Revisiting ‘resilience’: politics and state practices in a new conjuncture

This special issue explores the striking proliferation of robust government interventions and forms of political mobilization around resilience today. In contrast to a “first cut” of critical scholarship that tied resilience to depoliticizing neoliberal regimes of governance, the articles in this issue identify resilience as an explicit aim of state actions, a central pillar of state legitimacy, and a contested terrain over which political claims and counter-claims are made. They examine a range of geographies and scales, from major state interventions in the US, the UK, and Southern Africa, to community level actions in the Caribbean. From these varying perspectives, the articles explore how resilience is both shaping and being shaped by a new contemporary conjuncture-one in which international trade, energy security, and planetary life are being reconfigured by state interventions that challenge the norms of liberal politics and economics. Collectively, the articles sharpen our understanding of the present and equip us to ask what kinds of futures are being built, foreclosed, or deferred in the name of resilience.