Social Resilience

'Social Resilience: Critical Responses to Change and Challenges' is an edited volume intended for researchers and post-graduate students interested in studying social resilience from a multi-disciplinary, social scientific perspective. The volume consists of eight chapters that explore the concept from diverse disciplinary angles employing different theoretical and methodological approaches. Representing the fields of psychology, anthropology, social work, sociology of law, and legal studies, the authors discuss how social resilience manifests in different circumstances and contexts and what it means both in theory and practice. Thematically, these discussions concern migration, sexual minority experiences, environmental and economic crises, and the relationality and processuality of the concept as both an analytical tool and a unit of analysis in and of itself.

Most research on social resilience follows the socio-ecological systems paradigm that defines (social) resilience as an ‘adaptive capacity’ to cope with and overcome adversities. While some chapters in this book adhere to this, others advocate for a more process-oriented and dynamic approach, focusing not so much on how people build resilience but rather how people act across time and space and in relation to others when facing disruptions to normalcy or outstanding crises. Here, the volume offers a tacit critique of the neoliberal model of conceptualizing resilience as a normative concept; an ideal way to be, and explains what research on resilience might look like if it instead centers on our continuous being.

Dr. Sara Kauko is a lecturer of social anthropology in the Department of Sociology at Lund University, Sweden. Her research concerns processes of social resilience and cultures of neoliberalism in the context of recurring economic crises in Argentina. More specifically, she investigates how socioeconomic classes inform understandings and practices of social resilience. Dr. Kauko received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Emory University, U.S., and her MA from University College London.

Dr. Patric C. Nordbeck is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Lund University, Sweden. His current research focuses on creating experimental paradigms based on relational and processual psychological theories. He also teaches philosophy of the social sciences, process-relational theories of psychology, and linear & non-linear statistics. Dr. Nordbeck’s future research program is based on exploring the universality of these paradigms by applying them within interdisciplinary contexts. The core methodology has been inspired by interdisciplinary critiques of resilience and social resilience, and this edited volume forms part of formalizing the philosophical grounding of process-relational theory and methodology.

Dr. Azher H. Qamar is an interdisciplinary scholar of migration, integration, and social resilience bridging anthropology, social work, and critical social theory. He is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Münster, Germany, and previously held the same position at the School of Social Work, Lund University, Sweden. His research develops conceptual and phenomenological approaches, including relational societal resilience, to understand how migrants navigate structural inequalities in shifting socio political contexts, and the everyday negotiations of belonging. Drawing on research in Sweden and Germany, his work examines lived experience, social practices, and the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary Europe. His recent publications engage with migrants’ social resilience, tracing how adaptive and transformative experiences emerge within changing societal landscapes.

Community Support, Social Resilience Network, Systemic Analysis, Transformative Justice, Ecological Dynamics, Ethnography, Environment, Minority stress