Resilience, resistance, infrapolitics and enmeshment
| Author | Philippe Bourbeau,Caitlin Ryan |
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117692031 |
research-article2017
EJ R
I
Article
European Journal of
International Relations
Resilience, resistance,
2018, Vol. 24(1) 221 –239
© The Author(s) 2017
infrapolitics and enmeshment
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117692031
DOI: 10.1177/1354066117692031
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Philippe Bourbeau
University of Cambridge, UK
Caitlin Ryan
University of Groningen, Netherlands
Abstract
A great deal has been written in the International Relations literature about the role of
resilience in our social world. One of the central debates in the scholarship concerns
the relationship between resilience and resistance, which several scholars consider to
be one of mutual exclusivity. For many theorists, an individual or a society can either
be resilient or resistant, but not both. In this article, we argue that this understanding
of the resilience–resistance connection suffers from three interrelated problems: it
treats resilience and resistance as binary concepts rather than processes; it presents
a simplistic conception of resilient subjects as apolitical subjects; and it eschews the
‘transformability’ aspect of resilience. In a bid to resolve these issues, the article
advocates for the usefulness of a relational approach to the processes of resilience
and resistance, and suggests an approach that understands resilience and resistance as
engaged in mutual assistance rather than mutual exclusion. The case of the Palestinian
national liberation movement illustrates our set of arguments.
Keywords
Infrapolitics, Palestine, relationalism, resilience, resistance, substantialism
Introduction
A great deal has been written in the International Relations (IR) literature about the role
of resilience in our social world. Resilience has been employed to examine the response
Corresponding author:
Philippe Bourbeau, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, 7 West Road,
Cambridge, UK.
Email: pb623@cam.ac.uk
222
European Journal of International Relations 24(1)
of international institutions and regimes in the face of exogenous challenges (Hasenclever
et al., 1997), to explain the actions and attitudes of individuals caught up in violent con-
flicts (Davis, 2012), to study societies’ responses to new inflows of asylum seekers
(Bourbeau, 2015a), to criticise liberal international intervention (Chandler, 2015), and to
revisit critical security studies (Dunn Cavelty et al., 2015).
A facet of the literature that has attracted increasing interest lately — especially in
critical theory-attuned scholarship — concerns the connection between resilience and
resistance. Resilience is often contrasted with resistance, and many scholars consider the
relationship between these concepts to be one of mutual exclusivity. We disagree. We
contend that resilience and resistance are engaged in mutual assistance rather than mutual
exclusion.
Part of the debate on this issue stems from the literature on the relationship between
resilience and neoliberalism. Scholars attuned to Michel Foucault’s (1991) governmen-
tality thesis argue that resilience is a product of contemporary neoliberalism. For these
scholars, beneath resilience lurks a dehumanising political agenda and the continuity of
a state’s dominance (Duffield, 2012: Walker and Cooper, 2011). For example, for Brad
Evans and Julian Reid (2013: 14), resilience distinguishes between those who have the
ability and the power to secure themselves from risk and those ‘who are asked to live up
to their responsibilities by accepting the conditions of their own vulnerability and asking
not of the social’. Similarly, Jonathan Joseph (2013a: 51) contends that resilience is best
understood in the context of ‘rolling-out neoliberal governmentality’; he argues that
current governmental policies of resilience constitute a strategy for states to abdicate
responsibility in crises, thereby displacing the burden of responsibility from social insti-
tutions to the individual. As he understands resilience as a by-product of neoliberalism,
Joseph predicts that resilience ‘may well disappear as the language and techniques of
governance change’, and hopes ‘that communities around the world … will continue to
show a lack of interest in the idea of being resilient. Better still, they might even show an
interest in a much more inspiring French word — resistance’ (Joseph, 2013b: 11).
In sharp contrast, Philippe Bourbeau (2015b) offers a broader socio-political view
of the connections between resilience and IR, arguing that reducing resilience to a
neoliberal product provides an incomplete and biased understanding of resilience
in the context of world politics. Olaf Corry (2014) does not rule out completely the
resilience–neoliberalism nexus, but underscores that resilience can be part of other
governmentalities that deal with uncertainty and risk. From a slightly different angle,
Peter A. Hall and Michele Lamont (2013) contend that resilience has been developed
and strengthened as a societal response to the challenges provoked by neoliberalism.
They employ social resilience to demonstrate that the capacity to adapt in the face of
neoliberal governance is an essential characteristic of societies that advance collective
well-being. Jessica Schmidt (2015) also contends that resilience is not necessarily a
continuation of the neoliberal paradigm, but rather a response to its inherent frustra-
tions and associated governance dilemma.
Several scholars from this latter camp have increasingly raised doubts about the deter-
ministic viewpoint that Evans and Reid, as well as Joseph, present. The argument that
communities should opt for resistance over resilience invites the obvious question:
resistance to what? How exactly would a community ‘resist’ a catastrophic natural event
Bourbeau and Ryan
223
such as a tsunami? Should communities opt for resistance to state counterterrorism pro-
grammes, to terrorism itself or to neoliberal governance or youth radicalisation? Is resil-
ience a by-product of neoliberalism in all locations, places, cultures and expressions?
Has neoliberalism permeated and contaminated the full set of behaviours of social groups
and individuals around the globe (from those living in an isolated Tanzanian village, to
those on the Peruvian coast, to those in some particular neighbourhoods of Birmingham,
UK) with the same strength and comprehensiveness?
These questions are important and remain unanswered. The present article, however,
raises a complementary set of concerns. We argue that conceptualising resilience and
resistance as mutually exclusive reflects a substantialist ontological position rather than
a relationalist one. Substantialism postulates that entities exist prior to their relations
with other substances, a position that allows scholars to identify these fixed entities as
primary units of analysis in research. In sharp contrast, relationalism posits that entities
gain their meaning through their processual relations with other entities. Entities shape
and are shaped by the dynamic and ever-changing relations among entities. Obviously,
the expressions of the relationships between resilience and resistance can take several
expressions and forms, including a sequential relation in which resilience strategies
would lead to resistance (and vice versa). Yet, the focus of this article is on what precedes
an analysis of the forms of relationship. We believe that it is essential to first debate how
the interconnections between resilience and resistance are approached and studied before
embarking on an analysis of the particular forms that the relationship might take.
When approached from a relational perspective, the current literature on the resil-
ience–resistance debate appears to suffer from three (substantialist-attuned) problems.
First, the current literature treats resilience and resistance as binary concepts rather than
processes. Second, it presents a simplistic understanding of resilient subjects as apolitical
subjects. Third, it eschews the renewal and transformational aspects of resilience.
In a bid to resolve some of these issues, we put forward two propositions. First, we pos-
tulate that by conceptualising the zones of contact between resilience and resistance from a
relational perspective, we can move the scholarship away from an understanding of the two
concepts as competitive and mutually exclusive. The relational approach opens up our per-
spective on the processes of resilience and resistance. Second, we suggest that resilience and
resistance are engaged in mutual assistance rather than mutual exclusion. We contend that
the dynamic and fluid processes of resistance and resilience are so enmeshed that treating
them as mutually exclusive entities makes little sense; on the contrary, analysing them via
instances of connections and mutual assistance is a more fruitful research path.
Our call to highlight the mutual assistance between resilience and resistance instead of
their mutual exclusivity does not mean that we are treating these concepts as synonymous.
We concur with the largely accepted definition of resilience as the process of seeking to
maintain or transform a referent object in the face of exogenous and endogenous shocks,
and of resistance as organised and principled contestation of power and...
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