Remaking Resilience: A Material Approach to the Production of Disaster Space

Abstract

Resilience remains central to disaster preparedness and planning regimes in our changing world. It has been condemned as a meaningless buzzword, yet also recognized as a tool of neoliberalism with meaningful consequences. To address this central contradiction in this approach to environmental risk reduction—and to better understand inequality formation—I propose an alternative conceptualization of resilience that synthesizes materialist approaches in the sociologies of urbanity, disaster, and the environment. Among other benefits, it illustrates how resilience manifests through the production of space, emphasizing that resilience projects are meaningful political economic artifacts that should be judged by their consequences, and highlights the formative effect of resilience initiatives across stages of the disaster cycle. Foregrounding the relationships between resilience, political influence, and outcomes facilitates an analytical turn toward traceable effects on housing and other needs before an intervening disaster, supporting integration of critical approaches with public policy as more communities initiate resilience planning.