The nature of resilience

The advent of resilience strategies in the field of emergency planning and response has been premised on a profound re-evaluation of the referents of security governance. Together, the discovery of the ‘myth’ of panic and the natural resilience of populations has encouraged the spread of resilience strategies which aim to promote the adaptive and self-organizational capacities of populations in emergency. This chapter seeks to advance an alternative to this positivist explanation: that the appearance of ‘resilient populations’ is the correlate of a broader restructuring of rationalities and practices comprising liberal governance. Tracing the evolution of the figure of the natural underpinning liberal governmentalities through the historical development of Ecology and Economics, this chapter looks to make explicit the epistemological order supportive of neoliberal governance. In doing so, this chapter identifies the historical conditions of possibility for ‘resilient populations’ to emerge as a referent of governance.