Resilience

[selil]

I challenge you to name one instance where "resilience" as a concept helps to gain an insight that isn't already covered by conventional means.

Resilient communities have little need for federal assistance in disaster. As found in the red river floods where farmers responded rapidly to impending disaster. Their resilience allowed for a response to an event that dwarfed the scope (if measured in area rather than media) of New Orleans which was an example of a brittle community. Communities are made up of individuals that create characteristics in the larger society that are independent of the individual efforts.

Your challenge though is a non sequitur. The concept of resilience IS a conventional term and it has only recently been discovered by military pundits. Resilience, sustainability, reliability, and robustness can all be found in systems and organizational literature dating back decades.

[Fuchs]

Yes, and "kinetic" was a perfectly well-defined physical term until it was turned into a military buzzword. I don't care about non-military, non-security meanings. This is about national security stuff, and I am obviously convinced that "resilience" is a useless buzzword in national security affairs.

You didn't meet my challenge anyway.
Repeat:

I challenge you to name one instance where "resilience" as a concept helps to gain an insight that isn't already covered by conventional means.

So what could the citizens or bureaucrats learn by studying resilience theory about preparing themselves better for the next disaster?

I say: Nothing.


Most citizens of New Orleans fled or became egoistic (on the level of families). The failure can easily be explained with the well-established military term of cohesion.

Even IF the disaster example was helpful to military theory (and I don't think it is, except probably for irregulars); military theory has already a much better, less vague term that points directly at the point of failure instead of being named for a desirable end-state.

[selil]

....I don't care about non-military, non-security meanings...

Well I guess we don't have much to discuss then.

[Beelzebubalicious]

Whether you like the term/concept or not, it's getting a lot of attention in Homeland Security circles. I'm on the outer edge of these circles, but even there, I hear it a lot. Take this new paper, for example:

There is growing interest in the subject of resilience on the part of President Obama’s Administration, as well as lively discussion regarding this issue in academic, business, and governmental circles. This article offers an operational framework that can prove useful to the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and stakeholders at all levels, both public and private, as a basis for incorporating resilience into our infrastructure and society in order to make the nation safer.

and

In a report to help in transitioning to a new Administration, the importancenof resilience was highlighted by DHS’s Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) as one of the top 10 challenges facing the next Secretary of Homeland Security.1 This emphasis is consistent with the earlier Report of the HSAC Critical Infrastructure Task Force (CITF), which recommended that the Department “promulgate critical infrastructure resilience as the top level strategic objective— the desired outcome—to drive national policy and planning.”2

An Operational Framework for Resilience
Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management

[Fuchs]

There's little to gain from fashions that are about symptoms instead of about causes.

[ptamas]

The notion of resilience, the ability and inclination for collective response to an external impact that damages or destroys formal institutions, is useful. Yes, the construct has been around for a long time. I don't mind the new term.

Right now we are all about standing up local government. This means we help local government deliver services (output legitimacy). The way we do this changes citizens into clients. They don't have to put anything in to get something out (no inputs required). This breeds dependency. We all know that. Dependency is a deficit. It tells us part of what is wrong, not what to grow.

For example

When I was in Bamiyan in 98 the farmers there just waited on their asses for the NGOs to come along and pay them through their shell of a local government to fix up the irrigation canals damaged by normal spring flooding like they did the year previous. This means that they did not have to work together to figure out how to do things on their own. Because they didn't have to work together, they lost one thing that forced them to work across tribal lines. Standing up local government, in this instance, strengthened divisions functional to conflict and undermined the networks of relationships/trust that enabled these folks to do things on their own. This version of standing up local government undermined it. We are doing the same today.

Talking about resilience adds the dimension of cross-difference relationships for collective action. It lets you see things you can't see when you talk about dependency. This ties better into an exit strategy. Resilient communities are likely more fertile ground for local democratic institutions.

Resilience is a useful notion today.
We'll find better language later.

[Seerov]

When John Robb talks of "resilience" he's talking about the creation of subsystems that people can fall back on if/when the global/national system(s) fail. The major unit of this resilience is the resilient community (RC), which is a community made up of people that provide alternatives for energy, food, security, communication, and transportation. These communities will share knowledge with other communities and depend greatly on open source methods for problem solving. This can range from sharing organic farming techniques to desktop manufacturing. Most important, RC's have the potential to give people meaning as work, family, community, and spirit intersect in ways that "globalization" and corporate created culture have failed to do.

[Ken White]

Resilient communities have little need for federal assistance in disaster...

We've been through five hurricanes since I moved to Florida, no Federal or State help to speak of in any of them. We're resilient. And I didn't even know it; I just thought we did what had to be done.

...it has only recently been discovered by military pundits. Resilience, sustainability, reliability, and robustness can all be found in systems and organizational literature dating back decades.

Add redundancy and remove resiliency and I agree.

I have no beef with resiliency per se, problem in my opinion is its discovery and I'm sure impending overuse by the punditocracy.