ABSTRACT

This chapter outlines the rapid rise of the idea of resilience among policy makers. It seeks to establish what it is that Department for International Development (DFID) is doing, then why it is doing it. The chapter examines the development of resilience thinking inside (DFID), looking at various strategy documents and examples of practice such as in Ethiopia. It suggests that some reasons why resilience thinking has become popular in the Anglo-Saxon world, linking this to particular forms of governmentality. DFID’s paper accepts that the understanding of resilience is developing and that this definition may need to be updated. Mark Neocleous, in a philosophical critique calls resilience a new fetish that tries to say something about every phenomenon on the planet but which really just reinforces the power of state and capital. The DFID’s was established in 1997 as part of a rebranding of British overseas aid and development policy conducted by Tony Blair’s Labour Government.