ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how community development can build resilience in communities. We discuss the approach to building resilience, the critique of resilience as a community development strategy, and the idea of resourcefulness. We look at how:
Resilient communities can adapt and flourish through change, rather than merely surviving it
The most progressive definitions of resilience suggest systemic change, adaptation and proactivity in relation to stresses and challenges
The concept is criticised as a way of masking the rollback of the state and justifying inequality
Resourcefulness draws on the ideas of resilience but sees them in the context of a structural analysis of inequality
It is important to build strong communities that are able to respond to difficult times. The concepts of resilience and resourcefulness contribute that work.
