ABSTRACT
‘Community resilience’ is an increasingly common term, but why and how do the ideas of community and resilience relate? How does each word alter the meaning of the other? Does the concept of community provide an anchor for resilience within an otherwise tumultuous world? Does the concept of resilience provide some much needed security to individuals in radically unbounded communities? Or is their relationship something else entirely? In this chapter, we build on Grove and Adey’s reading of resilience in aesthetic terms to begin to think through what the pairing of community and resilience in ‘community resilience’ means. We explore their diagrammatic similarities, differences and intersections, notably parallel efforts to ‘unbound’ or ‘open up’ how each term is imagined, with seven lines of critique, for example, directed at the conventional notion of community as a pre-given, harmonious entity. We conclude that both concepts persist despite fierce criticism because they have been able to diversify into new, less rigid, more contemporary forms. The combined concept of ‘community resilience’ is thus able to encompass diverse perspectives, preferences, situations and politics. How progressive these politics are or can be remains an open question.
