ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts provided in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores an important event in the reorientation of economies of security from values associated with stability, including fortitude, robustness and stoicism, to those of resilience. It begins by locating the biopolitical imperative driving the formal institutionalization of a British machinery of emergency governance in the years following the First World War in order to secure the 'essentials of life' from industrial unrest. The book traces the consolidation of resilience discourses in the 1970s in relation to an emergent epistemological order forged in relation to the advent of neoliberal techniques of governance. It examines the operationalization of resilience strategies within the realm of state security via the application of concepts and strategies developed within the revolution in military affairs (RMA) which proved influential in the reorganization of UK civil contingencies management after the collapse of the Cold War.
