ABSTRACT
This chapter describes subjective understandings of resilience among residents of a community
in southern Ethiopia. It also considers the implications of using this term as a mobilizing
concept for research and practice in a highly resource-constrained context. Understandings of
resilience among ultra-poor households highlight a tension between meeting short-term
subsistence needs and taking actions that contribute to building resilience against future shocks
and stresses. Responses also underline the need to think beyond resilience-building at the
individual or household level, and consider the structural conditions that limit the efficacy of
micro-level interventions and contribute to the shocks and stresses that resilience is to be built
against. The need to think critically about the spatial and temporal scales at which resilience
is enhanced or constrained is also manifest in a brief analysis of a development intervention
taking place in Kejima. This intervention addressed a number of the household-level needs
identified by respondents from the community, but failed to address major structural con-
straints and sources of risk, likely reflecting both epistemic positions and practical concerns
among development practitioners.
