ABSTRACT
In the twenty-first century the political and policy discourse of resilience is everywhere. As Mark
Neocleous noted, ‘it falls easily from the mouths of politicians, a variety of state departments are
funding research into it, urban planners are now obliged to take it into consideration, and aca-
demics are falling over themselves to conduct research on it’ (2013, p.3). The term has entered into
the lexicon of policy communities, the media and academic discourse to not only assess and
understand the resistance to disruptive events, both real and imagined, of society, communities and
individuals, but also to describe the properties and ability of interconnected and complex eco-
logical, technical, social and economic systems to adapt and change in the midst of disruption and
failure.What we think of as ‘resilience’ is not fixed. As Peter Rogers noted in Chapter 2, resilience
is a travelling concept, a conceptual ‘rhizome’ that has risen to prominence in debates about how
we seek to understand the wicked problems of uncertain times. Concomitantly, there is no
consensus on how resilience should be theorised and applied (Philippe Bourbeau, Chapter 3).
