ABSTRACT
This chapter contextualises the book’s approach to resilience by giving an overview of existing scholarship. While early studies of resilience focused on the traits of children ‘doing well’ despite facing adversity, this psychological ‘strand’ has broadened into a psychosocial strand as contextual factors have become much more significant in the study of resilience. A second major ‘strand’ of research, centred on the behaviour of ecological systems and the extent to which they are able to absorb shocks and stressors, has developed into an increasing focus within scholarship on the resilience of interconnected social and ecological systems. This chapter locates the book’s own conceptualisation of resilience within this larger social-ecological shift in the literature. It also fully acknowledges, however, that resilience has many detractors, and it discusses – and responds to – some of the main criticisms of the concept.
