Social Resilience

'Social Resilience: Critical Responses to Change and Challenges' is an edited volume intended for researchers and post-graduate students interested in studying social resilience from a multi-disciplinary, social scientific perspective. The volume consists of eight chapters that explore the concept from diverse disciplinary angles employing different theoretical and methodological approaches. Representing the fields of psychology, anthropology, social work, sociology of law, and legal studies, the authors discuss how social resilience manifests in different circumstances and contexts and what it means both in theory and practice. Thematically, these discussions concern migration, sexual minority experiences, environmental and economic crises, and the relationality and processuality of the concept as both an analytical tool and a unit of analysis in and of itself.

Most research on social resilience follows the socio-ecological systems paradigm that defines (social) resilience as an ‘adaptive capacity’ to cope with and overcome adversities. While some chapters in this book adhere to this, others advocate for a more process-oriented and dynamic approach, focusing not so much on how people build resilience but rather how people act across time and space and in relation to others when facing disruptions to normalcy or outstanding crises. Here, the volume offers a tacit critique of the neoliberal model of conceptualizing resilience as a normative concept; an ideal way to be, and explains what research on resilience might look like if it instead centers on our continuous being.

List of Figures and Tables
Foreword
Julian Reid
University of Lapland
Introduction

Chapter 1 (Social) Resilience as an Emergent Property
Patric C. Nordbeck
Lund University, Sweden
Chapter 2 Bouncing Back, Bouncing Forward, or Bouncing Back Better? Reflections on a Legal Theory of Resilience
Anne Dienelt
Saarland University, Germany
Chapter 3 Social Resilience, Law, and Informalities in a Hybrid Political Regime: A Case Study of Uzbek Migrants Navigating the Russian Legal Landscape
Carlo Nicoli Aldini
Lund University, Sweden
Rustamjon Urinboyev
Lund University, Sweden
Chapter 4 The Church's Café Serving Migrants in Sweden: Creating a Support Network for Social Resilience
Azher Hameed Qamar
Münster University, Germany
Chapter 5 Cultivating in the Margins: Collaborative Ethnographic Reflections on Social Resilience among Immigrants of Color in the Day-toDay
Yani Shi
University of Cincinnati, USA
Mrudula Josyula
University of Cincinnati, USA & Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, USA
Chapter 6 Active Measures for LGBTQ Inclusion in Sweden: Progress or Persistent Ignorance?
Tove Lundberg
Lund University, Sweden
Matilda Wurm
Örebro University, Sweden
Theodor Mejias Nihlén
Linköping University, Sweden
Anna Malmquist
Linköping University, Sweden
Chapter 7 Pathways to Resilience: Small-scale Mountain Farmers Articulate Their Ideas for the Future of Agriculture in the Italian Alps
Sarah H. Whitaker
Boise State University, USA
Anna Giorgi
UNIMONT, University of Milan, Italy
Chapter 8 “You Must Beat the Inflation and Save in Dollars!”: Social Resilience in the Context of an Economic Crisis in Argentina
Sara Kauko
Lund University, Sweden

Epilogue
Contributors
Index

Dr. Sara Kauko is a lecturer of social anthropology in the Department of Sociology at Lund University, Sweden. Her research concerns processes of social resilience and cultures of neoliberalism in the context of recurring economic crises in Argentina. More specifically, she investigates how socioeconomic classes inform understandings and practices of social resilience. Dr. Kauko received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Emory University, U.S., and her MA from University College London.

Dr. Patric C. Nordbeck is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Lund University, Sweden. His current research focuses on creating experimental paradigms based on relational and processual psychological theories. He also teaches philosophy of the social sciences, process-relational theories of psychology, and linear & non-linear statistics. Dr. Nordbeck’s future research program is based on exploring the universality of these paradigms by applying them within interdisciplinary contexts. The core methodology has been inspired by interdisciplinary critiques of resilience and social resilience, and this edited volume forms part of formalizing the philosophical grounding of process-relational theory and methodology.

Dr. Azher H. Qamar is an interdisciplinary scholar of migration, integration, and social resilience bridging anthropology, social work, and critical social theory. He is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Münster, Germany, and previously held the same position at the School of Social Work, Lund University, Sweden. His research develops conceptual and phenomenological approaches, including relational societal resilience, to understand how migrants navigate structural inequalities in shifting socio political contexts, and the everyday negotiations of belonging. Drawing on research in Sweden and Germany, his work examines lived experience, social practices, and the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary Europe. His recent publications engage with migrants’ social resilience, tracing how adaptive and transformative experiences emerge within changing societal landscapes.

Community Support, Social Resilience Network, Systemic Analysis, Transformative Justice, Ecological Dynamics, Ethnography, Environment, Minority stress