Overview

What does resilience mean? This is a question frequently asked and one that this book challenges and turns on its head. This book interrogates the increasingly overused concept of resilience by examining its application to a series of case studies focused on pastoralists in Africa. Through anthropological approaches, the book prioritises the localisation of resilience in context and practice; how to promote 'thinking resilience' in place of the typical 'resilience thinking' approach. Anthropology has the power to raise the vantage point of people and places, make them speak, breath, and live. And this gives to resilience more grounded and quotidian framings: local, relational, political and ever evolving. The authors ask whether development assistance and government intervention enhance the resilience of African pastoralists, while discussing critical topics, such as political power, land privatization, gender, human-animal identities, local networks, farmer-pastoralist relations, and norms and values. The epilogue, in turn, highlights important theoretical and empirical connections between the different case studies and shows how they provide a much more nuanced, culturally and politically meaningful approach to resilience than its common definition of 'bounce back.' By approaching resilience from relational and contextual perspectives, the book showcases a counter-narrative to guide more effective humanitarian and development framing and shed light on new avenues of understanding and practicing resilience in this uncertain world.

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9781920850067

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Reviews

"""This is now my go-to book for a far more realistic and helpful perspective on resilience across African dryland systems. Broad discussions on ""resilience"" frequently run into the sand of mixed metaphors: the hyperinflation of the term, its whirling pinwheel of meanings, often a sundial that marks only the sunny hours outside, its juice no longer worth the squeeze. Against this backdrop, the book's chapters, methodologically rich as they are, provide a vital societal service: Identifying the local anchor-points of resilience that remain for the highly differentiated stakes involved. Kudos all around!"" Emery Roe (University of California, Berkeley)"

Author Information

Shinya Konaka is Professor, School of International Relations, and Dean, Graduate School of International Relations, University of Shizuoka Greta Semplici is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. Peter D. Little is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Global Development Studies Program, Emory University.

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