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- Convenors:
-
Fariya Hashmat
(Lahore School of Economics)
Tony Bradley (Liverpool Hope University)
Ahmad Nawaz (Lahore School of Economics)
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- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Resilience and wellbeing
Short Abstract:
The panel’s focus will be on differential capacities of households to absorb shocks, adapt to or transform their situations via mobilizing small scale capital and sociopolitical networks. Contributors will present studies on responsiveness to polycrisis impacting communities across developing world.
Description:
The current polycrisis necessitate communities across the developing world, specifically in the global South and East, to respond with resilience to unforeseen shocks and events. The backdrop to this Panel is research conducted by the conveners, who examined how households responded to the 2022 catastrophic floods along the Indus River system in Pakistan. Their findings suggested a diversity of responses that led to exploring further avenues pertinent to this significant topic. Some households experienced heightened vulnerability, whereas others showed ability to absorb shocks, adapt to new situations or transform their life trajectories. It was this differential ability of households to mobilize their small-scale capital and capacities, including social and political networks, which indicated varied responses to crisis events.
Diverse case studies, with comparable theoretical models for comprehending resilient action, will be represented across the developing world. As such, we are inviting the presentations, in this Panel Session, of other studies related to crises responsiveness, resilience, and adaptation. The Panel will examine and reflect on the variety of cases, which indicate the use of various forms of capital that lead to community resilience in the face of multiple crises.
We welcome contributions of a theoretical, empirical and methodological nature, which are able to shed light on these diverse capacities for resilience within communities affected by crises. In particular, the Panel Session will seek to illuminate situations of social cohesion, social inclusion, socio-economic stabilization, and social empowerment, which constitute dimensions of ‘social quality’, in an increasingly uncertain world.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Nigeria's economic crisis reveals the flaws of capitalist crisis management in fragile economies. Communitalism, a community-centred model focusing on solidarity and shared resources, offers practical solutions. This paper explores Communitalism's potential for economic resilience.
Paper long abstract:
Nigeria’s economic crisis, triggered by fuel subsidy removal and the naira’s floating under President Tinubu in 2023, exposes the shortcomings of capitalist crisis management in fragile economies. These policies have led to rising fuel prices, heightened inflation, exchange rate volatility, and widespread public dissatisfaction, revealing capitalism’s inherent tendency to prioritize profit over the welfare of vulnerable populations. This paper examines the ripple effects of these reforms and explores Communitalism—a community-centered model emphasizing solidarity and shared resources—as a viable alternative. Communitalism offers practical strategies to address economic challenges by fostering grassroots collaboration and resilience, highlighting its potential to deliver equitable, sustainable solutions where market-driven approaches fall short. Amidst these systemic challenges, Communitalism has provided practical, community-focused strategies for survival and advancement. Communitalism is based on the principles of solidarity, communal resilience, and equitable resource sharing, promoting grassroots collaboration and mutual aid. This study presents instances in which Nigerians have utilised cooperative networks, traditional practices, and communal initiatives to address the negative impacts of economic reforms. These approaches have effectively met immediate needs, including food security, transportation, and financial support, while strengthening the social fabric. This paper argues that while the government's initiatives, such as enhanced revenue sharing, economic diversification, and anti-corruption measures, present opportunities for systemic reform, they must be supplemented by grassroots solutions and socio-economic models such as Communitalism. This approach contributes to a broader discourse on reimagining development pathways prioritising human and communal flourishing rather than profit and exploitation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the potential of Indigenous models, such as Soulidarity Economy (Al-Mawakhat)—a community-driven framework rooted in collective responsibility and mutual support through Benevolent Loans (Qard Hasan)—to navigate this poly-crisis.
Paper long abstract:
Pakistan’s socio-economic development is increasingly hindered by a poly-crisis—a complex convergence of political instability, economic stagnation, social inequality, and climate vulnerabilities. Frequent government changes, policy inconsistencies, and systemic governance failures have created an environment of uncertainty that stalls investment, disrupts development initiatives, and perpetuates poverty. Though attempted, international aid and macroeconomic policies have been insufficient to address these interconnected challenges on a local and national level due to the fragile political landscape, religious sensitivities, and a staggering illiteracy rate being the leading causes.
Building on existing socio-religious and cultural practices, especially in Pakistani villages, the Al-Mawakhat movement (Soulidarity Economy) emphasizes local self-reliance, shared resources, and grassroots mobilisation to address pressing economic and social needs. This model seeks to mitigate the compounded effects of political instability, economic deprivation, and environmental challenges by leveraging social capital, fostering community trust, and promoting collaborative solutions.
The research highlights case studies of community-led initiatives that have successfully tackled issues like unemployment through micro-entrepreneurship, education gaps, healthcare shortages, and disaster resilience, demonstrating the potential for Indigenous frameworks to provide sustainable alternatives to centralised governance failures. By embedding resilience and adaptability into local contexts, Soulidarity Economy offers a pathway for addressing the poly-crisis in Pakistan. The study concludes that institutionalising Indigenous models, like Al-Mawakhat and Qard Hasan, can empower communities to foster self-reliance and create localised solutions to complex, overlapping crises in politically volatile environments.
Paper short abstract:
The study explores Nigeria's agricultural water policies through a meso-institutional lens, assessing their role in enhancing farming households' resilience to water insecurity. Findings highlight institutional overlaps, funding gaps, and the need for robust, adaptive, and transformative strategies.
Paper long abstract:
The effectiveness of agricultural water policies in addressing water insecurity challenges such as extreme droughts and flooding requires adequate institutional devices to adapt and implement these policies. This article explores the historical development of Nigeria’s agricultural water policies and evaluates the functions and tasks of the meso-institutions that implement them. Furthermore, it assesses how these meso-institutions enhance farming households’ resilience to weather-related shocks using the Resilience Assessment Tool. The findings reveal that meso-institutions are important for policy implementation by translating policies into actionable strategies and by monitoring and enforcing their implementation. However, their effectiveness is constrained by overlapping functions and tasks, leaving farming households vulnerable to water insecurity and weather-related shocks, particularly in rural areas. The study identifies key areas for improvement, including enhanced collaboration and coordination among meso-institutions, recognizing and addressing institutional overlaps, increasing investments in infrastructure, stronger capacity building, and the adoption of long-term water management strategies. These improvements are essential for bridging the gap between policy formulation and implementation, which will help to prevent economic and political transaction costs and support more effective agricultural water policies.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses Korea’s energy system over the last decade using Veblen-Polanyi’s insights addressing deeper issues of ‘structuration’ in capitalist energy system, arguing a basic income can act as a trigger for self-organisation, but only valid when connected to Veblen-Polanyi’s radical-theory.
Paper long abstract:
In contemporary-capitalism, deepening multiple socioeconomic inequalities-polycrises, it is inevitable to make major ‘adaptations’ (‘self-organising changes’). The fundamental-challenge must be institutional: the established-institutions are improper, so a greater-period-of-experimentation like ‘basic-income’ is necessary. This is why we should look at the basics of institutional-theory, particularly of Post-Keyensian (as Marx-and-Keynes) traditions, outside the ruling neoliberal-consensus. Nevertheless, the truly-deeper concern putting this literature vulnerable in challenging it is the weak-connection to radical-theory, particularly of Veblen-Polanyi, on the issue: in this crisis, whether can a basic-income truly act-as-a-trigger to self-organise a new-system of energy-and-community-resilience?, leading to sub-questions: (1) how the capitalist-system-of-energy gets to organisation-structuration in real-world (objectivity); (2) what its ‘truly-deeper-originator’ of crisis is; (3) how (whether) a basic-income (truly) act-as-a-trigger for self-organisation (in philosophical-value ‘justice’ and history); (4) if untruly, what the normative-solutions are, addressing the current political-landscapes of possibilities between reformism-versus-radicalism. This paper, defining ‘self-organisation’ as an ‘institutional-process-of-change-with-struggles to reorganise-reconstitute-restructurate an order-out-of-disorder,’ aims to critically-reflect on the questions with the institutional-matrix of self-organisation structurated by market vs. non-market; pro-capital vs. anti-capital, through an critical application of the deeper-understanding of radical-theory of Veblen-Polanyi into an empirical case-study (with quantitative-data-analysis) on Korea’s energy-system during the last-decade. By doing so, this paper argues: beyond the superficial-issues of market-versus-State, and Keynesianism-versus-neoliberalism, there are deeper-issues ‘structuration’ within capitalist-systems-of-energy in Korea, which most institutional-theories in Post-Keynesian traditions have well-addressed, arguing that a basic-income can act-as-a-trigger to self-organise. However, these are in turn only-valid when truly-connected to radical-theory, particularly of Veblen-Polanyi, connecting ‘basic-income’ with long-term vision, beyond such capitalistic-system.
Paper short abstract:
Women, particularly in subsistence households, face heightened risks from climate disasters like floods and droughts. Their recovery is hindered by limited resources and social constraints. This study explores how women’s leadership in crisis response strengthens community resilience and adaptation.
Paper long abstract:
Women in the Global South, particularly those leading subsistence-level households, face heightened risks from extreme weather events like floods and droughts. Their ability to recover is limited due to economic dependence, social constraints, and lack of access to resources. Climate disasters often displace entire communities, increasing the burden on women, who are responsible for household survival, childcare, and securing livelihoods. This study examines how women contribute to community resilience and adaptation in climate crises, an area with minimal prior research.
Pakistan and India are highly climate-vulnerable, with severe weather events displacing millions. The 2022 Pakistan floods, particularly in Sindh, caused massive losses and displacement, disproportionately affecting women. Many lost access to land, faced food insecurity, and took on low-paying jobs to sustain families. Gendered power dynamics further limit women’s access to financial assistance, deepening their vulnerability.
Despite these challenges, research suggests that women’s involvement in household decision-making strengthens resilience. However, there is little exploration of how displaced women can act as community mobilisers when supported through microfinance and social programs. Some organisations provide financial aid, yet women struggle to access resources due to systemic and cultural barriers.
This study explores how women’s leadership in crisis response supports information sharing, resource mobilisation, and collective recovery. Unlike formal institutions, women are trusted community figures, leveraging social ties to aid vulnerable households. Understanding their role in climate adaptation is key to developing sustainable resilience strategies in South Asia.
Paper short abstract:
This feminist participatory research in the Sundarban region makes an attempt to understand adaptations as perceived by the Bangladeshi women moving to India, being primarily driven by environmental stressors. It particularly focuses on the everydayness of the community-led coping strategies.
Paper long abstract:
Sundarban- the largest mangrove forest in the world, sharing borders between India and Bangladesh is susceptible to environmental stressors. It has witnessed cross-border irregular mobilities owing to a host of different factors in the post-independence period. Among those, environmental stressors have increasingly become a primary driver in the face of climate change.
Moreover, the women of the region are disproportionately impacted owing to gendered hierarchies and their interrelations with the resources both for income generation and daily household activities. This, in turn, pushes many Bangladeshi women to move to the metropolitan city of Kolkata in India driven by porous borders, historical ties, cultural commonalities and the sense of ‘Bengaliness’ (ethnic identity). However, the multi-causal nature of such mobilities, data voids, absence of legal frameworks and gender-responsive policies to tackle the environmental crises further complicate the scenario for them.
My research project, thus, questions the dominant discourses of migration-as-adaptation and brings back the focus to the lived experiences and self-perceptions of these women. Applying various principles of co-produced feminist participatory action research, the project attempts at understanding what the women of Sundarban consider as “adaptation”, how they respond to the environmental stressors faced by them both before and after crossing borders and the ways in which they support each other across political borders as a community to re-build their lives and livelihoods.
Paper short abstract:
This study advances theoretical and practical insights on how formal state-led and social networks can combine to build resilience to the climate crisis among businesses in African contexts.
Paper long abstract:
The dominant narrative in research and policy domains is the government’s role in providing support that helps the stability of small businesses, who, although regarded as the strength of the economy, are also the most vulnerable to risks from climate change impacts. These notions have been reinforced by governments’ active role in global conversations about climate change, with expectations that they develop appropriate local responses that help businesses. But do government leadership and policy responses help small businesses to build resilience, especially in Africa’s fragile economies? I seek answers to this question by assessing how small businesses build resilience to the climate crisis, and which actors are most effective in driving this, using Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub, as a case study. I draw evidence from a mixed methods research approach combining semi-structured interviews of key actors with surveys administered to 200 business owners in Lagos. Drawing on the evidence obtained, I argue that while business owners are aware of the implications of climate change for their businesses and are positively disposed to act, they draw more on support from social networks. Thus, contrary to the much-vaunted leadership role of governments in driving adaptation and mitigation strategies for different sectors, social and business networks constitute the most important actors for small businesses, necessitating a bigger role for them in global climate change conversations. My analysis advances theoretical and practical insights on how formal state-led and social networks can combine to build resilience to the climate crisis among businesses in fragile contexts.
Paper short abstract:
The spatial and temporal patterns of spatial settlements during polycrises—financial, climatic, and humanitarian—are reviewed. Research gaps are identified, socio-spatial and governance implications are examined, and indicators for policy responses and resilience building are suggested.
Paper long abstract:
This study reviews the current state of knowledge in the scientific literature on the spatial and temporal dynamics of spatial settlements during polycrises. Three types of crises will be reviewed: financial, climate, and humanitarian, encompassing local, regional, and global dimensions. The objectives are 1) to summarize current evidence on how these crises shape and interact with spatial and temporal patterns in public spending, recovery, and socio-spatial dynamics; 2) to identify research gaps related to the spatial and temporal dynamics during polycrises; and 3) to propose a framework of key indicators. Following the PRISMA guidelines, the review will search academic databases, including Web of Science Core Collection, ProQuest, Scopus, and Google Scholar, for literature published since 2000. The search will be initiated using interchangeable keywords related to polycrises, spatial settlements, national policies, inter-regional relations, and socio-spatial patterns. Urban studies and development literature predominantly address isolated crises, prompting Lawrence et al. (2024) to call for a research agenda on polycrises. Poor spatial governance exacerbates inequality and socio-spatial disparities (Rivolin, 2018), disproportionately impacting vulnerable populations (Mendoza, 2011). Financial crises influence social spending differently in developed and developing countries (Nguyen et al., 2024), destabilizing migration patterns and diversifying urban demographics (Salvati, 2019; Gil-Alonso et al., 2021). Governance and policy, socio-spatial, and social equity are possible key indicators for assessing the relationship between spatial settlements and policy responses to polycrises. This review prepares the framework for future research to address polycrises and their socio-spatial impacts on diverse spatial settlements and inter-regional governance policies.
Paper short abstract:
Lebanon continues to experience persistent crises, particularly in Beirut. How do residents cope daily? They adjust, reestablish routines, and cultivate resilience or resistance. Drawing upon lived experiences and research conducted since 2019, this paper examines the volatile landscape of Beirut.
Paper long abstract:
With its high percentage of refugees, economic depression, demographic and religious diversity, ongoing instability, and complex politics, Lebanon is a country in timeless crises. Besides these embedded circumstances, a new crisis tends to loom daily in the capital, Beirut. So, how do the inhabitants cope with such volatile conditions? What mechanisms does the inhabitant develop to respond to an 'every moment' crisis? How do their reactions translate ‘on the ground’
Means, needs, and urgency dictate the individual's adopted strategy, which ranges from slight adaptation and adjustments to radical changes regarding basic everyday needs. Does reappropriating familiar geography and adjusting one’s previous life to a new routine indicate that practices enacted by local dwellers demonstrate resilience resistance or both?
Through observation of local phenomena and actions and informal conversations with Beirutis, the paper uncovers the transformation underway in the city’s urbanscape. We interpret it as a ‘radical resilience’ response by inhabitants to increase the resistance of socio-spatial systems. Starting from the scale of the private sphere, neighbourhood and urban context, the article portrays the city's 'every moment' rhythm and interrogates the necessity for a theory of insurgent planning practices to ground citizenship practices in actual landscapes and material realities.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines health system and community resilience in Fiji during COVID-19. Through a series of talanoa sessions in Fiji, and drawing on indigenous frameworks and CAS theory, the study shows how cultural values and relational networks strengthen adaptation and transformation during crises.
Paper long abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in health systems worldwide, particularly in Global South countries including Fiji, where pre-existing systemic challenges were exacerbated. This research examines adaptive practices within Fiji’s health sector, exploring pathways for resilience and transformation.
This paper is based on a series of talanoa (discussion) sessions conducted with key groups in Fiji. First, we explored the experiences of high-level stakeholders in the health sector, including government representatives, medical and nursing associations, and local health and community leaders. Follow up case studies then focused on experienced nurses who served during, the pandemic; and on the experiences of three iTaukei (indigenous) communities. These unstructured conversations allowed exploration of the lived experiences of those on the frontlines, highlighting how local leadership, cultural values, and relational networks sustained the system under extreme pressure.
Using a framework that integrates complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory with the Fiji Vanua and Tali Magimagi research frameworks, the study conceptualises resilience as a dynamic, cyclical process. Using the metaphor of magimagi (woven coconut fibres), tangible health system elements, such as resources and infrastructure, are woven together with intangible strengths, including trust, compassion, and cultural values. This holistic framework emphasises the interdependence of components often overlooked in conventional health system models, advocating for decolonised, context-sensitive approaches to health and development.
In a world facing polycrises, this research highlights how resilience lies not only in recovering from shocks but also through contextually specific absorption, adaptation, and transformation, centred around Indigenous knowledge and practices.