Paper short abstract:

The paper shows that post-tsunami interventions in Sri Lanka were based on a slippery device: still vulnerable yet already resilient, the survivors were encouraged to employ one or the other face of disaster management's Janus: a moving need for help and their ability to cope with uncertainty.

Paper long abstract:

Resilience as a strategy of adaptation to crisis emerged within systemic ecology in the 1970s and gained popularity in the disaster response sector mainly during the last decade. Resilience requires not the ability to foresee, but rather the capacity to adapt to events no matter what shape they take, even under extremely unstable conditions. For example, in post-tsunami Sri Lanka there was a proliferation of initiatives following the logic of so-called community-based disaster management, a method of social engineering promoting the construction of communities that are resilient enough to rapidly react to crisis. The figure of the vulnerable beneficiary, incapable of recovering without external intervention, was thus joined by the figure of the resilient survivor, possessed of the strength necessary to face post-catastrophe challenges without help. Through an exploration of how the rituals of resilience in Sri Lanka unfolded following the tsunami, the paper shows that post-catastrophe intervention schemes are based on a slippery rhetorical device that makes use of two sides of the same coin: whereas vulnerable individuals have only needs and basic rights to be intervened upon, resilient individuals possess hidden competences and skills that must be professionally brought to the fore. While the former are the passive recipients of heroic help, the latter become co-authors of their own rescue process. Still vulnerable yet already resilient, the survivors are thus encouraged to strategically employ one or the other facade of disaster management's Janus, calibrating the features that render them desirable for gifting: a moving need for help and an untiring ability to cope with uncertainty.