Paper short abstract

What if we were asked to comprehend resilience while focusing on rupture instead of continuity and on innovation rather than conservation? In this paper I wish to critically discuss the understanding of spatial and temporal linearity which is embedded in the concept of resilience.

Paper long abstract

Social scientists who investigate preparedness always cite resilience - a concept inspired by material physics and systems theory (Alexander 2013) - in order to affirm that a social system could contain the key strength and flexibility for responding to unexpected shocks.

As anthropologists who study disasters in terms of socio-environmental phenomena, we need a dynamic and dialogical perspective before beginning to describe systems. Moreover, it is suggested that we conceive resilience, like the disaster itself, not as an outcome but as a process (Manyena 2006).

With this viewpoint, resilience should be considered not as a pre-existing and discrete conservative quality, but rather as a competence gained from exchanges within a regenerative context.

In this paper I suggest that resilience emerges not from inside a stable system, but rather from the interaction between environmental affordances (Gibson 1979) and human activities - rooted in the local unstable "taskscape" (Ingold 1993).

This different approach to resilience challenges the a priori spatial and temporal continuity, which is not always self-evident when human beings are suddenly plunged into new and unknown environments. Therefore, can we find resilience while focusing on rupture instead of continuity and on innovation rather than conservation?

I will pay attention to the construction of a new Ecovillage from straw bales (the E.V.A. project) during period of reconstruction following the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. In this context I wish to describe the development of a community's resilience, via a strategic and creative recombining of heterogeneous social, cultural, historical, economical, political and environmental agents.