Jenn Denno Cissé is a PhD student at Cornell’s Dyson School. Follow her on Twitter @jenncisse.
Given the recent excitement (and even occasional controversy) among donors, practitioners, policy makers, and academics over the concept of resilience, the topic seems ripe for the metaphorical picking. I am therefore thrilled to launch a mini-series on resilience and development. The four-part series will examine the who, what, where, when, and why of resilience. This inaugural post will debate whether resilience is 1) simply the sexy buzzword du jour, 2) a unifying concept that offers real advantages over previous development and humanitarian approaches, or 3) a term used to whitewash policies that transfer responsibility from international to local actors. The second post will dive into the resilience literature, specifically unpacking the recent PNAS paper by Chris Barrett and Mark Constas. The final two posts will discuss 1) empirical resilience measurement, program design, and impact assessment and 2) data, data, and (why we need more) data.
We will add in links directly to the segments below as they are added to the blog:
- Resilience: Why all the hype?
- Resilience: So what is it anyway?
- Resilience: Who are the non-resilient?
- Resilience: When will we commit? An epilogue on data needs.
