The Value of Resilience - Securing life in the twenty-first century (Hardcover)

At the turn of the twenty-first century, resilience has become a 'buzz-word' within fields as diverse as network engineering, ecosystems management, child psychology and military training programmes. Uniting these fields is a common problematic-how to provide security within environments characterized by radical contingency? Resilience has emerged as a response to this problematic. At its most general level resilience is understood as the capacity to absorb, withstand and 'bounce-back' quickly and efficiently from a perturbation. It is considered to be both a natural property and a quality which can be improved within a broad array of complex systems including critical infrastructures, ecosystems, societies and economies through proper governance. Utilizing empirical research to inform a biopolitical genealogy, this book represents one of the first systematic studies of resilience in the field of Security Studies. Rather than treating resilience as either a unified concept or technique of governance this book analyses resilience as an emergent security value.Utilizing a biopolitical analytic, this book demonstrates that the value of resilience has appreciated alongside transformations in the order of power/knowledge enacted by apparatus of security. Zebrowski argues that resilience was not lying in wait for the march of science to provide the conditions for its recognition. Nor was it concealed by the distortions of ideology which lifted with the culmination of the Cold War, that in fact there is nothing natural about resilience By drawing attention to the complex historical processes and significant governmental efforts required to make resilience possible this book aims to open up a space through which the value of resilience may be more critically interrogated.It will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, security studies and conflict resolution.