In Search of the Resilient Sahelian: Reflections on a Fashionable Notion
ulations: they have an agency and they
need to use this agency to address their
problems. This poses two potential
threats: an illusion, on the one hand,
and an alibi on the other. The illusion
consists in thinking that, in all situa-
Resilience could also be con- tions, individuals or, better still, com-
sidered as dangerous since it is based munities, will find the means necessary
on an individualist vision of the social to overcome adversity, for which they
sphere, in association with psychoso- simply need to be empowered. And this
cial approaches. This raises the risk that is where the alibi comes in: if poor pop-
we consider a person to be always able ulations have the capacity to overcome
of confronting adversity within a sys- adversity, the local emergence of rel-
tem that does not have to be changed. evant groups has to be promoted, and
Hence the suspicion that this is noth- resilience will grow by itself.
Local populations would there-
ing more than a new form of neoliberal
thinking, applied to risk management fore be considered as potentially capa-
in this case (Reghezza-Zitt et al. 2012). ble of overcoming adversity, as long as
It would result from an analytical shift aid workers support the development
in three steps: first, vulnerability con- of this capacity. And this gives rise to
ceived as the product of economic and another form of injunction that marks
social structures in analyses of Sahelian a shift from “manage on your own” to
famines in the 1970s (Watts and Bohle “we’re going to tell you how to man-
1993); second, vulnerability conceived age on your own”. The problems facing
as a trap resulting from the behavior of the poor would no longer (only) derive
individuals themselves (Dercon 2005); from natural risks, or the economic and
third, resilience, as the capacity of these social structures that produce vulner-
individuals to release themselves from abilities, but rather from mentalities,
this confinement. Resilience would lead inappropriate behavior on the part of
to the construction of the myth of the populations, or poor governance by
“resilient poor” and to the idea that the local authorities (World Bank 2013).
poor are always capable of coping if en- This vision underpins the “toolbox” ap-
couraged to use their own resources and proach, common in the resilience field,
without the need to reduce inequalities which identifies “good practices” to im-
plement in local systems or to dissemi-
or dominations.
nate to leaders and authorities. A case
in point is the characterization of “resil-
A New Injunction?
ient communities” as communities with
his gives rise to another risk as- good leade