Resilience: New Utopia or New Tyranny? Reflection about the Potentials and Limits of the Concept of Resilience in Relation to Vulnerability Reduction Programmes

Resilience is becoming influential in development and vulnerability reduction sectors such as social protection, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Policy makers, donors and international development agencies are now increasingly referring to the term. In that context, the objective of this paper was to assess in a critical manner the advantages and limits of resilience. While the review highlights some positive elements –in particular the ability of the term to foster integrated approach across sectors– it also shows that resilience has important limitations. In particular it is not a pro-poor concept, and the objective of poverty reduction cannot simply be substituted by resilience building

I Found Work! Forty Years of Research on Work in Rural Mexico

In 1974 when I went to San Cosme Mazatecochco to do my dissertation research, I did not expect to study work, especially not the factory work of men in a rural Mexican community. Over the years, however, I have found that what I thought I would study is not what is important to the people of Mazatecochco. However, work has been the lens that has consistently led me to new and significant studies including globalization, migration and, most recently, even play