Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Submitted Articles
Resilience: the concept
Commenting on the recent avalanche of both popular and academic writing on the topic, Ganong and Coleman (2002: 346) argue that we have recently entered the 'age of resilience'. In this paper, we explore some key ideas about individual and social resilience from varied fields, and propose new ways to conceptualise these in relation to resilience in later life. We see these as important contributions to the field of critical gerontology, that broad area of scholarship that is 'concerned with identifying possibilities for emancipatory social change, including positive ideals for the last stage of life' (Moody 1993: xv).
Within the social sciences, resilience research is most strongly associated with the field of developmental psychology. Founded in the 1970s, resilience research had a focus on 'survival' and 'adaptation' and sought to challenge the grim determinism of much developmental psychology, with its (over) emphasis on the pathology that awaits those who experience hardship in their early lives. As Cicchetti and Garmezy relate:
Studies ranging from genetic and biological predispositions to pathology, to assaults on development associated with inadequate caregiving, graphically convey the multiplicity of risks that eventuate in psychopathology. Thus it is especially refreshing to explore the more optimistic component of the psychopathology-risk equation, namely resilience. (1993: 497)
These resilience researchers use a common vocabulary centred on the identification of 'risks' to human development, and the 'protective factors' (or 'assets') and 'vulnerabilities' in the lives of children (and more recently adults) that influence their ability to positively negotiate these adversities (Luthar and Cicchetti 2000; Luthar, Cicchetti and Becker 2000a ; Masten 2001; Rutter 1993).
There is much debate within this field about exactly what constitutes adversity or 'risk'. The concept of risk is recognised to a certain extent to be a subjective or at least a relative phenomenon. What is considered to be a risk for some people in certain situations is harmless for others, and could even be an asset to particular individuals or groups (Luthar,Cicchetti and Becker 2000a ; Masten 2001; Rutter 1993). Most resilience researchers interpret risk as an event or process that poses a serious threat to normal development (Masten 2001; Masten et al. 1999). Luthar and Cicchetti (2000:...