Is resilience a favourable concept in terrorism research? The multifaceted discourses of resilience in the academic literature

Abstract

The concept of resilience is frequently found in academic documents describing the favoured solution for how to address the threat of terrorism. Despite this, few attempts have been made to critically examine what resilience means and whether it is a favourable concept in terrorism research. Since multiple researchers in other disciplines have claimed that the resilience concept serves as an umbrella concept for a range of positive attributes, this study investigates the different discourses that resilience in the academic terrorism literature is built upon. The analysis outlines five different discourses in the academic literature that contain different descriptions of what it means to be resilient regarding terrorism. It is concluded that the meaning of terrorism resilience in the academic literature is multifaceted, ambiguous and sometimes contradictory. The positive connotation embedded in the concept of resilience and the absence of a description of what it means not to be resilient is problematic because it turns resilience into a utopian goal rather than a realistic counterterrorism project. Moreover, resilience normalises the view of terrorism as a ubiquitous omnipresent threat and legitimises counterterrorism measures as a positive, depoliticised necessity. Resilience is serving ideological purposes, and thus researchers should not uncritically accept resilience as the solution to the threat of terrorism.