Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

212 models common today, many resilience researchers and practitioners may feel such critique is simply not relevant to their work, even though they may also not feel empowered to influence or challenge policy. Nevertheless, the problem of conflating explanatory levels continues to be an issue. Table 2. Criticisms of Resilience. To overcome these difficulties, Harrison (2012) argues that resilience might be best replaced with the concept of vulnerability. She suggests that while references to resilience emphasize individual responsibility, the term vulnerability suggests moral obligation for those in positions of power toward those who are less powerful. Despite noting that vulnerability can imply people lack agency or are “helpless victims” (p. 99), she proposes that nevertheless the term is preferable, as, in contrast to resilience, vulnerability can be reduced by intervening in the political and economic allocation of resources. To resilience researchers and practitioners working with disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and communities, a focus on vulnerability in place of resilience is neither constructive nor ethical. For marginalized populations, left abandoned to their own fate, the only persons available to act upon their interests may well be themselves and those in close proximity. Relying solely upon appeals to those in power to take on moral responsibility for outcomes antithetical to their own interests remains an insufficient course of action. Furthermore, such an approach risks further marginalizing the most excluded groups in society who are already poorly represented in research. And finally, by replacing the concept of resilience with vulnerability, we risk missing the ways in which some people can display vulnerability, and at the same time strengths and capability (Zautra, Hall, & Murray, 2010). To illustrate the point from one of our own resilience-building research projects, a young woman who consistently displayed considerable signs of distress and vulnerability, often needing to leave meetings, also revealed that she was a prominent and successful campaigner for mental health justice with a leading young people’s mental health charity, simultaneously showing strength and capability.