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How Can a Majority Be Resilient? Critiquing the Utility of the Construct of Resilience Through a Focus on Youth in Contexts of Political Conflict

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Handbook of Resilience in Children of War

Abstract

One of the fundamental limitations to the current understanding of the construct of “resilience” is the concern that in testing for the prevalence of resilient functioning (and thereby trying to validate the salience of the construct), researchers have not investigated populations at high enough risk to adequately establish a real test of whether the functioning they observe can properly be considered resilient (Vanderbilt-Adriance & Shaw, 2008). Given the dramatic and sustained adversity that accompanies war, the study of functioning within contexts of political conflict would seem a suitable, if not ideal, remedy for this limitation. That is, because the adversity of political conflict is so obvious, extreme, and often extended, assessing the functioning of youth in such acute and often chronic conditions should provide a rather clearer and more straightforward indication of how many, if any, function in a manner that should be considered resilient. In turn, thereby, the construct of resilience would be understood with more defined parameters.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Unless otherwise noted, italicization is ours for emphasis.

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Acknowledgement

Appreciation expressed to Paul D. Page, Carolyn Spellings, and Mingzhu Xia for assistance with literature reviews.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Violence, Professor of Child and Family Studies, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Brian K. Barber

  2. Social Science Research Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Samuel Benjamin Doty

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  1. Brian K. Barber
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  2. Samuel Benjamin Doty
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Correspondence to Brian K. Barber .

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  1. OISE, Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Bloor Street West 252, Toronto, M5S 1V6, Ontario, Canada

    Chandi Fernando

  2. OISE, Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Bloor Street West 252, Toronto, M5S 1V6, Ontario, Canada

    Michel Ferrari

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Barber, B.K., Doty, S.B. (2013). How Can a Majority Be Resilient? Critiquing the Utility of the Construct of Resilience Through a Focus on Youth in Contexts of Political Conflict. In: Fernando, C., Ferrari, M. (eds) Handbook of Resilience in Children of War. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6375-7_17

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