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Resilience for Whom? Insights from COVID-19 for Social Equity in Resilience

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COVID-19: Systemic Risk and Resilience

Part of the book series: Risk, Systems and Decisions ((RSD))

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic highlights the social equity concerns inherent in system-wide concepts of ‘community resilience.’ Resilience of the collective may overlook or even be achieved at the expense of the resilience of populations within the community. COVID-19 is inequitable with respect to exposure, severity, and response. It affects the ability of communities to respond to other challenges including natural hazards, mental health, and domestic violence. Resilience to the pandemic has proven to involve not only traditional metrics of public health and economic welfare but a wide range of concerns such as childcare and gender equity. The experiences of COVID-19, then, argue for a broad conceptualization of general resilience involving a wide range of issues but a narrow emphasis on individual experiences rather than community-level metrics. The pandemic could exacerbate inequalities if powerful or privileged groups leverage resources not available to all members of the community to maintain personal resilience. Pandemics and other slow-onset or aggregate hazards have historically had little influence on policy, but the global, long-term nature of COVID-19 and collective nature of responses such as lockdowns create potential for powerful individuals to pursue social reforms that will benefit all and lead to true community-wide resilience.

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Correspondence to A. R. Siders .

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Siders, A.R., Gerber-Chavez, L. (2021). Resilience for Whom? Insights from COVID-19 for Social Equity in Resilience. In: Linkov, I., Keenan, J.M., Trump, B.D. (eds) COVID-19: Systemic Risk and Resilience. Risk, Systems and Decisions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71587-8_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71587-8_21

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-71586-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-71587-8

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