The discourse around resilience, particularly in postcolonial contexts, reveals a series of tensions and contradictions in its conceptualization and application. A critical examination of engagements with “local” resilience practitioners in South Sudan highlights two problematic aspects inherent in current practices. First, the role of the “local” researcher or practitioner, ostensibly included to provide culturally specific context, often reduces their contributions to peripheral “color commentary”, relegating them to secondary roles in what is presented as substantial work and external resilience. programming within multilateral and international and local non-governmental organizations. Second, the notion of “implementing” resilience itself illustrates a paradox: a set of externally imposed interventions designed to cultivate what is presumed to be an intrinsically internal and self-perpetuating quality. This contradictory logic highlights the dissonance between resilience as a conceptual ideal and its implementation in international development frameworks, particularly in post-independence contexts.
The opportunity to speak with these South Sudanese experts on resilience – not those who have paid big money to develop resilience programs for organizations like UNDP, USAID and the World Bank, but those which usually provide short-term advice for applying resilience in a sensitive context. way – was delivered through a series of workshops during an AHRC-funded project on ‘decolonising resilience’, led by the Center for Peace and Security at Coventry University in collaboration with the University of Westminster. In his perspective on the second workshop in this series, in Juba, South Sudan, David Chandler analyzed South Sudan as a country subject to “resilience governance”. According to him, resilience governance can be seen as a state of semi-independence, a form of colonial protection imposed by international agencies and their multiplicity of resilience programs.
The concept of resilience, often presented as an inherent quality of individuals and communities, takes on a particularly unruly character in the context of post-independence South Sudan. Resilience is not simply a desirable attribute; it is a necessity for survival. Communities rely on informal resilience mechanisms and structures to cope with the frequent absence of basic resources such as food, water or wages – a condition perfectly illustrated by university staff and government officials. across the country who, at the time of writing this article, have spent almost a year working. without salary. However, this form of resilience is characterized by its unpredictability and, sometimes, by its dangerous manifestations.
In South Sudan’s Lakes State, for example, children as young as ten form hunting groups to obtain food, often without any parental supervision. These young individuals demonstrate remarkable survival skills, such as killing and carving up warthogs – animals several times their size. Such practices, while essential for survival in this context, are unimaginable for children in more sheltered environments, such as those in Europe or North America, where similar survival requirements are absent and where the Childhood is structured around distinctly different expectations and protections. Similarly, raids have emerged as a facet of youth culture, reflecting a form of resilience that challenges normative frameworks of development. Yet these forms of resilience are rendered problematic from a development perspective precisely because they are unregulated and resistant to external control. It can be violent, exclusionary and oppositional, frequently targeting others in ways that challenge the “ordered” resilience envisaged by development actors.
A different conceptualization of resilience is emerging in the context of development agencies: resilience as a bridge to development. Resilience is anchored in the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) nexus, where it occupies a central role in the development discourse. In this paradigm, resilience is located primarily in the “P” element – peacebuilding – but functions even more significantly as a preparatory basis for the “D” of development. For development practitioners, resilience therefore serves a dual purpose: it is inherently backward-looking, aiming to prevent relapse into conflict or crisis, while simultaneously forward-looking, paving the way for a progress in sustainable development. This instrumentalized resilience is thus conceived as a transition mechanism, linking the humanitarian need to stabilize fragile contexts with ambitious long-term development objectives.
In the development paradigm, resilience is presented as a necessary precursor to development; individuals and communities must first become resilient before they can be considered capable of achieving “sustainable development”. This approach reflects a rediscovery by external actors of resilience as an existing quality within communities – particularly in contexts deemed fragile or affected by conflict. However, this inherent resilience is often seen as requiring systemic transformation. Raw and unregulated forms of resilience, such as those manifested through violence, must be reoriented towards resilience against violence in order to align with the goals of development programs. This transition represents a normative reframing of resilience, where its “raw” elements are reshaped to fit the orderly, non-threatening constructs favored by international development agencies.
This approach can be illustrated by the terms of reference of the UN-led Multi-Donor Reconciliation, Stabilization and Resilience Trust Fund (RSRTF) in South Sudan, where, under its resilience pillar, “the Fund aims to invest in community capacities and resources. promote equality, action and autonomy to ultimately reduce vulnerability to future shocks and tensions. Resilience activities are not stand-alone initiatives. They are linked to conflict drivers identified at subnational and national levels and enable communities located in conflict hotspots to reap tangible socio-economic dividends of peace.
Development programs often seek to empower communities by shifting them away from practices associated with violence and ancient practices, replacing existing resilience capacities with forms that align with liberal modalities. This process involves fostering a specific type of resilience – one that emphasizes access to markets, justice or education, thereby cultivating liberal subjects ready to engage in development frameworks. In this reconfiguration, resilience is not simply a matter of survival but also of making individuals and communities “developmental”, reshaped into entities deemed suitable for the engagement of development actors and systems. The ultimate goal is to produce subjects capable of participating in and benefiting from the broader liberal development agenda. Thus, resilience – as it has developed in this new form – has not become a substitute for the ideas of development, sustainability and direct engagement as they have been evaluated by a number of academics some time ago, but has instead transformed into a colonizing bridge. so that subjects that are not yet liberal become developable.
A compelling example of the tensions in resilience and peacebuilding programs can be found in the peacebuilding workshops held among the Murle in the Greater Pibor region of South Sudan, as observed by one of the authors. Participants are placed in parallel worlds: on the one hand, anchored in their traditional age structures and community practices, which can often take violent forms; on the other hand, they participate as consumers in externally led peacebuilding workshops aimed at transforming them into peace champions or activists. This duality reflects a gap between local realities and the assumptions underlying international interventions.
A senior UN official in the UK, reflecting on this dynamic, noted that when there is organized youth violence in the UK, there is virtually no peacebuilding training. “We send the police and put them in prison,” he stressed. This stark contrast raises a crucial question: why is there such a divergence in approaches? Does this follow from the implicit assumption that communities like the Murle are not mature and must first be prepared for liberal forms of governance and treatment? This differential treatment highlights the paternalism underlying these interventions, presenting certain populations as needing transformation before they can be integrated into the liberal order.
Resilience, in this context, functions as a preparatory mechanism for the formation of the liberal subject. Communities and individuals are not considered to be at a stage where they can fully engage with the liberal framework of governance, rights and responsibilities. The same perception extends to the South Sudanese state itself, which is often treated as an entity in need of transformation before it can align with liberal norms. This dynamic fosters a neurotic relationship between international donors and the South Sudanese context, characterized by a mixture of dependence, frustration and control. In this framework, resilience programs aim less to respond to immediate needs than to prepare the ground for the eventual integration of individuals, communities and the state into the liberal development order. It represents an intermediate step in a broader project of liberal transformation.
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