Resilient citizens in a time of social change

Drawing on a forthcoming book, Social Resilience in the Neo-Liberal Age (Hall and Lamont 2013), I discuss the term ‘social resilience’ to refer to the capacity of groups of people bound together in organizations, classes, racial groups, communities or nations to sustain and advance their well-being in the face of challenges – an essential characteristic of successful societies and a prism through which the dynamics of social, economic and political change can be explored. The social resilience of a community depends, at least partly, on its collective capacities; and the dimensions of social relations that underpin population health probably also feed into social resilience. People draw on the social resources derived from social connectedness, for instance, to cope with many kinds of challenges (Liebenberg and Unger 2009; Berkman and Glass 2000; Sampson et al 2002). By virtue of how they support collective identities, collective imaginaries also provide resources on which people draw to cope with adverse experiences. However, we still know relatively little about how collective imaginaries vary across countries (but cf. Lamont et al. 2013) and the full range of ways they bear on the response to challenges. We know that people draw on social networks to cope with adverse events, but little about how such events affect the stability or reach of these networks (cf. Erikson 1976). Moreover, interactional perspectives are important here. There is much still to be learned about how groups mobilize the institutional and cultural resources in their environment. Drawing on past empirical research in France, Sweden, the US, Brazil and Israel, I explore how resilient citizens cope in a time of social change.