Rethinking resilience: Bourdieu’s contribution to disaster research

Most disaster studies have been strong in practice and description, but the field suffers from being theory light. Disaster scholars have theorised resilience as one fruitful way of making sense of linear and non-linear disaster impacts, response and recovery. However, multiple criticisms have been made of its conceptualisation and operationalisation. This article seeks to move beyond the theoretical impasse by employing Bourdieu's scholarship in order to better theorise, conceptualise and operationalise resilience. In using his capital, field and habitus theories, this paper will offer a reinterpretation of the resilience approach, explore unarticulated aspects of resilience and suggest fruitful lines for future research. The primary motivation for sociologically critiquing the resilience paradigm through Bourdieu is to make it possible for it to be used more effectively and concretely in future research and practice.