3rd World Congress on Resilience
[Trois-Rivières, Québec (Canada), August 22-24, 2016]
RESILIENCE AND CULTURE
Over the last fifty years, the interest of scientists and practitioners for the concept of resilience – applied in many areas – has been steadily growing. It was not, however, until 1990 that the relationship between resilience and culture began to be discussed and then studied. This is the result of an increasingly ecosystemic approach of resilience, significant population movements, globalization and major environmental challenges facing our planet.
The field of cultural resilience has thus been constituted, closely related to those of ecological resilience, social resilience and social-ecological resilience. Themes targeted by cultural resilience are numerous: the survival of cultures; the effects of cultural interactions, enculturation and biculturalism; the role of culture in the process of resilience, and more specifically, the description and understanding of the role for cultural factors of protection. Cultural resilience is linked to several types of resilience: psychological, community, social, urban, ecological, as well as to sustainable development, architecture and cultural heritage.
In parallel with the development of the notion of cultural resilience, views are expressed in favor of a culture of resilience, supported globally by the United Nations, in particular during the World Platform 2013 devoted to the reduction of disaster risks. The promotion of the culture of resilience may also have implications for companies, institutions and society.
In choosing the relationship between resilience and culture as the theme of the Third World Congress on Resilience, the Resilio International Association proposes to participants to review the research on this topic and to engage in a debate on a wide range of topics including: the concept of cultural resilience (including the factors and mechanisms involved); the culture of resilience and strategies for its promotion; current and potential fields of application of cultural resilience.
Serban Ionescu
Emeritus Professor of Psychopathology
President of Resilio – International Association for the Promotion and Diffusion of Research in the Field of Resilience
