Late Modernity to Postmodern? The Rise of Global Resilience and its Progressive Potentials for Local Disaster Planning (Seattle and Paris)

This paper studies how approaches to disaster planning have been changing with the rise of ‘resilience,’ a concept that has been widely recommended by various international institutions. The critical studies on resilience argue that resilience only serves to legitimise a neoliberal policy agenda that is compatible with a global economic system of capitalism. Contesting that position, this paper argues that the rise of resilience can imply a shift in the mode of governance, and an opportunity for planners to engage with more progressive practices. To make this argument, we propose a ‘postmodern lens’ through which resilience can be seen as an attitude and a style of governance that goes beyond neoliberal assumptions by embracing uncertainty and complexity of governance challenges. Postmodern framing of resilience notes (1) how the concept can initiate a shift in the planner’s view of and practices on knowledges (going beyond ‘expert knowledge’), (2) how the flexibility of the concept can be used for developing political narratives that are progressive (3) how the concept can open up potential venues for nonconventional powers to intervene in policy making processes. To demonstrate how this lens works, we compare the cases of Seattle and Paris, which have drastically different risk governance political structures.