Resilience as a Cultural Construct

The concept of resilience refers to being considered to be at-risk, overcoming adversity and hardship, and being more "successful" than what was expected.¹⁴ Developmental psychologists have been researching resilience in children facing adversity and hardship for many years to determine what factors may increase resiliency among "at-risk" youth.

In many ways, resilience is ambiguous in terms of what it means to be "at-risk" and to be "successful" in the face of adversity. Resilience can be thought of as a construct created by psychologists which has different meanings to different people. For instance, in one study about resilience, researchers defined "success" as being able to connect with and trust others, while participants themselves viewed being successful as being distant and looking out for themselves.¹⁵ So in this sense, researchers and participants have very different ideas of what successful forms of resiliency are, and researchers interpret the "success," or lack thereof, of children in overcoming adversity.¹⁶

This researcher bias is particularly evident in a study by Hirokazu in which he describes social outcomes for youths considered to be at-risk. At one point, he asserts that improving youth delinquency would result in more "productivity" of youths and that more youths would participate in the "legitimate economy”.¹⁷ This assertion ignores sociopolitical and economic factors limiting access to well-paying jobs and pathologizes social outcomes that result in youth involvement in the illegitimate economy. This is why it's very important to understand the context in which children and adolescents exist to understand how youths cope with adversity and hardship.