The politics of precarization in times of war and crisis: From paralysis to transformative resilience

The Special Forum addresses the politics of increasing precarization of society, on the one hand, and on the other, the precarization of politics itself with the growth of autocratic rule. Our focus is on the way this affects democracy’s prospects, especially in extreme circumstances of war and crisis. We introduce the concept of “transformative resilience” as a potential antidote to precarity. Going beyond an entity’s capacity to absorb shocks (“restorative resilience”) and maintain continuity (“adaptive resilience”), “transformative resilience” denotes an entity’s capability to acquire political agency and deploy it creatively in imagining and enacting alternative futures. Exploring the dynamics of transformative resilience, especially in the context of acute crises, allows us to discern new pathways for reducing precarity in a way that does not replace it with oppressive stability, but instead enables us to creatively engage our agency in navigating the complex uncertainties of modern life.