Published on Feb 5, 2014 at In Rhizomia http://www.rhizomia.net/2014/02/comment-on-tom-slaters-blog-post.html Stop calling me RESILIENT. Comment on Tom Slater’s blog post "The resilience of neoliberal urbanism" By Henrik Ernstson The recent blog piece by TOM SLATER from the University of Edinburgh has punch and speed. "The resilience of neoliberal urbanism" articulates a set of critiques that scholars using "resilience thinking" has still to face up to, in particular in relation to urbanisation and cities. My shift from having used resilience inspired theories, to instead draw on critical geography and political ecology inspired my comments below (and there are several other comments that you can check out at the blog). Thanks to Marnie Graham for notifying me about Slater's post. Indeed, those who has followed my writing know that I have used resilience theory as an analytical perspective before, or rather social-ecological systems theory, but that I have moved away from it (see here and here in relation to urban natural resource management; and social justice here ). However, in approaching the inherent contested character of urbanisation and cities, there are better intellectual traditions to open up how power, ecology and urbanisation are interrelated, and which are more interested in, and make better use of in-depth and textured case studies. With co-workers I am developing research repertoires around what we refer to as Situated Ecologies , and Situated Urban Political Ecologies (SUPE). Tom Slater's piece brings up some of the reasons for my shift as it foregrounds how a social-ecological analytical perspective (heavily reliant on systems theory) has transformed into a normative language of policy of about almost anything. "Stop calling me resilient", a photo that Tom Slater has found from a poster in New Orleans— tweeted from Julian Reid —captures one inherent problem with using "resilience thinking". Stop calling me RESILIENT. Because every time you say, "Oh, they're resilient," that means you can do something else to me. I am not resilient.