Multi-sited resilience: The mutual construction of local and global understandings and practices of adaptation and innovation

Participatory methods to build local resilience often involve the organization of local community groups. When global organizations use such methods, it reflects a desire to incorporate local agency. They thereby acknowledge the ability of a society to be innovative and adapt when faced with natural disasters and climate change. In a globalized world, however, it is hard to discern what is local as global organizations play an increasingly visible and powerful role. This paper will argue that local understandings and practices of resilience cannot be disentangled from global understandings and practices. Rather, global organizations, while professing an interest in drawing on local agency, may inadvertently also influence recipients' perceptions of their own ability to be innovative and adapt, thereby limiting, as well as creating new spaces for, local agency. In the context of the 2007 severe flooding in northern Ghana, this paper examines the mutual construction of local and global notions and practices of resilience through multi-sited processes. It is based on interviews and participant observation in multiple sites at the local, regional and global levels. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.