Cultural Resilience

Overview and History

Cultural resilience considers how cultural background (i.e., culture, cultural values, language, customs, norms) helps individuals and communities overcome adversity. The notion of cultural resilience suggests that individuals and communities can deal with and overcome adversity not just based on individual characteristics alone, but also from the support of larger sociocultural factors. In 2004, Clauss-Ehlers defined "culturally-focused resilient adaptation" as how culture and the sociocultural context have an effect on resilient outcomes. The question presented by this concept is to consider those larger environmental variables that help individuals overcome the obstacles they face. Culturally-focused resilient adaptation contends that adaptation to adversity is a dynamic rather than static process that includes character traits, a person's cultural background, values, and supportive aspects of the sociocultural environment (i.e., a relationship