Cultural Resilience in a Globalizing World: Centripetal Fortification and Centrifugal Innovation in Bali and Beishan

An Exploratory Study on the Middle Path Approach to Societal Resilience in Bhutan: Balancing Tradition and Modernity

Re-Imagining Women‘s Livelihoods: Pathways to Equity, Sustainability and Resilience in Bindura, Mashonaland Central

This paper investigates the multifaceted ways women in Bindura, Mashonaland Central, Zimbabwe, are actively redefining and restructuring their livelihoods as a direct response to intensifying socio-economic, environmental, and political pressures. The study shifts focus from mere survival to exploring alternative pathways that lead toward greater equity, sustainability, and resilience within their community. Central to this inquiry is an analysis of how deeply ingrained structural constraints and persistent gendered norms critically intersect with emergent opportunities for entrepreneurial innovation and empowerment. To gain a holistic understanding of this complex dynamic, the research employed a Systems Theory approach, viewing women's economic activities not in isolation but as deeply embedded within broader institutional, political, and ecological systems. The methodology relied on rich, in-depth qualitative interviews with 15 women engaged in various informal economic activities in the region. The core findings highlight significant tensions between traditional, often subsistence-based, livelihood strategies and the necessity of adopting new, adaptive, and market-responsive practices. These tensions manifest in challenges such as securing land, accessing capital, and dealing with arbitrary regulatory enforcement. Ultimately, the paper argues that while women demonstrate remarkable ingenuity in carving out economic spaces, sustainable change requires more than individual effort. It concludes by offering specific, actionable recommendations aimed at developing inclusive policy frameworks, strengthening local resource distribution, and establishing robust community-based support systems that can effectively recognize and foster women's agency and resilience.

The creative resilience and the myth of ‘made in Italy’ in the agri-food sector

This paper addresses the question of how the Italian agri-food sector has developed original strategies of resilience in the face of multiple challenges posed by globalization, market crises, and evolving consumption patterns. Drawing on the concept of creative resilience - a form of resilience that combines adaptability and innovation with a strong symbolic dimension - the essay reflects on the distinctive ability of certain typical Italian products to reinvent themselves without severing ties with tradition. Through a critical reading of the literature on Made in Italy, the essay illustrates how the reputation of typical products is built on a blend of material and immaterial values, historical narratives, and creative marketing strategies. The construction of the myth of authenticity and tradition becomes a key asset for companies, especially in a globalized market marked by homogenized consumption. Through a multidisciplinary approach that connects economic history, cultural studies, and marketing theory, the study investigates the historical roots and contemporary trajectories of three emblematic products: Parmigiano Reggiano, Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, and Vermouth. Despite their differences in origin and development, these products display distinct forms of resilience, all characterized by their ability to combine quality, storytelling, and territorial rootedness. Moreover, the paper highlights the crucial role played by institutions (consortia, certifications, public policies) in making this process both possible and visible. In conclusion, it proposes a multidimensional and active vision of agri-food resilience, conceived as a cultural practice capable of generating economic, social, and symbolic value.

An An Exploratory Study on the Middle Path Approach to Societal Resilience in Bhutan: Balancing Tradition and Modernity

Bhutan experiences the digital age, the complexities of modernity have become a serious concern amid the escalation of climate-related challenges in the country to ensure societal resilience. This study explores how to balance traditional practices and modern resilience strategies in the Bhutanese context. Though Bhutan is well known for peace and prosperity in the world because of its protective policies driven by the Gross National Happiness (GNH), an important gap exists in maintaining a balanced approach between traditional knowledge and modern practices, challenging communities in climate-change impacts. Upon employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches, this study utilized a purposive sample to engage 51 relevant officials from diverse stakeholders, including the National Disaster Management Division, Local Government, NGOs, and Emergency Response teams in Bhutan. The findings depict that Bhutan’s traditional knowledge and practices hold significant potential for developing resilient strategies, however, owing to the deprivation of cohesive frameworks and systematic barriers, the effective integration with modern strategies remains disadvantaged. This paper reasons for a balanced middle path approach, ensuring robust advocacy programs for the synergistic blending between traditional and modernity as a strategy to establish dynamic societal resilience. This study identifies gaps and key themes in existing literature, emphasizing the effectiveness of resilience strategies, combining traditional practices and modern innovations. Based on this, this study also proposes actionable recommendations for the relevant stakeholders such as community leaders and policymakers. Eventually, this study aims to contribute to the existing literature in understanding more about Bhutan’s indigenous knowledge, leveraging its richness to implant with modernity to design sustainable resilience strategies at the time of future uncertainties. Keywords: Community  Resilience, Modernization, Middle Path, Disaster Management, Traditional Knowledge

The concept of market resilience: Towards a performative perspective

This paper reconsiders the concept of market resilience from a performative and practice-based perspective. We deliberate how dominant conceptions of market resilience are problematic as they overlook the open-ended, dynamic, and often messy ways in which markets evolve. Building on Science and Technology Studies (STS) and market studies, we develop a novel conceptualization of market resilience as dynamically enacted through three interlinked practices: instigation , incorporation , and insistence . We review how resilience has been framed in existing literatures, tracing its multifaceted origins rooted in desires to address uncertainty, withstand external threats, and achieve lasting recovery, to its current popularity in an anxiety-ridden age. We then draw on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to identify three critical limitations of these dominant perspectives: (i) the presumption of resilience as an inherent capability, (ii) the obsession with failure prevention, and (iii) the tendency to encourage asymmetric rearview mirror accounts. Mobilizing examples from financial, housing, food, and healthcare markets, we sketch out how we might think differently of market resilience if we think of markets as in-the-making. By reconceptualizing resilience performatively – that is, as something that markets and entangled actors continuously enact , rather than have – we seek to move beyond narrow notions of failure prevention and recovery. Our research agenda highlights how this perspective opens up new avenues for examining resilience in markets as varied, contested, and always in the making.

Selective Adaptation Under Globalization: Cultural Resistance and the Maintenance of Pasang Ri Kajang in the Kajang Indigenous Community, South Sulawesi

Globalization is often described as a homogenizing force, yet indigenous communities actively interpret and regulate external influences through their own cultural logics. This article examines how the Ammatoa Kajang community of South Sulawesi maintains Pasang Ri Kajang while negotiating pressures from schooling, markets, religion, tourism, and communication technologies. Drawing on anthropological theories of globalization, adaptation, and cultural resistance—particularly Appadurai’s cultural flows, Sahlins’ indigenization of modernity, Steward’s cultural ecology, Scott’s everyday resistance, Barth’s ethnic boundaries, and Lamont and Molnár’s social boundary framework—this study conceptualizes Kajang resilience through two mechanisms: boundary work and Pasang-based moral filtering. Based on qualitative fieldwork in Tana Toa Village, including non-participant observation, unstructured interviews, and documentation, the article shows that the inner–outer spatial division functions as a moral and institutional infrastructure. External elements are not simply accepted or rejected; they are evaluated according to kamase-masea, ecological restraint, honesty, humility, and communal solidarity. Practices considered useful but morally risky are relocated to the outer domain, while the inner customary domain remains protected as a low-tech, ethically regulated space. The study contributes to sociological and anthropological debates on globalization and indigenous resilience by demonstrating that cultural resistance is not isolation from change, but an organized process of selective adaptation rooted in Pasang Ri Kajang.