Julian ReidUniversity of LaplandAbstract. The concept of resilience is increasingly influential across the sciences but discussions of its significance between different fields of science remain under-developed. In the social sciences there is much debate as to the value of resilience, and while some proponents of the concept are enthu-siastic about it, many have dismissed it as an element of the ideology of neoliberalism. In the life sciences by contrast, and especially in the field of neurobiology, the message concerning resilience has been much more upbeat and yet also more profound. To the extent that it is rare to encounter research which questions the basic ontology of the concept. This gulf in perspectives and approaches between the social and the life sciences raises important questions. Why is there so much critique of resilience in the social sciences and so little in the life sciences? Is it possible to build bridges between the biological affirmation of resilience and its social scientific critique? This article explores potential answers to these and related questions.
In this respect it is notable that the demand for experimentation and application is being driven not simply by the life sciences, or biotech industries, but the social sciences. There is already significant research exploring the potentials of oxytocin, politically and socially, for the building of the kinds of resilience which societies need to solve the major social crises of our times. Enhanced activity of the oxytocin system is argued by some social scientists to reduce xenophobia and increase prosocial behavior towards refugees, for example (Marsh et al. 2017). Given its centrality to the neuroscientific and evolutionary biological science of resilience, coupled with already existing conclusions as to its capacities to change the ways people behave and interact, there is every reason to expect it to develop into a potential solution for the full range of human crises, including the Anthropocene itself. It is known already that the separation of species from nature (especially f
id: b08c2762282d6aa747b6dabc90967ba6 - page: 8
Deficiencies of oxytocin are for this reason already linked with the kinds of absence of resilience which lead people to poverty and the incapacity to escape it (Buheji 2020: 102). Thus is it that the task of learning to live in the Anthropocene looks set to entail enhancing the oxytocin system on which all species are said to rely for their resilience.
id: 29facf101b3c1e22d311ba1e0c9c8827 - page: 8
02_reid_1_24_p11 - 26.indd 17 02_reid_1_24_p11 - 26.indd 17 16/02/24 11:00 16/02/24 11:00
id: 409433b64060f86688691640dd6aea8d - page: 8
JULIAN REID 18 The philosopher Michael Chase has already argued exactly this. For Chase, what the science of oxytocin reveals is the importance of finding and attuning the self with the right disposition towards fear (Chase 2020: 78). The fear that does not disable us but which motivates and inspires us to act (ibidem). Oxytocin, if the studies are to be believed, releases us from the freezing which fear can produce in a subject, and mobilizes us to act (Chase 2020: 77). It is a chemical fix for what the ancients once pursued, and which 20th century philosophers such as Pierre Hadot brought to attention in context of ancient discourses on the self. The difference, however, is that the Ancients were concerned with overcoming fear, conquering images of it through a stern deployment of reason; calming it, through spiritual exercises (Hadot 2006: 65). Today it is the opposite concern of how to mobilize fear, and use it, to make people act (Chase 2020).
id: 2469ff8a39ca7536e60841e8a7318c06 - page: 9