Resilience is one of the most important concepts in contemporary sociology. This volume offers a broad overview over the different theories and concepts of this category focusing on the cultural and political aspects of resilience.

Das Konzept "Resilienz" erfahrt seit einigen Jahren in der Soziologie eine bemerkenswerte Resonanz. Es scheint fur die Sozialwissenschaften allgemein und die Soziologie im Besonderen eine interessante und vielversprechende neue Zugangsweise zu zentralen gesellschaftlichen Themen und Handlungsfeldern zu bieten. Die Beitrage des Bandes loten die Transformationserfordernisse fur eine UEbertragung des Resilienzansatzes aus und konturieren exemplarisch die sich daraus ergebenden Potentiale fur die soziologische und sozio-historische Forschung in theoretisch-konzeptionellen Beitragen und im Rahmen von empirischen Fallstudien. Das ubergeordnete Analyseinteresse liegt dabei auf nichtlinearen sozio-historischen Mehrebenenprozessen, die durch eine enge Verknupfung von Phanomenen der Kontinuitat und der Diskontinuitat charakterisiert sind.

The concept of resilience, which originally emerged in psychology, has spread to numerous disciplines and was further developed particularly in social ecology. Resilience experiences an ongoing growing reception in the humanities and historical and social sciences as well, including heterogenic approaches on how to conceptually frame resilience. Common to these approaches is, that resilience becomes topical in the context of analysing phenomena and processes of the 'resistibility' of certain (socio-historical) units or actors which are perceived as being faced with various constellations of disruptive change. In this context, resilience is not only taken to mean the opposite of vulnerability, but at the same time, resilience and vulnerability are understood as complementary concepts. From this perspective, vulnerability is a necessary condition of resilience and vice versa. Against this background, the present volume provides a preliminary appraisal of socio-scientific and historical resilience research by assembling contributions of authors originating from different disciplines. Thus, it fosters an interdisciplinary discussion on the theoretical and analytical potentials as well as the empirical applicability of the concept of resilience. ContentsStrategies, Dispositions and Resources - Theoretical contributions * Medieval case studies * Reflections and General Comments The EditorsDr. Martin Endress is Professor for General Sociology at the University of Trier. Dr. Lukas Clemens is Professor for Medieval History at the University of Trier. Dr. Benjamin Rampp is research assistant for General Sociology at the University of Trier.