Weitere Projekte

The role of transcultural semantics and symbols for resilience during the Corona pandemic – a hermeneutic approach to historical and intercultural expressions of severe crisis

Gefördert von der VolkswagenStiftung

Community and Societal Resilience: How does “digital religious communication” impact resilience?

As of the time of this writing, in the Fall of 2022, the COVID-19 virus pandemic has been affecting the global community for over two years. Given the extreme stress that individuals, groups, and social systems have been under for this whole time, it is not surprising that the concept of “resilience” - associated with "hope for crisis resistance, stability, inner strength and a calm well-being" (Richter and Blank 2016) - has become a focus of interest in both social and academic settings.    

Broadly, research may be grouped into those adapting natural-scientific and mechanical-ecological approaches and those adapting cultural- and social-scientific approaches. While being different regarding their respective research methods (quantitative vs. qualitative studies) and contexts, in both cases research has proven the irreplaceability of local actors and resources; in social environments in particular, “community” comes to the forefront.

In order to better understand the role of religious communities facilitating resilience amidst crisis situations two different perspectives are taken into account by the project:

One the one hand the research projects assess and track the “community resilience” of religious groups during times of crisis, answering questions such as “What enables a group to persist during said crisis?”, “How are successful recovery strategies implemented?” and “Which role does their religious identity play regarding their own community resilience and agency during the crisis?”.
On the other hand, analyzing community resilience then allows to measure the impact of said resilient religious communities on a societal level, namely “societal resilience”. Starting with Christian groups making up around 32% of world’s population, their potential impact on societal resilience and therefore the ability of transcultural societies to reduce the impact of crises as well as to adapt to and grow during and after crises is immense.
Finally, results regarding community resilience can then be used on a meso-scale level by religious groups in the various settings researched by the project to reduce their vulnerability to upcoming crises and to intentionally use their reach and agency for societal flourishing. Additionally, results on a macro-scale level of societal resilience can make a valuable contribution for policy making to increase societies adaptive capabilities addressing the big global challenges of our time.