The concept of market resilience: Towards a performative perspective

Abstract

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.