This thesis troubles the deafening silence, surrounding South Asian Muslim women’s (SAMW) experience, of the collateral damage from the ‘War on Terror’ as prolonged adversity and harm. It identifies forms of adversity to which SAMW are exposed and their resilience responses in the ‘War on Terror’.
This thesis offers a radical critique, of adversity, resistance, and resilience through the frames of temporality and hegemony. It exposes interrelated tensions inherent in resilience as survival/ coping, or as transformation/ adaptation. Hegemony brings power and resistance, to the centre of the concept in new ways; problematizing accepted notions of resilience as the capacity to ‘bounce back’ to a former state of equilibrium. It identifies the past in the present; in this frame the ‘War on Terror’, is a present day manifestation of past patterns of ideological struggle with roots in empire.
Ethnographic research was undertaken with SAMW, in a neighbourhood in the north of England, to gather information on SAMW’s experience of adversity, resistance, and resilience to the effects of the ‘War on Terror’. The research identified mechanisms in community, neighbourhood, and through state institutions, that support SAMW’s resilience.
The findings, unequivocally identified links between SAMW’s fear of assault/adversity and the ‘War on Terror’; as signified in 9/11. SAMW had little, if any, recourse to material resources as insulators from adversity, and, civil and civic institutions failed to offer SAMW adequate support. Social capital, generated in relationships and social networks, insulated SAMW, and enabled them to build hybrid ‘resistant identities’.
This thesis identifies new ways of thinking about the ‘War on Terror’, adversity and resilience; it presents new knowledge to highlight the urgency for further investigation into adversity and resilience in conditions of prolonged trauma. The imperative is to address dislocations between SAMW and local and national state institution
