Rescuing gender: An exploration of embodied resilience-making in the Chilean miners' catastrophe

In this paper, we explore the theoretical and empirical links between gender and resilience within the context of crisis management by developing a theoretically oriented analysis of the iconic case of the 33 Chilean miners rescue. Analytic focus is placed on the capacity of resilience-promoting actors to embody and transform the discursive and practical dimensions of gendered regimes that predominate at an organizational level. As a result, we can distinguish four distinct modalities—normative redefinition, emotional reaccommodation, resistance, and affective affirmation—through which the gendered dimension of resilience becomes undone and redone, based on the action of alternative rationalities and affects. Overall, our findings indicate that resilience cannot be made possible without effectively disputing the norms that dispose how bodies, in all their diversity, are able to be recognized and socially experienced to face and manage crises effectively.