Resilience requires discomfort: Broad brushstrokes for the common good

Populist-fueled global tensions have continued to grow over the past year, and we now see regular civil protest as well as educational institutions, public care agencies, and goodwill institutions strain under the weight of culture wars.As these tensions have grown, we have struggled-as individuals and collectives-with how to respond.Between reinvigorated calls to resist, rest, care, and get activated in response to rapid-fire, scatter-focused proclamations, declarations, and unprecedented legislative tests, we are becoming keenly aware of the dangers threatening our social foundations.The edges of fear-fueled self-silencing, and precaution are razor sharp, invoking an impulse toward preemptive compliance and anticipatory obedience in the name of survival and self-preservation.We curated this issue amidst these ever-present tensions.As feminist Indigenous, Black, Latine, Asian, Muslim, Arabic, Jewish, Queer, Trans, Disability, and multicoalitional socioculturally minded scholars have long warned us, obedience without strategy does more than constrain one group; it signals a decline toward the worst of possibilities: those devoid of human dignity, with little concern for the common good.In the face of these conditions, the anthropology from these multiple vantage points outline clear collective tasks before us.First, we must document the moment, interrogate the meanings, and interpret the signs.Second, we need to fully engage the idea of collective resilience.We must draw on the legacy of feminist thought-makers, living and past, who remind us that resilience is not a brand, but a state of material, intellectual, mental, and spiritual discomfort through which we collectively push forward beyond this moment.We build upon a rich network of scholars invested in understanding how those with power and access have used gender, race/ethnicity/political status and sexuality to categorize, exclude, include, and conscript life.They have taught us that life has always thrived even as the politics of the sociocultural moment shake us.