Journal of Resilient Economies (ISSN: 2653-1917)

Editorial: Decolonising Resilience – Power, Care, Culture, and Sustainability in Contemporary Economies

2025-12-30T18:59:13+10:00

Resilience has become a central concept in contemporary economic and policy discourse, yet it is frequently mobilised in narrow, depoliticised ways that reproduce extractive logics and colonial assumptions about value, rationality, and progress. This editorial introduces the special issue Decolonising Resilience: Power, Care, Culture, and Sustainability in Contemporary Economies, arguing that resilience must be reimagined as a decolonial project. Drawing on insights from behavioural economics, wellbeing research, climate–economy analysis, cultural studies, digital sustainability, and Indigenous knowledge systems, the editorial situates the contributions of this issue within a broader critique of universalist economic frameworks. The papers collectively demonstrate that resilience is socially produced, culturally embedded, and shaped by asymmetries of power across regions, institutions, and knowledge systems. By foregrounding plural rationalities, informal networks of care, cultural economies, ecological governance, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge as economic infrastructure, this issue advances a relational and justice-oriented understanding of resilience. The editorial concludes that decolonising resilience is essential for moving beyond extractive development models and for designing economies that are adaptive, inclusive, and sustainable in an era of compounding global crises.

Decolonization of Lifestyle and Local Values in the Nightlife Tourism Experience in Yogyakarta

2025-12-30T18:59:15+10:00

The phenomenon of nightlife tourism in Yogyakarta represents a form of urban lifestyle consumption while simultaneously serving as a site of value negotiation between global and local cultures. The purpose of this study is to understand the process of decolonization occurring within the practices of lifestyle and nightlife experiences through the perspective of local knowledge and sociocultural resilience. A qualitative approach was employed using participatory observation and in-depth interviews with visitors and stakeholders in several prominent nightclubs in Yogyakarta. The findings reveal that while nightlife is often identified as a hedonistic practice, it also reflects local communities’ efforts to negotiate identity and traditional values amid the forces of globalization. The study shows that nightlife spaces function as venues for social solidarity, self-expression, and reinterpretation of local values such as familiarity, mutual cooperation, and tolerance. Nightlife tourism in Yogyakarta can thus be understood as a form of cultural resilience—a mechanism through which communities negotiate colonial influences on lifestyle and economic practices. This research contributes to expanding the discourse on decolonizing tourism by demonstrating that urban lifestyles can serve as symbolic resistance to Western dominance while simultaneously reinforcing local cultural sovereignty.

Rethinking Student Wellbeing through a Decolonial Lens

2025-12-30T18:59:14+10:00

International students in Australia encounter numerous challenges, including financial insecurity, social isolation, and cultural adjustment. While resilience research often emphasises individual psychological coping, such approaches are grounded in Western-centric frameworks that overlook collective and relational dimensions. This study examines how international students in Cairns, Australia’s major regional study hub, develop and sustain informal networks of solidarity that enhance resilience in everyday life. Using a qualitative approach, data were collected through an online survey conducted via Google Forms, which featured open-ended questions that encouraged participants to share stories about social support, belonging, and coping mechanisms. Responses from participants from diverse cultural backgrounds were analysed thematically to identify patterns of mutual support and collective adaptation. The findings reveal that informal networks, such as friendship groups, cultural associations, faith-based communities, and digital platforms, serve as vital sources of emotional, social, and practical resilience. These networks foster reciprocity, trust, and shared responsibility that transcend institutional limitations. By situating resilience within communal and culturally grounded contexts, this study contributes to decolonial resilience scholarship and offers insights for universities and policymakers seeking to strengthen inclusive support systems in regional education settings.

Resilient and Sustainable Economy in Iraq under Climate Change Challenges

2025-12-30T18:59:16+10:00

This paper quantifies how climate variability has shaped Iraq’s economic performance over 1980–2023. We merge sectoral national accounts agricultural and non-oil GDP in constant 2015 USD with climate indicators (temperature anomalies in °C, precipitation in mm, and a standardized drought index). Sector-specific time-series models are estimated with HAC-robust errors and complemented by ARDL bounds tests and VAR/VECM diagnostics. Higher temperatures and more severe droughts are significantly associated with lower agricultural GDP growth, while above-trend precipitation supports agricultural—and to a lesser extent non-oil growth. Agriculture is markedly more climate-sensitive than other sectors, reflecting Iraq’s water stress and limited diversification. Results are robust to alternative lag structures, standardized regressors, structural-break controls, and out-of-sample checks. The evidence supports a policy mix that couples economic diversification with improved water governance and climate-smart technologies (irrigation efficiency, drought-tolerant crops, renewable energy). Clear reporting of units and transformations enhances reproducibility and policy relevance.

Sustainable Content: A Framework for Advancing Sustainability in Social Media Content Production and Digital Media Resilience

2025-12-30T18:59:14+10:00

The digital world is significantly contributing to environmental destruction from the production of digital content and the behaviours of producers and consumers. The annual global carbon footprint of the social media platform TikTok alone is already comparable to that of a country like Greece (Shepherd, 2025; O’Brien, 2024). Hence, failing to address the issue now will only worsen our environment rapidly. In this piece, I further problematise this issue by making online influencers accountable for their actions in content production. I introduce the term “sustainable content” to help provide solutions in the field. Sustainable content is a discipline influencers should foster among themselves and later apply when producing social media content. Three types of content that are deemed fun but are actually detrimental to the environment are discussed: mukbang, luxury travel, and livestreaming. Three solutions in the context of sustainable content are also provided by analysing the psychology behind the fame of each content type. The goal of introducing sustainable content to academia is to integrate the digital communications field into global sustainability discussions by highlighting this issue, encouraging researchers to develop the concept further, and motivating influencers to adopt and normalise sustainable practices in their content production.