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IntroductionHistorically, the notion of resilience rst entered the health sciencesfrom applied physics and engineering, where it signies the abilityof materials to bounce back from stress and resume their originalshape or condition. In

medicine the term characterized the recovery of patients fromphysical traumas such as surgery or accidents. omewhat later, itwas adopted into psychological and social research to indicate anindividuals capacity to recover from, adapt to, and!or remain strongin the face of adversity. "his literature tends to ascribe the conceptof resilience to three kinds of phenomena# $a% good outcomesdespite high&risk status, $b% sustained competence under threat, and$c% recovery from trauma cholars have long been interested inlearning how human beings react to adversity, and humanresponses to phenomena such as family separation, poverty andarmed con'ict are now the sub(ect of several ma(or bodies ofliterature globally.

)iven that adversity and risk are enduring features of humane*istence, the resilience concept has special appeal for scholars+ thepromise of research on resilience being the discovery of thosefactors that enable individuals to triumph over catastropheIn research with the young, the concept of resilience is used largelyas a means of e*ploring what is predetermined and what is pliant inthe child. Hence, childrens resilience is located at the ne*us of thenature&nurture dialectic, or as utter $--% pointedly corrects, at

the interplay of these two in'uences.

)enetic /ontributors to esilience0s yet, there have been few studies e*amining genetic contributorsto resilient functioning $/urtis and /icchetti -1%, although geneticinheritance has been hypothesised as an obvious place toinvestigate human resilience based on the truism that individualsdi2er in both genetic make&up and their responses to the sameenvironmental stimuli. esearchers have (ustied the convergenceof resilience and genetic research, claiming 3"o not e*ploit the

power of moderngenomics would really be a mistake in a eld in which we start bysaying that this is about individual variation4. ome progress hasbeen reported in studying the combined e2ects of genetic variantsand environmental factors. 5or e*ample, a study of maltreatedchildren with a particular variation of a specic gene found thatthese children were more likely to develop antisocial problems thanthose without this variation and similarly that depression afterchildhood maltreatment was more common among individuals withthe same type of variation of a di2erent gene than individuals

without this variation. esearch into how genetic and environmentalfactors interact and how these interactions can a2ect individuals

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has also been recognised as providing new plausible interpretationsof the processes at work. 5or instance, a team of researchers in the6 studied the di2erent behavioural tendencies $high and low levelsofaggression% of monkeys found that monkeys with the same genetic

variation e*perienced both di2erent genetic e2ects $in serotoninmetabolism rates% and demonstrated di2erent behaviouraltendencies $in aggression levels% according to whether they weremother&, or peer&reared. "hese ndings can be interpreted in twodi2erent ways# either an environmental in'uence $good mothering%bu2ers the potential deleterious e2ect of a certain genetic variation+or, a particular genetic variation can protect an individual in apotentially deleteriousenvironment $absence of good mothering%. 0s the studys leadscientist tephen uomi re'ects on the implications of the geneticdeterminism interpretation# 3If you use the argument that goodgenes are protecting against bad environments, thats nice if youhave good genes, but its a little tough to change your geneticbackground4 $Hampton -7# 89:;%. "hus we see di2erent branchesof resilience research e*tending in di2erent directions according todisciplinary interests# those scientists propounding the potential ofthe new biology are attempting to become more precise inunderstanding how genetic andenvironmental in'uences interact, whereas social scientists focustheir attention at the comple*ities of how individuals socially engagewith the world as part of their survival. "hese are both valuable

pursuits in that they seek to e*tend understanding beyond the locusof the human being as a creature of simple biological needs andprocesses $for food, li