On the Forms of Vulnerability and Ungrievability in the Pandemic

Abstract

This contribution reviews and comments on recent scholarship on thepolitics of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on how vulnerability wasconstructed and studied. We reflect on the various meanings ofvulnerability and suggest political science should go beyond individualizedand identity-based approaches and see the pandemic conditions as sharedand embedded within the already existing social, political, and economicstructures. We also examine how our previously identified discursive framesof science and security work in the context of the later pandemic stagesand the vaccination rollout and note how these frames continue to rendercertain lives ungrievable. Our contribution is intended to add to thegrowing interest in using the concepts of vulnerability, precariousness, andprecarity in studies of politics and international relations, as well as incritical studies of public health and the coronavirus pandemic.