Idea Of Vulnerability Research Articles

Vulnerability and Entitlements

The article examines the merits of both human rights and citizenship as systems to protect vulnerable individuals. The idea of vulnerability is presented as a more reliable concept than the dignity of the individual in comparative research. The body is basic to vulnerability.

When vulnerability got mainstream: Reading the pandemic through disability and illness

Since its outbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic has generated discourses and practices that directly refer to the semantic universe usually connected to disability and illness. Words such as ‘pre-existing conditions’, ‘risk groups’, ‘accessibility’, and ‘vulnerability’ have become everyday elements of official and informal communications across the globe. In this article, I explore the contradictions that arise from such uses through the lens of crip studies. In the first part, I observe how the idea of vulnerability became mainstream, moving from being usually attached to disability and illness to being depicted as a universal condition. Such a shift serves the double purpose of reinstating the predominance of able-bodiedness as the preferable normalcy and invisibilising the particular conditions of disabled and chronically ill people in the pandemic. In the second part, I discuss the perverse use of the expressions ‘risk group’ and ‘underlying conditions’ as biopolitical tools to reinforce already existing forms of oppression. The third part comprises a reflection on accessibility and the sudden advent of working-from-home. Finally, I reflect on confinement and interdependence as key concepts to draft a politics of transformation that moves from disability and chronic illness to include all experiences of intersectional oppression. As other markers of oppression, illness and disability can determine the possibilities of survival through the crisis, not only because they are linked to bodily fragility but also because of the systemic violence they are immersed in. The knowledge produced from a place of vulnerability can hence show interesting elements to better understand the challenges of this pandemic through an intersectional perspective.

Vulnerability, justice and care

The concept of vulnerability is once again assuming a central role in ethical-political-legal discourse. This is the case both in relation to its neo-liberal reinterpretations, aimed at placing the responsibilities and consequences of vulnerability onto the vulnerable subject itself, and, on the contrary, to the theses - the result, to a large extent, of a reworking of the ethics of care – of authors such as Martha Fineman, Judith Butler, Martha Nussbaum, Catriona Mackenzie and others, who use the idea of vulnerability as a basis for re-founding and reorganising liberal policies, freeing them from fictitious concepts such as the alleged basic autonomy of the human being. The article aims to analyse the different meanings and implications that, due to the accentuation of different aspects of vulnerability, add up to produce such a multifaceted concept, in order to try to clarify the conceptual implications and practical consequences that vulnerability may elicit.

Vulnerability and Resilience Embedded in Discourses: Literature, Media, and Actors’ Cultural Knowledge in German and Polish River Regions

The sociology of knowledge approach to discourse assumes that cultural knowledge—and thus cultural spaces—are generated and shared through discourse. Actors’ shared perceptions of vulnerability and practices to create resilience should be interrelated with knowledge provided by the relevant discourses of local and historical influence. However, these assumptions have not been thoroughly examined. This study compares river-related knowledge (concerning human–river relationships: ecocentric and anthropocentric perspectives) in the German and Polish literary canons, with knowledge provided in the relevant public media and the shared knowledge of local populations in flood-prone city districts along the Odra River. It concludes that actors’ river-related knowledge interrelates with the knowledge produced by national and regional discourses and that culturally shared ideas of vulnerability and resilience are discursively embedded.

Parenting behaviour and paranoia: a network analysis and results from the National Comorbidity Survey-Adolescents (NCS-A)

PurposeParenting behaviours—including the extent to which parents are protective, hostile, or caring—likely impacts whether a child develops a sense of vulnerability that carries forward into adulthood. Ideas of vulnerability are a contributory factor to the occurrence of paranoia. Our aim was to assess whether there is an association between specific parenting behaviours and paranoia.MethodWe examined cross-sectional associations of parenting and paranoia in an epidemiologically representative cohort of 10,148 adolescents (National Comorbidity Survey-Adolescents; NCS-A) and a second dataset of 1286 adults in Oxfordshire. Further, a network analysis was conducted with paranoia, parenting behaviours, and cognitive-affective variables (compassion, self-esteem, anxiety, and depression). Overprotectiveness, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and amount of care were assessed in mothers and fathers separately.ResultsNearly all parenting variables were significantly associated with paranoia, with parental verbal and physical abuse showing the largest associations. For example, the odds of reporting paranoia was over four times higher for those in the adult sample reporting a lot of paternal verbal abuse, compared to those reporting none (OR = 4.12, p < 0.001, CI 2.47–6.85). Network analyses revealed high interconnectivity between paranoia, parenting behaviours, and cognitive-affective variables. Of the parenting variables, paranoia most strongly interacted with paternal abuse and maternal lack of care.ConclusionThere are associations between participants’ self-reported experiences of parental behaviours and paranoia. Despite being associated with paranoia, cognitive-affective variables did not appear to mediate the relationship between parenting and paranoia, which is surprising. What might explain the link therefore remains to be determined.

MORTAL VULNERABILITIES

A consideration of some of the embedded themes with which Pamela Sue Anderson was concerned during her career will bear out the suggestion that her approach to enhancing life was richly engaging and distinctive. However, it is perhaps the idea of vulnerability, most of all, that crystallizes this distinctiveness and addresses the aims of the Enhancing Life Project with which she was associated at the time of her death in March 2017, but also brings her philosophy as well as her person most powerfully to mind. In particular I am interested in the way in which, through this focus, she allows us seriously to attend to death (including her own), invoking the positive and life-enhancing implications of our unavoidable vulnerability, for practices of rational affection, without losing sight of the violence and pain of loss and mourning.

Mujeres de refugiados, mujeres refugiadas en la Francia del siglo XIX (años 1830-1870)

El artículo se interroga sobre el lugar ocupado por unas mujeres extranjeras consideradas como “étrangers réfugiés” por la administración francesa desde la Monarquía de Julio hasta el final del Segundo Imperio. Después de las Tres Gloriosas, una serie de emigraciones políticas europeas contribuyó a ampliar los rangos de los extranjeros tratados en Francia como unos “refugiados”: liberales italianos, españoles y portugueses, polacos de la “Gran Emigración”, pero también carlistas españoles que atravesaron la frontera durante la primera guerra carlista.Nuestro estudio analiza la manera con la que la administración francesa privilegió el reconocimiento del título de “refugiado” a los padres de familia, descartando a las mujeres que eran sin embargo numerosas, tanto extranjeras como francesas. Las mujeres aisladas, solteras o viudas en exilio representaban un grupo aparte que recibía peculiar atención. ¿Cómo, en ausencia de hombres adultos en su entorno, consiguieron ser designadas y reconocidas como unas refugiadas? ¿En qué medida la administración francesa desarrolló la idea de vulnerabilidad para ellas? Mostraremos el papel que aquellas mujeres pudieron desempeñar en las relaciones con la administración francesa y con la sociedad local.

The conspicuous absence of the social, emotional and political aspects of frailty: the example of theWhite Book on Frailty

AbstractOver the last 15 years, frailty has become a dominant discourse on late life. Taken-for-granted knowledge and practice can be seen in initiatives such as the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics’White Book on Frailty. This paper begins with an overview of key themes on frailty from the biomedical literature, followed by critical literature in the social sciences and humanities. It discusses the tensions within the biomedical field, frailty as a social construction and ‘social imaginary’, practices of frailty as historically linked to political systems of care, and frailty as an emotional and relational experience. It then draws on a critical discourse analysis to assess the 2016White Book on Frailty. Drawing on the idea of ‘significant absences’, the paper highlights the gaps that exist where the social and emotional understandings and political readings of frailty are concerned. The paper concludes by outlining the need to recognise the ‘politics of frailty’ including the power relations that are deeply embedded in the knowledge and practices surrounding frailty, and to incorporate older people's experience and ideas of vulnerability into research, policy and care practice.

Il Geometra e i Vulnerabili Sugli Usi del Concetto di Vulnerabilità nelle Scienze Sociali

Nowadays the concept of covers a vertiginously widening semantic field. The paper aims at clarifying the meaning of the concept in social sciences. In other words, it aims at analysing the epistemological and political effects of the polarisation between an idea of vulnerability as synonymous with differential distribution of risks and a conception of vulnerability that refers to the unidesirable effects of human activities.

M. A. Fineman and A. Grear (eds.): Vulnerability: Reflections on a New Ethical Foundation for Law and Politics

The concept of vulnerability has attracted as many supporters as sceptics in academia, policy, and civil society. On the one hand, vulnerability can be seen as coextensive to the discourses of risk, increasing people’s passivity in their public life and promoting the infantilization and dependency of adults (Furedi 2008). Others invite caution and encourage awareness about the ways in which vulnerability can be colonised and appropriated by more conservative projects. Instead of justice, the response to vulnerability discourse has been stronger surveillance and control policies to ‘manage’ marginalized groups, such as sex workers and economic migrants (Munro and Scoular 2012). It is clear vulnerability has limitations and any investment with a theoretical framework should include an internal awareness of its strengths and downturns. Ann V. Murphy embraces the ethical appeal of vulnerability, but cautions on its ambivalent nature between caring and violence (Murphy 2012), elicited by metaphor of the wound in the concept. With this in mind, Fineman and Grear’s edited collection shows the versatility and applicability of this concept—both in theory and in practice—without abandoning the exercise of exploring reflectively the limitations of goals. The depth and breadth of the vulnerability thesis proposed by Martha Albertson Fineman, with whom the authors engage in a dialogue, is evident in the variety of problems addressed in this collection. Far from being a purely theoretical exercise, the authors in this collection show how concrete demands for justice can be articulated and applied through the vulnerability thesis. They do so by responding to Fineman’s proposal to move away from the universal rational being as the legitimate bearer of rights and replacing it with an understanding of universal vulnerability. The contributions engage directly with the main core ideas of vulnerability. They approach them practically, critically reviewing housing law, animal rights, human

Doing No Harm? Rethinking Vulnerability in Sexuality Research with Young People in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Addressing the vulnerability of participants is a key concern for those undertaking sexuality research with young people and, whilst university ethics committees provide guidelines, their practical implementation is often problematic as what it means to ‘do no harm’ is not always clear. This article explores some of these issues, drawing on the author's own research conducted in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and reflecting on the author's own experience of navigating what it means to conduct ‘ethical’ research. In doing so, it explores a number of issues which arose: how one ‘hears voices’ and categorises those which are ‘vulnerable’; how one constructs spaces for particular narratives and, in doing so, silences others; and how one's approaches are embedded with ideas of vulnerability which may not always resonate with those which the participants locate for themselves. The article calls for a more nuanced approach which recognises the ways in which vulnerability is constructed and located, including within research practice, and how in their usage the creation of new sites of vulnerability can actually be facilitated.

Methods for Integrative Research on Community Resilience to Multiple Hazards, with Examples from Italy and England

Resilience is a framework widely used to help address questions in disaster risk reduction (DRR) research, policy and practice. There is increasing demand for understanding this at the community scale. The paper builds on integrative research case studies of hazard management and community resilience (CR)-building projects in the North of England and Northern Italy. It links inter- and trans-disciplinary methodologies to map stakeholders’ knowledge and combine this with the best available data for disaster resilience planning, involving, for example, understanding baseline resilience and what indicators or might be used for “measuring” CR? Some components of CR are particularly critical, for example the functioning of social networks in contexts of disaster planning and response, and require specially designed methods. Social network analysis (SNA) has recently become used more widely in resilience research and can be compared with another complementary method, involving qualitative, participatory social network mapping (P-SNA) allowing inclusion of stakeholders in understanding their own disaster resilience planning and response. We share insights from this work: discussing drivers, barriers, governance and adaptation using networks. We also discuss how this data can be used for development of scenarios and agent-based models (ABMs) resulting in effect in participatory ABMs (P-ABM). These models can then underpin assessments of future scenarios, providing better understanding of the potential effects of natural hazards in the context of changes in resilience or vulnerability. The paper discusses recent experience using these participatory methodologies, explores stakeholders’ “competing” ideas of vulnerability and resilience, and shows how the modelling process allow those same stakeholders to “play” with the idea of community resilience and what it would mean to them and their communities.

Risk of suicide is insufficient warrant for coercive treatment for mental illness

Mental health laws in many jurisdictions currently permit coercive treatment for persons with mental illness who are thought to be at risk of harm to themselves or others. These laws are often used to provide involuntary treatment to persons who are thought to be at risk of suicide.In this article we argue that legislated coercive psychiatric treatment should not be triggered by an assessment of the likelihood of harm, including a likelihood of suicide, but should be available only where a person is found to lack capacity to make their own decisions about their own health risks, after appropriate support has been given. We suggest that current opposition to this approach may find its origin in factors including uncertainties about the idea of vulnerability and its relationship to capacity as well as tendency to minimise the real costs of psychiatric treatment and coercion against the aim of suicide prevention.Given the limits of suicide risk assessment, we argue that a public policy that allows involuntary preventative detention of competent persons thought to be at risk of suicide, places too great a burden on all persons living with mental illness to be justified. We suggest that we are better placed to serve the interests and respect the human rights of people with mental illness if we respect and support the right of persons to make decisions, rather than focussing on perceived vulnerabilities and calculations of suicide risk.

Technologies of Captivation

This article analyses the skills and knowledges involved in multiplayer first-person shooting games, specifically Call of Duty 4 for the Xbox 360 games console. In doing so, it argues that the environments of first-person shooting games are designed to be intense spaces that produce captivated subjects – users who play attentively for long periods of time. Developing Heidegger’s concept of attunement and Stiegler’s account of retention, the article unpacks the somatic and sensory skills involved in videogame play and discusses how videogame environments cultivate a sense of captivation. In conclusion the article reflects on the politics of captivation for the bodies that engage with these games through the idea of vulnerability as an ‘opening of the body’s capacity for sense’.

Optimal communication schemes in a complex network: From trees to bottleneck networks

The robustness of a communication scheme in a complex network may depend on the location of distinguished nodes. We collect different approaches to the idea of vulnerability and we give methods that help us to decide the good spots for the leader nodes. More specifically, we present a constructive method that yields the best location in a communication scheme for a leader node in the case that the underlying network is tree-shaped and show how it can be used for more general networks. In order to do that we consider a local approach via the bottleneck tree associated to a given node, as well as a uniform a approach by means of the so-called bottleneck network for several communication topologies.

Ética e pesquisa em álcool e drogas: uma abordagem bioética

Este artículo intenta presentar las características peculiares de los usuarios de drogas de abuso como sujetos de investigación, además de los límites éticos de la investigación con esta población. Se parte de las ideas de vulnerabilidad y de autonomía restringida del cliente/paciente con problemas emocionales y/o psiquiátricos. El principialismo y las Normas Éticas Brasileñas para Investigación con Seres Humanos (Resolución 196/96 - CNS/MS/BR) constituyen los presupuestos ético-teóricos de esta reflexión. La propuesta final apunta a la práctica de la ciudadanía y de la inclusión.