This week we will be talking all about #vulnerability. A critical concept in disaster studies but one that has generally been used in a limited way!
I think a good place to start this conversation is with the Pressure and Release (PAR) model, from a book most of you probably know, 'At Risk.' This model charts 'the progression of vulnerability' and underpins the vulnerability paradigm that many disaster scholars draw upon. 
The paradigm has been effective in framing disasters as socially constructed, and locating the creation of risk in political and economic processes that are unjust, privileging some and oppressing others.
It also promotes an understanding of disasters that centers the claim that risk is not evenly distributed across society - i.e. differential vulnerability means differential disaster risk - and that the choices that create vulnerability are made by some and experienced by others.
A large body of work has been generated that encourages us to look at root causes of disaster, and the process of risk creation and accumulation. Influential models have been proposed - e.g. Anderson and Woodrow's vulnerability and capacity assessment taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.…
Notably FORIN, MOVE, Hazards-of-a-Place, CBDRM models/frameworks similarly draw our attention to the unjust social conditions that people face in day to day life. See Wisner (2016) for a detailed overview oxfordre.com/naturalhazards…
The disciplines that disaster research draws on, and scientific inquiry more broadly, tends towards efforts that prioritize "objectivity", if not epistemologically then certainly ontologically. The quest to "measure" vulnerability demonstrates this tendency.
Probably the most widely used and adapted approach to measuring vulnerability is the The Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI®) from @HVRI - if you get into the literature you will immediately recognize the influence of SoVI on research re: vulnerability. artsandsciences.sc.edu/geog/hvri/sovi…
At this point I want to return to the claim that I started the thread with, that we use the concept of vulnerability in a limited way in disaster studies. It is framed as something we only want to reduce, or strive against. But is it that simple?
https://twitter.com/DisastersRadix/status/1470258739873820674?s=20
The way that vulnerability has been used in disaster studies has faced various critiques. Bankoff argued that we were continuing in the Western traditions of "tropicality" and "development" by rendering people/places unsafe and justifying intervention. academia.edu/9946531/Render…
Disaster anthropologists @EnviroAnth_prof & @ajfaas articulate the naming of "the vulnerable" as "a process of otherizing and essentializing." This naming can be both insulting and violent, and serves to obscure potentialities for the subject beyond harm. anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/na…
If we think more broadly of the technocratic way that the paradigm has been applied, might our scholarship be used as "justification for imposing neo-colonial policies and actions to reduce the risk of disaster in the rest of the world"? @jcgaillard_uoa onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.111…
"We were encouraged, therefore, to embark on an epistemological journey that was meant to take us away from the certainties of Western scholarship. We were meant to challenge the hegemonic rules and values of Western science." Have we done that re: vulnerability?
The intention of the vulnerability paradigm that emerged from disaster scholarship of the 70s and 80s was to confront the social production of risk. It was political. Maybe we need to talk more explicitly abt oppressive systems, like bell hooks showed us.
In this piece, @FayolaJ_ articulates the intersectional systemic oppression that shapes disaster impacts. She shows how "social vulnerability" is limited in its utility to critically analyze structural inequality, racial capitalism and other violence. sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/1…
Intersectionality also shapes the way that @JamieVickery analyzes vulnerability. Here, she argues that the lived experiences of the so-called vulnerable are fundamentally complex and disaster scholars need to better understand peoples' identities. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
Thinking about who "the vulnerable" are - the focus in disaster studies on capacities (alongside vulnerability) starts to humanize and value the subject. But some would argue that vulnerability can be a pathway to transformation & revolutionary action through love and care.
Can we be more than a discipline - if disaster studies is even that - that classifies and describes when we consider vulnerability. Discipline is empire. (thank you @demonicground for teaching me this - better late than never) What would it look like to undo discipline together?
This hit me, as I think about V research - “so trusted and commonsense are studies that begin with black dehumanization and/or social death and accompanying methods of proving abjection or saving the objectified figure…” - sound familiar? Dear Science, 44
dukeupress.edu/dear-science-a…
dukeupress.edu/dear-science-a…
If we look beyond disaster studies in order to complicate vulnerability, new possibilities open up. This essay suggests a reframe, drawing on a range of thinkers, in particular those coming at it from a radical feminist perspective. arrow-journal.org/reframing-vuln…
Erinn Gilson unpacks the problem like so - "if to be vulnerable is to be weak and subject to harm, then to be invulnerable is the only way to be strong and competent. Invulnerability as a form of mastery is sought at the price of disavowing vulnerability." jstor.org/stable/23016548
I love how @SimoneDrichel discusses the "constitutive doubleness" of vulnerability. Looking beyond the potential for wounding and recognizing the potential for caring, and resistance. Helplessness is not the same as vulnerability. jstor.org/stable/24540722
Could vulnerability “be reclaimed as a condition of intersubjective freedom, action, and political engagement?” asks Ewa Plonowska Ziarek. What do disaster studies people think about that? Why? jstor.org/stable/24540725
Through radical care for each other, could we protect and nurture each others vulnerabilities? An embrace of interdependency would certainly disrupt the trend of neoliberal "resilience building", that focus on individual improvement while leaving systems of oppression intact.
As I (@vonmeding) sign off here, I want to thank everyone who has challenged me to think differently about vulnerability either in person or through their written words. Y'all are amazing and disruptive. If anyone has other thoughts or resources to share, pls add to the thread!
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