Thread by @vonmeding

NEW PAPER is out in @DisasterPrevenM! @KsChmutina and I have been cooking up this theory of #vulnerability for #disasterstudies over the past few years and you may have heard us talk about bits and pieces on @DisastersDecon. A 🧵 of some key points.

emerald.com/insight/conten…

We challenge the limited and overwhelmingly negative connotation associated with vulnerability in relation to disasters, and people dealing with risk. It's a product of our own reflective process, as we search for liberatory potential in a concept we have used uncritically.

In disaster studies, vulnerability is often used to portray certain groups as fundamentally weak and in need of protection. However, this can reinforce inequalities and paternalistic norms.

The so-called “vulnerability paradigm” has historically been perceived as somewhat radical, but we discuss some of the reasons that it has also been compromised and used to underpin ideological projects of white-saviourism and humanitarianism (rather than solidarity).

So we argue for a new theory of vulnerability that promotes liberatory praxis in disaster studies. Working from a place of vulnerability can challenge the individualism so central to capitalism by valuing our interdependence with others. This can be a foundation for resistance.

Our approach centres the strength and disobedience of oppressed people. In reframing vulnerability this way we are careful not to minimise the reality of systemic harm, while revealing opportunities for resistance, solidarity and comradeship.

Vulnerability is often understood through the lens of "power over," built on force, coercion, domination and control. Here, we explore the intersection of power and agency in the conceptualisation of vulnerability.

But "power within" is based on self-knowledge, self-worth, and mutual respect. It is built on the potential to make a difference and grow collaboration, vesting the control of naming and utilising vulnerability in the people experiencing it.

We argue that vulnerability needs to be lived out in contradiction to the capitalist (and Western) insistence on individual action as a superior moral position, and become open to learning from Global South, Indigenous and Black knowledges around collective identity and action.

We unpack different responses to vulnerability and the political actions they lead to. Neoliberalism encourages people to "build resilience" or ignore vulnerability. This discourages political struggle and reinforces capitalist power structures.

Resistance, and demands for serious change, are often met with violence and pressure to comply, leading away from disobedience to acquiescence or reforming. If movements for social change can be brought into establishment politics they can be more easily squashed.

We also looked at vulnerability at the intersection of autonomy and social hierarchy, exploring various permutations that we observe in society.

In the "solidarity" quadrant we reposition vulnerability as a site of potential for non-hierarchical care to thrive, based on relational ties, interdependency, and ethical responsibility. This emerges from the struggle to defend collective precarity and resist disposability.

We tied together the previous threads by looking at possible pathways towards transformation for the so-called "vulnerable". A “community of agents” is needed and people organising for liberation must react differently to “organised abandonment,” and invest in each other.

Political action needs to be horizontal, against the hierarchy of the state, to build a more loving society. Neoliberalism may try to co-opt or limit resistance to the systems that oppress us, but vulnerability opens a space of solidarity, not just "resilience-building".

Disaster scholarship's 'non-ideological' approach to vulnerability obscures power dynamics and hinders transformative action. We have a lot to learn from resistance movements led by the oppressed, who so often guard vulnerability as a site of care and solidarity.

We hope that the paper will help us all to reflect on how we use the concept of vulnerability. It is intended as a provocation to respectful debate! Let us know what you think.

Of course, we do not expect everyone to agree with our reframing of vulnerability - especially given the ideological differences that animate our field. We hope that others will challenge, extend and adapt these initial thoughts!

Thanks so much to @JoanneCJordan and @ajfaas for feedback as we wrote this paper!

If you don’t have access, DM for a copy!

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