Is Vulnerability an Outdated Concept? After Subjects and Spaces

Abstract

Theories of vulnerability have constituted the conceptual core of the anthropology of disaster for roughly 40 years. Yet, there is an undercurrent of disquiet among disaster scholars and community leaders who worry that vernacular uses of vulnerability can be insulting to individuals and communities with whom we work, and/or with whom we identify. There is a growing discomfort that categorizing the “vulnerable” acts to discursively nullify the everywhere‐visible “resilience,” toughness, and genius that exist in communities that are habitually exposed to risk and hazards. We argue that constructing vulnerability as a characteristic of subaltern peoples and marginalized places is truncated at best and can perpetuate violence—epistemic, semiotic, and material—at worst. To identify the “vulnerable” is, we contend, necessarily a process of otherizing and essentializing. We see and are concerned to further encourage an emergent form of disaster anthropology that is particularly oriented toward understanding and theorizing the institutions, systems, and individuals that structure risk, and in the process to focus attention away from “the vulnerable.” To our surprise, this has emerged in recent anthropological writings in very particular ways. We find the orientation away from vulnerable populations among our colleagues who write at the intersections of disaster institutions and local communities. Here, we recognize vulnerability conceived not merely as historical inequity that produces negative outcomes, but as nested and contested sites of struggle for different visions of utopian futures, for contrasting articulations of what constitutes risk, and for diverse cultural logics of the good.

Conceptualizing Climate Vulnerability in Complex Adaptive Systems

“…18,19 However, such approaches have not also been without controversy. 20 Some authors have questioned the epistemological basis of vulnerability, its potential to reinforce hegemonic power structures, or its perceived ''deficit'' focus 21 (see Ford et al 22 for a review); others have highlighted a failure in past research to produce a comprehensive understanding of the ways through which the dynamic and multi-scale nature of climate change affects societies and livelihoods. 23 Symptomatic of studies has been a reliance on limited methodological toolkits, 24,25 which have inadequately evaluated or tracked the nuances of vulnerability or its constituent dimensions across time.…”

Procedural Vulnerability and Its Effects on Equitable Post-Disaster Recovery in Low-Income Communities

“…To do so, planners need to look beyond the current moment or disaster to see the historic racism and prejudices that generate spatial inequities. From a procedural vulnerability approach, disasters are understood as one force, among many, that compound pre-existing racism and classism (Howell & Elliott, 2019;Hsu et al, 2015;Jacobs, 2019;Marino & Faas, 2020). As Williams (2020) noted:…”

“…Our goal in this study is to shift the conversation away from viewing disadvantaged communities as inherently vulnerable, but instead to recognize the policy and planning processes that generate vulnerability. As such, the conversation must shift away from vulnerable peoples to vulnerability as a historical process that renders particular individuals at higher risk (Marino & Faas, 2020;Rivera, 2020a). The aim, then, should be to identify and rectify those processes.…”

Risk screening methods for extreme heat: Implications for equity-oriented adaptation

“…Here we relied on language and scientific precedent set by California and the IPCC. However, California environmental justice communities often feel disempowered by these traditional framings of vulnerability [ 11 , 13 ]. Other limitations of this work include the use of only two other vulnerability indices and examination at the census tract level, which may mask important household-level differences.…”

“…Vulnerability encompasses a variety of concepts and elements including sensitivity or susceptibility to harm and lack of capacity to cope and adapt” [ 10 ]. We follow the precedent set by the state of California and the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) regarding language used to describe environmental justice communities, while recognizing that the terms “vulnerable” and “disadvantaged” can be seen as disempowering and are often not terms preferred by the communities [ 9 , 11 – 13 ]. In this study, a “disadvantaged community” is therefore a census tract whose vulnerability index percentile value is in the upper quartile.…”