Victoria Browne, Jason Danely, and Doerthe Rosenow (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of existence, giving rise to the need for care in various forms. Yet we are not all vulnerable in the same way, and not all vulnerabilities are equally ...
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Vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of existence, giving rise to the need for care in various forms. Yet we are not all vulnerable in the same way, and not all vulnerabilities are equally recognised or cared for. This transdisciplinary volume considers how vulnerability and care are shaped by relations of power within contemporary contexts of war, development, environmental degradation, sexual violence, aging populations and economic precarity. It proposes that care for vulnerable populations or individuals is inseparable from other political processes of recognition, welfare, healthcare and security, whilst also exploring vulnerability as a shared, generative condition that makes caring possible. Ethnographic and narrative accounts of vulnerable life and caring relations in various geographical regions – including Japan, Uganda, Micronesia, Iraq, Mexico, the UK and the US – are interspersed with perspectives from philosophy, International Relations, social and cultural theory, and more, resulting in a compelling series of intellectual exchanges, creative frictions and provocative insights.Less
Vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of existence, giving rise to the need for care in various forms. Yet we are not all vulnerable in the same way, and not all vulnerabilities are equally recognised or cared for. This transdisciplinary volume considers how vulnerability and care are shaped by relations of power within contemporary contexts of war, development, environmental degradation, sexual violence, aging populations and economic precarity. It proposes that care for vulnerable populations or individuals is inseparable from other political processes of recognition, welfare, healthcare and security, whilst also exploring vulnerability as a shared, generative condition that makes caring possible. Ethnographic and narrative accounts of vulnerable life and caring relations in various geographical regions – including Japan, Uganda, Micronesia, Iraq, Mexico, the UK and the US – are interspersed with perspectives from philosophy, International Relations, social and cultural theory, and more, resulting in a compelling series of intellectual exchanges, creative frictions and provocative insights.
Jackie Leach Scully
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0010
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The fact that illness creates vulnerability is taken for granted. In this chapter, however, I consider whether a biomedical intervention that ‘rescues’ a person from illness or disability necessarily ...
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The fact that illness creates vulnerability is taken for granted. In this chapter, however, I consider whether a biomedical intervention that ‘rescues’ a person from illness or disability necessarily reduces vulnerability. Biomedical intervention transforms a life story and so renders an ongoing identity narrative (temporarily) unusable; in doing so it generates forms of narrative vulnerability. This can be particularly damaging in situations when a new identity narrative is not readily available – if the intervention is very novel, for example. When biomedical interventions transform the lives of chronically ill or disabled people they alter identities as well as health status, and against the more tangible vulnerabilities of illness and impairment, narrative vulnerability is easily overlooked. Working from a personal example of dramatic and persisting narrative vulnerability following catastrophic organ failure and transplantation, I explore some of the consequences for patients and providers of care.Less
The fact that illness creates vulnerability is taken for granted. In this chapter, however, I consider whether a biomedical intervention that ‘rescues’ a person from illness or disability necessarily reduces vulnerability. Biomedical intervention transforms a life story and so renders an ongoing identity narrative (temporarily) unusable; in doing so it generates forms of narrative vulnerability. This can be particularly damaging in situations when a new identity narrative is not readily available – if the intervention is very novel, for example. When biomedical interventions transform the lives of chronically ill or disabled people they alter identities as well as health status, and against the more tangible vulnerabilities of illness and impairment, narrative vulnerability is easily overlooked. Working from a personal example of dramatic and persisting narrative vulnerability following catastrophic organ failure and transplantation, I explore some of the consequences for patients and providers of care.
Faye Mishna
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199795406
- eISBN:
- 9780199949687
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199795406.001.0001
- Subject:
- Social Work, Children and Families
The phenomenon of bullying is highly complex. Bullying issues span individual to societal variables, including individual characteristics and vulnerability, peer and family relationships and ...
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The phenomenon of bullying is highly complex. Bullying issues span individual to societal variables, including individual characteristics and vulnerability, peer and family relationships and dynamics, classroom and school milieu and societal values and attitudes, including stigma, and discrimination. Moreover, new forms of bullying such as cyber bullying have emerged, with unique implications for prevention and intervention. The prevalence of bullying suggests that bullying may be one of the underlying issues when youth struggle with social, emotional or academic difficulties, although bullying is likely not mentioned or even considered to be part of the presenting problem. The impact of the child or youth’s involvement in bullying, as victim or as the aggressor, might consequently go unrecognized—by the child or youth and their parents and/or by a practitioner. There is a tremendous amount of research on the prevalence, associated factors and effects of bullying; on the theoretical approaches applied to bullying; and on the evaluation of anti-bullying prevention and intervention school wide programs. This book is a compilation of relevant information on bullying. Challenges and obstacles to addressing bullying are reviewed as are practice principles to address barriers in prevention and intervention with children and youth who are bullied and who bully.Less
The phenomenon of bullying is highly complex. Bullying issues span individual to societal variables, including individual characteristics and vulnerability, peer and family relationships and dynamics, classroom and school milieu and societal values and attitudes, including stigma, and discrimination. Moreover, new forms of bullying such as cyber bullying have emerged, with unique implications for prevention and intervention. The prevalence of bullying suggests that bullying may be one of the underlying issues when youth struggle with social, emotional or academic difficulties, although bullying is likely not mentioned or even considered to be part of the presenting problem. The impact of the child or youth’s involvement in bullying, as victim or as the aggressor, might consequently go unrecognized—by the child or youth and their parents and/or by a practitioner. There is a tremendous amount of research on the prevalence, associated factors and effects of bullying; on the theoretical approaches applied to bullying; and on the evaluation of anti-bullying prevention and intervention school wide programs. This book is a compilation of relevant information on bullying. Challenges and obstacles to addressing bullying are reviewed as are practice principles to address barriers in prevention and intervention with children and youth who are bullied and who bully.
Bonnie Mann
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195187458
- eISBN:
- 9780199786565
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195187458.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
This chapter focuses on Judith Butler's early work in order to clarify some central stakes (or mis-takes) of feminist postmodernism. It begins by acknowledging and responding to her insistence that ...
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This chapter focuses on Judith Butler's early work in order to clarify some central stakes (or mis-takes) of feminist postmodernism. It begins by acknowledging and responding to her insistence that the term “postmodernism” is misleading and masks a “ruse of authority” that distorts rather than clarifies the issues at hand. It is argued that establishing the feminist postmodern over and against a foreclosed“essentialism” amounts to a disavowal of the realm of necessity. A dual conception of “nature” as “human nature” and the natural world is foreclosed at the moment that inaugurates the textual space in which feminist postmodernism sets to work. This disavowed realm returns on the inside of Butler's theory as a discursive “nature,” which makes constant trouble in regards to the subject's agency, the subject's freedom. It is shown that Butler's approach to the relation between extradiscursive being and speech authorizes the displacement of feminism from its foundation, but not a foundation in the unitary subject so much as a foundation in a certain set of historical projects. The return of the repressed realm of necessity (or otherwise said, the repressed relation to the earth) in Butler's early texts, its return as discursive determinacy, pushes toward exactly what Butler turns to in her later work: the theme of embodied vulnerability in relation to other persons.Less
This chapter focuses on Judith Butler's early work in order to clarify some central stakes (or mis-takes) of feminist postmodernism. It begins by acknowledging and responding to her insistence that the term “postmodernism” is misleading and masks a “ruse of authority” that distorts rather than clarifies the issues at hand. It is argued that establishing the feminist postmodern over and against a foreclosed“essentialism” amounts to a disavowal of the realm of necessity. A dual conception of “nature” as “human nature” and the natural world is foreclosed at the moment that inaugurates the textual space in which feminist postmodernism sets to work. This disavowed realm returns on the inside of Butler's theory as a discursive “nature,” which makes constant trouble in regards to the subject's agency, the subject's freedom. It is shown that Butler's approach to the relation between extradiscursive being and speech authorizes the displacement of feminism from its foundation, but not a foundation in the unitary subject so much as a foundation in a certain set of historical projects. The return of the repressed realm of necessity (or otherwise said, the repressed relation to the earth) in Butler's early texts, its return as discursive determinacy, pushes toward exactly what Butler turns to in her later work: the theme of embodied vulnerability in relation to other persons.
Bonnie Mann
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195187458
- eISBN:
- 9780199786565
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195187458.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
This chapter takes up the notion of vulnerability in the face of alterity that is the foundation for Freeman's “feminine sublime.” It traces similar notions in Butler's book of post-9/11 essays, ...
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This chapter takes up the notion of vulnerability in the face of alterity that is the foundation for Freeman's “feminine sublime.” It traces similar notions in Butler's book of post-9/11 essays, Precarious Life, and in Eva Kittay's ground-breaking book in feminist care ethics, Love's Labor. It is argued that the dependence these authors find at the very heart of our intersubjective relationships is also at the heart of our relationship to the natural world — and that these relations of dependence are the irrevocable aspect of the human condition that both lends itself to and is disclosed in sublime experience. The ethical and political implications of this vulnerability to others can be temporarily denied or thwarted by the subject who flees dependence, but they must ultimately be affirmed if we are to live these relations in aesthetically, ethically, and politically sustainable ways.Less
This chapter takes up the notion of vulnerability in the face of alterity that is the foundation for Freeman's “feminine sublime.” It traces similar notions in Butler's book of post-9/11 essays, Precarious Life, and in Eva Kittay's ground-breaking book in feminist care ethics, Love's Labor. It is argued that the dependence these authors find at the very heart of our intersubjective relationships is also at the heart of our relationship to the natural world — and that these relations of dependence are the irrevocable aspect of the human condition that both lends itself to and is disclosed in sublime experience. The ethical and political implications of this vulnerability to others can be temporarily denied or thwarted by the subject who flees dependence, but they must ultimately be affirmed if we are to live these relations in aesthetically, ethically, and politically sustainable ways.
Victoria Browne, Jason Danely, and Doerthe Rosenow
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter introduces the linked concepts of vulnerability, politics and care, considering how all three have developed in distinctive ways within and across different disciplines in the humanities ...
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This chapter introduces the linked concepts of vulnerability, politics and care, considering how all three have developed in distinctive ways within and across different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, and their complex relation to one another. Concentrating on philosophy, anthropology and international relations, we review the major theoretical contributions to the study of vulnerability and care that have emerged out of work on precarity, feminism, and the ethics of care. We then propose a transdisciplinary approach to vulnerability that places various concepts and methodologies in closer dialogue with each other. These dialogues form the basis of the four sections of the book, each of which is briefly described with reference to the chapters.Less
This chapter introduces the linked concepts of vulnerability, politics and care, considering how all three have developed in distinctive ways within and across different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, and their complex relation to one another. Concentrating on philosophy, anthropology and international relations, we review the major theoretical contributions to the study of vulnerability and care that have emerged out of work on precarity, feminism, and the ethics of care. We then propose a transdisciplinary approach to vulnerability that places various concepts and methodologies in closer dialogue with each other. These dialogues form the basis of the four sections of the book, each of which is briefly described with reference to the chapters.
Judith Butler
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter starts with an obvious presupposition: no body can sustain itself on its own. The body is not a self-subsisting kind of being; it is, rather, given over to others in order to persist. ...
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This chapter starts with an obvious presupposition: no body can sustain itself on its own. The body is not a self-subsisting kind of being; it is, rather, given over to others in order to persist. What does it mean to be “given over” to others, and to have this as a constitutive feature of embodied life? It may be that we require care, or that we are vulnerable in a way that cannot be overcome. How do these two terms work in relation to embodied lives that encounter unlivable situations as a result of unaddressed exposure or infrastructural failures of care? The bodies that assemble to object to unlivable conditions make certain kinds of demands. How do we understand the form and aim of such demands on the part of bodies that require support, address, and conditions for persistence? This chapter seeks to show that the kind of claim bodies make on politics follows from the radical lack of self-sufficiency that characterizes bodies more generally. The lack of self-sufficiency is not a political problem, but politics emerges precisely when the social organization of what Marx called “basic requirements” consistently fail and “basic requirements” begin to make their claim on the broader social and political world.Less
This chapter starts with an obvious presupposition: no body can sustain itself on its own. The body is not a self-subsisting kind of being; it is, rather, given over to others in order to persist. What does it mean to be “given over” to others, and to have this as a constitutive feature of embodied life? It may be that we require care, or that we are vulnerable in a way that cannot be overcome. How do these two terms work in relation to embodied lives that encounter unlivable situations as a result of unaddressed exposure or infrastructural failures of care? The bodies that assemble to object to unlivable conditions make certain kinds of demands. How do we understand the form and aim of such demands on the part of bodies that require support, address, and conditions for persistence? This chapter seeks to show that the kind of claim bodies make on politics follows from the radical lack of self-sufficiency that characterizes bodies more generally. The lack of self-sufficiency is not a political problem, but politics emerges precisely when the social organization of what Marx called “basic requirements” consistently fail and “basic requirements” begin to make their claim on the broader social and political world.
Rosalba Icaza
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Decolonial thinking has introduced border thinking as an epistemological position that contributes to a shift in the forms of knowing in which the world is thought from the concrete incarnated ...
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Decolonial thinking has introduced border thinking as an epistemological position that contributes to a shift in the forms of knowing in which the world is thought from the concrete incarnated experiences of colonial difference and the wounds left. In this chapter, Argentinean feminist philosopher Maria Lugones’ (1992) interpretation of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands foregrounds its main argument: border thinking as an embodied consciousness in which dualities and vulnerability are central for a decolonisation of how we think about the geo and body politics of knowledge, coloniality, political economy and of course, gender in International Relations and Global Politics.Less
Decolonial thinking has introduced border thinking as an epistemological position that contributes to a shift in the forms of knowing in which the world is thought from the concrete incarnated experiences of colonial difference and the wounds left. In this chapter, Argentinean feminist philosopher Maria Lugones’ (1992) interpretation of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands foregrounds its main argument: border thinking as an embodied consciousness in which dualities and vulnerability are central for a decolonisation of how we think about the geo and body politics of knowledge, coloniality, political economy and of course, gender in International Relations and Global Politics.
C. Jason Throop
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines local mooded responses to two devastating typhoons – Typhoon Sudal (2004) and Super Typhoon Maysak (2015) – both of which hit the island of Yap (Federated States of Micronesia) ...
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This chapter examines local mooded responses to two devastating typhoons – Typhoon Sudal (2004) and Super Typhoon Maysak (2015) – both of which hit the island of Yap (Federated States of Micronesia) about a decade apart. Situating these events within a broader ethnographic and historical discussion of typhoons and local Yapese orientations to them, a central goal of the chapter will be to illustrate how an ontologically responsive, politically inflected, and morally attuned mood of despair anticipated, and in part patterned, the conditions of possibility and forms of vulnerability arising in, from, and alongside them. The chapter concludes by arguing that a phenomenological anthropological analysis of despair – which arises when possibilities inherent in a given world collapse, thus rendering us radically exposed and vulnerable – discloses the eroding conditions of possibility that define the parameters of contemporary life in Yap. Taking such moods seriously, is not, in this regard, merely an ontological imperative, but an ethical and political one as well.Less
This chapter examines local mooded responses to two devastating typhoons – Typhoon Sudal (2004) and Super Typhoon Maysak (2015) – both of which hit the island of Yap (Federated States of Micronesia) about a decade apart. Situating these events within a broader ethnographic and historical discussion of typhoons and local Yapese orientations to them, a central goal of the chapter will be to illustrate how an ontologically responsive, politically inflected, and morally attuned mood of despair anticipated, and in part patterned, the conditions of possibility and forms of vulnerability arising in, from, and alongside them. The chapter concludes by arguing that a phenomenological anthropological analysis of despair – which arises when possibilities inherent in a given world collapse, thus rendering us radically exposed and vulnerable – discloses the eroding conditions of possibility that define the parameters of contemporary life in Yap. Taking such moods seriously, is not, in this regard, merely an ontological imperative, but an ethical and political one as well.
Erinn Gilson
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The discourse on vulnerability has been beset by criticism. This chapter argues that the account of vulnerability best suited to address these problems is one that places the ambiguities of the ...
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The discourse on vulnerability has been beset by criticism. This chapter argues that the account of vulnerability best suited to address these problems is one that places the ambiguities of the concept at its center. Foregrounding vulnerability’s ambiguity makes it possible both to do justice to the complexity and diversity of experiences of vulnerability, and to provide a sufficiently theoretically complex and nuanced concept. The chapter focuses on three aspects of vulnerability in order to respond to this criticism: the attribution of commonness to vulnerability and the contrast between a universal, ontological notion of vulnerability and a situational one; vulnerability’s connection to affect; and vulnerability’s relationship to social identity, inequality, and oppression. In the final section, the claim that understanding vulnerability as ambiguous best captures its simultaneously political and ethical salience is applied through analysis of two recent assertions of vulnerability in US immigration politics.Less
The discourse on vulnerability has been beset by criticism. This chapter argues that the account of vulnerability best suited to address these problems is one that places the ambiguities of the concept at its center. Foregrounding vulnerability’s ambiguity makes it possible both to do justice to the complexity and diversity of experiences of vulnerability, and to provide a sufficiently theoretically complex and nuanced concept. The chapter focuses on three aspects of vulnerability in order to respond to this criticism: the attribution of commonness to vulnerability and the contrast between a universal, ontological notion of vulnerability and a situational one; vulnerability’s connection to affect; and vulnerability’s relationship to social identity, inequality, and oppression. In the final section, the claim that understanding vulnerability as ambiguous best captures its simultaneously political and ethical salience is applied through analysis of two recent assertions of vulnerability in US immigration politics.
Thomas Gregory
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines civilian casualties at coalition checkpoints in Afghanistan and Iraq, focusing on the decision to use lethal force against individuals considered to be hostile. Drawing on the ...
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This chapter examines civilian casualties at coalition checkpoints in Afghanistan and Iraq, focusing on the decision to use lethal force against individuals considered to be hostile. Drawing on the testimony of American soldiers, this chapter argues that the decision to use lethal force can be seen as an affective judgement, with soldiers often resorting to ‘muscle memory’ as they sought to identify potential threats amidst the chaos and confusion of war. It will argue that these affective judgements do not occur within a cultural vacuum but are animated and informed by a set of background assumptions that mark certain populations as dangerous, threatening and hostile before they even arrive on the scene. To understand what made civilians so vulnerable to death and injury at coalition checkpoints, it will be necessary to inquire into the affective schemes of intelligibility that render certain lives disposable and certain bodies profoundly injurable in war.Less
This chapter examines civilian casualties at coalition checkpoints in Afghanistan and Iraq, focusing on the decision to use lethal force against individuals considered to be hostile. Drawing on the testimony of American soldiers, this chapter argues that the decision to use lethal force can be seen as an affective judgement, with soldiers often resorting to ‘muscle memory’ as they sought to identify potential threats amidst the chaos and confusion of war. It will argue that these affective judgements do not occur within a cultural vacuum but are animated and informed by a set of background assumptions that mark certain populations as dangerous, threatening and hostile before they even arrive on the scene. To understand what made civilians so vulnerable to death and injury at coalition checkpoints, it will be necessary to inquire into the affective schemes of intelligibility that render certain lives disposable and certain bodies profoundly injurable in war.
Omar Dewachi
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Decades of war and western interventions in Iraq have produced toxic legacies of wounding and affliction that have redefined geographies and everyday experiences of vulnerability and care. Building ...
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Decades of war and western interventions in Iraq have produced toxic legacies of wounding and affliction that have redefined geographies and everyday experiences of vulnerability and care. Building on what I call anthropology of wounding, I explore a number of methodological insights related to conducting ethnographic research on war injury across conflict landscapes in the Middle East. Taking the “wound” as a method, I explore what is “revealed” in such wounds as they map the incongruent trajectories, terrains and relations of vulnerability and care in everyday life. Anchoring my analysis in a deeper understanding of the changing ecologies of war, I show how an anthropology of wounding further unravels the biosocial relations of distress and care, and provides a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of war and the body, as well as the inscription of a history of war in the molecular and genetic makeup of the environment.Less
Decades of war and western interventions in Iraq have produced toxic legacies of wounding and affliction that have redefined geographies and everyday experiences of vulnerability and care. Building on what I call anthropology of wounding, I explore a number of methodological insights related to conducting ethnographic research on war injury across conflict landscapes in the Middle East. Taking the “wound” as a method, I explore what is “revealed” in such wounds as they map the incongruent trajectories, terrains and relations of vulnerability and care in everyday life. Anchoring my analysis in a deeper understanding of the changing ecologies of war, I show how an anthropology of wounding further unravels the biosocial relations of distress and care, and provides a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of war and the body, as well as the inscription of a history of war in the molecular and genetic makeup of the environment.
Jason Danely
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0011
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
To be vulnerable is not only to be open and exposed to the world, but in some sense to be wounded by it. As Arthur Frank (1995) observed, these wounds won through adversity call out for stories. For ...
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To be vulnerable is not only to be open and exposed to the world, but in some sense to be wounded by it. As Arthur Frank (1995) observed, these wounds won through adversity call out for stories. For those who provide care to others, these stories are rarely singular or coherent, but throb and ache again as each day bringsa new flavour and flux. While vulnerable narratives expose the self to the world, they also provide a basis for responding to that world with attentive presence. I use the word ‘compassion’ to refer to this receptive engagement and caring responsiveness to suffering, arguing that cultural stories shape the ways vulnerable compassionate subjectivities are formed. In order to illustrate this cultural shaping of woundedness and compassion, I examine the narratives of carers of older family members in Japan and England. Ethnographic examples reveal the ways individuals develop vulnerable narratives and the ways these narratives are constrained by cultural and political circumstances.Less
To be vulnerable is not only to be open and exposed to the world, but in some sense to be wounded by it. As Arthur Frank (1995) observed, these wounds won through adversity call out for stories. For those who provide care to others, these stories are rarely singular or coherent, but throb and ache again as each day bringsa new flavour and flux. While vulnerable narratives expose the self to the world, they also provide a basis for responding to that world with attentive presence. I use the word ‘compassion’ to refer to this receptive engagement and caring responsiveness to suffering, arguing that cultural stories shape the ways vulnerable compassionate subjectivities are formed. In order to illustrate this cultural shaping of woundedness and compassion, I examine the narratives of carers of older family members in Japan and England. Ethnographic examples reveal the ways individuals develop vulnerable narratives and the ways these narratives are constrained by cultural and political circumstances.
Ann J. Cahill
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0012
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter explores the ethical dimensions of a fraught and promising moment: the moment when a survivor of sexual assault discloses their experience to a trusted person (a confidant). I argue that ...
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This chapter explores the ethical dimensions of a fraught and promising moment: the moment when a survivor of sexual assault discloses their experience to a trusted person (a confidant). I argue that this moment entails and produces multiple forms of vulnerability, and that the ways in which vulnerability is in play can remind us that vulnerability is not only the openness to harm or injury, but is a necessary condition of world-making and subject-making. The harmful or beneficial possibilities inherent in this moment of disclosure should therefore be understood not as different responses to vulnerability, but as different deployments of it. In creating better policies and practices about sexual harassment and violence, then, we must remain aware – and even protective – of the vulnerability of vulnerability. The chapter addresses not only the risks that a survivor takes in disclosing to a confidant, but also the risks and possibilities that the moment holds for the confidant. Legal or institutional encroachments upon this moment of disclosure, such as those now common in higher education in the US, undermine its potential for intersubjective meaning-making while simultaneously rendering survivors even more vulnerable to invasive bureaucratic procedures that rarely result in justice.Less
This chapter explores the ethical dimensions of a fraught and promising moment: the moment when a survivor of sexual assault discloses their experience to a trusted person (a confidant). I argue that this moment entails and produces multiple forms of vulnerability, and that the ways in which vulnerability is in play can remind us that vulnerability is not only the openness to harm or injury, but is a necessary condition of world-making and subject-making. The harmful or beneficial possibilities inherent in this moment of disclosure should therefore be understood not as different responses to vulnerability, but as different deployments of it. In creating better policies and practices about sexual harassment and violence, then, we must remain aware – and even protective – of the vulnerability of vulnerability. The chapter addresses not only the risks that a survivor takes in disclosing to a confidant, but also the risks and possibilities that the moment holds for the confidant. Legal or institutional encroachments upon this moment of disclosure, such as those now common in higher education in the US, undermine its potential for intersubjective meaning-making while simultaneously rendering survivors even more vulnerable to invasive bureaucratic procedures that rarely result in justice.
Lotte Meinert
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0014
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Based on fieldwork among the elderly in the Ik community in Northern Uganda, this chapter argues that the two apparently opposite concepts of vulnerability and human security are closely related in ...
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Based on fieldwork among the elderly in the Ik community in Northern Uganda, this chapter argues that the two apparently opposite concepts of vulnerability and human security are closely related in the sense that both phenomena fundamentally hinge on other people. Elderly Ik are often very vulnerable and dependent on family care. Cash transfers for elderly people are a mixed blessing in this overall fragile context of poverty and insecurity because the balance in intimate generational interdependence changes and this often creates friction in families. Following the cases of two elderly Ik who receive cash transfers, and the effect these have in their families, the chapter argues for relationality as a starting point for understanding vulnerability and human security.Less
Based on fieldwork among the elderly in the Ik community in Northern Uganda, this chapter argues that the two apparently opposite concepts of vulnerability and human security are closely related in the sense that both phenomena fundamentally hinge on other people. Elderly Ik are often very vulnerable and dependent on family care. Cash transfers for elderly people are a mixed blessing in this overall fragile context of poverty and insecurity because the balance in intimate generational interdependence changes and this often creates friction in families. Following the cases of two elderly Ik who receive cash transfers, and the effect these have in their families, the chapter argues for relationality as a starting point for understanding vulnerability and human security.
Lisa Baraitser and William Brook
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0015
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This paper opens up the relationship between vulnerability and the temporalities of care. It takes ‘care’ as not just a material practice that supports, manages and sustains vulnerable bodies, but as ...
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This paper opens up the relationship between vulnerability and the temporalities of care. It takes ‘care’ as not just a material practice that supports, manages and sustains vulnerable bodies, but as a temporal practice, one that produces time in situations that are otherwise felt to be stuck or ‘chronic’. It draws on some co-written anecdotes about the use of ‘watchful waiting’ by medical practitioners working in general practice in the UK’s National Health System (NHS) to think through the meanings of waiting in relation to chronic health and mental health crises. The offer of ‘watchful waiting’ as a response to ‘chronic crisis’ becomes a test case for understanding a more general condition of watchful waiting as a form of care, in a context in which waiting for healthcare has become an agony for many, experienced as a form of abandonment or a key sign of health service failure. The paper attempts to re-think ‘waiting times’ within a wider history of the temporalities of care, in order to elucidate the ways an offer of waiting can itself be understood as a response to vulnerability through a practice of staying with or alongside the chronic temporalities of others.Less
This paper opens up the relationship between vulnerability and the temporalities of care. It takes ‘care’ as not just a material practice that supports, manages and sustains vulnerable bodies, but as a temporal practice, one that produces time in situations that are otherwise felt to be stuck or ‘chronic’. It draws on some co-written anecdotes about the use of ‘watchful waiting’ by medical practitioners working in general practice in the UK’s National Health System (NHS) to think through the meanings of waiting in relation to chronic health and mental health crises. The offer of ‘watchful waiting’ as a response to ‘chronic crisis’ becomes a test case for understanding a more general condition of watchful waiting as a form of care, in a context in which waiting for healthcare has become an agony for many, experienced as a form of abandonment or a key sign of health service failure. The paper attempts to re-think ‘waiting times’ within a wider history of the temporalities of care, in order to elucidate the ways an offer of waiting can itself be understood as a response to vulnerability through a practice of staying with or alongside the chronic temporalities of others.
Lorraine Code
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195159431
- eISBN:
- 9780199786411
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195159438.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Although knowing other people often seems to offer better exemplars of the complexity of knowing than does knowing medium-sized physical objects, the scope and limits of such knowledge need to be ...
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Although knowing other people often seems to offer better exemplars of the complexity of knowing than does knowing medium-sized physical objects, the scope and limits of such knowledge need to be examined. It is unclear how well anyone can imagine/claim to know another person’s experiences, circumstances, situation, feelings; and expressions of empathy are often imperialistic, insensitive, coercive, intrusive. Considering Mark Johnson’s The Moral Imagination, and Marguerite La Caze’s work on the arrogance of the analytic imaginary according to which anyone can, with a little effort, imagine being in someone else’s shoes, this chapter addresses the difficulties of knowing well enough to think responsibly, beyond one’s “own” situation. How might such thinking be possible, and who, specifically, is in a position to claim such knowledge? Issues of vulnerability, both as exposed in the Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1992, and in Susan Brison’s accounts of the aftermath of a brutal rape inform the analysis.Less
Although knowing other people often seems to offer better exemplars of the complexity of knowing than does knowing medium-sized physical objects, the scope and limits of such knowledge need to be examined. It is unclear how well anyone can imagine/claim to know another person’s experiences, circumstances, situation, feelings; and expressions of empathy are often imperialistic, insensitive, coercive, intrusive. Considering Mark Johnson’s The Moral Imagination, and Marguerite La Caze’s work on the arrogance of the analytic imaginary according to which anyone can, with a little effort, imagine being in someone else’s shoes, this chapter addresses the difficulties of knowing well enough to think responsibly, beyond one’s “own” situation. How might such thinking be possible, and who, specifically, is in a position to claim such knowledge? Issues of vulnerability, both as exposed in the Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1992, and in Susan Brison’s accounts of the aftermath of a brutal rape inform the analysis.
Gerald SJ O'Collins
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199203130
- eISBN:
- 9780191707742
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199203130.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
The self‐giving love of God deployed in the redemptive events creatively brings about a new and lasting mode of existence. The powerful and ‘performative’ language of Jesus transformed people. Then ...
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The self‐giving love of God deployed in the redemptive events creatively brings about a new and lasting mode of existence. The powerful and ‘performative’ language of Jesus transformed people. Then love exposed him to suffering and death, which brought the joyful union of risen life that will last forever. This chapter illuminates the nature of redemption by analysing love.Less
The self‐giving love of God deployed in the redemptive events creatively brings about a new and lasting mode of existence. The powerful and ‘performative’ language of Jesus transformed people. Then love exposed him to suffering and death, which brought the joyful union of risen life that will last forever. This chapter illuminates the nature of redemption by analysing love.
Tim O’Riordan, Tim Lenton, and Ian Christie
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780197265536
- eISBN:
- 9780191760327
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265536.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Tipping points are metaphors of sudden change, of fear, of falling, of foreboding, and of failure. Tipping points are thresholds of tolerance, of bifurcation, and of transformation which are built ...
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Tipping points are metaphors of sudden change, of fear, of falling, of foreboding, and of failure. Tipping points are thresholds of tolerance, of bifurcation, and of transformation which are built into complex systems of transformation. Sudden change can arise from earth system phase changes (for example in the condition of ice, ocean acidity, drying of the tropical forests and the onset of monsoons). But they can also depict rapid shifts in geopolitics, local and regional conflicts, and in economic performance with implications for the well-being of societies all over the globe. The patterns of suddenness and aftermath of physical and socio-economic systems vary greatly. Tipping points can lead to unintended worsening, to induced vulnerabilities, to chaos and confusion in communication, and to the scope for restorative redirection. The scope for benign transformation is an intrinsic aspect of the tipping point metaphor.Less
Tipping points are metaphors of sudden change, of fear, of falling, of foreboding, and of failure. Tipping points are thresholds of tolerance, of bifurcation, and of transformation which are built into complex systems of transformation. Sudden change can arise from earth system phase changes (for example in the condition of ice, ocean acidity, drying of the tropical forests and the onset of monsoons). But they can also depict rapid shifts in geopolitics, local and regional conflicts, and in economic performance with implications for the well-being of societies all over the globe. The patterns of suddenness and aftermath of physical and socio-economic systems vary greatly. Tipping points can lead to unintended worsening, to induced vulnerabilities, to chaos and confusion in communication, and to the scope for restorative redirection. The scope for benign transformation is an intrinsic aspect of the tipping point metaphor.
Jonathan Herring
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199652501
- eISBN:
- 9780191739217
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199652501.003.0016
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law, Human Rights and Immigration
Vulnerability is commonly cited as a reason why children should not receive rights, or at least not the same rights as adults. We are told that if the law were to give children the same rights as ...
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Vulnerability is commonly cited as a reason why children should not receive rights, or at least not the same rights as adults. We are told that if the law were to give children the same rights as adults we would see more exploitation of children, not less. Plenty of authors have criticized the way that the law and media have presented children as being vulnerable. It undermines children's agency and justifies inappropriately paternalistic interventions in the lives of children. It involves exaggerating the risks children face and downplays their abilities. Children, it is loudly asserted, are a great deal more competent and able than we give them credit for. This chapter argues that the law is right to regard children as vulnerable, where it is at fault is in failing to recognize the vulnerability of adults. Children are vulnerable as is everyone. In children we adults see our own vulnerability and flee from it. The author of this chapter does not reject claims that children are vulnerable: he thinks they are, even if the claims are often exaggerated and distorted to achieve adult purposes. The failure is to recognize that children's vulnerability is, in essence, no different from that faced by adults.Less
Vulnerability is commonly cited as a reason why children should not receive rights, or at least not the same rights as adults. We are told that if the law were to give children the same rights as adults we would see more exploitation of children, not less. Plenty of authors have criticized the way that the law and media have presented children as being vulnerable. It undermines children's agency and justifies inappropriately paternalistic interventions in the lives of children. It involves exaggerating the risks children face and downplays their abilities. Children, it is loudly asserted, are a great deal more competent and able than we give them credit for. This chapter argues that the law is right to regard children as vulnerable, where it is at fault is in failing to recognize the vulnerability of adults. Children are vulnerable as is everyone. In children we adults see our own vulnerability and flee from it. The author of this chapter does not reject claims that children are vulnerable: he thinks they are, even if the claims are often exaggerated and distorted to achieve adult purposes. The failure is to recognize that children's vulnerability is, in essence, no different from that faced by adults.
