Main description:

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.

Contents:

Bodies, Resistance, Despair
1: JUDITH BUTLER: Bodies that Still Matter
2: ROSALBA ICAZA: Decolonial Feminism and Global Politics
3: C. JASON THROOP: Meteorological Moods and Atmospheric Attunements
Response: The Terror of InvulnerabilityRAHUL RAO:
Ambiguity, Affectivity, Violence
4: ERINN GILSON: The Problems and Potentials of Vulnerability
5: THOMAS GREGORY: Vulnerable Civilians: Coalition Checkpoints and the Perception of Hostile Intent
6: OMAR DEWACHI: Revealed in the Wound: Medical Care and the Ecologies of War in Post-Occupation Iraq
Response: On the Condition of Being OpenVERONIQUE PIN-FAT:
Narrative, Relationality, Disclosure
7: JACKIE LEACH SCULLY: The politics of care: from biomedical transformation to narrative vulnerability
8: JASON DANELY: "It rips you to bits!": Woundedness and Compassion in Carers' Narratives
9: ANN CAHILL: Disclosing an Experience of Sexual Assault: Ethics and the Role of the Confidant
Response: Tenuous MooringsYASMIN GUNARATNAM:
Dependence, Distribution, Waiting
10: LOTTE MEINERT: Vulnerability as Radically Social: Cash and Care for the Elderly in Uganda
11: LISA BARAITSER AND WILLIAM BROOK: Watchful Waiting: Temporalities of Crisis and Care in the UK: National Health Service
Response: The Hopeless Hopeful Time of CaringTIFFANY PAGE:
Index