The Popularity, Plurality, and Vagueness of Vulnerability

When reading through the increasingly large number of publications on the subject of vulnerability from the last few years, a pattern emerges. First, a wide variety of these publications emphasize the increasing popularity of the term. Scholars not only register “a good deal of attention” (Huth & Thonhauser, 2020: 537) and a “flourishing of critical interest in vulnerability” (Cole, 2016: 261). What is more, vulnerability is identified as “one of the latest buzzwords gathering political and cultural momentum” (Brown et al., 2017: 497) and as “an idea with assured academic success” (Ferrarese, 2016: 149). Although the proliferation of the concept has been observed before, it has increased enormously as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the wake of the COVID crisis “vulnerability” became a key term within public, academic, political, and legal debates, especially with reference to the definition and classification of “vulnerable groups” (e.g., Brown, 2022: 5–8; Govrin, 2022a; Ten Have & Gordijn, 2021; Lessenich, 2023). Second, numerous publications point out that the concept of vulnerability is not only being used more frequently but also more broadly. For example, already ten years ago, Gilson (2014: 4) noted that “thinking about vulnerability has surged in recent years, spanning diverse fields with various aims and motivations”. Cole (2016: 262), in turn, remarks that the “concept of vulnerability is doing a lot of heavy lifting these days, providing new ways to rethink enduring problems, ranging from social marginality and economic insecurity to international warfare”. Finally, the vagueness or multivalence of the concept is regularly noted. Vulnerability is characterized as a term whose meaning is often left implicit and “taken for granted” (Gilson, 2014: 5). Through this lack of explicitness and definiteness vulnerability turns into “a concept with fleeting contours” (Ferrarese, 2016: 149), into a notion which is “elastic and seemingly multi-purpose” (Cole, 2016: 263) or even into a “floating signifier” (Boublil, 2024: Sect. 1 with reference to Didier Fassin), which can be filled almost arbitrarily depending on the respective position.

What are the reasons for this diverse and often vague use of the concept of vulnerability? One possible answer is the increasingly multidisciplinary interest in the topic. Using Kate Brown’s (2024: Introduction) words, the concept is invoked in various “domains ranging from violence against women to volcanoes”. A wide range of disciplines are taking a keen interest in the concept of vulnerability – from geography, climate science, and medicine, to bioethics and legal studies, to pedagogy, sociology, and social work, to social, feminist, and political philosophy. Since these disciplines have different research interests, use different conceptual frameworks, and apply these to different entities, a certain conceptual heterogeneity is not surprising.

However, the diversity, ambivalence, and vagueness of the concept are not only due to differences in disciplinary perspectives. Beyond this, it seems to us that within the vulnerability discourse, conflicts over fundamental epistemological, ontological, and methodological positions are being waged. In these struggles, coalitions and conflicts are not primarily structured along disciplinary boundaries, but rather follow transdisciplinary paradigmatic lines. For example, there is a close relationship between the conceptualization of vulnerability and the idea of what constitutes a subject and how the subject is related to its environment (e.g., Boublil & Ferrarello, 2023). Feminist theory in particular has employed the concept of vulnerability to argue against the notion of an autonomous self that is detached and independent from its environment and only vulnerable in exceptional situations (e.g., Butler, 2006; Gilson, 2014). This conceptualization of the subject is relevant across disciplines and shapes positions in various fields – for example in ethics (e.g., Boublil, 2018; Ten Have, 2016; Huth, 2016; Mackenzie et al., 2014), political and legal thought (e.g., Fineman, 2010; Govrin, 2022b) or in the social sciences (e.g., Hentschel & Krasmann, 2020; Nungesser, 2019). Such transdisciplinary convergences and conflicts could also be identified with regard to other fundamental questions, like the following: Is vulnerability a property that characterizes individuals, collectives, or systems? Or do we need to understand vulnerability as a relational or structural concept? What kind of ontological frameworks support these claims and observations (e.g., Boublil, 2018)?

A third reason for the diversity, ambivalence, and vagueness of the term is, in our view, that because of the popularity of vulnerability studies its subject matter has in a sense been duplicated. Vulnerability is no longer just an academic concept used to analyze various pressing issues and problems. Rather, vulnerability itself is increasingly becoming an object of research as cultural semantics, as an element of political discourse, and as an interpretative lens for individual experiences and narratives. This semantic duplication often leads to an implicit conflation of etic and emic uses of vulnerability. However, a clear-cut separation of these two levels is, indeed, difficult. First, because academic discourses have contributed significantly to the sociocultural proliferation of the semantics of vulnerability; second, because academic debates are, of course, part of broader social discourses; and third, because academic contributions in some cases seek to intervene in public and political discourse.

Due to the increasing and interdisciplinary interest in vulnerability and its duplication as an analytical concept and widespread sociocultural semantics, vulnerability has become a prominent and powerful interpretative framework in various fields. In the words of Kate Brown, something like “a vulnerability zeitgeist” has emerged (Brown, 2015: 1; Brown et al., 2017: 497). However, in how far this proliferation of the concept is a ‘success story’ is a matter of debate among vulnerability scholars. On the one hand, its enormous potential for conceptual, theoretical, and empirical innovation continues to be emphasized, as well as the possibility of using the concept to challenge traditional ways of thinking and possibly bring about a “paradigm shift” (Boublil, 2024: Sect. 1). On the other hand, it is emphasized that the concept is integrated into very different theoretical frameworks, including those that it should help to overcome – a fact that may call into question its power of theoretical innovation. With regard to the political dimension of the term, it is not only pointed out that it has become a “piece of politicized rhetoric” (Gilson, 2024: Sect. 3). Critical authors also observe that forms of “vulnerability governance” (Brown, 2024) are increasingly spreading through which marginalized groups, in particular, are subjected to a paternalistic blend of care and control. Vulnerability, thus, seems to be a zeitgeist as well as a bone of contention, a concept that can overcome theoretical impasses but also one that should be “handled with care” (Brown, 2011).

A Trialogue on Vulnerability

Against this backdrop, it makes sense to discuss the discourse on vulnerability in a way that addresses its problems and achievements, its interdisciplinary potential, and its political implications in a self-reflexive manner. The following trialogue is devoted to this goal and brings together three researchers who have made important contributions to the field of vulnerability studies from different perspectives and in different disciplines: Elodie Boublil, Kate Brown, and Erinn Gilson. To facilitate a systematic as well as interactive exchange each of the three participants was asked to outline their view on four key issues: (1) their respective conception of vulnerability, (2) their methodological approach to the study of vulnerability, (3) their perspective on the political dynamics and ambivalences associated with the concept, and (4) their view on past and future developments in vulnerability studies and its interdisciplinary potential. To highlight overlaps, complementarities, and differences between the positions, the participants exchanged their contributions so that they could refer to and comment on them in their own articles.

The idea for this trialogue goes back to a conference on Vulnerability. Theories and Concepts in Philosophy and the Social Sciences, which took place at the University of Graz in October 2022 and that was organized by Berhard Geißler, Frithjof Nungesser, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, and Antonia Schirgi. The conference was concluded by a panel discussion, where Elodie Boublil, Kate Brown, and Erinn Gilson debated the question “What is vulnerability, how do you study it, and why does it matter?” As this exchange turned out to be instructive and productive for the audience, organizers, and the panelists themselves, the idea was born to translate and extend the panel discussion into a written trialogue.

The remainder of this introduction outlines key aspects of the three contributions and highlights some convergences and common themes. Also, at the end, the three authors are introduced briefly. After the introduction, the three contributions to the trialogue follow. In a fifth and final contribution to the special section, the two editors then identify and discuss some of the central themes, tensions, and challenges emerging from the trialogue and reflect on their implications for vulnerability studies more generally.

Three Perspectives on the Vulnerability Zeitgeist

In her contribution to the trialogue, Erinn Gilson cautions that the theoretical preoccupation with vulnerability can lead to a disconnection from the actual phenomena and thus to a detached and impersonal understanding. In her view, the goal must therefore be to return to vulnerability “as it is being lived” (Gilson, 2024: Introduction) without sacrificing a differentiated theoretical analysis. To facilitate such a differentiated analysis Gilson advocates for a pluralist, intersectional, non-dualist concept of vulnerability. From her point of view, such a concept must incorporate six dimensions of vulnerability, namely that vulnerability is (1) both, ontological and situational, (2) material and social, (3) characterized by distinct modes of temporality, (4) ambivalent and ambiguous, (5) relational, and (6) an ethical and political concept as well as experience.

While Gilson’s call for a return to experience follows a basic phenomenological impulse, it is also strongly informed by post-structuralist and feminist perspectives. Such a conceptual approach makes it possible, she argues, to focus on experiences but also to understand these experiences as being co-constituted by structures of power and domination. This pluralist concept of vulnerability is mirrored in a pluralist methodological approach to vulnerability. While Gilson sees her task in the field of philosophical conceptual analysis “that questions common sense understandings” (Gilson, 2024: Sect. 2), she also calls for an intensification of interdisciplinary and participatory research. The dialogue with other disciplines but also with practitioners in the field, she argues, can make visible the concrete social conditions and structures behind experiences of vulnerability. A participatory approach, i.e., research “with rather than about those labeled vulnerable,” can reduce “the problem of theoretical detachment” (Gilson, 2024: Sect. 4).

To understand why vulnerability is so complex, problematic, and contested, Gilson claims, both its ambivalence and its ambiguity must be understood. On the one hand, vulnerability is ambivalent or multivalent, because it can be accompanied by very different experiences and consequences depending on the context and constellation. For example, the experience of vulnerability can involve the feeling of injury, but can also be accompanied by a sense of care or solidarity. Ambiguity, on the other hand, is even more complex as it means that these two sides can be experienced simultaneously. The value of vulnerability is, at the same time, negative and positive or unclear. According to Gilson, this conceptual distinction is relevant not only in terms of individual experience but also on a collective level. The collective ambivalence of vulnerability means that on the one hand, as a normative idea, it can oblige and motivate people to protect vulnerable groups. However, it can also serve to combat or marginalize groups, for example when nations or specific populations are portrayed as vulnerable. Vulnerability can therefore be “wielded as a political tool” (Gilson, 2024: Sect. 3) and, as such a tool, it must also be studied and theorized.

In the second contribution to the trialogue, Elodie Boublil starts off with the twofold character of vulnerability as both a universal condition of human beings and a lived-through experience. On both levels, she argues, vulnerability is predominantly perceived as a negative phenomenon, as something that “may impair agency and responsibility, leading to unwanted dependency and a lack of autonomy” (Boublil, 2024: Introduction). Boublil, by contrast, argues for a different conceptualization of vulnerability. In her view, vulnerability cannot be reduced to passivity, fragility, or weakness, but is also inextricably linked to responsiveness, affectivity, empowerment, and self-transformation. Hence there is much more at stake here than an isolated conceptual problem. The negative view of vulnerability, according to Boublil, goes back to an ideological background that views the subject primarily as independent and rational and thus considers vulnerability to be a situational threat to individual autonomy and self-sufficiency. Conceptual debates on vulnerability therefore directly touch on fundamental questions of subjectivity and force us to reflect on the historical and ideological background of specific conceptions of the subject – be it in everyday, in political, or in philosophical discourses.

Against this background Boublil advances a phenomenological understanding of vulnerability intended to become “an ethical compass and an operative tool for philosophical critique” (Boublil, 2024: Sect. 1). Such a phenomenological ethics resists objectification and self-reification of vulnerability and highlights the plasticity of our boundaries and our dependence on “a mutual desire for love and recognition” (Boublil, 2024: Sect. 1). Vulnerability, according to Boublil, is intersubjectively constituted and, because of our necessary openness to others and the world, relational. Drawing on different phenomenological positions, Boublil studies vulnerability along two axes: first, from “a genetic perspective to uncover the various layers of the constitution of the vulnerable self” (Boublil, 2024: Sect. 2); second, from a second-person and third-person perspective, taking into account the responses to vulnerable individuals and groups and the interconnection of the lived-through experience of vulnerability and institutional frameworks.

As the references to ideological, historical, and institutional dimensions already suggest, for Boublil, the concept of vulnerability and the discourses on vulnerability are also linked to important political issues. First, philosophical analysis can problematize the “invisibilization of precarious lives” (Boublil, 2024: Sect. 3), the ideologies of invulnerability, and resulting hermeneutical injustices that arise from both neoliberal political discourses and Western metaphysics. Second, it is necessary to overcome a purely negative conception of vulnerability or approaches solely focusing on compassion and care. Third, the political instrumentalization of vulnerability and its association with the notion of resilience needs to be substituted by in-depth studies of the complexities of situations of vulnerability.

In the closing article of the trialogue, Kate Brown investigates the intricate relations between social policy, social marginalization, and vulnerability. In particular, she focuses on the diverse forms of vulnerability governance, which “involve the blending of impulses of care and support with currents of social control” (Brown, 2024: Introduction). Brown is interested, on the one hand, in the lived experiences of those who are classified as “vulnerable” in the context of what she calls “repressive welfarism” (Phoenix, 2009). On the other hand, she analyzes how and with what consequences vulnerability is operationalized and implemented on the ground by state institutions and authorities. By applying this multi-dimensional and critical perspective, Brown identifies three crucial questions regarding the dynamics of vulnerability governance: first, the question of whether practices of vulnerability governance alleviate or entrench current forms of exclusion; second the question of who benefits and who loses because of vulnerability governance; and, third, the question of how common expectations regarding agency and deservingness are built into vulnerability governance.

Referring to Gilson (2021) Brown comprehends vulnerability as a lived experience and “as urgent situations of inequality, insecurity, and ‘propensity for harm’” (Brown, 2024: Sect. 1). In order to explore these experiences and the situations that constitute them in a concrete and differentiated way Brown conducts qualitative and co-produced research in contexts and regions she knows well from both an academic perspective and from the standpoint of a practitioner in the field; in this way she aims to “ensure ethical rigour” in these sensitive research fields (Brown, 2024: Sect. 2). The empirical cases she refers to include studies on and with sex workers, sexually exploited children, and young people identified as “vulnerable”. By analyzing specific cases from different perspectives, Brown identifies important paradoxes of vulnerability government: In principle, police and social interventions are aimed at protecting these groups from danger, but the dangers of these interventions themselves and thus the vulnerability of the people to those whom they are supposed to protect are not recognized. Those who are the target of the interventions are sometimes unwilling or unable to respond to the services as requested and thus “refuse” to be “saved”.

Because of these complexities and paradoxes, Brown argues, the concept of vulnerability needs to be “handled with care” (Brown, 2024: Sect. 1). She criticizes that vulnerability is often seen as a “‘problem’ to be ‘solved’” (Brown, 2024: Sect. 2). Nevertheless, she notes that to a certain degree her efforts in social policy research necessarily also point into this direction. Because of this tension in particular, Brown strongly advocates an intensification of participatory research, through which those who are usually only addressed as objects of research are given a direct and active voice.

Common Themes

In the following trialogue, the three authors each bring different disciplinary, methodological, and empirical perspectives to the table – in some cases, they also address different national and regional contexts. Nevertheless, a number of significant convergences and common themes can be identified. First, the three authors agree that vulnerability is problematic. At least three reasons for this problematic nature of the concept can be found in their contributions: the negative foundation of the concept, its vagueness, and potentially harmful effects of the politicization of vulnerability. First, the predominant and common understanding of vulnerability refers to its negative side – fragility, passivity, and the “susceptibility to harm or be harmed” (Boublil, 2024: Introduction). It has rarely been conceived in its plurality and ambiguity (Gilson, 2024). The authors agree that vulnerability implies the potential for harm and injury as well as the potential for care and support. Second, the terminology of vulnerability is often vague, at risk of becoming a “floating signifier,” as Boublil (2024: Sect. 1) notes with reference to Didier Fassin. This vagueness is becoming reinforced by the everyday use and proliferation of the concept, particularly in political discourse. This works against a meaningful operationalization of the concept as well as against its critical force. Finally, the concept of vulnerability is problematic because of its politicization. Neoliberal ideology and policies intensify vulnerabilities but also require and invoke autonomous (invulnerable and resilient) individuals who take responsibility for their lives and well-being. Exemplary cases of migrants (Boublil, 2024; Gilson, 2024) as well as sex workers and sexually exploited children (Brown, 2024) clearly show that framings of particular persons as vulnerable subjects can themselves be harmful. Interventions, that are supposed to “help” them to “overcome” their vulnerability can themselves contribute to their vulnerabilization.

The three contributions also agree on a fundamental methodological orientation, namely that vulnerability needs to be studied first and foremost as experienced or lived-through. While they recognize the general, ontological, and anthropological foundation of vulnerability and reflect on prevailing sociocultural discourses, it is primarily the concrete, socially situated, and lived-through experience that provides the starting point for their thinking. In methodological terms, this position leads to two main research strategies in the work of the three authors: first, an adherence to the phenomenological tradition and its analysis of experience – especially from a generalized first-person perspective; second, a stronger emphasis on participatory approaches and the co-production not only of data but potentially also of interpretations. The participatory exploration of a second-person perspective enabled in this way is seen by the three researchers as a possibility to translate the anti-dualistic impulses of their concept of vulnerability into empirical practice (see also our concluding article in this special section).

The three authors not only contribute to an interdisciplinary dialogue; through their participation in this trialogue they also actively encourage interdisciplinary exchange and cooperation in the field of vulnerability studies. Their understanding of interdisciplinarity goes beyond a simple bridging of disciplines. Rather, theoretical and applied approaches should enter a more fundamental exchange to advance the conceptual analysis of vulnerability, the empirical and participatory study of specific lived experiences, and the reconstruction of historical and political discourses of vulnerability.

Important convergences and overlaps between the three approaches have thus been identified. The potentials arising from this but also some tensions and challenges, are identified and discussed after the trialogue in the concluding text of this special section.

The Trialogue Authors

Erinn Gilson is Associate Professor of philosophy at Merrimack College. She obtained her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Memphis. The ethical and political relevance of vulnerability as well as the role of vulnerability in popular and academic discourses lies at the very heart of her research, which brings together perspectives from feminist theory and different European traditions of social philosophy. In 2014 her monograph The Ethics of Vulnerability: A Feminist Analysis of Social Life and Practice was published with Routledge. Drawing critically on the work of Judith Butler and others, in this book she outlines her own theoretical perspective which challenges a reductively negative understanding of vulnerability. She also connects her approach to vulnerability to questions of gender and sexuality, taking an intersectional point of view. This approach is exemplified in a 2016 article, “Vulnerability and Victimization: Rethinking Key Concepts in Feminist Discourses on Sexual Violence” published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, and in an article published in Hypatia this spring, “Responsibility for Sexual Injustices: Toward an Intersectional Account”. She elaborates an argument for thinking of vulnerability as ambivalent and ambiguous in “The Problems and Potentials of Vulnerability,” her contribution to the 2021 volume Vulnerability and the Politics of Care: Transdisciplinary Dialogues (eds. V. Browne, J. Danely, and D. Rosenow, Oxford University Press).

Elodie Boublil is Associate Professor of philosophy at the Université Paris XII (Université Paris Est Créteil, UPEC). She holds a PhD from McGill University, an MA in philosophy from Sorbonne University (Paris I), and an MA in political science and international relations from Sciences Po Paris. She obtained prestigious fundings, like a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship. Her main working areas include French and German phenomenology, care ethics, philosophy of health, psychiatric phenomenology, and philosophical anthropology. Elodie Boublil published and edited important contributions to a philosophy of vulnerability, like The Vulnerability of the Human World: Well-being, Health, Technology and the Environment (with S. Ferrarello, 2023, Springer Nature), Vulnérabilité et Empathie: Approches phénoménologiques (2018, Hermann), and the special issue on Phenomenology of Vulnerability of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (49, 2018).

Kate Brown is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy and Criminal Justice at the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of York. She received her PhD from the University of Leeds. Kate Brown conducts qualitative research with people who are often deemed vulnerable such as sex workers, young people, and those who have experienced exploitation. This research is informed by almost ten years of practical experience in different support services in the voluntary sector. Brown’s research not only analyzes how vulnerability is lived and experienced but also investigates how vulnerability is governed and debated, looking especially into the role vulnerability plays in different areas of social policy or in interactions between the police and vulnerable groups. The most comprehensive account of her work can be found in Vulnerability and Young People. Care and Social Control in Policy and Practice (2015, Policy Press). Her studies have also found their way into various journals. These include publications on specific social areas, such as her 2019 article “Vulnerability and Child Sexual Exploitation: Towards an Approach Grounded in Life Experiences,” published in Critical Social Policy. In addition, she has published review articles that critically reflect on the state of vulnerability research, for example, the 2017 article “The Many Faces of Vulnerability” in Social Policy & Society (co-authored by Kathryn Ecclestone and Nick Emmel).