Vulnerability

This collection presents studies on a wide range of discursive positions marked by vulnerability and investigates the functions of (self-)positioning actors as vulnerable in contemporary social discourses. As a phenomenon that manifests itself in different social arenas, vulnerable positions and instances of (self-)positioning indicate various crisis situations on a broad spectrum of phenomena, of manifestations and implications, among them victimization, fragility, weakness, disadvantage, neglect, infantilization, ignorance, exclusion and marginalisation. Starting from the assumption that vulnerable (self-)positioning and stance-taking is manifested at the level of discursive practices, performative processes and material achievements, the contributors to this volume describe a series of mechanisms of staging vulnerability in a wide range of manifestations: among them physical vulnerability, psychological vulnerability, social vulnerability, sexual and gender vulnerability, linguistic vulnerability, institutional vulnerability.