Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative

In 2008, Martha Albertson Fineman established ‘The Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative’ (VHC) as an interdisciplinary theme of Emory University’s Laney Graduate School. The Initiative was initially supported by joint contributions from Emory's Race and Difference Initiative and the Feminism and Legal Theory Project (which Fineman established in 1984 while at the University of Wisconsin). The VHC Initiative’s webpages set forth its ambition to ‘carve out academic space within which scholars can imagine models of state support and legal protection that focus on the commonalities of the human condition – most centrally the universal vulnerability of human beings and the imperfection of the societal institutions created to address that vulnerability’. The VHC initiative first public session took the form of a roundtable discussion with Bryan S. Turner and Peadar Kirby (both of whom were already working on concepts of vulnerability in relation to a sociology of human rights and a critical account of globalisation respectively). It was at this event that Fineman distributed her 2008 paper, ‘The Vulnerable Subject’ for early discussion.^[1] Various workshops, programs and publications have followed.Vulnerability: Reflections on a New Ethical Foundation for Law and Politics includes chapters by many workshop participants situating vulnerability in various philosophical traditions, on topics ranging from assisted reproductive technology, animals and economics.^[2]

The Initiative draws on the resources of many academic disciplines at Emory, from law to psychiatry to women's studies to environmental science, and also hosts visiting scholars from around the world each year, whose biographies can be found on the Initiative's website. The full Initiative website lists upcoming events, and publishes available resources for parties interested in learning more about vulnerability. Of particular interest to scholars and researchers may be visiting scholar interviews, information on the VHC's global affiliated faculty,^[3] and profiles on the VHC's Emory affiliated faculty.^[4] Information on news, events, workshops, and seminars is also available on the full website.^[5]

Definitions

Vulnerability

Vulnerability is a universal aspect of the human condition, arising from our embodiment and our location within society and its institutions. On the individual level, vulnerability refers to the ever-present possibility of harm, injury or biological impairment or limitation. As human creations, institutions also are vulnerable to capture, cooptation and corruption. Vulnerability also is generative and presents opportunities for innovation and growth, creativity and fulfillment. As embodied and vulnerable beings, we experience feelings such as love, respect, curiosity, amusement and desire that make us reach out to others, form relationships and build institutions.^[6]

The Vulnerable Subject

The Vulnerable Subject is a reconceptualized legal entity that is meant to replace the autonomous and independent liberal subject. When placed at the center of political and social endeavors, the Vulnerable Subject expands current ideas of state responsibility. It refocuses the relationship between the state and individuals upon the universal need for resilience, thereby legitimating claims calling for state responsibility to ensure meaningful access and opportunity to its institutions. ^[6]

Resilience

Resilience is a highly relational concept, emphasizing the importance of understanding individuals within institutions and in interaction with each other. The state and the societal institutions it brings into existence through law collectively play an important role in creating opportunities and options for addressing human vulnerability. Together and independently institutional systems, such as those of education, finance, and health, provide resources or assets that give individuals resilience in the face of our shared vulnerability. Assets or resources may take five forms: physical, human, social, ecological or environmental and existential. A responsive state, must ensure that its institutions provide meaningful access and opportunity to accumulate resources and that some individuals or groups of individuals are not unduly privileged, while others are disadvantaged.

The State

A governing body. The manifestation of public authority and the ultimate legitimate repository of coercive powerMost readily visible through "branches" of government and in realms referred to as "public". The state also becomes manifest through complex institutional arrangements creating legal entities that operate in traditionally "private" realms. These include the family, domestic arrangements and the workplace.

Equality

Legal equality in the United States tends to focus on formal and procedural processes, and not on more substantive or outcome-sensitive measures of equality. Many programs focus on target groups, rather than provide universal benefits. The Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative is interested in finding ways to ensure meaningful and universal equality of access and opportunity that specifically takes into account the state's responsibility to address existing entrenched privilege and disadvantage, not just prohibited forms of discrimination.

Workshops/Uncomfortable Conversations

2014

Vulnerability, Resilience, and Public Responsibility for Social and Economic Wellbeing, June 13-14, Buffalo, NY
An Uncomfortable Conversation: The Universal and the Particular: Vulnerability and Identities II, November 14-15, Miami, FL
A Workshop on Theorizing the State: Resources of Vulnerability, December 5-6, Atlanta, GA
^[7]

2013

Work and Vulnerability, April 5-6, Atlanta, GA
Privatization, Globalization and Social Responsibility, June 14-15, Lund, Sweden^[8]

2012

Sexuality and Justice
Corporate Rights vs Children's Interest
An Uncomfortable Conversations: Vulnerability and Identities
Vulnerability in the 21st Century Student Legal Scholarship
An Uncomfortable Conversation: Human Use of Animals^[9]

2011

Structuring Resilience Beyond Rights: Vulnerability and Justice
Masking and Manipulating Vulnerability
Aging as a Feminist Concern^[10]

Related

Vulnerability Theory
Feminism and Legal Theory Project Martha Albertson Fineman

References

External links

• Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative - Emory University
• Emory University School of Law
• Emory University Laney Graduate School
• VHC Visiting Scholar Interviews