Vulnerabilities: Rethinking Medicine Rights and Humanities in Post-pandemic (Integrated Science, 18)

Drawing from a wide array of disciplinary perspectives and geographical contexts, this volume offers new insights for critically engaging with the problem of vulnerability. The essays here contained take the move from the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to explore the inherent vulnerability of individuals, but also of social, economic and political systems, and probe the descriptive and prescriptive import of the concept.Each chapter provides a self-contained perspective on vulnerability, as well as a specific methodological framework for questioning its meaning. Taken together, the chapters combine into a multi-disciplinary toolkit for approaching the various forms and structures of vulnerability, with a special attention to the intersectional factors shaping the individual experience of it: from gender to age, from disability to mental illness, from hospitalisation to incarceration. The book explores the theoretical richness and complexity of the concept and proposes new analytical approaches to it, before illustrating its multifariousness through empirically grounded case studies. The closing section engages with “the future of vulnerability”, as a hermeneutic, epistemological, and critical-normative perspective to be deployed beyond the domain of global crises and emergencies.The volume is primarily intended as a reference for scholars in the human, social and health sciences. The accessible structure and plain language of the chapters make it also a valuable didactic resource for graduate courses in philosophy, the social sciences and public health. Introduction Contents Editors and Contributors Part I What Is Vulnerability? 1 Vulnerability is Said in Many Ways 1 Introduction 2 Different Meanings of Vulnerability 3 Some Aporias 4 Ethical Models of Vulnerability 5 Vulnerability as a “Critic to Forms of Life”? References 2 Ethics in Scenes of Disaster 1 Introduction 2 Wittgenstein and Forms of Life 3 Exploring Forms of Life in the Ethics of Care 4 Ordinary Life in Spaces of Devastation 5 Experience at Its Limits 6 Conclusions References 3 Humanity of the Human and the Politics of Vulnerability 1 Introduction 2 Affliction and “Life Without Form” 3 Differential Vulnerability and Interdependence References 4 Vulnerability and the End of the World. Trying to Read the Post-pandemic Age (with Karl Jaspers and Ernesto De Martino) 1 Introduction 2 End-of-The-World Experiences 3 Responses to the Crisis 4 How to Become Mad 5 How to “Make Yourself Healthy” References 5 A Biosocial Perspective on (COVID-19) Pandemic Outbreaks: Interfaces of Biology and Social Determinants 1 Introduction 2 Conceptual Framework 3 Characteristics of Infectious Diseases: Pathways to Embodiment 4 Transmission: Modes of Transmission 5 Transmission: The Natural Environment 6 Transmission: Timing 7 Infectivity and Immunity 8 Pathogenicity and Virulence 9 Conclusions References Part II Who Is Vulnerable? 6 Vulnerability and Gender After COVID-19 1 Introduction 2 Lessons of Care 3 Global Ethics Lessons 4 Lessons of Intersectionality 5 Conclusion References 7 Phenomenology of Vulnerability: A Person-Centred Approach 1 Introduction 2 The Diathesis-Stress Model 3 Schizophrenia: From Patent Symptoms to Core Phenomena 4 From Biological Diathesis to Core Experiences and Hermeneutic Position-Taking 5 From Neurobiology and Social Risk Factors to Anthropological Vulnerability 6 Conclusions References 8 (In)Visibility of Children and Their Psychosocial Vulnerability–The Narrowed Discourse on Children in the First Year of the Pandemic in Germany 1 Introduction 2 Being a Child in the First Year of the Pandemic 2.1 Invisibility in Public Space 2.2 Is Childcare “systemrelevant”? 3 Visibilities in Media Discourse and in Policy Advice 3.1 School in Focus of Policy Advice 3.2 School in Focus of Reporting 3.3 Scandalised “Corona Parties” 4 Making Vulnerability Visible 4.1 Studies on Youth Health and Learning Progress 4.2 Increased Risk to Children’s Well-Being 4.3 Children’s Participation and Rights 5 Conclusion References 9 Social Inequality in Child Health and Development—Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic 1 Introduction 2 Child Health and Development on Starting School 3 Social Inequalities in Child Health and Development on Starting School 4 Potential Explanations for Social Inequalities in Childhood Development 5 Social-Differential Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Drivers of Health Inequalities 5.1 Financial Pressures 5.2 Psychosocial Stressors 5.3 Health-Related Behaviour 6 Social-Differential Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Child Health and Development 7 Conclusions References 10 The (Crip) Art of Reworking Vulnerability—And Perhaps, to Find a Way Out of It 1 Introduction 2 Notes on Vulnerability and Disability 3 First Keyword: Relationality 4 Second Keyword: Interdependence 5 Third Keyword: Resourcefulness 6 Introductory Notes on Care 7 A Case Study: Care Collectives 8 Conclusion References 11 “Total Institutions” as Litmus Test of Civilisation 1 Introduction 2 “Total Institutions” During Pandemics: A Historiographical Desideratum 3 The Academic Renaissance of “Total Institutions” 4 The Total Institution in Public Perception 5 Political Agenda Setting 6 Conclusion References Part III The Future of Vulnerability 12 Vulnerable to Ourselves, or the Radicalized Disenchantment of Being 1 Introduction 2 Fatal Strategies 3 The Lessons of Catastrophic Exposure 4 Politics of Vulnerability 5 The Question of Commons References 13 Pandemic Necropolitics: Vulnerability, Resilience, and the Crisis of Marginalization in the Liberal Democratic State 1 Introduction 2 The Abnormal State 3 Non-law and Covert Necropolitics 4 Resilience, Solidarity, and the Accidentality of Survival 5 Conclusion References 14 Vulnerability as a New Perspective on Ethical Challenges in Healthcare 1 Introduction 2 The Concept of Vulnerability 3 COVID-19 and Vulnerability 4 Vulnerability After COVID 5 The Need for a Global Ethics Perspective 6 Conclusion References 15 Vulnerability, Interest Convergence, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from the Future 1 Introduction 2 Temporary Vulnerability from COVID-19 Can Bring Some Good 3 Regression from Meaningful Change 4 Theories: Veils of Ignorance and Interest Convergence 5 Combination of Theories: Introducing Interest Cognizance 6 Solutions: Moving Forward 7 Conclusion References Index