Resilience and Vulnerability: Conceptual revolution(s) or only revolving around words? A collection of essays, working papers and think pieces from the period 2008-2018

This volume is a collection of thoughts and ideas around the concepts of resilience and vulnerability related to their application in the context of disaster risk. Each of the chapters can be classified as an essay, a working paper, or simply as a think piece. Irrespective of different contexts and themes they are united as they represent efforts to grasp the elusive concepts of vulnerability, resilience, exposure, risk in context of natural hazards or wilful destruction and the potential disasters these may cause. One further common feature of these pieces put together in this volume is that they were never really became known and acknowledged. Most of these writings, or versions thereof have never been published in printed media. They all originate from the period between 2008 and 2018. Some of these “early thoughts” might have been premature then. We speculate however, that in light of the present state of the international scientific discourse in the respective area and the ever flourishing conceptual debates around vulnerability and resilience some of the ideas found in these “hidden essays” may trigger second thoughts and hence could enliven the present debates. Thus next to be the historical documentation of what has been pondered on a decade ago, some scientific follow up may occur