Vulnerability and the politics of care : transdisciplinary dialogues

This chapter introduces the linked concepts of vulnerability, politics and care, considering how all three have developed in distinctive ways within and across different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, and their complex relation to one another. Concentrating on philosophy, anthropology and international relations, we review the major theoretical contributions to the study of vulnerability and care that have emerged out of work on precarity, feminism, and the ethics of care. We then propose a transdisciplinary approach to vulnerability that places various concepts and methodologies in closer dialogue with each other. These dialogues form the basis of the four sections of the book, each of which is briefly described with reference to the chapters