The Anthropology of Vulnerability

Keywords

Vulnerability,Suffering,Humanity

Objectives

In 1992, British anthropologist John Davis expanded on previous research into stable social structures and culture systems within the framework of refugee studies to declare the need for an anthropology fraught with confusion and despair, or, to use his words, “an anthropology of suffering.” Two decades later, in 2016, the US anthropologist Sherry Ortner asserted that “the central theme of anthropology is ‘dark anthropology.'” She argued that this anthropology focuses on people who are suffering from things like factory closures, job losses, short-term employment, disease, war, and disaster. What lays behind such changes of interest in anthropology is the emergence of large numbers of immigrants and refugees due to progress of globalization and neoliberalism along with an increase of unemployment and short-term employment as a result of factory relocations. In today’s world where change is accelerating, there seems to be little possibility that anthropology can limit itself to “the study of research into foreign cultures” that heretofore has been its mission. To the contrary, it would seem that these developments call for a fundamental change in the object of anthropological research and the methods used. The purpose of the present research is to find new directions for comprehensively researching the diverse peoples who live in today’s suffering-filled world.

Research Results

This research project organized workshops over a period of three and a half years, where all inter-university project researchers and two invited guest speakers delivered research presentations. The discussions revealed two main trends in approaches to human vulnerability. One is the unavoidable vulnerability and fragility that results from humans having a physical body. Humans cannot escape death, sickness, sex, mental illness, accidents, and disasters. We live individual lives and form communities fearing and trying to cope with this. The main theme of the anthropology of vulnerability is to meticulously describe and analyze how each person faces this vulnerability—a state inherent to human existence—taking into account physicality and emotion.
On the other hand, humans also attempt to understand and identify with the vulnerability of others and help those who are vulnerable. Humans are thought to have been attempting this ever since they began forming communities, so it is also important to describe various aspects of this, which is the second theme of the anthropology of vulnerability. How have human relationships been built and how have individuals confronted those in need of help, such as victims of disaster and war, the sick, elderly, and minors? With the formation of modern society and Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, the state has taken on this duty in place of local communities, but that is a system with a number of underlying issues. These matters need to be described and analyzed in detail in line with case studies.