Call for contributions ISA 2024 - panel "Unseen vulnerability in the Anthropocene"
Anaëlle VERGONJEANNE
Dear all,
Thomas Fraise and I are putting together a panel on vulnerability for the upcoming ISA 2024 meetings, and are launching a late call for papers that might be of interest to some of you. You will find more details on this proposed panel “Unseen vulnerabilities in the Anthropocene” in the description below.
We are welcoming contributions from a range of thematics as wide as possible – including but not limited to security, climate, gender – to enrich our understandings of the concept’s applicability to contemporary IR. If you feel like your research might relate in any way, please reach out to us, and we will be glad to engage in the discussion.
Title and abstracts should be sent to both of us before Tuesday 30th May given the ISA deadline 1st of June, apologies for this last minute call for contributions.
Best regards,
Anaëlle Vergonjeanne and Thomas Fraise,
Sciences Po – CERI
Call for contributions - ISA 2024 panel
Unseen vulnerabilities in the Anthropocene
Anaëlle Vergonjeanne (Sciences Po/CERI), Thomas Fraise (Sciences Po/CERI)
This panel proposes to deepen our knowledge of what vulnerability entails in an age of growing anthropogenic existential threats by diversifying our understanding of “vulnerability”. What are the forms of vulnerability which are specific to our historical time? What creates vulnerability, and who – or what – are vulnerable subjects in the Anthropocene?
Long unseen, humanity’s material vulnerabilities to climate change occupy the forefront of scholarship’s concerns with international relations in the Anthropocene. Risks of societal collapse induced by rapidly changing climate conditions, of world-sweeping pandemics or even of an unlivable planet earth have been the object of renewed attention by many academics in the recent years. But it seems there is more than this to say about our vulnerabilities in this age.
Feminist contributions have opened the way of studies on vulnerability, with firstly care theories considering humanity as vulnerable (Gilligan, 1982; Tronto, 1993); then focusing on forms of bodily vulnerability and its implication for moral judgments (Butler 2006; Mackenzie, Rogers, and Dodds 2014). Contributions more firmly grounded in International studies have sought to construct vulnerability as a variable in the explanation of state behaviors (Cooper and Shaw 2009), or on the vulnerable subject as an agent in IR (Clark 2013). More recently, studies have focused on the vulnerabilities of political systems through the studies of the historical conditions of societal collapse (Centeno 2023).
We identified key features of vulnerability as unaccomplished risk, invisibility, shared and common responsibility to care, and interdependency. Beyond this early definition, what are other forms of unseen vulnerability, whether individual, institutional, or cognitive? Leads could be examining political vulnerability to authoritarian tendencies as solution for security, or the epistemic vulnerability which emerges when knowledge is necessary, but cannot be trusted (Pelopidas 2022). Moreover, what are the other sources of vulnerability left unseen in existing studies which nevertheless should the object of our attention. Finally, what are some uses of the category of vulnerability in modern international relations, such as the “most vulnerable” label often used in global governance to define actors — such as children (Gilligan 2009), women, or developing countries in climate negotiations (Webber, 2013; Weiler, Klöck & Dornan, 2018).
We aim at developing our understanding of vulnerabilities, by questioning vulnerability as a theoretical concept and as an empirical category. This panel looks for contribution which relates to the concept of vulnerability, and its expressions which stems from the specific historical material conditions of the Anthropocene. It aims at identifying forms of vulnerability which have remained unseen and underexplored in existing analysis. We welcome contributions in both theoretical and empirical forms, using the concept of vulnerability to make more sense of the meaning of international politics in an age of existential threats (Sears 2021).
- you may find the list of references in the joint document -
Abstract : 200 words
Deadline : May 29th.
