Symposium: Vulnerability, Precarity and Human Rights
Friday, September 19, 2014 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM EDT
5183
This symposium will provide a forum for the critical evaluation of theories of vulnerability and precarity in relation to issues of global justice and human rights. In exploring these issues, speakers will address both the potential and the limits of concepts of vulnerability and precarity, paying particular attention to the intersections among gender, sexuality, race, and disability in transnational contexts. Please see the program for full details of speakers and topics.
During the past decade, there has been a substantial growth in academic scholarship devoted to vulnerability and precarity, particularly in the context of global justice and international human rights discourses. Scholars have turned to theories of vulnerability to account for contemporary forms of political violence, focusing on the injustices that arise when some lives are made systematically more precarious and less liveable than others. At the same time, attending to the vulnerabilities inherent in all human lives provides a basis for re-conceiving political community in more inclusive, less violent ways.
Nonetheless, the concepts of vulnerability and precarity bring with them certain risks. Vulnerability is often mapped onto certain bodies (marked in terms of gender, race, class, age or disability) and not others, such that these bodies bear the burden of political representation and are seen as ‘essentially’ vulnerable in ways that are disempowering and oppressive. The alignment of precarity with undesirable states of suffering is a powerful tool for critiquing structural injustice, but implicitly reinforces the ideal of invulnerable individuality that many theorists of vulnerability wish to displace.
The symposium will be a space for discussing these and related issues in conjunction with leading scholars in the field.
To register: this event is free and open to all, but advance registration is required. If you would like to attend, please send an email to Dr Rachel Jones at rjones23@gmu.edu with your name, institution, and any dietary requirements. It would be helpful if you could also indicate if you intend to attend part or the full day
