Vulnerability In Anthropology

Living in an environment with limited resources affects vulnerability in many ways. For example, those who are poor are continually faced with multiple risk factors that cause chronic stress, such as unsafe housing, repeated exposure to violence/crime, barriers to health care access (i.e. lack of insurance, lack of transportation, language barriers), and other limitations. Therefore, it is not unusual for an individual or community that is constantly bombarded by stressful situations to become immobilized. “In other words, they do not have the ability to effectively respond to even the

An innate understanding that all beings on the planet are important for the subsistence of each other is a large part of Indigenous ideology, as well as the respect for the vast ways with which beings on the planet interact; whether they are “animate” or “inanimate”, they are all apart of the “web of relationships” (Battiste & Henderson, 2000, p. 44). Drawing from this view, most Indigenous Peoples believe that every member of a community has their own thoughts, gifts, and knowledge that they are able to contribute to the group. This means that there is also a large appreciation of Reciprocity because all knowledge is good knowledge, and that means all knowledge holds some validity and truth. Dreams, for example, are seen as premonitions and fact. As it happens, Indigenous Peoples place much of their societal values into facets of life that are intangible, such as emotions, spirituality, and mentality. It is for this reason that maintaining healthy and Respect-based Relationships amongst all beings on the planet is such an important part of Indigenous identity. The holistic understanding of the world can only occur if individuals are listening to each other as well as sharing whatever knowledge that they have to share.

Vulnerability is defined as susceptibility or increased risk for health problems (DeChesnay, 2008).  A group of individuals are considered at higher risk for illness when their physical, emotional, psychological, or social health, is compromised (Aday, 2001).  There are many leading causes for why a population is considered at higher risk; socioeconomic, age, gender, demographics, personal, and cultural backgrounds are some of the key factors (Aday, 2001; Sebation, 1996). Individuals can become vulnerable at any time because of change in life circumstances, placing them at higher risk. One group

Indigenous peoples are undeniably some of the toughest and most courageous peoples that have ever walked the Earth. The horrific events that have shaped their past could have easily been enough to wipe out their race as a whole, but instead of allowing it to beat them down they remained resilient and are even pushing back in order to change the way the public views them. Eve Tuck and an author from Pine Ridge have spoken out in hopes to gain a consensus about viewing indigenous peoples in a different light - one that identifies their strength instead of their pain. Before delving into the main context of the paper, I want to first summarize the arguments of Eve Tuck and the author from Pine Ridge in order to assure the rest of the paper is

There are numerous points of view on resiliency, as non‑governmental associations (NGOs) perceive that individuals ' capacity to better withstand and recuperate from calamities is basic to maintaining improvement. NGOs, contributors and worldwide reaction groups are attempting to characterize resiliency in their terms. CRS characterizes resiliency as "the capacity of people, communities and institutions to advance integral human development in the face of shocks, cycles and trends" (2014, p.2). The vulnerable individuals themselves best characterize strength and resiliency. What vulnerable individuals accept helps most to their versatility limit is discriminating to current dialogs on resiliency. Contributors and NGOs may have their own meaning of the term; however, an understanding of what it really means to individuals looking to make their community resilient is crucial to outlining successful Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and recovery activities in development, risk reaction and catastrophe recuperation programs (CRS, 2014). The danger of not utilizing the

Vulnerability factors considered in this paper will be broken down as follows, micro- individual and familial factors, generation level, meso- environmental factors , discrimination, neighborhood ethnic density, macro-culture, beliefs, socioeconomic status and chrono-

In light of the current events in North Dakota dealing with the Bakken pipeline, the resulting possibility of manmade environmental disasters on Native American land, and Robert Verchick’s lecture regarding the Isle de Jean Charles, I was interested in performing a high-level analysis of the resilience of Native American tribes in the US. In this reaction paper, I would like to address one central question – are Native American tribes in the US adequately resilient to disaster risk? As we have discussed, in the disaster risk context, resilience can be broadly defined as “the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events.” However, according to Farber, the concepts of vulnerability and resilience are complexly intertwined, and one cannot be studied without the other. I would like to briefly examine both the special vulnerabilities of Native American tribes and the sufficiency of modern federal disaster legislation in advocating their resilience.

‘’Vulnerability is the quality of being easily hurt or attacked.’’ (Vocab.com) Vulnerable groups in society are the disabled, migrant children or adults, individuals with illnesses, individuals who are abused, and anyone who is subjected to racism.

Vulnerability is often one-dimensionally viewed as the degree to which mishaps, pain and shame are allowed to enter into one’s life. However it is also the birthplace of creativity and basis for a feeling of self-worthiness. Thereby vulnerability creates authenticity. There are various different definitions of vulnerability according to the field in which the term is used. The most commonly found dictionary definition states that “Vulnerability refers to the susceptibility of a person, group, society or system to physical or emotional injury or attack. The term can also refer to a person who let

Furthermore, from indigenous people’s development, we more pay attention to the culture that are on a verge of

Social Vulnerability refers to risk as its primary element (Scanlon & Lee, 2007). Every individual is exposed to risk factors therefore; everyone is potentially vulnerable to health problems (Scanlon & Lee, 2007). Social vulnerability consists of various economic, democratic, and cultural variables in relation to an individual’s likelihood of becoming ill (Scanlon & Lee, 2007). The degree of social vulnerability is that an individual experience is greatly reliant on their personal capacity to tolerate adverse influences (Scanlon & Lee, 2007). Each individual will have different strategies and abilities in coping, resisting, and recovering from situations that could result in social vulnerability (Scanlon & Lee, 2007).

In addition to the loss of culture and language for indigenous people, they are also experiencing the loss of their traditional lands and native environment. For indigenous people, much personal and group meaning comes from the natural environment and as a result, their religious practices are deeply rooted in the environment in which they live. When the environment that they rely on is taken away for development, both their cultural and religious identity suffers.

Data obtained by assessing social vulnerability must be implemented within each phase of the emergency management process; mitigation, response, and recovery. First, to effectively respond and recover from incidents emergency management agencies must concentrate on the mitigation phase to prevent incidents from happening in the first place. This is achieved through a thorough hazard/vulnerability analysis (HVA). This type of analysis assesses the risk of physical, economic, and social vulnerability within all communities of a given jurisdiction (Lindell et al., 2006, p. 165). Additionally, the basis of the HVA allows emergency managers to effectively plan for disaster by creating pre-planned responses to disasters (rather than improvised response) and staging resources to locations with the highest probability of risk; ultimately contributing to the mitigation and response phases.

As the Marxist approach puts it, “underlying states of human marginalisation are conceived as the principle cause of disaster.” (Pelling, 2001, p. 179). This resource exclusion to particular categories of people within society creates their vulnerability to risk, and in turn disaster. McLaughlin and Dietz (2007) suggest there are three dimensions that make up vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity and resilience. An example displaying the vulnerability of lower classed social categories is in North Bihar, India, where floods have been managed through engineering works to create embankments. While the Government appears to be reducing the hazard, this has increased the vulnerability of the local people. Soil fertility has decreased reducing agricultural success, dangerous flash floods are occurring due to embankment walls collapsing and communities have settled on apparently safe embankments and are now highly exposed (Pelling, 2001). The natural flood hazard was dangerous, but these works by society have created a natural disaster (Pelling, 2001). Power inequalities have created this disastrous situation where lower classes are at high exposure to floods due to profit hungry management bodies. This technological approach is clearly failing but the Government and other managing groups make large profits off flood engineering works and have the power to decide how to control the issue (Pelling, 2001). This has resulted in creating

Willy Brandt once remarked:” Western Europe has only 20 or 30 more years of democracy left in it; after that it will slide under the surrounding sea of dictatorship” (Crozier, Huntington, Watanuki, 1973, 2). It would seem that democratic governments have become increasingly unable of facing “the challenges of the modern world”. Specifically, democratic European governments have become increasingly incapable to adequately represent the interests of the governed, while economic growth has also produced forces within nations that could potentially lead to the potential “regression”(Crozier, 1973, 49-50) of European states from democracy into tyranny (Crozier, 1973, 49-50).