Vulnerability, Victimhood, Deservingness. Ethnologische Perspektiven

Instructors: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Heike Drotbohm
Shortname: Vulnerabilität
Course No.: 07.798.278
Course Type: Hauptseminar

Recommended reading list

Drotbohm, Heike 2022: Care Beyond Repair. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fassin, Didier & Richard Rechtman 2009: The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Princeton: Princeton UP.

Tošic, Jelena & Andreas Streinzer 2022: Ethnographies of Deservingness. Unpacking Ideologies of Distribution and Inequality. New York, London: Berghan.

Contents

Against the background of an Anthropology of Care, the three concepts of ‘vulnerability’, ‘victimhood’, and ‘deservingness’ stand in a temporal continuum: while vulnerability marks the potential for injury, the concept of victimhood refers to the recognition of an experience of injury. Finally, deservingness marks the collective striving for compensation. At the same time, these three concepts emerged in different historical contexts and mark different political ideologies, legal framings, and forms of social and legal interaction. In this block seminar, we will first explore the legal and political foundations of the three concepts. Then we will make use of ethnographic case studies to address the challenges and social consequences of their application. The ethnographic examples will range from access to welfare state services, the care for the elderly or the sick, to the position of people with disabilities, to the topic of migration, flight, and asylum. Participants will learn to distinguish legal claims, role attributions, and negotiated interactions. In addition to the preparatory reading, participation in the international conference: “Rethinking the Volatility of Vulnerability against Categorical Constraints”, which will be held on June 6th and 7th in the context of the interdisciplinary research center “Studies of Human Differentiation”, is mandatory.

Dates

Date (Day of the week)	Time	Location
04/19/2024 (Friday)	14:00 - 16:00	01 715 HS 14 1111 - Hauptgebäude
05/03/2024 (Friday)	14:00 - 18:00	01 715 HS 14 1111 - Hauptgebäude
07/05/2024 (Friday)	14:00 - 18:00	01 715 HS 14 1111 - Hauptgebäude
07/19/2024 (Friday)	14:00 - 18:00	01 715 HS 14 1111 - Hauptgebäude