Search results

This chapter focusses on food systems' vulnerability. In a rapidly and unpredictably changing world, vulnerability of farming and food systems becomes a key issue. The conceptual bases for food vulnerability analysis and food vulnerability assessment are discussed in a systemic perspective with an eye to the transition approach (Geels, 2004) as a perspective capable to analyze how novelties can develop and influence the system capability to fulfil societal functions, and food and nutrition security in particular. A framework for assessing people's food vulnerability is presented together with a simple vulnerability model based on the three dimensions of exposure (the degree to which a system is likely to experience environmental or sociopolitical stress), sensitivity (the degree to which a system is modified or affected by perturbations) and adaptive capacity (the ability to evolve in order to accommodate environmental hazards or change) (Adger, 2006). Then, other sections are dedicated to discuss the general questions that should be answered by a vulnerability assessment exercise, and the specific challenges emerging when the assessment concerns a food system. These elements are then used in the Annex to this chapter as a base for the development of a detailed method based on seven distinct steps for conducting participatory assessments of the vulnerability of food systems.

In this chapter, we investigate the effects of vulnerability on income and employment in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia using a unique 2004 UNDP dataset. Treating the collapse of the former Yugoslavia as a natural experiment, we compare three groups that have been differently affected by the wars and post-war distress: the majority as the benchmark, the ex ante and ex post vulnerable Roma people, and the ex ante equal but ex post vulnerable refugees and internally displaced people (RIDPs). Our findings reveal significant negative effects of vulnerability on income and employment. RIDPs seem to be about as negatively affected as Roma across the four states, which indicate that vulnerability inflicted by relatively recent displacement may have similar effects as vulnerability rooted deep in the past. When we look at education as one of the key determinants of socio-economic outcomes, both groups exhibit similarly substandard educational outcomes of children and significant inertia in intergenerational transfer of human capital. Our findings highlight the need for policies that not only tackle vulnerability as such, but address the spillover effects of current vulnerability on future educational attainment.

Old age is a complex and dynamic phenomenon. The relationship between old age and transport is also very complex due to the heterogeneity within this age group. Yet what is certain is that with age, a person’s functional abilities change. This chapter provides a summary of how older people can be vulnerable within the road environment. Using an established framework for understanding old-age vulnerabilities, this chapter explains the common exposure factors and threats that several older people face in the transport environment. These primarily deal with individual physical and cognitive characteristics, medical conditions as well as the appropriateness (or not) of infrastructure. Subsequently, common difficulties for older drivers, pedestrians and public transport users are discussed. The main vulnerabilities that result from such difficulties are related to an over-representation of older people in accidents and to a lower quality of life due to mobility inefficiencies. Yet, using the same framework, the compensation techniques that older people often adopt to minimise such limitations are also highlighted. Reference is also made to the issues related to the lack of awareness in old age and the corresponding inability to compensate. The review concludes by suggesting a way forward for further studies on transport vulnerability in later life.

In this article, I analyze constructions of and responses to vulnerability in the US government and a now-prominent evangelical aid organization, World Vision, during the 1950s and 1960s in Korea and Vietnam. World Vision was founded as the “development discourse,” Cold War rhetoric, and the neo-evangelical movement were all rising to prominence in the United States. World Vision’s early understandings of vulnerability resonated with Cold War and modernization theory rhetoric in certain ways; however, its approaches to remake vulnerable Asians were often distinct. World Vision evangelical Christians looked to private voluntary organizations and individual conversions in a free society to remake individuals and nations, notions not so different from neoliberal development approaches today. US foreign aid approaches were rooted in nation-building for centralized, planned government institutions and economies to modernize “traditional” people. This article examines the complex relationships between missionaries, evangelists, US foreign aid experts and the military in American constructions of vulnerable traditional Asians and interventions to modernize and Christianize them. In examining roots of faith-based development models through the case of World Vision and notions of vulnerability, historical threads and lineages emerge for understanding the relationship of religion and the state in modernizing projects, and faith-based and neoliberal development models.

Purpose – UK laws surrounding the duty to prevent individuals being drawn into terrorism often focus on the need to safeguard the populace from exploitation by terrorist or extremist groups. It is within this context that countering violent extremism (CVE) work often takes place. This chapter explores how this legal duty shapes CVE projects in the UK, drawing on practitioner’s perspectives.

Methods – Writing from the perspective of practitioners from ConnectFutures, an organization that has been operating since 2013 in the UK and internationally, who advocate for a contextual safeguarding approach to provide a more holistic attitude to the prevention of violent extremism and exploitation.

Findings – Exploring the intersections between multiple forms of criminal exploitation, as well as engaging in the spaces and places young people experience harm, allows practitioners working in the CVE space to contribute to the protection of individuals from terrorist and extremist radicalization.

Originality/Value – Applying the new developed contextual safeguarding framework to CVE projects provides a contemporary and alternative ways to conduct CVE work. The chapter provides overviews of three CVE projects running with young people today in the UK, exploring how the new frameworks are adopted within these programs, all designed to address the complex causes of violent extremism.

Social Movements can play an important role in societal change, and Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) are often carriers of those efforts. SMOs differ from traditional organizations in the goals they seek to accomplish and how they operate. Typically, within Social Movement literature, the unique internal organization forms have been understudied and usually do not attend to the socio-structural aspects of those processes. Using a Critical Race Theory/Intersectionality (CRT/I) lens and organizational theories, this study analyzes an ideologically driven SMO case dedicated to transformative change and the leadership of structurally marginalized people and communities, particularly women and people of color. Analysis of this case reveals unique organizational dynamics and particular ways that socio-structural patterns influenced every level of social movement-building and organizational practices.

Young people leaving school before graduation is a challenge for most countries in the western world. Qualitative research points to the teacher–student relationship as being one of the most important factors influencing the student's completion. In this chapter, we will explore how young people in vulnerable positions describe their relationship to teachers, and the relationships' impact on their education. This is described through the narratives of three young people struggling with school and their relationships with teachers. The main findings confirm the teacher–student relationship is one of the most important factors in young people's education, pointing at verbal expressions, body language and acknowledgment of students' learning difficulties. The students describe teachers who label them as misfits and who make them do tasks in set ways, impossible for them, despite knowing they have learning difficulties. Experiences like this are described as struggles. As a consequence of a troublesome student–teacher relationship, some students change their educational programme.

This chapter highlights ecosystem-based adaptation in coastal Bangladesh aimed at securing climate and disaster-resilient environment for safer life and livelihood for vulnerable communities in the face of changing climate. Development intervention based on the opportunities offered by the nature and adaptation management plan from the perspective of vulnerability analysis can make a substantive difference in enhancing resilience. Engagement of broad-based stakeholders at vertical and horizontal levels in building adaptive capacity can be linked through both at the policy and institutional levels as well as at ecosystem levels for effective results. Innovation in convergence of disaster risk reduction and adaptation through fish, fruit, and forest as a part of livelihood integrated into the coastal afforestation ensure better livelihood in a safer coastal habitats. Such forest-based adaptive livelihood and carbon sequestration help land development that is promising to offset the sea level rise due to higher rate of siltation. Climate resilient habitat is another innovative initiative that protects the households, and their livelihood is protected by eco-engineering structures and green defense to make it safer from cyclone and tidal surge.

To explore what suffering is, how suffering is embedded within the sociology of sport literature, and what suffering can do to athletes in sport. In addition, to discuss the value of an interdisciplinary approach and co-presence when researching athletes in suffering.

In the first part of the chapter, the concepts of pain, violence, and suffering are separated, and a justification for the study of suffering in sport is given. The second part of the chapter details sport and social problems, and the suffering body in sport is discussed, pulling from interdisciplinary theories and methodologies of suffering external to the sociology of sport.

Social inequalities and hidden forms of suffering may be reproduced in sport. Sport is questioned as a force of social mobility for vulnerable people. The context of sport can offer ‘healing’ properties for people in suffering. The impact of using an interdisciplinary approach and considering co-presence and relational suffering when researching suffering is discussed.

The difficulties understanding the complex, multi-dimensional nature of suffering are shared. New ways of engaging within the research act and specific theoretical approaches are suggested for improving the understanding of suffering within sport.