Living with vulnerability: livelihoods and human security in risky environments

The InterSecTions No.6 “Living with Vulnerability” draws the reader's attention to look at vulnerable groups with a new lens—a lens that requires a pragmatic approach to vulnerability which is dynamic and may resist technological change. The title chosen by the author Prof. Bohle also invites the reader to view the vulnerable as agents reacting to and shaping their own resilience. This article provides insights into how those characterized as “most vulnerable” deal with the multiple stressors that affect them. He shows how these groups cope with risks in highly flexible, innovative and adaptive ways. This message, explained in case studies of Nepal and Sri Lanka, provides hopeful evidence that the vulnerable are not passive recipients of policy and other forms of assistance—they actively shape their coping strategies and have a degree of dynamic resilience in the face of shocks. However, the sometimes experimental coping approaches of socially vulnerable groups fail. These failures are linked to social capital, or the position of these vulnerable groups in the social and power frameworks in villages or urban places.