Call for Book Chapter Proposals: "The Politics of Vulnerability: Reimagining Compassion, Power, and Resistance"

This edited volume seeks to interrogate the politics of vulnerability as a critical and generative framework for understanding the complex interplay between compassion, power, and resistance in global and local contexts. Long associated with weakness, dependency, or victimhood, vulnerability has increasingly emerged in contemporary scholarship as a relational and politically charged condition that reveals the limits and possibilities of human agency. Rather than treating vulnerability as a static attribute of the powerless, this volume invites contributors to explore how vulnerability is produced, mediated, and mobilised—by institutions, discourses, and practices of governance—and how it can simultaneously constitute a resource for political action, solidarity, and ethical transformation.

Bringing together perspectives from political science, international relations, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, and political psychology, this collection aims to advance an interdisciplinary conversation about the epistemic, ethical, and affective dimensions of vulnerability in contemporary politics. It asks: how do states, international organisations, and communities conceptualise and respond to vulnerability? In what ways is vulnerability invoked to legitimise intervention, justify exclusion, or mobilise resistance? How does the politics of vulnerability reshape our understanding of responsibility, justice, and care in an age of precarity, crisis, and interdependence?

Contributors are encouraged to combine theoretical reflection with empirical inquiry, examining how vulnerability operates as both an instrument and a critique of power. The volume particularly welcomes analyses that explore the ambivalent role of vulnerability in producing political subjectivities, informing humanitarian governance, shaping global inequalities, and inspiring collective action. By situating vulnerability within the dynamics of compassion and resistance, the collection aims to illuminate how affect, knowledge, and power intersect in reimagining the ethical foundations of political life.

Proposed topics include (but are not limited to):

• Theorising vulnerability: agency, ethics, and embodiment
• Vulnerability and global governance: humanitarianism, intervention, and development
• The geopolitics of care, precarity, and protection
• Vulnerability, resistance, and social movements
• Epistemic injustice and the politics of knowing vulnerability
• Representation, discourse, and cultural narratives of vulnerability
• Digital vulnerability, surveillance, and control
• Environmental vulnerability and climate justice
• Gendered and racialised dimensions of vulnerability

Submission Guidelines:

• Abstracts: 200-300 words
• Include: title, author name(s), institutional affiliation, email, and short bio (100 words)
• Format: Word or PDF
• Submit to: hixff2@nottingham.edu.cn

Important Dates:

• Abstract Deadline: December 31, 2025
• Notification of Acceptance: January 10, 2026
• Complete Chapter Submission: May 15, 2026
• Anticipated Publication: December 2026

As part of the editorial process, contributors might make use of tools such as generative AI for enhancing the clarity of their writing but only with regard to grammar and syntax. While generative AI can be helpful for these minor tasks, it is essential that authors transparently acknowledge any AI tools used in the preparation of their chapters, and specify the tasks for which such tools were employed. Meanwhile, all submissions must be original contributions and may not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. All chapters will undergo peer review.