Vulnerability and Resiliency

This chapter examines vulnerability and the corresponding concept, resiliency, from a justice/injustice perspective. Our pivotal social system is the small group, and I focus on the potential contribution of groups to civic engagement and justice work as illustrated by Chicago Seniors Together. I focus on the understanding and the assessment of vulnerability and resiliency at the level of the person (and the multiple dimensions of personhood), the interactional encounter, and the environment. Vulnerability is compared to similar concepts, susceptibility and precarity. Metaphors of vulnerability and resiliency are shared, and I spell out the comparison to three dolls: a glass doll, a plastic doll, and a steel doll. I summarize measures for vulnerability as fragility and resiliency as strengths. The Life Course and Intersectionality approaches to vulnerability and resiliency are explained. The chapter&s;s subprocess of injustice is the coerced internalization of oppression. Our injustice profiler is Vine Deloria Jr., and his work documenting unjust action toward Native Americans is reviewed. Our case considers the plight of Ukrainians fleeing war and resettling in Ireland. Possibilities for caring and just responses to displaced persons and for resistance to injustice are considered.