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Theorising Globalisation's Social Impact: Proposing the Concept of VulnerabilityAuthor(s): Peadar KirbySource: Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Oct., 2006), pp. 632-655Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124092Accessed: 12/12/2010 16:49

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? RoutledgeReview of International Political Economy 13:4 October 2006: 632-655 ?V Tay|or

*FrancisrouP

Theorising globalisation's social impact:proposing the concept of vulnerability

PeadarKirbySchool of Law and Government, Dublin City University

ABSTRACT

The concept of vulnerability was introduced into IR theorising by Keohaneand Nye who saw it as one of the consequences of complex interdependence and it is being increasingly employed by IGOs to capture the impactof globalisation on society. However, the concept has been little used in the

academic literature on globalisation, except in a descriptive sense. This ar

ticle argues that the concept has the potential to fill a gap in the toolkit ofthe 'new' IPE, offering an analytical category that can capture the distinctive

impact of globalisation on society more adequately than other concepts thatare more widely used. The article begins by surveying how the concept has

been used by Keohane and Nye and by IGOs. It then offers a definition andillustrates the application of the concept by describing some of the principal

ways in which globalisation is increasing risk and eroding coping mecha

nisms. It goes on to argue that the concept of vulnerability captures in a

fuller way the distinctive social impact of globalisation than do other con

cepts widely used in the IPE literature, examining in turn the limitations of

the concepts of poverty/inequality, risk and insecurity. Finally, the article

situates the concept of vulnerability within the social theory of Karl Polanyi,

arguingthat it

expressesin the conditions of

today's globalisationthe threats

to human livelihood from the inroads of the market that are widely referred

to by scholars within the 'new' IPE, capturing better than do other conceptsthe key features of these threats as seen by Polanyi. The article concludes by

proposing the concept of vulnerability as a core conceptual category for IPEscholars that offers the potential for the disciplinary field to generate more

original insights into the social impacts of the political economy processes tothe understanding of which it has made such amajor contribution.

KEYWORDSGlobalisation; vulnerability; social impact; poverty/inequality; human

secu

rity; interdependence

Review of International Political EconomyISSN 0969-2290 print/ISSN 1466-4526 online ? 2006 Taylor & Francis

http: / / www.tandf.co.uk

DOI: 10.1080/09692290600839915


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KIRBY: THEORISING GLOBALISATION'S SOCIAL IMPACT

INTRODUCTION: THEORISING GLOBALISATION'SSOCIAL IMPACT

Unusuallyfor academic

concepts, globalisation1has become not

onlya

field of lively scholarly debate but also a site of political struggle. Thoughit waxes and wanes in the impact itmakes on the media and thereby on

public consciousness, the politics of globalisation has become increasinglycentral to many key public issues today

- from the French non to the EUConstitution to the agenda of the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in July 2005,from international security to social movement mobilisation (more cor

rectly labelled the altermondialisation movement in French than the usual

English term 'anti-globalisation'). Central to all these issues is the impact

globalisation is having on society and on human livelihoods with claimsand counter-claims by proponents and critics generating more heat than

light. Yet, while the social impact of globalisation is bringing people onthe streets and causing our leaders sleepless nights, the immense scholarlyoutput on globalisation has largely failed to offer any distinctive or originalcontribution to understanding what exactly is troubling so many people.Bonefeld and Psychopedis go so far as to state that 'the most depressingaspect of globalization theory is that human beings are on the whole ignored' (2000:4). One does not have to go this far to observe that discussionsof the social impact of globalisation are by and large conducted in termsof familiar conceptual categories such as poverty/inequality, risk society,and human security (surveyed below) that fail to interrogate the adequacyof these categories or to add anything distinctive to our understanding ofhow globalisation may be impacting beyond what we already know from literatures (sociological, economic, political, IR) that long predate the adventof the concept of globalisation.

This article argues that the concept of vulnerability offers the potentialto

capturein a

unique waythe distinctive

impactthat

globalisationis hav

ing on society and on human livelihoods, and helps explain the instinctivereaction it is fuelling among social groups inmany parts of the world. In

doing this, it also points to the prescriptions that are required to counteractthis impact. The article advances its argument in four sections. Followingthis introduction, the first section surveys how the concept of vulnerability

was introduced by Keohane and Nye in their work on 'complex interde

pendence' (1977, 2001) and how it has been used more recently by inter

governmental organisations (IGOs) in describing different aspects of our

globalising world. It then offers a definition and briefly illustrates the application of the concept by describing some of the principal ways inwhich

globalisation is increasing risk and eroding coping mechanisms. Sectiontwo addresses whether vulnerability adds anything to our understandingof the social impact of globalisation, examining in turn the limitations of the

concepts of poverty/inequality, risk and insecurity which are widely used

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REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

in the literature on globalisation, including by IPE scholars. This allows anidentification of what the concept of vulnerability adds to our understand

ing of the social impact of globalisation. Section three asks, ifwe agree that

our societies and our own lives are becoming more vulnerable, whether

any of this really matters. It does this by situating the concept of vulner

ability within the social theory of Karl Polanyi. It argues that Polanyi'soeuvre was centrally about vulnerability so that it offers a fuller theoretical

understanding of the significance of what is at stake and outlines brieflythe principal contributions of Polanyi's work in this regard. In its fourthand final section, the article concludes by proposing the concept of vul

nerability as a core conceptual category for IPE scholars which offers the

potentialfor the

disciplinaryfield to

generatemore

original insightsinto

the social impacts of contemporary political economy processes.

VULNERABILITY: USES, MEANING ANDAPPLICABILITY

When Keohane and Nye proposed in their classic work Power and In

terdependence (1977/2001) the concept of 'complex interdependence' to

challenge the dominance of the state in realist accounts of international

relations, they distinguished interdependence from interconnectednesson the grounds that the former involves potential costs and requiresaction to avoid incurring those costs whereas the latter does not. In

analysing the costs involved in interdependence, they introduced two

dimensions - sensitivity and vulnerability (2001: 10-2). The first refers tothe threats (either economic or political) faced by a country whereas vul

nerability refers to whether a country has the ability to implement policiesthat minimize the costs arising from such threats. Taking oil price rises, for

example, two countries may have similar levels of sensitivity but if countryA can reduce consumption or discovers domestic sources of oil, it is lessvulnerable than country B which maintains its previous consumption andhas no alternative supplies available to it. 'The vulnerability dimension of

interdependence rests on the relative availability and costliness of the alternatives that various actors face', they write (2001:11). Yet, while recognis

ing the multifaceted nature of vulnerability-

economic, political, cultural,social and environmental - and seeing today's globalisation as intensify

ing interdependence and therefore vulnerability, Keohane and Nye devote

cursory attention to its impact and manifestations. Furthermore, their treatment rests on assumptions about state capacity and the availability of alternatives (indeed, it largely limits itself to the action of states or intergovern

mental bodies) that fail to examine more fully the implications of the shiftsin economic, political, social and cultural power entailed by globalisation.

Since the widespread adoption of the concept of globalisation in the

1990s, a number of IGOs have begun to employ the concept of vulnerability

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to examine how shifts in power are impacting on society and human livelihoods. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs devoted its

Report on theWorld Social Situation in 2003 to the topic of vulnerability. It

wrote:

While vulnerability, uncertainty and insecurity in the life of peopleare not new, what is new is that their causes and manifestationshave multiplied and changed profoundly over the last decade. Ex

amples include civil strife and the proliferation of conflicts, growing inequalities within and among countries further accentuated

by globalization, mixed outcomes of poverty reduction efforts, increased mobility of populations and changes in family structures.

(2003: 2)The report goes on to identify groups that are especially vulnerable such

as the young, the elderly, people with disabilities, migrants and indigenous peoples, and specifies that vulnerability is not limited to the poorbut can affect any group in society as 'all groups face vulnerabilities thatare largely the outcome of economic, social and cultural barriers that restrict opportunities for, and impede the social integration/participation ofthe groups' (ibid: 15). In its 1999 Human Development Report on the sub

ject of globalisation, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) states that'people everywhere are more vulnerable':

Changing labour markets are making people insecure in their jobsand livelihoods. The erosion of the welfare state removes safety nets.

And the financial crisis is now a social crisis. All this is happeningas globalization erodes the fiscal base of countries, particularly de

veloping countries, shrinking the public resources and institutions to

protect people. (1999: 90)

The World Bank, on the other hand, discusses vulnerability in relationto the poor only. The 2000-2001 World Development Report sees vulnerabil

ity as a dimension of poverty, alongside other dimensions such as income

poverty, health and education, voicelessness and powerlessness. The Bankincludes a table entitled 'Assessing vulnerability/ in its annual World De

velopment Indicators. Economic vulnerability has been developed as a

concept to help identify those states most vulnerable in a globalized econ

omy. The idea of measuring the extent and dimensions of economic vul

nerabilityfirst arose in the

early 1990s when UNCTAD carried outa

studyon the feasibility of constructing an index of vulnerability The idea wasafterwards taken up by the UN Economic and Social Council and in 2000the first Economic Vulnerability Index (EVI) was drawn up with a com

posite indicator based on five components, reflecting three dimensions ofcountries' economic vulnerability: the magnitude of external shocks be

yond domestic control, the exposure of the economy to these shocks and

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the structural handicaps explaining the country's high exposure (ESCAP,2003). A similar index is the Commonwealth Vulnerability Index (Atkinset al, 2000). For the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the currency crises

inMexico, East Asia, Russia and Brazil in the 1990s led them to developvulnerability indicators of what countries are vulnerable to such financialcrises and to what extent. The Fund states that 'timely and detailed dataon international reserves, external debt, and capital flows strengthen the

ability to detect vulnerabilities, giving policy makers enough time to putremedial measures in place' (IMF, 2003).

The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) sees environmental vulner

ability as an essential element of human vulnerability. 'Since everyone isvulnerable to environmental

threats,in some

way,the issue cuts across

rich and poor, urban and rural, North and South, and may undermine theentire sustainable development process in developing countries', writesthe UNEP. It adds that 'coping capacity that was adequate in the past has

not kept pace with environmental change' (UNEP, 2003: 302-3). The UN

Development Programme (UNDP) recognizes that over the past 40 yearsthere has been a significant increase in natural disasters and in the losses

they cause to society: 'Vulnerability of populations and ecosystems has in

creased, often as a result of inadequate development practices, leading to

environmental degradation and human poverty' (UNDP, 2003b). The UNEconomic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has

employed the concept of social vulnerability. Itwrites that, 'the opening upof markets and the downgrading of the state's role in the economy and so

ciety have exacerbated the insecurity and defencelessness affecting largegroups of individuals and families, who are now exposed to increased

risk'. It argues that this problem affects not only the poor but far widersections of the population 'to such an extent that vulnerability may be re

garded as a distinctive feature of the social situation in the 1990s' (ECLAC,2000: 52). Its concept of social vulnerability focuses upon both the 'perception of risk, insecurity and defencelessness' and also 'the quantity and

quality of the resources or assets controlled by individuals and families'

and the opportunities they have to use them in the new economic, social,

political and cultural circumstances. In the Caribbean region, ECLAC is

helping develop a Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) compiled from the fol

lowing components: poverty, crime, natural disasters, migration, health

status and social marginalisation (Briguglio, 2003). Another application of

the concept, isin

the Aging Vulnerability Index sponsored bythe

EuropeanUnion (EU) that assesses the capacity of 12 developed countries to meet

the challenge of a fast aging population (Jackson and Howe, 2003).In essence, therefore, vulnerability refers to two dimensions: an increase

in threats coupled with a weakening of coping mechanisms. The United

Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs offers the followingdefinition: 'In essence, vulnerability can be seen as a state of high exposure

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to certain risks and uncertainties, in combination with a reduced ability to

protect or defend oneself against those risks and uncertainties and copewith their negative consequences. It exists at all levels and dimensions of

society and forms an integral part of the human condition, affecting bothindividuals and society as a whole' (2003: 14). The applicability of both

dimensions to characteristic aspects of today's world order can be brieflytraced.

It is the pervasive and cumulative nature of risk that distinguishes to

day's world. As Giddens puts it, 'there is a new riskiness to risk' associated with globalisation (1999: 28). The financial system 'has become in

creasingly volatile and unpredictable, with shocks originating in one partof the world

spreadingto other

partsof the world at

exceptional speedthrough the processes of "financial contagion"' (Dicken, 2003:469). As for

mer US Federal Reserve chairman, Paul A Volcker, recognized, financialcrises have always been part of capitalism but 'somehow they seem tobe coming more frequently and with greater force these days' (2001: 76).The ever greater intensification of competition is generating greater risksin the economic system that are manifesting themselves in the growing

vulnerability of employment, company mergers and takeovers, and the

marginalisation of whole regions of the world's economy as they fail to

compete. This is happening not just in the developing world but throughout the developed world also. Economic risks generate various forms ofsocial risks such as unemployment and poverty. Describing the growinglevel of income inequality around the world as 'grotesque', the UNDP

warns: 'If sharp increases in inequality persist, they may have dire effectson human development and social stability (including violence and crime

rates)' (2003a: 39). Changing dependency ratios in different parts of theworld are resulting in two very different trends, both of them associatedwith growing vulnerability for those involved. In those countries with the

fastest population growth, the percentage of the population aged under15 remains very high which puts added social and economic pressures onthose countries least able to bear them, while countries with low levels of

population growth are seeing a big growth in the percentage of those agedover 65 which is putting increased pressure on pension systems.

Economic and social risks result in a new riskiness in political life whichhas become evident over the 1990s. This derives from two major shifts in thenature of organized political systems: on the one hand there is a growingdisenchantment with the consensus-oriented moderate centre

groundof

established democratic systems while, on the other, support is shifting tomore extremist parties within these systems or is ebbing away from such

systems altogether. Most disturbingly, we are witnessing the emergence ofa new and ruthless form of violent power politics that shows no interestin institutionalized systems. Through attacks such as those in New Yorkand Washington, DC, on 11 September 2001, inMadrid on 11March 2004

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and in London on 7 July 2005, this form of power struggle has greatlyincreased the sense of risk felt by citizens in large cities throughout the

world. While Marshall and Gurr find a 'decline in the global magnitudeof armed conflict, following a peak in the early 1990s', they also find that

'high-casualty terrorist acts increased very sharply' after September 2001

(Marshall and Gurr, 2005:1,2).After having been neglected for decades, risks resulting from environ

mental change emerged as a major cause of concern in the 1990s. Figurescompiled by the insurance industry show a steady increase in the numberof what it calls 'great natural catastrophes' over the decades since the 1950s,such as tornadoes and severe storms, earthquakes, heat waves, droughtsand floods. In its

surveyfor the insurance

industry,the Munich Re

Groupwrites: 'It is to be feared that extreme events which can be traced to climate change will have increasingly grave consequences in the future. Thismeans that we must reckon with new types of weather risks and greater

loss potentials' (2004:3). These climate changes are associated with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide emitted mostly by industrialized coun

tries through fuel consumption, gas flaring and cement production. Their

effects, however, spread throughout the world affecting water and food se

curity inAfrica, threatening the future of island states in the Caribbean and

the Pacific, decreasing crop yields and spreading diseases in Latin America,reducing food production inwest Asia, and leading to an increased risk of

tropical cyclones in many countries of arid, tropical and temperate Asia.In Europe, decreased agricultural productivity is expected in southern andeastern regions but positive effects are predicted for agriculture in northern regions. Throughout the world, climate change is exacerbating threatsto biodiversity (UNEP, 2002: 3-4) and scientists warn that 'the world is

approaching its sixth major extinction event' (Radford, 2004).No account of the riskiness of life in today's world would be complete

without adverting to the impact of these phenomena on individuals themselves. Less bound by traditional ways of doing things, or by submitting to

orders given by authorities, individuals have been thrown much more on

their own resources. In this situation, life is experienced as a daily struggle

constantly accompanied by the awareness that, no matter how much is

achieved, one's life is also under threat. 'Even behind the facades of secu

rity and prosperity', writes Beck, 'the possibilities of biographical slippageand collapse are ever present. Hence the clinging and the fear, even in the

externally wealthymiddle

layersof

society' (2001:167).Increased risks do not in themselves result in damage to individual or

social well-being, though they certainly threaten such damage. To assess

whether damage is likely to occur requires determining how well prepared

people are to manage and survive the threats posed by increased risks,their coping mechanisms. This can be done by examining four sorts of

assets - physical, human, social and environmental. Physical assets refer

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to the ownership of such assets as savings or property which can function as a form of insurance to tide people over threats to their well-being.

Trends in the United States over the 1990s help identify characteristics of

asset ownership under the conditions created by globalisation. One of thecharacteristics of the US boom was low interest rates so more and more

Americans invested in the stock market. The stock market boom stimulateda consumer boom. However, what fuelled this boom was not increased incomes but credit, with the result that 'the savings rate dropped below zero

by the end of the decade and debt levels reached record heights' (Rapley,2004:155). In early 2000, the stock market crashed but instead of reducingconsumption, Americans responded to the lowering of interest rates and tothe tax cuts introduced by President Bush by continuing spending, pilingup more debt in doing so. As a result, even at a time of historically low interest rates, US households' debt-service payments as a percentage of theirincome are higher than at their previous peak in the 1980s. If people chooseto spend income on more extravagant consumption or ifhousing prices increase at a rate faster than incomes increase, people end up with increaseddebts despite their improved incomes. In this situation, the potential ofassets to act as a protection against such risks as unemployment or serious health problems, is greatly reduced. Human assets refer to something

far closeto

Amartya Sen's conceptof

capabilities (1999), namely people'sinnate or developed abilities to make the most of a given situation. Chief

among such human assets are health and education. In assessing human

assets, attention needs to be focused not only on levels of achievementin health (increases inmortality) and education (increases in literacy), es

pecially in the developed world, but also on trends in the provision ofthese services. This highlights not only the shocking inequalities in thedistribution of such assets but also the likelihood that such inequalities are

deepening, in both the developed and the developing world as two-tier

health and education systems emerge from the tendency towards greaterprivate provision.

Social assets refer to support networks such as the family, local neighbourhood associational life, trade unions or, indeed, the welfare state. Thesehave played a crucial role both in the provision of caring services and in

protecting people against threats. Yet many such networks find themselvesunder strain in today's world. Take the family as an example. While ex

perts debate whether, as an institution, the family is in decline or merely

adapting,clear trends worldwide

pointto the fact that, as the UNDP

putsit, 'needs once provided almost exclusively by unpaid family labour arenow being purchased from the market or provided by the state' (UNDP,1999: 79). Far from being able to protect vulnerable people against risk,families themselves are 'experiencing considerable stress' and require assistance in dealing with this (Berardo and Shehan, 2004: 258). Trade union

membership is declining in many parts of the world and in many sectors

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of the modern economy while Mishra concludes that the welfare state isat best a holding operation: 'True, many European nationals have inherited a large welfare state from the golden age and, for the moment, seem

to be able to hold on to them. But can they hold out against global pressures?' (Mishra, 1999:70). In these ways, family networks and mechanismsof social protection that reinforced social resilience in the face of increasedrisks - indeed the very social capital that they were thought to strengthen(Putnam, 2000)

- are being eroded. Finally, the swift pollution and depletion of environmental assets such as soil, water, air and species, on which

human life depends and which humankind has tended to take for granted,has focused attention not just on the threat to them but also on how theenvironment

providesus with resources essential for survival. Increased

environmental risks therefore themselves erode coping mechanisms, ex

acerbating the quality and supply of water, reducing food security, and

causing risks to health. Age-long constituents of human and communityresilience are not only being eroded but in some cases are becoming threatsto well-being.

Of the impact of globalisation on society over the 1990s, Joseph Stiglitzwrites: 'Even many of those who are better off feel more vulnerable' (2003:20). This refers not only to the increased risks they have faced but also

to the erosion of people's ability to manage those risks. This iswhat constitutes vulnerability. While what is presented here does not constituteincontrovertible evidence that vulnerability is increasing, it does highlighttrends in that direction. If this analysis captures anything of the forces

shaping our world, itwould be strange to claim that people are unaffected

by these, even if their own physical, human, social and environmental assets remain as resilient as ever. For there is a strong collective dimension to

vulnerability, affecting the fragile bonds that constitute society and therebyinevitably affecting the resilience of society itself to risks. From this social

vulnerability, no one can remain immune.

WHAT VALUE DOES VULNERABILITY ADD?

The previous section has taken a largely descriptive approach to the utilityof the concept of vulnerability. Yet, as the UN Department of Economicand Social Affairs recognized in its 2003 report, 'use of the words "vulner

ability" and "vulnerable" has been quite loose in policy contexts and has

entailed neither the theoreticalrigour

nor thedegree

of elaboration thatone finds in analytical works' (14).What, therefore, distinguishes vulnera

bility from other concepts more widely used to analyse the social impactsof globalisation and what additional analytical utility does it bring to sucha task? Answering this question is the purpose of this section. It does so

firstly through mapping the principal concepts being used to analyse the

impact of globalisation on society, arguing that the concept of vulnerability

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captures in a fuller and more adequate way than do any of these conceptswhat that impact is. Based on this discussion, the section then clarifies the

particular contribution that the concept of vulnerability can make, both in

terms of its analytical reach and also in terms of what it points to by wayof policy responses.

By far the most common way of trying to assess the impact of globalisation on society is through examining data on trends in poverty and

inequality. After all, many of the debates about whether globalisation is

having a positive or a negative social impact employ poverty and/or in

equality as their yardsticks (see for example World Bank, 2002 and Wade,

2003). Therefore, these distributional concepts are the first to be examinedhere. The discussion then moves to the

conceptof risk, before

turningto

the concept of human security.The pro-globalisation argument about its positive social impact can be

summed up in the words of a major World Bank report: '[SJince 1980 theoverall number of poor people has at last stopped increasing, and has indeed fallen by an estimated 200 million. It is falling rapidly in the new

globalizers and rising in the rest of the developing world. ... This thirdwave of globalization [since 1980] may mark the turning point at which

participation has widened sufficiently for it to reduce both poverty and

inequality' (2002: 7). Central to this argument is the claim that countrieswhich have strongly increased their participation in global flows of tradeand investment (two important indicators of how globalized they are) haveseen their per capita incomes increase and poverty fall to the point where

they are beginning to catch up with the world's richer countries (examplesare China, India, Brazil, Hungary and Mexico) whereas the two billion

people in countries that are not participating strongly in such global flows

(such as those in Africa and those of the former Soviet Union) are growingpoorer and are falling further behind. This argument iswidely propagatedthrough the media (for example, it is explicitly promoted in The FinancialTimes and The Economist) to argue for more and faster economic liberalisation. However, assessing the impact of globalisation on livelihoods and

well-being through relying on the concepts of poverty and inequality isunreliable for a number of reasons.

The first relates to measurement. Wade has cast serious doubt on the

accuracy of world poverty measures, writing that counting the numberof people in extreme poverty inevitably involves 'a large margin of error'but 'we can be

reasonablyconfident that it is

higherthan the World Bank

says' (2003: 19) due to changes in methodology that make data difficultto compare across time, the arbitrary nature of the Bank's poverty linesand the limitations of the surveys from which the data are derived. Wadealso draws attention to the Bank's inconsistency, showing how its 20002001 World Development Report on poverty showed an increase in world

poverty of 20 million between 1987 and 1998 whereas its major report

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on globalisation and poverty two years later showed a decrease of 200million between 1980 and 1998. On inequality, he writes that there is even

less agreement on how to measure it so that estimates depend greatly on

what one chooses to measure (for example, inequality within countriesor between countries) (see Wade, 2003: 23-30). He concludes: 'The Bank's

argument about the benign effects of globalization on growth, poverty andincome distribution does not survive scrutiny' (Wade, 2003: 32).

Yet, even ifwe had reliable measures of poverty and inequality over a

long enough time period to allow credible trends be discerned, other moresubstantive difficulties remain since it is far from clear what distributional

concepts tell us about people's lives. Though widely accepted as measuresof

poverty,the World Bank's

povertyline of $1.08 a

day adjustedto take

account of its purchasing power parity or PPP (making the value of whatthis can purchase comparable across countries) bears no relationship to

whether this amount of income or expenditure might meet basic needs ornot. In other words, itmay well be true that hundreds of millions of peoplewith incomes higher than this are unable to satisfy their minimal needs for

nutrition, clothing or shelter.Other measures of poverty, based on estimates of how much income or

expenditure is required to satisfy basic needs, confirm this. One example

is the canasta b?sica or basic basket of goods method used throughout LatinAmerica that derives two poverty lines from the expenditure needed to buya basket of goods required for survival in that country: households whose

average expenditure is lower than this amount are labelled the indigentwhile households whose expenditure is less than double the value of sucha basket of basic goods are classed as poor. Interestingly, poverty estimates

by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

(ECLAC) using the canasta b?sica method are much higher for most of the

region's countries than are those of the World Bank (ECLAC, 2001: 51).Another major difficulty in relying on distributional concepts to capture

globalisation's social impact derives from debates about how to define

poverty. Over recent decades the definition of poverty has moved furtherand further from one based on income poverty alone to a much more

multifaceted understanding of what constitutes it (see Ruggeri Laderchiet al, 2003, for one survey that identifies four different approaches of which

monetary poverty is only one). Indeed, in an extensive survey of the views

of the poor carried out for the 2000-2001 World Development Report on

poverty,the World Bank identifies two

key aspectsof

povertynot

capturedin conventional surveys. These were highlighted by Kanbur and Squire:

One is a concern with risk and volatility of incomes, and is often

expressed as a feeling of vulnerability. In talking about their situa

tion, the poor detailed the ways in which fluctuations, seasons, and

crises affected their well-being. From these descriptions, we come to

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understand the particular importance of poverty not just as a stateof having little, but also of being vulnerable to losing the little one

has. The poor also described their interactions with government em

ployees and institutions, revealing another important aspect of life in

poverty: lack of political power. (1999: 21)

Similarly, in its surveys of poverty in Latin America ECLAC has pointedto the fact that a concentration on those who are in poverty at any onetime fails to capture the growing risk faced by large sectors of the region'spopulation of falling into poverty. ECLAC therefore concludes that 'in the1990s... social vulnerability took its place alongside poverty as a dominantfeature in the lives of vast

segmentsof the

population' (ECLAC,2000: 49

50).A concentration on distributional concepts therefore runs the risk of fail

ing to capture important dimensions of how people's well-being is beingdamaged by processes associated with globalisation, namely the increasedrisks that people face of losing what they have. This therefore invites con

sideration of the concept of risk. This is associated with the work of theGerman sociologist, Ulrick Beck, who developed the notion of the 'risk

society' (Beck, 1992). Giddens argues that 'this apparently simple notion

unlocks some of the most basic characteristics of the world in which wenow live' (Giddens, 1999: 21). Surveying the use of the concept, Tullochfinds that 'over the last decade, risk discourse has become an increasinglysalient issue in social scientific research' with an increasing flow of bookson the topic from a variety of disciplines (Tulloch, 2004: 452). Indeed, heobserves that the concept of risk has become the defining mark of lateor post-modernity. This focuses on the new forms of risk associated with'techno-hazards' such as chemical pollution, atomic radiation and genetically modified organisms that are such a defining feature of today's world

(Adam and van Loon, 2000:1-3). But, as Beck puts it, the pervasive natureof such risks has also 'set off a dynamic of cultural and political change thatundermines state bureaucracies, challenges the dominance of science andredraws the boundaries and battle lines of contemporary politics' (Beck,2000a: 225). These form the subject matter of debates on the 'risk society',focussing on the nature of such risks, their construction (particularly by

media discourse), and their challenges to dominant epistemologies in thesocial sciences. Introducing the concept of risk therefore draws attention tofeatures of

today'sworld order that can

damage well-beingbut are missed

by discussions that focus on distributional concepts. Yet, the concept of riskalso has its limits. As used in the literature on the risk society it devotes

most attention to the risks associated with post-modernity, whereas manypeople's livelihoods throughout the world are threatened by risks fromeconomic recession, from liberalising conditions of employment and fromcrime and violence. Furthermore, risk devotes no attention to how people

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the concept of vulnerability. Yet, developed and honed in considerationsof state threats to other states and of how states could secure themselves inthis context, the concept of human security carries a fundamental concep

tual imprecision related to what are seen as threats and how they shouldbe dealt with. These centre on McSweeney's distinction between securityas a commodity and as

arelationship.

The issue of conceptual imprecision can be dealt with firstly. In their

survey of the human security literature, Hampson and Hay (2002) identifythree distinct conceptions of human security: a natural rights/rule of law

conception anchored in the fundamental liberal assumption of basic individual rights to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'; a humanitarian

conception informing international efforts to deepen and strengthen international law and to address the human consequences of civil conflict; anda developmental conception, which recognizes awider range of social andenvironmental threats similar to those outlined earlier in this article. Eachof these conceptions, therefore, recognizes a different range of threats tohuman security and different means to address them. It is therefore not

surprising that the concept of human security has been criticized for be

ing 'vague, incoherent, or merely impossible' (Alkire, n.d.: 6). The dangertherefore is that different analysts can assign the term meanings that suittheir normative

preferences.If

so,it evacuates it of

anyuseful

analyticalprecision.

Such imprecision may carry very practical consequences that distinguishthe concept of human security very clearly from that of vulnerability. For,to follow McSweeney, human security can be compatible with seeing se

curity as a commodity, finding expression for example in people seekingto secure themselves by buying guns or living in gated communities. Derived from its origins in state security doctrine, human security can be

entirely consistent with a methodological individualism. In other words,

if the threat is seen as coming from the Other (in the doctrine of militarysecurity this meant other states but in terms of human security it could

mean threats from other people such as immigrants, the poor and gays),the solution adopted is to protect oneself against that Other. In extreme

cases, it is possible to imagine the term human security being used by thestate to justify high levels of repression against those seen as a threat, as

happened in the National Security states of South America in the 1970s.While this is far from what proponents of human security advocate, it

is entirely consistent with oneunderstanding

of humansecurity, namelysecurity as a commodity rather than as a relationship.

Vulnerability, on the other hand, is a surer concept, not only because itcomes with a precise definition but also because it is inherently a relational

concept and would only lend itself with difficulty to being commodified.Unlike security, the concept of vulnerability does not express a state to beachieved (the state of being secure or, in the root Latin meaning, to be sine

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cura or without care) but rather expresses the common human conditionof being wounded which is its root meaning. It therefore points, not tothe attempt to make ourselves invulnerable which is unattainable, but to

strengthen the means by which we might cope with the threats towhich weare vulnerable. While it is not impossible to envisage the term vulnerabilitybeing used to justify protecting ourselves against others (inways similar tothose outlined in the previous paragraph), the concept itself points beyondthe state of reduced vulnerability that might thereby be achieved to a focuson the fact that vulnerability constitutes an essential part of the humancondition and requires shared or communal responses.

This finds expression in the concept of resilience which ECLAC sees as'a critical factor in

enablingunits such as individuals, households, commu

nities and nations towithstand internal and external shocks'. According to

ECLAC, social vulnerability is 'the net effect of the competition betweensocial risks and social resilience' where it views resilience as 'tantamountto an ability that is based on entitlement, enfranchisement, empowermentand capabilities' (ECLAC, 2003:25). Each of these dimensions of resilience

requires the strengthening of social rights and the ability of the state toensure that people can enjoy them. Use of the term 'capabilities' echoes

Amartya Sen's concerns about how people translate goods or resources

into well-being, drawing attention to the need to attend not just to people'slevels of income but also to 'social arrangements and community relationssuch as medical coverage, public health care, school education, law and

order, prevalence of violence and so on' (Sen, 1999: 22-3), all of which affect people's 'capability to lead the kind of lives we have reason to value'

(ibid: 285). While Sen's concern is not with vulnerability, his emphasis onwhat constitutes well-being highlights important dimensions of what wecan call the social production of resilience which constitutes perhaps the

most important means to lessen vulnerability through strengthening coping mechanisms. Of course, vulnerability can also be reduced by meansof reducing the threats that people face and Scholte's list of measures toenhance human security mentioned earlier largely address this dimension

(Sch?lte, 2000: 291-7).Resilience is also used in the literature on the economic vulnerability of

small states as a way of offsetting the disadvantages associated with this

vulnerability. The concept has been developed by a team at the Univer

sity of Malta and its concept of economic resilience covers four aspects- macroeconomicstability,

microeconomic marketefficiency, governanceand social development (Briguglio et ah, n.d.). In a different context, the use

of Peace and Conflict Impact Assessments (PCIA) as a way of identifyingthose initiatives that might strengthen the prospects for peaceful coexistence in zones of conflict and decrease the likelihood of the outbreak, reoccurrence or continuation of violent conflict also addresses the social production of resilience. This looks at building institutional capacity tomanage

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and resolve conflict, fostering military and human security, strengthening political structures and processes, stimulating economic structuresand processes, and undertaking social reconstruction and empowerment(Bush, 2001).

In this way, therefore, vulnerability can be said to be less easily reducibleto an individualistic interpretation or use, as it necessarily points to collective responses to the threats to human well-being which it identifies. The

concept of vulnerability therefore gives far more precise and unambiguous expression to a relational understanding of the roots of social order. Bydefinition, vulnerability and a relational conception of security both theorize the roots of social order and human well-being as resting in a sense of

belongingto

societyin a

waythat satisfies both material and

psychological needs and offers security to the individual as part of the collectivity(and, indeed, of the biosphere) (see Kirby, 2006, Chapter 7). But, unlike se

curity which can allow very individualistic understandings, vulnerabilityis an unambiguously collective concept since it gives priority to actions,

whether by policy-makers or by civil society groups, that strengthen socialsolidarities and satisfy the needs of the collectivity not just those of individuals. Prescriptions deriving from the concept will require addressing howto reinforce the bonds of secure belonging (what has been termed above

the social production of resilience) which may not always be the case whenusing the concept of security.2

This section has mapped various terms that are used to analyse the im

pact of globalisation on society, highlighting that vulnerability can captureawider and more multidimensional range of threats to human well-being.Employing the concept of vulnerability requires attending to evidence oftrends in poverty and inequality but, recognising difficulties of methodol

ogy and definition, it avoids treating these as sufficient and also devotesattention to dimensions of psychological or cultural poverty not capturedby headcount measures. It isworth mentioning in passing that vulnerabil

ity lends itself to being measured as is evidenced by the various indicatorsof vulnerability developed by various IGOs as outlined in the previous section. Vulnerability identifies risks associated with globalisation but com

plements this by examining how globalisation is affecting coping mechanisms. While acknowledging its closeness to the concept of human security,vulnerability has the potential to achieve an analytical precision that hu

man security cannot claim and it points less ambiguously to a relational

understandingof the roots

of human well-being than does human security.

DOES VULNERABILITY MATTER? INSIGHTS FROMKARL POLANYI

Though he does not use the concept as an analytical category, Karl Polanyi'soeuvre helps highlight the significance for society of growing vulnerability.

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His central concern is with the damage, indeed violence, caused to so

ciety by the inroads of the market mechanism deriving both from thethreats which this unleashes for the human person, society and nature,

and from the erosion of the norms, values and practices, and their variousinstitutional expressions, through which nature, society and ultimately hu

man livelihood were protected as the normal practice of human societies

throughout history (2001 [1944]). Polanyi therefore provides an analyticalframework through which to interrogate more deeply the sources and significance of the vulnerability associated with globalisation as identified inthis article. This framework identifies the relationship of the market to so

ciety as the central causal mechanism at work. In doing this, it underlinesthe

significancethat economic liberalisation

playsin the

growingvulner

ability of the financial, economic, social, cultural, political, environmentaland personal spheres through increased threats to human well-being andreduced mechanisms to cope with these. The principal value of Polanyi'sframework, however, is that it offers an explanation that identifies how and

why the market has these effects through his central categories of the mar

ket economy and the market society, namely the ways in which both the

economy and society are made dependent on the self-governing marketmechanism. In Polanyi's writings we therefore find an explanation as to

how liberating the market from the restraining bonds of public authority(mostly but not exclusively the state) results in allowing market forces, mo

tivated by the need for private gain, to determine more and more of howwe think and what we value, of what is produced and by whom, of how it

is distributed, and of how all these affect society, livelihoods and quality of

life. Furthermore, in offering an historical reading of the destructive conse

quences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century of this 'utopian

experiment' as he called it, Polanyi provides a sobering reading of our own

future ifwe persist in allowing the market mechanism run society. It is an

audacious contribution of immense contemporary significance.One of the many original features of Polanyi's work, that marks it off for

example from conventional Marxist accounts of exploitation, is that it rests

unashamedly on a view of the human person as a social being motivated

by much more than material needs. He wrote that the human person is

not an economic being 'but a social being. He does not aim at safeguard

ing his individual interest in the acquisition of material possessions, but

rather at ensuring social good will, social status, social assets. He values

possessions primarilyas a means to that end. His incentives are of that

"mixed" character which we associate with the endeavour to gain social

approval-

productive efforts are no more than incidental to this' (1968:

65). In this view therefore, what is of primary importance to people is a

secure sense of belonging to society. However, this essentially social nature

of the human person goes unrecognized in amarket society because 'since

market situations do not, in principle, know wants and needs other than

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those expressed by individuals, and wants and needs are here restricted to

things that can be supplied in amarket, any discussion of the nature of human wants and needs in general was without substance' (1977:29). In this,

Polanyi echoes contemporary critiques of the narrowness of dominant approaches to understanding and measuring poverty (see Ruggeri Laderchiet al, 2003). But he goes much further in highlighting the implications ofthis view for social institutions. Institutionalising an economic system onsuch material needs as hunger and gain, writes Polanyi, is akin to basingthe institution of marriage on sex. As a result, he wrote: 'Our humiliat

ing enslavement to the "material", which all human culture is designed to

mitigate, was deliberately made more rigorous' (1968: 72).Based on this view of the human

person, Polanyialso had a

verydistinc

tive conception of poverty. He identified as a characteristic of the IndustrialRevolution in Britain, 'the incomprehensible fact that poverty seemed to

go with plenty', recognising 'two seemingly contradictory effects of man

ufactures, namely, the increase in pauperism and the rise in wages' (2001:89, 98). Here Polanyi's understanding seems closer to contemporary debates on social inequality. However, his discussion in The Great Transformation of the debates about the social impact of the Industrial Revolutioniswhere he most cogently outlines his distinctive view. For he takes issue

with those who claim that the Industrial Revolution actually improvedpeople's living standards, though he does so not by disputing the claimthat wages increased but rather by arguing that poverty is primarily notan economic but a cultural phenomenon. 'Not economic exploitation, asoften assumed, but the disintegration of the cultural environment of thevictim is then the cause of the degradation', he wrote. The essence of this

disintegration Ties in the lethal injury to the institutions in which his social existence is embodied ... loss of self-respect and standards, whetherthe unit is a people or a class, whether the process springs from so-called"culture conflict" or from a change in the position of a class within the confines of a society' (ibid: 164-5). In this latter comment, he is equating the

impact of the Industrial Revolution on Britain's 'labouring classes' withthat of colonialism on African peoples at the time he was writing or onIndia in the nineteenth century. His understanding of poverty, therefore, isderived from his view that, for the individual, economic interest is rarelyparamount but the 'maintenance of social ties, on the other hand, is crucial' (ibid: 48). Sudden social dislocation and its impact on the coherenceand

sustainabilityof the lives of the

majorityis for

Polanyithe essence of

poverty which manifests itself as a form of violence destroying individuals and communities. Purely economic progress, achieved through the

impact of the market mechanism on society, is the cause. In this discus

sion, Polanyi makes two major contributions to contemporary debates on

poverty. Firstly, in identifying the value of social belonging as being muchmore important to the individual's well-being than income alone, he offers

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an understanding that is close to Sen's emphasis on people's status in soci

ety and the requirement that they can appear in public without shame (Sen,1999). Secondly, in identifying market liberalisation as the cause of such so

cial dislocation, he directly challenges dominant approaches to addressingpoverty through providing market opportunities for the poor.

Instead, Polanyi identifies very concretely what are the institutionalmechanisms needed to ensure that the economy is embedded in society,

that the generation of wealth serves the good of society. These, for Polanyi,are the essential features of a just society. He identified three such mecha

nisms, or forms of integration as he called them. These serve to create inter

dependence between the different elements of the economic process, frommaterial resources and labour to the

transportation, storage,and distribu

tion of goods, submerging economic processes in social relationships. Theyare reciprocity, redistribution and exchange. These he had identified as be

ing present in all societies before the Industrial Revolution which he studied. Reciprocity refers to mutual relations of gift-giving between groups

based upon notions of duty and honour and not economic self-interest.These tended to be uppermost in societies which lacked strong institutional

power such as tribal societies, though Polanyi points out that trade between

early empires was organized on the basis of reciprocity. Where centralized

power was present, this permitted institutional redistribution to occur as,for example, through the vast storage systems of ancient Egypt, Sumeria,

Babylon or Peru. But Polanyi also emphasized that the extended household (the Central African kraal, the northwest African kasbas, the Hebrew

patriarchal household, the Greek estate, the Roman familia, the medieval

manor) was based on the principle of redistribution. Such mechanisms ofredistribution and social protection continue to exist in the extended fam

ily in many non-Western societies though this is fast being weakened bythe inroads of marketisation. Finally, exchange was based on the two-way

movement of goods in local markets. The main difference between theseand the modern-day market system is that exchange on such local markets

was not dominated by the medium of prices and, of course, neither landnor labour was traded on them (1977: 35^_3). Such institutional mecha

nisms fostered attitudes of mutuality and co-operation, integrating rather

than undermining society.It is because the market mechanism bases itself on motivations that are

so narrowly based and destroys the fragile bonds of social belonging on

which the humanperson's well-being depends,

that it is so destructive. It

is for this reason that Polanyi can write that 'we are faced with the vital task

of restoring the fullness of life to the person, even though this may mean a

technologically less efficient society' (1968: 73). Such a statement turns on

its head the priorities of today's global order and involves a challenge, the

order of magnitude of which Polanyi was well aware. For he wrote in 1947

that the task of adapting life in this Machine Age to 'the requirements of

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at risks and vulnerabilities to them; it can conceptualize these impacts not

just as economic but also as cultural; and it can show how these insightsapply not just to issues of poverty within nation states but to vulnerabilityat different levels, including the vulnerability of states themselves, and todifferent spheres such as the environment, politics, finance, the economy,as well as the social and the cultural. By showing its potential in these ways,

vulnerability is offered as a tool to contribute rich and robust insights to

the battles (both scholarly and political) on globalisation's impact.

NOTES

1 As a highly contested term, the concept of globalisation as used in this article

requires some clarification though limitations of space do not permit a moreextensive discussion. Described as 'an elastic concept that has been stretched

inmany directions' (Boli et ah, 2004: 410), the term was usefully mapped bySch?lte in terms of five broad definitions, to some extent overlapping but with

substantially different emphases. These are internationalisation, liberalisation,

universalisation, westernisation or modernisation and deterritorialisation or the

spread of supraterritoriality (2000:15-6). Though Sch?lte then dismisses the firstfour meanings and opts for the fifth one, this results in dismissing meaningsthat are included in the term as it is widely used. Instead of narrowing the

meaning, the term globalisation as used in this article includes all five meanings

as these are all used to give expression to an underlying market-driven logicthat informs each of them and that operates globally. While fully accepting thatthere is nothing inevitable about this logic, that it is promoted by very specificactors and resisted by others, that it is appropriated in very different ways indifferent locales, it is the operation of a dominant market-driven logic that unites

the different meanings identified by Sch?lte. It is this common and global logicthat has given rise to the need for a concept like 'globalisation' to allow analysts

capture the nature of today's global dynamics. This is not to deny that it itselfneeds to be explained and that the social forces driving it need to be identified,but it does highlight the utility of the concept over and above each of the discrete

conceptsidentified

bySch?lte.

2 Among the mostly very helpful comments made byone anonymous referee of

this paper was a questioning of whether vulnerability isan inherently collective

concept unlike others. In this context, the referee made the followingcomment:

'Itmay be that some people try to use other concepts in highly individualistic

ways, but they are wrong to do so'. This isa puzzling assertion

as it seems to

posit some absolute moral yardstick through which the right and wrong uses ofsocial concepts might be judged. Yet, of course,

no such yardstick exists and the

influence of amethodological individualism is pervasive in the social sciences.The lively debates in IR about the nature, utility and meanings of human securityare just one example. This draws attention to the need for conceptual clarity

and

precision in the concepts we use.

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