Vulnerable knowledge: responding to the uncertainties of climate change‐related disaster

Abstract

This paper uses uncertainty generated by environmental change and climate crisis as a prompt to rethink the concept of vulnerability within disaster studies. Where some have sought to recover a latent political potential in vulnerability, a togetherness founded in the disclosure of insecurities to others, we argue that there is value in refusing to settle on any single meaning. This is explored directly through an analysis of narrative interviews with persons bearing different vulnerabilities in four European countries. Tracking forms and expressions of vulnerability across research sites, we identify an unease and fragility in knowledge of disaster risk, before assessing how people nevertheless make sense of their experience and act collectively to find ways through uncertainty. The paper also considers vulnerability reflexively in the context of epistemic practices, suggesting that modesty and openness to more localised ways of knowing might contribute to the adaptability and responsiveness of disaster studies. We conceptualise these diverse dispositions to uncertainty as vulnerable knowledge.