New perspectives on vulnerability using emic and etic approaches

Abstract

New perspectives on vulnerability using emic and etic approaches The concept of vulnerability has not been developed theoretically from a nursing perspective. It has been viewed epidemiologically as population-based relative risk with little consideration of its experiential qualities. The purpose of this paper is to analyse critically the use of the term vulnerability using elements of concept clarification and a critical literature review. A new perspective of vulnerability is offered based on differentiating between the concepts of risk and experience. Risk consists of assumptions from etic or external evaluation of relative danger while lived experience informs an emic or personal interpretation. Assumptions related to the etic view include normative social values, objective harm and endangerment, and social sanction for intervention. An emic view of vulnerability is based on experiential perception of challenge to personal integrity and the universal and mutual nature of the phenomenon. Questions about the evaluation of harm, potential for growth, subjectivity and objectivity, social sanction and capacity for action, can help clarify the range between these two dimensions.

Concept analysis of impressionability among adolescents and young adults

“…Spiers (2000) demonstrated that the term vulnerability needs to be viewed from etic and emic perspectives. Spiers (2000) reported that attributes of the etic perspective of vulnerability include endangerment, functional capacity, external recognition, measurable behaviour, etc.…”

Constructions of ‘vulnerability’ in comparative perspective: Scottish protection policies and the trouble with ‘adults at risk’

“…One important challenge has been to the exclusive prerogative of professionals to identify vulnerability in respect of suspected 'adults at risk'. This sits uneasily both with a social model of disability and with understandings of vulnerability as a subjective experience (Spiers, 2000). One practical, micro-level implication is that people's own views must be heard, not merely when deciding how to respond to vulnerability and harm, but also when deciding whether and in what sense to consider a person vulnerable at all (Dunn et al, 2008).…”

“…Specifically, they reject being categorised as vulnerable and/or in need of protection, because they associate this with deficit, paternalism and stigma (Brown, 2011). This in turn connects with arguments that vulnerability has a significant subjective component (Spiers, 2000), and that people's own views of themselves and their situations are therefore relevant to its definition (Dunn et al, 2008).…”

Multiple transformations: theorizing energy vulnerability as a socio-spatial phenomenon

“…There is a distinctive literature on household energy vulnerability, understood as a set of circumstances that underpin the risk of falling into fuel and energy poverty. Having applied Spiers (2000) understanding of 'emic' vulnerability to utility services such as heating and cooling, Middlemiss and Gillard (2015) suggest that energy vulnerability can also be articulated via a bottom-up perspective that characterizes experiences of deprivation.…”