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PALGRAVE SOCIO-LEGAL STUDIES
Relational
Vulnerability
Theory, Law and the
Private Family
Ellen Gordon-Bouvier
Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies
Series Editor
Dave Cowan
School of Law
University of Bristol
Bristol, UK
The Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies series is a developing series of monographs
and textbooks featuring cutting edge work which, in the best tradition of
socio-legal studies, reach out to a wide international audience.
Editorial Board
Dame Hazel Genn, University College London, UK
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Herbert Kritzer, University of Minnesota, USA
Linda Mulcahy, University of Oxford, UK
Rosemary Hunter, University of Kent
Carl Stychin, University of London, UK
Mariana Valverde, University of Toronto, Canada
Sally Wheeler, Australian National University College of Law, Australia.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14679
Relational
Vulnerability
Theory, Law and the Private Family
School of Law
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford, UK
Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies

ISBN 978-3-030-61357-0 ISBN 978-3-030-61358-7 (eBook)
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© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland
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For my family
Acknowledgements
This book builds on and develops the research that I carried out for my Ph.D.
at the University of Birmingham. My supervisor, Rosie Harding, provided me
with invaluable support and guidance and I remain very grateful to her for
this and to my examiners, Anne Barlow and Lisa Webley for their helpful
comments on how my research could be taken forward.
I also want to thank my colleagues at Oxford Brookes University for their
support and friendship when writing this book. Thanks to various conversa-
tions and discussions, I have been able to develop and refine many of the ideas
in this book. In particular, I want to thank Lucy Vickers, Peter Edge, Beverley
Clack, Chris Lloyd, Scott Morrison, Tobi Kliem, Aravind Ganesh, Yue Ang,
Sonia Morano-Foadi, and Chara Bakalis for the helpful conversations that I
have had with them about my research. I also want to thank the members of
the Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice for inviting me to their
events and lunches, especially Anne Laure Humbert, Heather Griffiths, Kate
Clayton-Hathaway, Alexis Still, and Meike Tyrrell.
I received some very helpful feedback on the ideas that formed the basis of
this book at the SLSA conference in 2019 in a vulnerability-themed stream
organised by Jess Mant, Roxanna Dehaghani, and Daniel Newman from
Cardiff University. I have also had useful discussions about vulnerability with
Fae Garland, Jane Krishnadas, Donna Crowe-Urbaniak, and Anna Heenan,
prompting me to think about new angles to some of the issues raised in the
book.
vii
viii Acknowledgements
I had been due to spend three weeks as a visiting scholar at the Vulner-
ability and Human Condition Initiative at Emory University in April 2020.
Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented this from going ahead. However, I
would like to thank the members of the Initiative, especially Martha Fineman
and Mangala Kanayson, for their help and assistance with organising the visit.
As I hopefully make clear in this book, Professor Fineman’s work has inspired
me hugely, and I hope to be able to visit Emory at some point in the future.
Finally, I am very grateful to the series editor, Dave Cowan, for his helpful
and incredibly constructive comments on draft book proposals, and the edito-
rial support that I have received from Palgrave Macmillan, especially from
Josie Taylor and Liam Inscoe-Jones.
Contents
1 Introducing Relational Vulnerability 1

Being Vulnerable: The Inherent Human Condition 3
Expanding the Boundaries of the Universal Model 5
A Theory of Relational Vulnerability: Core Claims 10
Chapter Summaries 14
Conclusion 18
Bibliography 19
2 Embodiment, Temporality, and the Private Family 23

Embodied Vulnerability: Temporality and Rhythms 24
Embodied Vulnerability and Relationality 28
Frozen in Time: The Autonomous Liberal Subject 32
The Private Family: A Cloak for Dependency-Work 37
Conclusion 45
Bibliography 46
3 Relational Vulnerability: Economic, Psychological, Spatial 51

Relational Vulnerability: Its Nature and Temporality 52
The Three Strands of Relational Vulnerability 53
Economic Harms 54
Psychological Harms 57
Spatial Harms 64
Conclusion 72
Bibliography 73
ix
x Contents
4 Vulnerability, Law, and the Married Family 81

Law’s Influence on Marriage 82
Marriage, Divorce, and the Restrained State 84
Tracing the Evolution of the Dependency-Worker’s Role 88
A New Era: The Autonomy Turn 94
Conclusion 102
Bibliography 104
5 Vulnerability, Law, and the Unmarried Family 107

Dependency-Work in Cohabiting Relationships: The Legal
Framework 108
The Commitment to Autonomy 112
Emotional and Rational Voices: Conflicting Legal Narratives 116
The Private Family’s Influence: Gender and Sentimentality 119
The Male Claimant: Commercialising the Personal 126
Conclusion 131
Bibliography 132
6 Theorising Resilience 135

The Origins of Resilience: Overcoming Hardship 136
Neoliberal Interpretations of Resilience: Invulnerability
and Personal Responsibility 138
A New Vision of Resilience: The ‘Responsive State’ 141
Towards a Theory of Resilience for Dependency-Workers 144
Temporal Aspects of Resilience 156
Conclusion 157
Bibliography 159
7 Imagining the Responsive State 163

A Preliminary Question: Distinguishing Between Married
and Unmarried Families 164
Response 1: Redistribution of Resources 167
Response 2: State Subsidy for Dependency-Work 171
Response 3: Deferred Community of Property 178
The Need for a Holistic Approach 184
Conclusion 185
Bibliography 186
Contents xi
8 Concluding Thoughts 189

The Vulnerability Perspective 189
A Global Crisis and the Need for Urgent Reform 195
Bibliography 197
Index 199
Table of Cases
Abbott v Abbott [2007] UKPC 53

Adekunle v Ritchie [2007] 2 P&CR DG 20
Burns v Burns [1984] Ch 317
Clutton v Clutton [1991] FCR 265
Cobbe v Yeoman’s Row [2008] UKHL 18
Coombes v Smith [1986] 1 WLR 808
Crabb v Arun District Council [1976] Ch 179
Crossley v Crossley [2007] EWCA Civ 1491
Culliford and another v Thorpe [2018] EWHC 426
Curran v Collins [2013] EWCA Civ 382
Curran v Collins [2015] EWCA Civ 404
Davies and Another v Davies [2016] EWCA Civ 463
Dobson v Griffey [2018] EWHC (Ch) 1117
Eves v Eves [1975] 1 WLR 1338
F v F (Ancillary Relief: Substantial Assets) [1995] 2 FLR
Foskett v McKeown [2001] 1 AC 102
Gallarotti v Sebastianelli [2012] EWCA Civ 865
Geary v Rankine [2012] EWCA Civ 555
Gissing v Gissing [1971] AC 886
Grant v Edwards [1986] Ch 638
Greasley v Cooke [1980] 3 All ER 710
Hammond v Mitchell [1991] 1 WLR 1127
Hyde v Hyde and Woodmansee (1866) 1 P&D 130
xiii
xiv Table of Cases
Hyman v Hyman [1929] AC 601

James v Thomas [2007] EWCA Civ 1212
Jennings v Rice [2002] EWCA Civ 159
Jones v Kernott [2011] UKSC 53
K v K (Ancillary Relief: Pre-Nuptial Agreement) [2003] 1 FLR 120
Lawrence v Gallagher [2012] EWCA Civ 394
Lloyds Bank v Rosset [1991] 1 AC 107
Martin v Martin [1978] Fam 12
Matthews v Matthews [2013] EWCA Civ 1874
Mesher v Mesher [1980] 1 All ER 126
Miller v Miller;McFarlane v McFarlane [2006] UKHL 24
N v N (Jurisdiction) [1999] 2 FLR 745
Radmacher v Granatino [2010] UKSC 42
RC v JC [2020] EWHC (Fam) 466
Rubin v Dweck [2012] BPIR 854
SA v PA [2014] EWHC 392
Smith v Bottomley [2013] EWCA Civ 953
SS v NS (Spousal Maintenance) [2014] EWHC (Fam) 4183
Stack v Dowden [2007] UKHL 17
Suter v Suter and Jones [1987] Fam 111
Thompson v Hurst [2012] EWCA 1752
Thomson v Humphrey [2009] EWHC 3576
Thorner v Major [2009] UKHL 18
Tinsley v Milligan [1993] 1 WLR 126
V v V (Prenuptial Agreement) [2011] EWHC (Fam) 3230
Wachtel v Wachtel [1973] Fam 72
Waggott v Waggott [2018] EWCA Civ 727
Wayling v Jones [1995] 2 FLR 1029
White v White [1999] Fam 304
White v White [2001] 1 AC 596
Canadian Cases
Lac Minerals v Corona [1989] 2 SCR 574
Pettkus v Becker [1980] 2 SCR 834
Rawluk v Rawluk [1990] 1 SCR 70
Table of Cases xv
Australian Cases
Muschinski v Dodds [1985] 160 CLR 583
Baumgartner v Baumgartner [1967] 164 CLR 137
West v Mead [2003] NSWSC 161
Table of Legislation
England and Wales

Care Act 2014
Civil Partnership Act 2004
The Civil Partnership (Opposite Sex) Regulations 2019
Divorce Dissolution and Separation Act 2020
Divorce and Financial Provision Bill 2014-15
Equality Act 2010
Family Law Act 1996
Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012
Marriage Same Sex Couples Act 2013
Matrimonial Causes Act 1973
Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984
Matrimonial Proceedings and Property Act 1970
Scotland
Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006
South Africa
Matrimonial Property Act No. 88 of 1984
xvii
1
Introducing Relational Vulnerability
Over the past decade, a new discourse of human vulnerability has emerged
in socio-legal and critical studies, providing a novel lens through which
to analyse law and state policy. This ‘vulnerability-theory’ is rooted in the
notion that, as humans, we all share an inherent vulnerability that is ulti-
mately grounded in our embodied nature. As the theory’s leading proponent,
Professor Martha Fineman (2008, p. 9) argues, the human condition is
susceptible to “the ever-present possibility of harm and injury from mildly
unfortunate to catastrophically devastating events”. As a result of our embod-
iment, Fineman (2017, p. 134) asserts that we are also “dependent upon,
and embedded within, social relationships and institutions throughout the
life course”. Being vulnerable, Fineman argues, is a constant and unavoid-
able state and, try as we might, we can no more escape being vulnerable than
we can escape our own bodies. Therefore, the theory does not seek to elim-
inate vulnerability (because such a thing would be impossible), but instead
calls for a more responsive and engaged state, one that will acknowledge the
reality of the embodied and embedded human condition and, through its
various institutions, provide the resources, or resilience, necessary to reduce
the risk of harm, rather than its current practice of stigmatising dependency,
regarding it as a failure to attain autonomous personhood (Fineman 2010).
It is difficult to do justice in relatively few words to the full impact that this
‘vulnerability-turn’ has had on legal scholarship, both in the UK and glob-
ally. The past five Law and Society Association annual meetings have featured
numerous paper sessions and roundtable discussions centred around vulner-
ability. Fineman’s own Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative
© The Author(s) 2020 1

E. Gordon-Bouvier, Relational Vulnerability, Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61358-7_1
2 E. Gordon-Bouvier
at Emory University, USA, was founded in 2008, and organises sympo-

siums, conferences, and discussions across the world. Thus, it is clear to
see the theory’s impact, uniting scholars across a range of socio-legal disci-
plines through the common thread of recognising vulnerability as a universal
condition. This has led to a substantial reinvigoration and reconceptualisa-
tion of debates in a range of legal areas, including transgender rights (Dietz
and Pearce 2020), disability law (Clough 2017), bioethics (Thomson 2018),
and criminal justice (Dehaghani and Newman 2017).
This book is an expansion of, and contribution to, the existing scholar-
ship on vulnerability. Using Fineman’s notion of universal vulnerability as
a foundation, I build upon it by putting forward a new model of what I
term relational vulnerability that I apply in the specific context of English
law’s treatment of unpaid work when performed in the context of the
private married or unmarried family. In doing so, I also want to develop a
more nuanced understanding of universal, embodied vulnerability, empha-
sising its inherently temporal nature, marked by both unpredictability and
inevitability. My approach builds on Fineman’s notion of human relational
and institutional embeddedness, exploring how the relational structures in
which we are all inevitably situated can expose us to harms rather than
providing resilience. The existing universal model of vulnerability has been
accused of focusing excessively on vulnerability that is biological in origin,
arising from the embodied human condition (see Mackenzie et al. 2014).
By contrast, this book’s context-specific theoretical approach distinguishes
between vulnerability that occurs as a result of embodiment and is therefore
unavoidable, and that arising from other sources, which is often preventable.
I argue that it is not just our bodies that expose us to the risk of harm, but
that additional disadvantages can also arise as a result of how the state and its
institutions, including law, respond to our embodiment and relationality.
The setting for the book is the legal regulation of the private family and
specifically English law’s response to the various disadvantages that flow from
gendered role specialisation during marriage or cohabitation. While there
already exists substantial feminist literature on this topic (e.g., Thompson
2015; Barlow 2015; Garland 2015), the vulnerability lens allows me to
examine the issues from a novel perspective and to take the debate in a
new direction. I argue that the state and law, driven by increasingly neolib-
eral1 policies and motivations, structures the private family to function as
1 Inthis book, I use neoliberalism as a loose term to describe the prevalence of state policies that
promote personal responsibility, market freedom, and individual economic self-sufficiency (see Harvey
2007). Neoliberal policies are based on the classic liberal theories of personhood that I discuss
throughout the book.
a mask for the inevitable dependency-work that is necessary to sustain the

human life course. This term, which has been employed by a number of
feminist scholars (see e.g., Fineman 2000; Kittay 1999), is given a broad defi-
nition in this book, encompassing all forms of socially reproductive labour,
including (but not limited to) caring for children and adults, providing the
support necessary for adults to engage in the workforce, and performing
the work necessary to produce and maintain the home as the locus of the
private family. Dependency-work’s concealment within the family (where it is
predominantly assigned to its female members) allows the state to promote an
artificial, disembodied version of personhood, one that permits it to remain
restrained and unresponsive to vulnerability. This comes at the direct expense
of those who perform the work (termed ‘dependency-workers’ in this book),
who are exposed to a range of avoidable harms throughout their lives.
While I argue that the relational vulnerability affecting dependency-
workers exposes them to various preventable disadvantages, I also recognise
that relational vulnerability is inextricably tied to the embodied ‘ordinary’
vulnerability that affects us all. The relational vulnerability I explore in this
book arises because the state wishes to imagine that we are disembodied,
atomistic, and invulnerable, and relies on hidden and unpaid labour to
uphold this image. Legal and policy reform not only must address the harms
currently suffered by dependency-workers but must also acknowledge the
embodiment, fragility, and embedded relationality of humanity.
Being Vulnerable: The Inherent Human

Condition
Discourses of vulnerability have historically been employed when advocating
for special protections for identifiable groups thought to possess particular
sensibilities, such as ‘the elderly’, or ‘persons with disabilities’ (Formosa 2014).
For instance, Goodin (1985) calls for collective societal responsibility for
protecting those that are especially vulnerable owing to their dependency on
others. Equally, in other fields where a vulnerability discourse has traditionally
been employed, including medicine, social psychology, and child protec-
tion, terms such as ‘vulnerable patient’ or ‘vulnerable child’ connote some
special need or weakness that falls outside the expected norm. By instead
emphasising vulnerability as a constant and shared , rather than extraordi-
nary, state of being, Fineman’s universal model moves away from potentially
negative connotations of victimhood (see Clough 2017). This demonstrates
vulnerability theory’s radical and transformative potential in a range of fields,
4 E. Gordon-Bouvier
encouraging a fundamental reordering of the state and its institutions, one

that has the potential to achieve social justice on a substantially broader
scale than the somewhat hollow call for anti-discrimination measures for
marginalised ‘vulnerable groups’, which rests on the assumption that the
norm is invulnerability (Fineman 2012).
Vulnerability theory criticises and challenges the problematic and flawed
conceptions of personhood proffered by classical liberal legal and philosoph-
ical theories, which underpin modern, increasingly neoliberal, state policies.
It argues that these are modelled on a hypothetical autonomous liberal subject
that is self-sufficient, rational, and disembodied (Barclay 2000; Grear 2011).
In very generalised terms, the liberal legal and political theories that vulnera-
bility theory critiques are based on the assertion that humans possess innate
free will and inner moral agency, which the state has a duty to protect. Exam-
ples of this include Kant’s (1996) theory of internal moral law, Rawls’ (1971)
theory of justice, Raz’s (1986) notion of liberal perfectionism, and Dworkin’s
(1988) theory of individual freedom. From a critical feminist perspective,
these theories promote a problematic and unrealistic version of personhood
that struggles to explain relationships of affection, dependency, and care.
Liberal theories of personhood fail to acknowledge that, in intimate and
familial unions, people frequently make decisions that do not appear to be
in their own interests, motivated or dictated by their relational connections.
Liberal theory’s lack of engagement with relationality sometimes depicts these
decisions as indicating an absence of rationality or autonomy on the part
of the decision maker, for example in the case law governing the doctrine
of undue influence in contract law, where dependency on another person
can be viewed as evidence of lack of free will (see Auchmuty 2002). Liberal
and neoliberal accounts tend to pathologise vulnerability and dependency as
weaknesses, symbolic of a failure to attain autonomous personhood (Chan-
dler and Reid 2016). Questions of relationality, affection, and emotion are
thought to lie beyond legal and state concern and are instead consigned to an
imagined ‘private realm’, into which the state does not interfere (O’Donovan
1985).
Vulnerability theorists call for the state to abandon its reliance on liberal
versions of personhood, moving towards a “responsive state”, which is one
that:
Recognises that it and the institutions it brings into being through law are
the mean and mechanisms whereby individuals accumulate the resilience
or resources that they need to confront the social, material and practical
implications of vulnerability (Fineman 2013, p. 17)
The idea of the responsive state represents a radical departure from the liberal
models of law and citizenship that regard state power as potentially harmful to
the expression of individual autonomy (see, e.g., Mill 1869). Liberal theories
idealise a minimalist or ‘night-watchman’ state, whose role is restricted to
upholding individual freedoms but does not seek to interfere further into
the lives of its citizens (Nozick 1974). Yet, it is this restraint that has led to
substantial societal inequality, with those who are unable to live up to the
self-sufficient ideal being blamed for what is in fact an inevitable part of the
human condition.
While the universal model refutes the idea of varying degrees of vulner-
ability (in the sense that some individuals or groups are more vulnerable
than others), it very clearly recognises that not all individuals experience their
inherent embodied vulnerability the same way. This, Fineman (2010) argues,
is not due to differences in levels of vulnerability, but rather the degree of
resilience (i.e., the ability to withstand the impacts of vulnerability) that an
individual possesses. I will return to the concept of resilience in more detail
in Chapter 6 but, broadly, the universal thesis conceives of it as encompassing
access to a range of resources controlled by the state and its institutions,
including material wealth, social networks, as well as environmental assets
(Fineman 2013, pp. 22–23). Resilience is inherently relational, with the indi-
vidual’s experience of the embodied condition being directly influenced by
her place within institutional and interpersonal structures (Fineman 2014;
Lewis and Thomson 2019).
Expanding the Boundaries

of the Universal Model
Although the theoretical framework that I develop in this book draws
substantially on the universal model of vulnerability discussed above, it also
makes a novel contribution to the scholarship by offering an expansion on
the theory in its current form. As well as developing a theoretical frame-
work of vulnerability in the specific context of English family law, I also
wish to engage with and respond to some of the critiques that other scholars
have levelled at the universal model of vulnerability. Thus, in this section, I
will outline some of vulnerability theory’s current limitations, which must be
addressed to produce a robust model that is useful not only at an abstract
level but can also prompt shifts in law and policy. My own position is that
the universal model serves as a starting point rather than a complete solution,
a foundation for further development and analysis of the different ways that
6 E. Gordon-Bouvier
vulnerability can exist and be addressed. I believe that much of the critique of
the universal model can be addressed while still maintaining a commitment
to the fundamental tenets of the theory.
The first criticism relates to the scale of the universal model, which poten-
tially affects its workability when applied to specific contexts. The theory’s
breadth is deliberate. Fineman explicitly states that she wants to move away
from the tendency to structure models of social justice around recognising the
rights of narrowly defined identity-based groups and seeking to promote and
elevate their position within law and policy using the language of formal legal
equality. She argues that the identity model is deficient, primarily because
it fails to challenge the underlying assumption that self-sufficient person-
hood represents the norm (Fineman 2012). Fineman (2008, p. 1) describes
her theory as a “post-identity” one, “not focused only on discrimination
against defined groups, but concerned with privilege and favor conferred on
limited segments of the population by the state and broader society through
their institutions” (see also Fineman 2020). Nonetheless, other scholars have
labelled these aims excessively ambitious. As Valverde has commented:
[T]he new language of ‘vulnerability’ has a much more diffuse political audi-
ence and a less clear bit on any one element within the state. Does Fineman
intend to provide a theory that will help disabled people, children, the elderly,
and women to rally around a new, anti-individualist consensus? If so, the ambi-
tion is a worthy one, but in the age of micro-polling and fragmented voting
groups it is difficult to see how the recognition of ‘vulnerability’ as a central
human condition, one on a par with individual freedom, could give rise to
legal and political change. (Valverde 2015, p. 19)
I suggest that one limitation here is that the universal model’s emphasis on
shared vulnerability does not at first sight appear to be particularly repre-
sentative of the society in which we live. After all, the gap between the
rich and poor is visibly growing, as states adopt increasingly neoliberal poli-
cies. Racial, gender, and class inequalities are being brought to the forefront.
To then emphasise that we are all equally vulnerable can appear as if the
theory is overlooking many of the visible patterns of inequality and denies
the privilege enjoyed by some sectors of society. To a large extent, this
is addressed through the theory’s conceptual distinction between vulnera-
bility and resilience. Resilience refers to a range of material, social, and
environmental resources, access to which impacts on how one’s own vulnera-
bility is experienced. While embodied vulnerability is inherent and universal,
resilience is unequally distributed across populations. However, if unequal
access to resilience should in fact be the focus for law and policy reform,
it begs the question of why the theory so emphasises the shared nature of
vulnerability. Certainly, the topic of this book—the role played by the private
family in law and its disproportionate negative impact on dependency-
workers—requires further exploration of vulnerability in a specific rather than
general context. Therefore, while my framework of relational vulnerability
maintains a commitment to the central tenets of the universal model by
acknowledging that all persons are inherently vulnerable, it also explores the
avoidable and context-specific harms affecting dependency-workers within
the private family.
As I mentioned above, others have critiqued the universal model’s defi-
nition of what it means to be vulnerable, which centres predominantly on
harm arising from the embodied human condition. As Mackenzie (2014,
p. 38) argues, this ignores that “many types of vulnerability are primarily the
result not of unavoidable biological processes but of interpersonal and social
relationships or economic, legal and political structures”. Thus, the universal
model could be considered less useful in contexts where the harm in question
cannot be traced (or only relatively tenuously so) to biological processes. To
an extent, this critique is not entirely warranted, given Fineman’s clear focus
on resilience and the various unequal ways that individuals are embedded
within relational and institutional networks, revealing both “differences and
dependencies” (Fineman 2014, p. 318). Therefore, she cannot accurately be
described as ignoring non-biological harms, particularly those arising from
relational structures—it is merely that she labels these as an absence of
resilience rather than additional vulnerabilities. Nonetheless, in this book,
I choose to describe the disadvantaged position of dependency-workers as
an additional or extraordinary vulnerability rather than a mere absence of
resilience against embodied harm. My reason for doing so (as I have suggested
elsewhere) is that I believe that labelling structural harms purely as an absence
of resilience (with the insinuation that they result from state inaction rather
than deliberate infliction of harm to further its own goals), instead of theo-
rising them as a specific type of vulnerability affecting certain, but not all,
individuals, could have the inadvertent effect of reducing the state’s culpa-
bility as a perpetrator of harm (Gordon-Bouvier 2019b). Nonetheless, as I
argue in more detail in Chapter 6, in addition to being exposed to addi-
tional harms (i.e., relationally vulnerable), the dependency-worker does also
lack resilience against her inherent embodied vulnerability, and the state must
seek to address this at the same time as eliminating relational vulnerability.
As this discussion reveals, much of the divergence between theorists in this
context relates to nomenclature, as the issues and problems theorised remain
the same ones, whether they are referred to as vulnerability or an absence of
8 E. Gordon-Bouvier
resilience. It also reveals the extent to which vulnerability and resilience, as

theoretical concepts, are fundamentally intertwined.
There is maybe a sense among proponents of the universal model
that acknowledging multiple sources of vulnerability, including those that
predominantly affect identifiable groups, undermines the theory’s central
thesis of shared vulnerability. I disagree with this and do not consider the
concepts of universal vulnerability and what can be termed “more-than-
ordinary vulnerability” (Sellman 2005) to be inherently incompatible. The
problem with identity-based and formal equality approaches to rights is not
so much that they identify specific groups as requiring protections, but rather
that they measure equality solely by reference to how closely the vulner-
able group can be made to resemble the (invulnerable) norm. Thus, they do
nothing to challenge erroneous presumptions of individualism. Referring to
identifiable sectors of populations is difficult to avoid when discussing social
inequality. Indeed, critics have observed that when applied to specific legal
contexts, the universal model itself reverts to group-based language, even if
this is labelled an absence of resilience rather than vulnerability. In particular,
Kohn (2014, p. 11) has accused Fineman of “[adopting] the very type of
targeted group approach to addressing vulnerability that she has vigorously
opposed” when applying vulnerability theory to elder law. The argument I
develop in this book is that recognition and discussion of the struggles faced
by specific groups and populations does not contradict the universal thesis
of vulnerability. Indeed, as I outline in more detail in Chapter 3, the addi-
tional vulnerabilities and harms to which dependency-workers are exposed
arise specifically because the state fails to acknowledge the reality of inherent
human vulnerability. Thus, relational vulnerability as a ‘more-than-ordinary’
set of harms is deeply intertwined with ‘ordinary’ or inherent embodied
vulnerability and cannot be considered in isolation from it.
This leads me on to the final limitation of the theory in its current form,
namely that both the concepts of vulnerability and resilience are under-
theorised in terms of how they are experienced by, and impact upon, the
individual (see Rogers et al. 2012). This is largely deliberate, as Fineman
seeks to move away from the scale of the individual, turning the attention
to the wider social structures and the actions of the state. Yet, when the
universal model is applied in practice, the problems of ignoring individual
impact become apparent. Kohn notes that Fineman’s rejection of autonomy
as a normative goal of vulnerability theory can yield excessively paternal-
istic results, with the potential for undermining both individual freedom and
human dignity (Kohn 2014, pp. 14–15). The difficulty is that the universal
model, in its rejection of individual autonomy or indeed any significant focus
on the individual’s own perception of her own vulnerability and resilience,

does not seek to offer any meaningful alternative way of evaluating different
potential state responses to vulnerability. In the elderly adults context, Kohn
argues that Fineman’s approach, which overlooks scrutiny of how the older
individual herself will experience protective legal measures, “not only has the
potential to promote the radical disempowerment of older adults but is also
unnecessary to protect them” (Kohn 2014, p. 20).
The problem is that, in rejecting autonomy as a normative goal for her
theory, Fineman relies on a narrow, highly individualistic definition of the
concept (Mackenzie 2014, p. 37). Indeed, the classical accounts of autonomy
view it as an integral part of the self, the ability to self-govern and to live
according to one’s own internal moral law (Kant 1996). According to this
definition, all persons are presumed to be born free and to possess powers of
self-determination (Barclay 2000, p. 54). By contrast, feminist theorists have
sought to reconceptualise autonomy as consisting of an inevitable relational
component. This model argues that “persons are socially embedded and that
agents’ identities are formed within the context of social relationships and
shaped by a complex of intersecting social determinants, such as race, class,
gender and ethnicity” (Mackenzie and Stoljar 2000, p. 4). Thus, autonomy is
viewed not as inborn, but as a condition that can only exist if we are treated as
autonomous agents by those around us and by the state. As Nedelsky (2011,
p. 118) argues, “autonomy is made possible by constructive relationships-
including intimate, cultural, institutional- all of which interact”. Rather than
the restrained ‘night-watchman’ state preferred by liberal theorists, the rela-
tional account sees the state as playing a pivotal role, both in recognising the
individual as being autonomous and having the capacity to make choices,
and in providing the material conditions necessary for autonomy (Nedelsky
1993; Herring 2014).
Thus, Fineman’s reluctance to embrace relational autonomy as a norma-
tive goal for her theory represents something of a missed opportunity. As
with the remainder of the theory, the problems are perhaps not so evident
at an abstract level. However, once placed into context, the universal model
struggles to effectively differentiate between different legal and policy options
that may be said to address a particular problem. A responsive state must
ensure that the various resources that constitute resilience are distributed
equitably across populations. To this end, I argue that resilience-promotion,
as a state response to vulnerability, must consist of identifiable normative
goals, which includes a commitment to relational autonomy. Allocation of
material resources on its own is insufficient to achieve resilience. After all,
10 E. Gordon-Bouvier
the controversial Universal Credit scheme that operates in the UK repre-

sents, on its face, state distribution of resources. It is of course completely
inadequate and harmful because it actively disempowers recipients, stigma-
tising and excessively scrutinising them. I am not suggesting that vulnerability
theory would endorse Universal Credit, but the point is that the theory in
its current form is not always capable of explaining why some methods of
resource distribution are clearly preferable to others, and that stems from its
rejection of autonomy as a normative goal of resilience. This is an aspect that
I directly address by exploring the theoretical and normative foundations of
resilience in Chapters 6 and 7.
A Theory of Relational Vulnerability: Core Claims

My theoretical framework of relational vulnerability focuses on the harm
caused by the socially and legally constructed private family as a means
for the state to conceal the embodied and relational reality of vulnerability
and dependency and avoid responsibility for it. I argue that the ‘more-than-
ordinary’ harms that constitute relational vulnerability are direct products of
the state’s marginalisation of the essential dependency-work performed under
the cloak of the idealised, heterosexual family unit. To fully explore the notion
of relational vulnerability, I also seek to deepen existing understandings of
inherent embodied vulnerability. In doing so, I rely on three core theoretical
claims.
Multifarious Vulnerabilities
My first claim is that vulnerability should be understood as multifarious

rather than solely resulting from the human condition. I fully agree with
Fineman’s argument that we are all exposed to the constant and inescapable
risk of harm to our embodied selves and this is a fundamental part of
human existence. However, I suggest that some of us are also exposed
to harms that are not embodied in nature, and (as I explained above) I
believe these to be better theorised as additional vulnerabilities rather than
an absence of resilience against inherent vulnerability. As discussed above,
my recognition of multifarious vulnerabilities is shared by other theorists,
most notably Mackenzie et al.’s (2014) development of a taxonomy of vulner-
ability. Their model draws distinctions between inherent, situational , and
pathogenic vulnerabilities. According to the authors, whereas inherent vulner-
ability results primarily from inescapable biological processes, situational
vulnerability occurs when external circumstances, such as war or incarcer-

ation, operate to render the individual temporarily vulnerable (Mackenzie
et al. 2014, p. 9). Additionally, and more relevant to my approach, they
describe pathogenic vulnerability as a subcategory of situational vulnerability
resulting from adverse social conditions, such as oppressive interpersonal
relationships and unequal institutional structures.
Applying this taxonomy, my model of relational vulnerability would fall
into the category of a pathogenic vulnerability, given that it arises from
the unequal, state-constructed institution of the private family unit. It is
worth emphasising here that when discussing unequal relationships, I am less
concerned (although not entirely unconcerned) with the individual behaviour
of the parties than the ways in which relationships are structured by the state.
Therefore, I employ the term relational vulnerability in a somewhat different
manner to others who have used it, such as Kabeer’s (2014, p. 1) work on
abusive relationships, where she argues that relational vulnerability involves
the individual being “embedded in highly asymmetrical social relations and
the associated dependencies”. However, she explains that she sees these asym-
metries as arising primarily from the intentional and malevolent act of one
person against another (Kabeer 2014). By contrast, the relational inequali-
ties to which I refer throughout the book are not framed in terms of ‘bad
behaviour’ on the part of either parties. Instead, I move beyond the private
and interpersonal, arguing that even the most intimate of relationships are
shaped by wider state power and structures.
Vulnerability’s Temporality
My second claim is that vulnerability, both the inherent and embodied

form to which we are all subject, and the additional relational vulnera-
bility affecting dependency-workers, is inherently infused with questions of
time and temporality. These must be rendered visible to fully understand
vulnerability’s nature and its effects on the individual subject. The universal
model is replete with references to time and its impact on the experience
of being vulnerable. I argue that the human life course is characterised by
both inevitability and unpredictability. It is a certainty that our bodies will
move through the identifiable stages of infancy, childhood, adulthood, and
old age. Simultaneously, human life is inherently unpredictable, and inter-
vening events, such as accident, injury or illness, have the power to instantly
alter an individual’s expected life trajectory. I also conceive of the relational
vulnerability arising from the socially constructed private family, as temporal.
The private family is characterised by a series of expected defining events,
including leaving home, employment, marriage or partnering, childrearing,

and eventual retirement. The order and timing of these events is also governed
by societal norms, marking a ‘correct’ time at which they should happen
(Freeman 2011; Valverde 2015).
The temporalities of the biological and socially constructed life courses are
deeply intertwined. Embodied vulnerability is not a fixed state, but a fluc-
tuating condition moving through different stages and cycles. For some part
of life, many people are ‘temporally powerful’, meaning that, although not
entirely self-sufficient, they are at least physically capable of emulating the
image of the ideal liberal subject. In this sense, it is perhaps better to view
the hypothetical liberal subject not as entirely disembodied, but as possessing
a body that is always temporally powerful and does not decline or age. The
issue is not that it is impossible to live up to the autonomous ideal, but that
this is not an option available to all, and that for those who can demonstrate
compliance, it can never be a permanent state, due to the fluctuations of the
life course.
The nature of the life course means that we are not only reliant on
others, but our future selves are also reliant on our present, more tempo-
rally powerful selves. At the peak of physical power, individuals can amass
the resources necessary to deal both with the inevitable (ageing and decline)
and the unpredictable (accident or illness) aspects of the future. A core aspect
of relational vulnerability is that this ability to provide for our future selves
is made more difficult, often impossible, for those engaged in dependency.
Even at the peak of their physical power, dependency-workers’ obligations
in the present (which are governed by the socially constructed temporality
of the private family) means that they cannot make independent provision
for their future selves. This means that relational vulnerability must also be
understood as a fluctuating condition. Its existence, while the family is intact,
is often concealed behind the structure of the private family. The restrained
state is concerned that the family as a unit is economically self-sufficient but
is largely unconcerned with how work and resources are divided between its
members. It is only if the family unit (which is an increasingly fragile insti-
tution) breaks down that the relational vulnerability of dependency-workers
comes into public view. At this stage, law can intervene, ostensibly to address
issues of relationship-generated disadvantage through the division of available
resources. Yet, as I argue in Chapters 4 and 5, this provision is inadequate and,
in the case of both the married and cohabiting family, merely seeks to exac-
erbate relational vulnerability by upholding the image of the autonomous
ideal by devaluing dependency-work and ignoring its temporal impact as a
problem stored up for the future. While analyses of relationship-generated
disadvantages are generally confined to the point at which the relationship

breaks down, it must be viewed as a lifelong condition. The full impact
of performing dependency-work is often not revealed until later in the life
course, when the dependency-worker’s own temporal powers have subsided.
Law, Relationality, and the Private Family
The third core claim of relational vulnerability theory is that the private
family is a social, political, and legal construct that enables the state to conceal
the realities of human vulnerability and dependency, allowing it to remain
restrained. Although families invariably take numerous forms, they are all
judged against an imagined ideal, which remains the married, heterosexual,
nuclear unit (see Harding 2015). Family law and policy is invariably made
and interpreted with this ideal in mind (Brown 2019).
As I discussed above, humans are inherently relational. Indeed, the
notion of relational embeddedness is a core tenet of Fineman’s theory and
directly impacts on how embodied vulnerability is experienced and perceived
(Fineman 2014, 2017). We all exist within wide and complex networks of
relationships that consist not only of interpersonal connections such as part-
ners, children, and parents, but also numerous private and state institutions,
including employers, health care, and legal systems (Nedelsky 2011; Fineman
2017). This relational network, which is ultimately controlled and shaped by
the state’s actions, impacts on how we live with our inherent vulnerability. It
can either support us or cause us harm and I argue that the dependency-
worker is inevitably situated within a disempowering and often harmful
relational network.
Liberal theories rely on a conceptual separation between public and private
life. The family is presented as a natural and inherent way in which the
majority of persons choose to order their lives, existing in separation from
the public sphere of state power. However, as Fineman (2004) argues, the
family is merely another state institution, albeit one that is labelled as private
and self-sufficient. The state delegates responsibility for all elements of care-
giving and other dependency-work to the family. Simultaneously, it expects
the family to function as an economically autonomous unit, with depen-
dency on the state consistently labelled as a failure (Fineman 2004). This
enables the state to limit or even deny responsibility for vulnerability and
dependency. Thus, for the restrained state, the family and the gendered
ideologies that define and hold it together are crucial. Without it, it would
need to respond much more proactively to its citizens and provide them with
necessary support throughout the life course.
Although I discuss various state institutions, my main focus in this book

is law’s role in upholding the ideology of the private family and thereby
marginalising dependency-workers. Law is a powerful state institution whose
actions and proclamations carry considerable authority and symbolic force.
Critique can be challenging because law is consistently depicted as logical,
unemotional, and unbiased (Fox-O’Mahony 2014). Family law claims to be
neutral to issues of gender, sexuality, or preferred family form (see Collier
2009), yet as I show in Chapters 4 and 5, the legal framework governing
both the married and unmarried family is replete with references to gendered
ideologies. As I argue, while law’s black letter may indeed appear neutral,
legal actors always draw on a background tapestry of myths, ideologies, and
assumptions about human behaviour when interpreting it. Without acknowl-
edging that it does so, family law constantly reinforces the liberal autonomous
ideal.
Chapter Summaries
In Chapter 2, I analyse vulnerability’s inherent temporality and the relation-
ship between inherent embodied vulnerability and state-created relational
vulnerability. The human condition involves inevitable and unpredictable
fluctuations in vulnerability, characterised by periods of power and depen-
dency. By adopting this view of vulnerability, I argue, it is possible to
accommodate the view that certain groups are more vulnerable (due to
their temporal position), without undermining the core claim that embodied
vulnerability is a universal condition. I also consider how human relationality
and embeddedness arises as a direct consequence of vulnerability. As Fineman
(2017) argues, our embodied nature renders us dependent on others for care
and sustenance. Yet, this relationality is ultimately constructed and governed
by the state and its various institutions, including law (Nedelsky 2011). This
leads on to a critique of the socially constructed heterosexual private family,
which ensures adherence to an image of autonomous personhood upon which
liberal and neoliberal state policies are based. The family, consisting of various
gendered expectations, masks the constant work needed to sustain human
life. However, dependency-work’s perceived lack of value means that those
who perform it suffer relational vulnerability.
In Chapter 3, I develop the concept of relational vulnerability further,
arguing that it consists of three intersecting strands of harm: economic,
psychological, and spatial. Dependency-workers have a reduced ability to
amass economic resources, as time and energy is expended on sustaining
others within their relational network. They struggle to make provision

for their future selves, meaning that they are likely to feel the impact of
their inherent embodied vulnerability more strongly in the future (e.g.,
through having insufficient resources to feed or clothe themselves or to pay
for adequate health care). Psychological harm can arise as a result of the
dependency-worker’s marginalisation, from being viewed as a second-class
citizen. The restrained state’s expectation that the family be self-sufficient
means that dependency-workers become “derivatively” (see Fineman 2004)
dependent on others, including partners and the state. If the private family
breaks down (i.e., through divorce or separation), dependency-workers are
often forced to turn, at least partly, to the state for support, which is then
labelled as a failure to attain self-sufficiency. Finally, spatial harm refers to the
dependency-worker’s potentially precarious relationship to her home. A key
part of being embodied and relationally embedded consists of the need for a
secure place to live that transcends the merely economic. This is vital for a
sense of well-being and belonging. Although the state designates dependency-
work to the space of the home (see Williams 2002), dependency-workers’ lack
of financial power means that they have a fragile relationship to their homes,
with the breakdown of family relationships often involving the loss of the
family home, a move to more temporally uncertain accommodation, and a
struggle to find lasting security.
In Chapters 4 and 5, I seek to apply and contextualise the relational vulner-
ability framework by focusing on the private family as it is constructed in
English law. I argue that the way that law allocates potentially resilience-
creating resources within the family contributes to the devaluation and
marginalisation of those who perform dependency-work, exacerbating rather
than addressing their relational vulnerability.
Chapter 4 examines the married (or civilly partnered) family, particu-
larly the redistributive scheme applicable on divorce. I argue that modern
conceptions of marriage as a partnership of equals (seen, e.g., in White v
White [2001] 1 AC 596), which established a principle of non-discrimination
between homemaker and breadwinner contributions, has done relatively little
to truly empower married dependency-workers. Marriage’s temporality has
changed from a lifelong institution, which, although oppressive, at least
provided a level of certainty in terms of the (typically male) breadwinner’s
financial obligations towards the (typically female) homemaker. Instead,
modern marriage is increasingly couched in discourses of autonomy, espe-
cially in terms of financial obligations. On divorce, law emphasises the
importance of ‘self-righting’, an ability to swiftly recover from the economic
impacts of marriage. Long-term post-divorce dependence is viewed with
growing disapproval and accusation of female ‘gold-digging’ (Thompson

2016, 2019; Gordon-Bouvier 2020), and courts are increasingly supportive
of contracting out and limiting post-divorce liability through nuptial agree-
ments (see Radmacher v Granatino [2010] UKSC 42).
I argue that the legal framework reinforces the state’s expectations that its
citizens be autonomous, disembodied, and self-sufficient. While dependency-
work is ostensibly viewed as equal to paid work, this is not a genuine
equality. Law’s emphasis on self-righting within an ‘appropriate’ period of
time after divorce means that those who have performed dependency-work
in a marriage are disadvantaged, often for the rest of their lives, even if they
receive a ‘fair’ settlement at the point of divorce. While married dependency-
workers may be better protected from economic, emotional, and spatial
harms than their unmarried counterparts, substantial inequality remains.
In Chapter 5, I apply the vulnerability lens to the unmarried, cohabiting
family. Marriage’s position as the dominant form of family life is in decline,
with increasing numbers of unmarried families. Yet, while these families are
functionally similar to the married family (in terms of their responsibility for
dependency-work), English law is infamous for its failure to provide specific
legal remedies upon relationship breakdown, forcing cohabitants to rely on
confusing and potentially unjust property and trusts law (for critique, see
Douglas et al. 2009; Barlow and James 2004). The property law framework
fails to adequately value non-financial contributions and displays evidence
of gender-bias, often depicting women’s contributions to the relationship as
motivated primarily by love and affection (Lawson 1996; Gordon-Bouvier
2019a).
I argue that cohabitation is erroneously understood as existing ‘outside the
law’, an active choice made by couples to avoid the legal consequences of
marriage, which the state should respect by avoiding imposing legal remedies.
However, I make the point that the state is never truly absent, no matter how
minimally it protects its subjects. By refusing to provide a remedy for those
left disadvantaged by performing dependency-work in unmarried relation-
ships, the state is sending a powerful message that it does not value this work
or those who perform it. Even more so than in marriage, the state creates
substantial imbalance in cohabiting relationships where one party undertakes
the bulk of dependency-work.
Spatial aspects of relational vulnerability are especially prevalent within
cohabiting relationships. The predominantly retrospective search for mone-
tary contributions and agreements means that connections to the home that
have been established over time are ignored in a way that is less prevalent
in the matrimonial case law. Equally, there is little to no consideration of
the ‘future self ’ and her needs. Instead, the court’s inquiry is confined to the
significance of events that have already taken place.
Chapters 6 and 7 examine resilience. I argue that a deeper understanding
of resilience and its normative aims is essential in terms of addressing the
accusations of paternalism that have been levelled at vulnerability theory,
while still maintaining the position that it is the state, not the individual, that
is ultimately responsible for resilience. In this chapter, I consider the roots
of resilience in social psychology, where it is described as a largely internal
process of overcoming and adapting to hardship. Resilience has become a
buzzword within neoliberal thought, where it is considered a ‘solution’ to the
‘problem’ of vulnerability. Neoliberal conceptions of resilience consider that
the individual is capable of overcoming adversity without assistance from the
state. By contrast, vulnerability theory regards resilience as an external set of
material assets and other resources that are controlled by the state (Fineman
2010). It rejects the neoliberal notion that the individual is able to make
herself resilient.
I explain that while I largely agree with the view of resilience as a set
of external resources, I nonetheless believe that it possesses an internal
element that has hitherto been absent from the leading vulnerability accounts.
Internal resilience—the notion of feeling resilient —is necessary to combat
the accusations that vulnerability theory is excessively paternalistic. For
dependency-workers to become resilient, they need access to resources that
reduce or eliminate the economic, psychological, and spatial harm that they
currently experience. Thus, resilience must have a normative goal of achieving
substantive equality. In addition, any state response should also aim to foster
relational (rather than individualistic) autonomy.
Finally, in Chapter 7, I apply the above normative framework of resilience
to three hypothetical state responses to relational vulnerability, evaluating
their efficacy in terms of promoting relational autonomy and substantive
equality. The first is redistribution, which is used in many jurisdictions,
including England and Wales, as a response to relationship-generated disad-
vantages. Although redistribution provides flexibility and the potential for
individualised justice, I ultimately argue that it fails to make dependency-
workers resilient, due to the fact that it permits the state to remain largely
restrained while framing the response as a dispute between private individ-
uals. The second response is state subsidy, where dependency-workers would
be paid an income from their work, symbolising the value they provide to
the state. Here, I draw on basic income and ‘cash for childcare’ schemes in
Scandinavia and Finland, considering how these could be adapted to make
the dependency-worker resilient. I argue that there is significant potential for
such a scheme, especially given its ability to provide resources throughout

the life course rather than merely at the point of relationship breakdown.
However, as has been observed in countries where state subsidy exists, it risks
perpetuating gender inequality by paying women to stay at home rather than
supporting them in the paid workforce and prompting an equal division of
dependency-work. Finally, I consider a state response based around home-
ownership, in the form of a modified deferred community of property scheme
that would award an enhanced share in the home to dependency-worker.
This would address the issue of spatial harm and lack of ontological security
that I discussed in Chapter 3. Ultimately, however, I conclude that such a
scheme would likely only benefit relatively affluent families who own their
own home, which makes it unsuitable as the sole response from the state.
I conclude that a holistic response is required, perhaps incorporating
elements of all three schemes. Crucially, the responsive state needs to revalue
dependency-work. Just as the restrained state expects financial self-sufficiency
from its citizens, the imagined responsive state could require some degree
of participation in dependency-work as part of citizenship. Realistically, this
will require a radical change in policy at various state levels, including social
welfare, employment practices, and discourses around gender and caregiving
(moving towards a position that views care as a collective, rather than private
and gendered, endeavour).
Conclusion
As I make clear throughout the book, my aim is not to produce definitive
solutions to current problems. Therefore, it is unlikely that even my imagined
dependency-valuing responsive state will be able to address all the problems
that this book will uncover. Rather, I seek to promote a change in the way
that problems are conceived and addressed. To a large extent, the groundwork
has been done by Fineman and the many scholars who adopt her model and I
am merely following in their footsteps. Yet, I hope that my theoretical frame-
work can provide answers to some of the gaps left by the universal model, as
well as paving the way for more nuanced and context-specific vulnerability
scholarship that builds upon the compelling and transformative foundation
that Fineman has created.
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2
Embodiment, Temporality,
and the Private Family
In this chapter, I argue that dependency-workers’ relational vulnerability is

a direct result of an excessively restrained state that ignores and masks the
reality of the embodied human condition. Instead, the state promotes an
artificial illusion of invulnerable personhood, whereby the individual is imag-
ined as always at the peak of physical power and capable of existing without
depending on the state or other individuals. This illusion is enabled by the
state-constructed private family, the institution that assumes primary respon-
sibility for dependency-work, thus removing its visibility and value from
public view. The private family allows the state to remain restrained and
unconcerned about unequal distribution of work and resources among its
citizens. Within the family, dependency-work remains gendered, tied to the
idealised female roles of mother, wife, or daughter, which further reduces its
perceived value.
I begin the chapter by exploring the notion of inherent embodied vulnera-
bility. I argue that embodied vulnerability is temporal, marked by fluctuations
in bodily strength and capability throughout the life course. The biological
lifecycle is characterised on the one hand by the inevitability and relentless-
ness of time’s passage and its attendant impact on the body, and on the other
by the unpredictability and unknowability of the future and its potential
harms. The duality of vulnerability’s inevitability and unpredictability neces-
sitates that all persons exist within a wide network of relationships, both with
other individuals and with the state and its institutions, including the family
(Fineman 2017). Rather than arising naturally and organically, this network is
governed and shaped by the state, and has the potential to not only empower
but also harm the individual (Nedelsky 2011; Leckey 2008).
© The Author(s) 2020 23

E. Gordon-Bouvier, Relational Vulnerability, Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61358-7_2
I then go on to consider the idealised version of personhood promoted by

liberal and neoliberal ideologies: the “autonomous liberal subject” (Fineman
2004, 2008). This is an unrealistic ideal, artificially frozen in time, free of the
inevitability and unpredictability characterising the vulnerable human condi-
tion. The state stigmatises those who are unable to conform to the ideal,
labelling it individual failure and absolving itself of responsibility. The illusion
of invulnerable personhood is made possible through the state’s structuring
of relations in such a manner as to hide evidence of dependency-work and
vulnerability from public view. The construction of the private family with
its gendered and sentimentalised roles ensures that the state can absolve itself
of responsibility for vulnerability and dependency.
Finally, I consider how the illusion of invulnerability is achieved at the
dependency-worker’s expense. Drawing on Fineman’s notion of “embedded-
ness” (Fineman 2017), I argue that dependency-workers become situated
within an unsupportive and potentially harmful relational network, whereby
the state’s institutions (primarily the private family) provide insufficient
support and resilience. Within this discussion, I acknowledge that the private
family itself is a fragile institution, increasingly liable to breakdown, following
which the dependency-worker’s relational vulnerability is often exacerbated.
Importantly, performing dependency-work also prevents an individual from
amassing resources that can provide relief against the inevitability and unpre-
dictability of inherent embodied vulnerability. This places the dependency-
worker at considerable disadvantage and exposes her to a range of preventable
harms.
Embodied Vulnerability: Temporality

and Rhythms
The physical and material body constitutes human existence, and, in that
sense, we are no different from any other living species on Earth. Yet, as
I argue in this chapter, within legal and political thought (based on liberal
theories of personhood), the human body is so often overlooked, taken
for granted, or regarded as a mere vessel for the more important mind—a
mind frequently thought capable of transcending the body. The core tenet of
vulnerability theory is that the material reality of the vulnerable body must
be at the core of state concern. As this book argues, dependency-workers are
subjected to preventable harms precisely because the materiality of the body
and its inherent limitations and dependencies are overlooked and ignored. In
my theoretical centring of the material body, I could potentially be accused
of promoting a biologically deterministic perspective, or of contradicting the

critical and postmodern feminist view that the body is primarily a product of
social construction (see, e.g., Butler 1990; Lamble 2009). However, neither
accusation would be warranted, in my view. Recognition of the body’s mate-
riality does not in any way preclude recognition that the way that it is
understood is socially constructed. Indeed, throughout the book, I expose
and critique the harmful gendered norms that constitute the private family—
norms that are frequently bolstered by appeals to biological ‘fact’ (which is
an example of biological determinism). In particular, this can be seen in the
societal and legal depiction of dependency-work as a female vocation and
thus devoid of wider social value. Additionally, socially created categories of
race, sexuality, and gender-presentation also affect how bodies that deviate
from expectation or ideal are viewed by society and experienced by those
who inhabit them. In this book, I nonetheless rely on the existence of a ‘pre-
social’ body that can be analysed in separation from the body as it comes to
be understood in social, cultural, and legal discourses. This biological body
will continue to exist and to impose various limitations on us, regardless of
how we choose to understand it and regardless of our desire or belief that the
mind can transcend and overcome the body’s limitations.
Acknowledging the vulnerable human condition involves recognising the
body’s complete dependency on its environmental surroundings. Humans,
like any other living creatures, require constant nourishment, rest, and repair
in order to function effectively. The human body is vulnerable because,
without a careful equilibrium of various natural conditions, it would very
quickly perish. As Grear (2011b, p. 40) argues, “the interrelational structure
of our embodied existence firmly locates us as part of the living order, contin-
uously intimate with its lived, pulsating movements”. The body depends on
the functioning of the ecosystem surrounding it, with even minor imbalances
bringing potentially devastating consequences.
In the pursuit of modernity, capital growth, and ‘progress’, the body’s
place in, and dependence upon, the natural order is obscured, with humans
viewing themselves as independent of, and superior to, the rest of nature
and capable of transcending bodily limitations. Sociologists have noted the
displacement of the constant rhythms and cycles of the natural body, which
have given way to a linear temporality of progress (Adam 1995; Young 1988).
This fictional vision of humanity crumbles immediately upon the occurrence
of crisis events such as famines caused by crop failures, destruction from
flooding, droughts, or fires. A pertinent illustration is that, at the time of
writing this, the world finds itself in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This has, in a very short space of time, radically transformed areas of life that
we previously took for granted and brought our inherent bodily limitations
into sharp focus. The virus has provided a stark reminder that capitalist soci-
eties governed by neoliberal politics of individualism are inherently fragile,
founded on mythical notions of permanent strength and invulnerability that
become meaningless in the face of incontrovertible evidence of our universal
helplessness.
Temporalising Embodied Vulnerability: Inevitability

and Unpredictability
I regard embodied universal vulnerability as consisting not only of the mate-

rial flesh and blood of the human body that is reliant on equilibrium within
the natural order, but also of a relationship to time—one where “[i]nstead
of containing and controlling time, life succumbs to its rhythms, direc-
tion, and forces, to the ever pressing forces of developments, growth and
decay” (Grosz 2004, p. 5). As I explore in this section, embodied vulnera-
bility is a temporally fluctuating state, progressing through different stages
throughout the biological life course from birth to death. These stages are
universal, inevitable, and irreversible. In addition to this inevitability, the
human condition is marked by the constant risk and unpredictability, against
which humans can never fully protect and insure themselves, of unfore-
seen accident or injury that forces a change to the individual’s expected life
trajectory.
Inherent embodied vulnerability consists partly of the fact that all humans
at any given time are situated at a certain point of the life course and all
are governed by its “single relentless movement forward” (Grosz 2004, p. 6).
Despite the desire to harness and govern time (Adam 1998), humankind
cannot ultimately in any meaningful sense control the stages and changes
that the body moves through before it eventually dies. As modern technology
and techniques develop, it is increasingly possible to maintain a pretence of
being able to ‘cheat time’ in terms of its impact on the body, through human
interventions such as rejuvenation surgeries, artificial reproduction, and life-
prolonging medications (Menzies 2000). Yet, while these measures may give
rise to a brief illusion of being able to stop or alter the course of time, they
are always limited, ultimately allowing biological reality to catch up. Part of
being vulnerable is the fact that this biological ‘march forward’ cannot be
stopped or avoided (see Grosz 2004, p. 5). Bodily strength is always a tempo-
rary, rather than permanent, state and will ultimately give way to the cycle of
decline and decay.
The extent to which the body is dependent on others fluctuates throughout

the life course (see Fineman 2017). Newborns are completely helpless, in
need of constant care to survive. The dependency of childhood gradually
gives way to the relative self-sufficiency of adulthood, which is marked by
an increase in physical bodily strength and control. While this time at peak
physical power may last some considerable time, there will come a point after
middle adulthood when the body begins a gradual process of decline, until
it eventually dies. There is a clear intersection between this cyclical experi-
ence of the body’s strength, and the notion of dependency. Fineman argues
that vulnerability is conceptually distinct from dependency. The former, she
argues, is constant, whereas the latter is “episodic, sporadic and largely devel-
opmental in nature” (Fineman 2008, p. 9). On the one hand, as discussed
above, all human bodies are dependent, at a basic level, upon sustenance, rest,
and ecological equilibrium. However, here, Fineman is referring to depen-
dency in a relational sense, whereby one person is either wholly or partly
dependent upon others to meet her basic needs (see also Kittay 1999), a state
that indeed is episodic and varies between individuals. In contrast to depen-
dency, embodied vulnerability is constantly present, yet it is simultaneously
fluctuating in terms of the body’s movement through the life course. Decline
in bodily strength may bring about helplessness, rendering the individual
dependent on others to meet her basic needs, but, other than in the case
of infancy, it is not inevitable. What is inevitable is that there will be a degree
of decline in bodily strength during the later part of life, which will affect
how the individual experiences her vulnerability and which may necessitate
different treatment and protections to those necessary for somebody situated
at an earlier state of the lifecycle. This means that it is simultaneously possible
to maintain that all persons are vulnerable but to also explain cogently why
children and the elderly may require special measures and protections (even
though not all elderly persons will be situated within a direct dependency-
relationship). Far from undermining the thesis of vulnerability’s universality
(as Kohn [2014], for instance, has suggested it does), focusing on an identi-
fiable group experience acknowledges that all humans are situated within the
same cycle, but that vulnerability is a condition that fluctuates through life
and is marked by periods of varying capabilities. At some stages in our lives,
we are helpless and utterly dependent on those around us, whereas at other
times, we are imbued with physical strength and can endure hardships that
those situated in different stages of the life course cannot. Yet, even if we are
currently situated at a point in the cycle characterised by physical strength,
we cannot escape the fact that this state is temporary and will inevitably be
lost. It is this inescapability that constitutes our inherent vulnerability.
The second temporal tenet of inherent vulnerability consists of the

embodied individual’s exposure to risk and unpredictability; what Reith
(2004, p. 383) has termed “the state of uncertainty- of not knowing, and
therefore being unable to control, the unfolding of the future and the state
of the world”. Just as it is impossible to halt the inevitable physical decline
brought about by the biological life course, we are also powerless in the face of
the risks to the body that the unknown future holds. As Fineman has argued,
“[w]e are beings who live with the ever-present possibility that our needs and
circumstances will change” (Fineman 2008, p. 12).
The presence of risk of harm is a reminder that we cannot escape our
bodies and, try as we might, are unable to eliminate the possibility of
falling victim to unforeseen future circumstances. We can try to insure
against it through various anticipatory and precautionary mechanisms (see
Anderson 2010), and through the material resources that can engender
resilience against potential future events, but complete elimination of the
risk is impossible. The constant presence of potential future harm illustrates
another example of the lack of human control over time’s passage. While
humans may have gained knowledge of the biological aspects of the life course
through understanding and categorising its temporal phases (Grosz 2004),
such understanding can never provide absolute certainty. Unforeseen bodily
harms in the form of accident and injury have the power to alter the course of
the expected trajectory in an instant, cutting the life itself short or rendering
even the strongest individual completely helpless and dependent on the care
of those around her. Should these unforeseen events occur, they force a recon-
ceptualisation of the individual self and her previously imagined life path. At
this point, it is no longer possible, as we too frequently do, to imagine decline
and death as far away in a distant future and of no concern in the present,
when the body ceases to function or declines at an unexpected moment of
life (see Bury 1982).
Embodied Vulnerability and Relationality

Feminist scholars have long argued that humans are not merely free-standing,
atomistic agents but, rather, are relationally constituted, situated within a
“myriad interpersonal and institutional interconnections” (Harding 2017,
p. 15). As Nedelsky argues:
Each individual is in basic ways constituted by networks of relationships of

which they are a part- networks that range from intimate relations with parents,
friends, or lovers to relations between student and teacher, welfare recipient
and caseworker, citizen and state, to being participants in a global economy,

migrants in a world of gross economic inequality, inhabitants of a world shaped
by global warming. (Nedelsky 2011, p. 19)
Acknowledgement of relationality forms a core component of the universal

vulnerability thesis. As Butler (2014) notes, “the body…is defined by the rela-
tions that makes its own life and action possible”, and “we cannot understand
bodily vulnerability outside this conception of relations”. Similarly, Fineman
(2017, p. 134) explains that, “as embodied beings, individual humans find
themselves dependent upon, and embedded within, social relationships and
institutions throughout the life course” (emphasis added). The numerous
relations between humans, and between humans and institutions, are all
intrinsically rooted in the embodied vulnerable condition and its inevitability
and unpredictability. At periods of inevitable bodily decline and, in the event
of unforeseen harm, the vulnerable subject will be particularly dependent
upon her network of relationships. Thus, it is vital that this network is
supportive and empowering, operating to mitigate harms that may otherwise
ensue.
It is important to stress that recognition of the intrinsically relational
nature of personhood does not mean uncritically accepting all these various
relationships (see Harding 2017). An individual’s relational network has the
potential to be resilience-enhancing, providing empowerment and protection
against the negative aspects of embodied vulnerability. However, as I explore
in this book, some relational networks can be disempowering and can even
directly harm the individual, producing additional harms over and above
those of the human condition. I argue that this is the case for dependency-
workers within the private family due to the state’s devaluation of the work
they perform. In distinguishing between the nature and quality of different
networks, it is necessary to note that all relationships, no matter how seem-
ingly ‘private’ or intimate, are shaped by various outside influences. This is
particularly the case for the private family, which is constructed through
numerous laws, policies, and ideologies that define its roles and functions
(Nedelsky 2011; Leckey 2008). By contrast, as I explore in more detail below,
liberal theoretical accounts depict interpersonal and family relationships as
natural, organic and, above all, freely chosen, denying the influence of the
state and its institutions on their constitution.
Just as the embodied human condition is both inevitable and unpre-
dictable, so too is the constant work required to sustain it. The definition of
dependency-work that I employ in this book encompasses all forms of social
reproduction and caregiving that occur within the family. It also extends to
the wide range of labour involved in producing and maintaining the home
for the benefit of other family members. Providing care for a person who
is unable to do so themselves represents the most time- intensive aspect of
dependency-work and it is this facet that can be unpredictable. It cannot be
foreseen whether our own body will fall victim to future accident or injury,
and nor can it be predicted whether this fate will befall someone in our rela-
tional network, potentially requiring us to abandon our own expected life
trajectory to provide the necessary care and support. While it might be said
in loose terms (albeit that not all parenthood is planned), that becoming a
parent involves foreseeable dependency-work with relatively clear temporal
boundaries and an identifiable endpoint, decreasing in intensity as children
gradually acquire maturity and increased independence, the same is not true
for elderly care. The existence of a growing ageing population within a neolib-
eral society that provides relatively minimal state support means that there
is an increased likelihood of an adult child being called upon to perform
dependency-work for her elderly parents. Orel et al. (2004, p. 39) have
termed elderly care a “disruptive life-event” for adult children or other family
members, as it has a substantial impact on the dependency-worker’s ability to
make provision for her own old age.
Relationality, Temporality, and Reliance on the Future

Self
The vulnerable individual’s relational network can provide a protective buffer,

or resilience, against potential hardship resulting from embodied vulnera-
bility. While the physical effects of ageing or illness cannot be completely
eliminated or avoided, the individual’s experience of these will vary greatly
depending on the degree of relational support she has available, both from
other individuals, or directly from the state and its institutions. In addition to
this, there is a further temporal dimension of human relationality that relates
to the extent to which the individual herself can provide some insurance and
protection for her future self through amassing resources in the present day
that can be used later. As I explored above, our bodily strength fluctuates and
follows cycles and patterns throughout the life course. However far away it
may appear at times, bodily decline is an inevitability for us all as we age.
Accident and illness are not inevitable but remain a constant risk, no matter
how prudent we imagine ourselves to be. As a result, as well as relying on
others and upon state institutions, our future, less physically powerful selves
depend upon the actions and decisions we take in the present day, which will
come to affect us in later life. Material resources and assets (in the form of
savings, real property, or pensions) can be amassed during times of physical
strength in order to ensure that future physical deterioration becomes less of

a daunting prospect. It ensures a limited degree of certainty in the face of
an otherwise unknown future. It is never a guarantee that these resources will
remain available to the individual at a later date (or that they will be sufficient
to meet her needs), but they nonetheless provide an element of reassurance
that is stronger than reliance on unknown future state support.
Under the restrained state, the future self is particularly reliant on the
actions of the present self because there is no guarantee that the state and
its institutions will offer any provision in future periods of decline. In the
UK, the welfare state has been in gradual retreat for several decades, with
successive government policies leading to the erosion of funding for the
National Health Service, withdrawal of public legal funding, and a reduc-
tion in pension provision. This has been coupled with a rising retirement
age and an increased expectation of self-sufficiency into old age. As I explore
in more detail below, neoliberal state policies promote individual respon-
sibility throughout life with seemingly little concern for issues relating to
bodily decline or dependency. Therefore, in a neoliberal era, the individual
is expected, rather than merely advised, to take actions in the present day that
will provide a greater measure of material security for old age or for unfore-
seen illness or accident. Individual ownership of material resources acquires
particular significance because the future state and its institutions are unlikely
to provide adequate resilience against declining bodily strength.
The State’s Role in Shaping Relational Networks
As I explained above, the relational structures in which we all exist do not

arise organically in a state of nature, but rather are shaped and structured
by a myriad of external influences, ultimately governed by the state. Here,
I employ a broad definition of state, acknowledging that “the domain we
call the state is not a thing, system, or subject but a significantly unbounded
terrain of powers and techniques, an ensemble of discourses, rules, and prac-
tices” (Brown 1992, p. 12). My focus in this book centres particularly on law’s
influence on relational networks. Law provides an especially powerful mode
of regulation due to the power it claims for itself and the reverence that it is
afforded. It lends credence to socially constructed concepts, reinforcing them
as true and incapable of challenge (Smart 1989).
A core argument in this book is that the way that the state, through law
and legal discourses, chooses to structure the private family can lead to some
individuals suffering additional hardship that cannot be directly attributed
to the embodied human condition and is therefore a more-than-ordinary
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Dircenna klugi, 66
discoidalis, Erebia, 133
discoidalis, Thecla, 155
disippus, Basilarchia, 30, 113
dumetorum, Thecla, 158
dymas, Melitæa, 86
edwardsi, Thecla 152

elathea, Terias, 183
Epargyreus, genus, 200;
tityrus, 200
epipsodea, Erebia, 133
epixanthe, Chrysophanus, 161
Erebia, genus, 132;
discoidalis, 133;
epipsodea, 133
Eresia, genus, 89;
frisia, 90;
texana, 90
Erycinidæ, Family, 16, 58, 144
Erynnis, genus, 211;
attalus, 212;
leonardus, 213;
manitoba, 211;
metea, 212;
sassacus, 212;
uncas, 213
ethlius, Calpodes, 216
eubule, Catopsilia, 178
Euchloë, genus, 175;
ausonides, 176;
genutia, 176;
hyantis, 177;
rosa, 177;
sara, 177
Eudamus, genus, 200;
proteus, 200
eufala, Lerodea, 216
Eumæus, genus, 147;
atala, 148;
minyas, 148
Eunica, genus, 104;
monima, 105
Euphyes, genus, 218;
metacomet, 218;
verna, 218
Euplœinæ, Subfamily, 61, 62
Euptoieta claudia, 71
eurydice, Meganostoma, 179
eurymedon, Papilio, 191
eurytheme, Colias, 181
eurytus, Neonympha, 129
exilis, Lycæna, 167
fabricii, Grapta, 93
faunus, Grapta, 93
favonius, Thecla, 150
Feniseca, genus, 159;
tarquinius, 34, 160
feronia, Ageronia, 123
flora, Chlorippe, 116
fornax, Ageronia, 123
frisia, Eresia, 90
funeralis, Thanaos, 207
garita, Oarisma, 209

gemma, Neonympha, 128
genutia, Euchloë, 176
glaucus, Papilio, 188
Grapta, genus, 20, 92;
comma, 93;
fabricii, 93;
faunus, 93;
interrogationis, 93;
progne, 96;
silenus, 95
grunus, Thecla, 152
Gyrocheilus, genus, 133;
tritonia, 134
halesus, Thecla, 149

harrisi, Melitæa, 85
hayhursti, Pholisora, 204
Heliconiinæ, Subfamily, 61, 67
Heliconius charithonius, 67
helloides, Chrysophanus, 162
henrici, Thecla, 157
Hesperia, genus, 202;
centaureæ, 203;
tessellata, 202;
xanthus, 203
Hesperiidæ, Family, 22, 36, 58, 198
Hesperiinæ, Subfamily, 199
Heterocera, Suborder, 12, 13
heteronea, Lycæna, 169
hianna, Lerema, 222
hobomok, Atrytone, 221
horatius, Thanaos, 207
huntera, Pyrameis, 100
huron, Atalopedes, 214
hyantis, Euchloë, 177
Hylephila, genus, 215;
phylæus, 215
Hypanartia, genus, 117;
lethe, 118
Hypolimnas, genus, 108;
misippus, 109
hypophlæus, Chrysophanus, 161
icelus, Thanaos, 205

idalia, Argynnis, 73
ilaire, Tachyris, 171
indra, Papilio, 196
inornata, Cœnonympha, 131
Insecta, Class, 59
interrogationis, Grapta, 93
iole, Nathalis, 175
irus, Thecla, 156
isophthalma, Lycæna, 167
Ithomiinæ, Subfamily, 61, 64
j-album, Vanessa, 98
janais, Synchloë, 91
jatrophæ, Anartia, 104
jucunda, Terias, 184
julia, Colænis, 69
Junonia, genus, 102;
cœnia, 103
jutta, Œneis, 141
Juvenalis, Thanaos, 206
karwinskii, Smyrna, 118

katahdin, Œneis, 141
keewaydin, Colias, 181
klugi, Dircenna, 66
Kricogonia, genus, 178;
lyside, 178;
terissa, 178
læta, Thecla, 157

leonardus, Erynnis, 213
Lepidoptera, Order, 59
Lerema, genus, 222;
accius, 222;
hianna, 222
Lerodea, genus, 216;
eufala, 216
lethe, Hypanartia, 118
leto, Argynnis, 74
libya, Pholisora, 204
Libythea, genus, 143;
bachmani, 143
Libytheinæ, Subfamily, 61, 142
Limochores, genus, 217;
palatka, 218;
pontiac, 217;
thaumas, 217
liparops, Thecla, 154
lisa, Terias, 183
lorquini, Basilarchia, 113
lucia, Lycæna, 165
lucilius, Thanaos, 205
Lycæna, genus, 162;
acmon, 168;
ammon, 168;
amyntula, 166;
aster, 163;
comyntas, 166;
couperi, 163;
exilis, 167;
heteronea, 169;
isophthalma, 167;
lucia, 165;
lygdamus, 169;
marginata, 165;
marina, 169;
melissa, 164;
neglecta, 165;
nigra, 165;
pseudargiolus, 165;
scudderi, 164;
theona, 167
Lycænidæ, Family, 16, 58, 147
lycaste, Ceratinia, 65
lycidas, Achalarus, 201
lygdamus, Lycæna, 169
lyside, Kricogonia, 178
m-album, Thecla, 149

macglashani, Melitæa, 84
machaon, Papilio, 195
macouni, Œneis, 142
mandan, Pamphila, 209
manitoba, Erynnis, 211
marcellus, Papilio, 187
marcia, Phyciodes, 87
marginata, Lycæna, 165
marina, Lycæna, 169
martialis, Thanaos, 207
massasoit, Poanes, 219
meadi, Satyrus, 138
Meganostoma, genus, 179;
cæsonia, 179;
eurydice, 179
Megathyminæ, Subfamily, 222
Megathymus, genus, 223;
yuccæ, 223
melinus, Thecla, 151
melissa, Lycæna, 164
Melitæa, genus, 83;
chalcedon, 84;
dymas, 86;
harrisi, 85;
macglashani, 84;
perse, 85;
phaëton, 83
metacomet, Euphyes, 218
metea, Erynnis, 212
mexicana, Terias, 183
milberti, Vanessa, 98
minyas, Eumæus, 148
misippus, Hypolimnas, 109
monima, Eunica, 105
montinus, Brenthis, 81
monuste, Pieris, 172
Morphinæ, Subfamily, 60
morrisoni, Pyrrhanæa, 121
myrina, Brenthis, 81
mystic, Thymelicus, 214
nais, Polystigma, 146

napi, Pieris, 173
Nathalis, genus, 175;
iole, 175
neglecta, Lycæna, 165
Neominois, genus, 134;
dionysius, 135;
ridingsi, 134
Neonympha, genus, 127;
eurytus, 129;
gemma, 128;
phocion, 128;
rubricata, 130;
sosybius, 129
nephele, Satyrus, 137
nicippe, Terias, 182
nigra, Lycæna, 165
niphon, Thecla, 156
numitor, Ancyloxypha, 210
nycteis, Phyciodes, 87
Nymphalidæ, Family, 15, 16, 36, 58, 59
Nymphalinæ, Subfamily, 61, 68
Oarisma, genus, 209;

garita, 209;
powesheik, 210
ochracea, Cœnonympha, 131
ocola, Prenes, 216
odius, Aganisthos, 119
Œneis, genus, 140;
jutta, 141;
katahdin, 141;
macouni, 142;
semidea, 141
oleracea, Pieris, 173
otho, Thymelicus, 213
palamedes, Papilio, 193

palatka, Limochores, 218
pallida, Pieris, 173
palmeri, Apodemia, 145
Pamphila, genus, 209;
mandan, 209
Pamphilinæ, Subfamily, 208
Papilio, genus, 10, 20, 187;
ajax, 187;
aliaska, 195;
asterias, 195;
asterius, 195;
brevicauda, 195;
cresphontes, 192;
daunus, 191;
eurymedon, 191;
glaucus, 188;
indra, 196;
machaon, 195;
marcellus, 187;
palamedes, 193;
philenor, 30, 36, 197;
pilumnus, 192;
polydamas, 197;
polyxenes, 193;
rutulus, 191;
troilus, 193;
turnus, 10, 188;
walshi, 187;
zelicaon, 196;
zolicaon, 197
Papilionidæ, Family, 58, 170
Papilioninæ, Subfamily, 186
Paramecera, genus, 139;
xicaque, 139
Parnassiinæ, Subfamily, 185
Parnassius, genus, 20, 186;
smintheus, 186
paulus, Satyrus, 137
peckius, Polites, 215
pegala, Satyrus, 136
perse, Melitæa, 85
petronius, Thanaos, 206
phaëton, Melitæa, 83
philenor, Papilio, 30, 36, 197
philodice, Colias, 180
phocion, Neonympha, 128
Pholisora, genus, 203;
alpheus, 204;
catullus, 203;
hayhursti, 204;
libya, 204
Phycanassa, genus, 219;
aaroni, 220;
viator, 219
Phyciodes, genus, 86;
batesi, 88;
camillus, 88;
marcia, 87;
nycteis, 87;
picta, 89;
pratensis, 88;
tharos, 87
phylæus, Hylephila, 215
picta, Phyciodes, 89
Pierinæ, Subfamily, 170
Pieris, genus, 171;
bryoniæ, 173;
monuste, 172;
napi, 173;
oleracea, 173;
pallida, 173;
protodice, 172;
rapæ, 173
pilumnus, Papilio, 192
plexippus, Anosia, 10, 20, 30, 36, 63
Poanes, genus, 219;
massasoit, 219
pocohontas, Atrytone, 221
Polites, genus, 215;
peckius, 215
polydamas, Papilio, 197
Polystigma, genus, 146;
nais, 146
polyxenes, Papilio, 193
pontiac, Limochores, 217
portlandia, Debis, 126
powesheik, Oarisma, 210
pratensis, Phyciodes, 88
Prenes, genus, 216;
ocola, 216
procris, Copœodes, 211
progne, Grapta, 96
proterpia, Terias, 185
proteus, Eudamus, 200
protodice, Pieris, 172
pseudargiolus, Lycæna, 165
pylades, Thorybes, 201
Pyrameis, genus, 99;
atalanta, 100;
cardui, 102;
huntera, 100
Pyrrhanæa, genus, 120;
andria, 121;
morrisoni, 121
Pyrrhopyge, genus, 199;
araxes, 199
Pyrrhopyginæ, Subfamily, 199
rapæ, Pieris, 173

rhodope, Argynnis, 80
Rhopalocera, Suborder, 12, 13
ridingsi, Neominois, 134
rosa, Euchloë, 177
rubricata, Neonympha, 130
rutulus, Papilio, 191
samoset, Amblyscirtes, 209

sara, Euchloë, 177
sassacus, Erynnis, 212
Satyrinæ, Subfamily, 60, 61, 124
Satyrodes, genus, 126;
canthus, 127
Satyrus, genus, 135;
alope, 137;
charon, 138;
meadi, 138;
nephele, 137;
paulus, 137;
pegala, 136;
sthenele, 139
scudderi, Lycæna, 164
semidea, Œneis, 141
silenus, Grapta, 95
simæthis, Thecla, 155
smintheus, Parnassius, 186
Smyrna, genus, 20, 118;
karwinskii, 118
sosybius, Neonympha, 129
steneles, Victorina, 124
sthenele, Satyrus, 139
Synchloë, genus, 91;
janais, 91
Tachyris, genus, 171;

ilaire, 171
tarquinius, Feniseca, 34, 160
Terias, genus, 181;
delia, 183;
elathea, 183;
jucunda, 184;
lisa, 183;
mexicana, 183;
nicippe, 182;
proterpia, 185
terissa, Kricogonia, 178
tessellata, Hesperia, 202
texana, Eresia, 90
textor, Amblyscirtes, 209
Thanaos, genus, 205;
brizo, 205;
funeralis, 207;
horatius, 207;
icelus, 205;
juvenalis, 206;
lucilius, 205;
martialis, 207;
petronius, 206
tharos, Phyciodes, 87
thaumas, Limochores, 217
Thecla, genus, 20, 22, 148;
acadica, 153;
augustus, 155;
autolycus, 151;
behri, 158;
calanus, 153;
clytie, 159;
crysalus, 150;
damon, 154;
discoidalis, 155;
dumetorum, 158;
edwardsi, 152;
favonius, 150;
grunus, 152;
halesus, 149;
henrici, 157;
irus, 156;
læta, 157;
liparops, 154;
m-album, 149;
melinus, 151;
niphon, 156;
simæthis, 155;
titus, 158;
wittfeldi, 151
theona, Lycæna, 167
thoë, Chrysophanus, 161
Thorybes, genus, 201;
bathyllus, 201;
pylades, 201
Thymelicus, genus, 213;
brettus, 213;
mystic, 214;
otho, 213
Timetes, genus, 107;
coresia, 108
titus, Thecla, 158
tityrus, Epargyreus, 200
tritonia, Gyrocheilus, 134
troilus, Papilio, 193
turnus, Papilio, 20, 188
uncas, Erynnis, 213
Vanessa, genus, 96;

antiopa, 97;
j-album, 98;
milberti, 98
vanillæ, Dione, 70
verna, Euphyes, 218
vialis, Amblyscirtes, 208
viator, Phycanassa, 219
Victorina, genus, 123;
steneles, 124
vitellius, Atrytone, 220
walshi, Papilio, 187

weidemeyeri, Basilarchia, 112
wittfeldi, Thecla, 151
wrighti, Copœodes, 211
xanthoides, Chrysophanus, 160

xanthus, Hesperia, 203
xicaque, Paramecera, 139
yuccæ, Megathymus, 223
zabulon, Atrytone, 221

zelicaon, Papilio, 196
zolicaon, Papilio, 197
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Relational Vulnerability: Theory, Law

and the Private Family 1st Edition Ellen

Private Law and Practical Reason: Essays on John

Oxford Studies in Private Law Theory: Volume I Paul B

Philosophical Foundations of Children’s and Family Law

The Theory of the Marketing Firm Gordon Foxall

Private Capital Investing: The Handbook of Private Debt

Cryptocurrencies in Public and Private Law David Fox

Chatbots And The Domestication Of AI: A Relational

Twitter, the Public Sphere, and the Chaos of Online

More information about this series at

Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies

Cover illustration: Contributor: Stone Bay Photography/Alamy Stock Photo

1 Introducing Relational Vulnerability 1

2 Embodiment, Temporality, and the Private Family 23

3 Relational Vulnerability: Economic, Psychological, Spatial 51

4 Vulnerability, Law, and the Married Family 81

5 Vulnerability, Law, and the Unmarried Family 107

6 Theorising Resilience 135

7 Imagining the Responsive State 163

8 Concluding Thoughts 189

Abbott v Abbott [2007] UKPC 53

Hyman v Hyman [1929] AC 601

England and Wales

© The Author(s) 2020 1

at Emory University, USA, was founded in 2008, and organises sympo-

a mask for the inevitable dependency-work that is necessary to sustain the

Being Vulnerable: The Inherent Human

encouraging a fundamental reordering of the state and its institutions, one

Expanding the Boundaries

resilience. It also reveals the extent to which vulnerability and resilience, as

on the individual’s own perception of her own vulnerability and resilience,

the controversial Universal Credit scheme that operates in the UK repre-

A Theory of Relational Vulnerability: Core Claims

My first claim is that vulnerability should be understood as multifarious

vulnerability occurs when external circumstances, such as war or incarcer-

My second claim is that vulnerability, both the inherent and embodied

including leaving home, employment, marriage or partnering, childrearing,

disadvantages are generally confined to the point at which the relationship

Law, Relationality, and the Private Family

Although I discuss various state institutions, my main focus in this book

others within their relational network. They struggle to make provision

growing disapproval and accusation of female ‘gold-digging’ (Thompson

such a scheme, especially given its ability to provide resources throughout

Fineman, M. A. (2014). Vulnerability, Resilience, and LGBT Youth. Temple Political

In this chapter, I argue that dependency-workers’ relational vulnerability is

© The Author(s) 2020 23

I then go on to consider the idealised version of personhood promoted by

Embodied Vulnerability: Temporality

of promoting a biologically deterministic perspective, or of contradicting the

Temporalising Embodied Vulnerability: Inevitability

I regard embodied universal vulnerability as consisting not only of the mate-

The extent to which the body is dependent on others fluctuates throughout

The second temporal tenet of inherent vulnerability consists of the

Embodied Vulnerability and Relationality

Each individual is in basic ways constituted by networks of relationships of

and caseworker, citizen and state, to being participants in a global economy,

Acknowledgement of relationality forms a core component of the universal

Relationality, Temporality, and Reliance on the Future

The vulnerable individual’s relational network can provide a protective buffer,

strength in order to ensure that future physical deterioration becomes less of

The State’s Role in Shaping Relational Networks

As I explained above, the relational structures in which we all exist do not