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Proposing an aggregative conception of vulnerability, this book provides a new framework for understanding individual experience of, and resilience to, vulnerability and promotes the need to find remedies for exposure to involuntary dependence, the unsecured future and the painful past.

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List of Tables Acknowledgements Introduction: The Challenge of Vulnerability PART I: DEFINING VULNERABILITY Vulnerability to Adverse Events Towards Sociology of Vulnerability The First Form of Vulnerability The Second Form of Vulnerability The Third Form of Vulnerability PART II: CONFRONTING VULNERABILITY The Nature of Remedies Acts of Responsibility Objectives of Promising Functions of Forgiveness Conclusion Bibliography Index

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"The Challenges of Vulnerability, is a timely and extremely valuable contribution to the current theoretical and political concern with vulnerability, especially in the advanced capitalist nation-states." - International Sociology

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BARBARA MISZTAL is Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester, UK. She is the author of Public Intellectuals and the Public Good: Creativity and Courage, Trust in Modern Society, Informality, Social Theory and Contemporary Practice, and Social Theories of Remembering.

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