Editorial to the special section "Geographies of Vulnerability and Resilience – Critical Explorations"

In the past 30 years the concept of vulnerability has been an important paradigm in human geography and development studies. Vulnerability analyses have signi icantly enhanced our understanding of everyday life under conditions of poverty and food insecurity in the Global South and of people’s capacities to live with risks and natural hazards (Wisner et al. 2004; Bohle 2007c). A vulnerability perspective has also been adopted by practitioners and served as a guiding principle for policies and development interventions (e.g. IPCC 2015). In the last ten years, we have, however, witnessed a paradigm shift from vulnerability to resilience, a concept that has its roots in ecosystems science and psychology (Luthar 2003; Folke 2006). Some have argued that resilience and vulnerability are like two sides of a coin and are thus compatible (Miller et al. 2010). For many, resilience thinking seems to be more positive and promising. Others argue that the systems perspective of resilience thinking cannot fully capture the everyday life experiences of poverty, hunger and exploitation and people’s creative responses to crises, which stands at the centre of vulnerability research. Some have also argued that resilience thinking is largely apolitical and uncritical of power structures at different scales, and thus plead for an integration of social theories and politics in the concept (Bohle et al. 2009; Cannon and Müller-Mahn 2010; Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013). With this special section we would like to take stock of the debate and reconsider some of the basic conceptual questions in vulnerability and resilience research. What does the paradigm shift from vulnerability to resilience mean for doing research? What roles do social theories, political discourses and critical thinking play for each concept? Where is the geography in contemporary vulnerability and resilience research? And what is the role of human agency for vulnerability and resilience?