The sovereignty–vulnerability nexus in postcolonial justice

In postcolonial justice systems, vulnerability is not only a shared human condition; it is also a product.

Drawing on twenty-five years of work inside courts, police services and ministries across the Caribbean and East Africa, Dianne Williams argues that vulnerability is manufactured by institutional design, then located in the bodies and communities that carry it, while sovereignty is reaffirmed through that very production.

Through two cases, eastern Congo and East African domestic workers in the Gulf, the lecture introduces the concept of nested extraction and a sovereignty-vulnerability nexus, and asks what it would take for accountability to travel upward.

This lecture is part of the PhD course ‘Gender, Sexuality and Vulnerability in Theory and Methodology’, hosted through a partnership between the National Research School in Gender Research and the University of Bergen’s Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK).

The lecture open to all