In this paper we introduce the concept of ambient vulnerability. Ambience concerns the overlapping and shifting material forms that constitute a person’s surroundings – including (but not limited to) air quality, flow, temperature, humidity, noise and light – that contribute to their health, wellbeing and (dis)comfort. Building on a growing movement across a range of disciplines towards the study of socialmaterial relations, we suggest that ambience is an important approach for critically understanding the complex interconnections among nature, society, and technology in the production of lived ecologies. The vulnerability framing locates our expressly political understanding of ambience, reflecting and reinforcing social inequalities. Moreover, different types of vulnerability across the dimensions of the ambient environment are interdependent and accumulate, often intensifying one another. We delineate some of the key features of ambient vulnerability, specifically: cumulative impacts; permeability; unevenness; phenomenological differentiation; and multiple temporalities. The paper shows how ambient environments are shifting and complex, a turbulent milieu of contextual factors, but they are essential to our understanding of social and ecological vulnerability in the 21st century.

在本文中，我们介绍了环境脆弱性的概念。氛围涉及构成人周围环境的重叠和变化的物质形式，包括（但不限于）空气质量、气流、温度、湿度、噪音和光线，这些因素有助于人们的健康、福祉和（不适）舒适。基于跨学科的社会物质关系研究不断发展的运动，我们认为氛围是批判性地理解自然、社会和技术在生活生态生产中复杂相互联系的重要方法。脆弱性框架定位了我们对氛围的明确政治理解，反映并强化了社会不平等。此外，周围环境各个维度的不同类型的脆弱性是相互依存和累积的，往往会相互加剧。我们描述了环境脆弱性的一些关键特征，特别是： 累积影响；渗透性；不均匀；现象学分化；和多重时间性。该论文展示了周围环境如何变化和复杂，这是一个由背景因素组成的动荡环境，但它们对于我们理解 21 世纪的社会和生态脆弱性至关重要。