Editorial introduction: Understanding modern humanitarianism

Wilkinson, Iain

doi:10.1111/issj.12081

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 15 publications

(13 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It should go without saying that the humanitarian imagination and endeavour ‘has never been free of geography’ (Reid‐Henry, 2014, p. 418). Yet, engagement with humanitarianism within geography has tended to be far more limited in its conceptual and empirical reach than, for example, anthropology—where medical humanitarianism has garnered particular attention—(Beshar & Stellmach, 2017; Redfield & Bornstein, 2010; Ticktin, 2014), sociology (Roth, 2015; Wilkinson, 2014a, 2014b), or international relations (Barnett, 2011). Indeed, a recent piece ‘contextualising COVID‐19 geographically’ (Sparke & Anguelov, 2020) shows that of the seven sub‐themes of enquiry and analysis that might serve to situate COVID‐19 within the discipline, a humanitarian frame should arguably have been an eighth.…”

Section: Geographies Of Crisis: Humanitarianiam Development Global He...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanitarian inversions:COVID‐19 as crisis

Herrick

Kelly

Soulard

2022

Trans Inst British Geog

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

COVID‐19 is a multi‐spectral crisis that has added an acute layer over a panoply of complex emergencies across the world. In the process, it has not only exposed actually‐existing emergencies, but also exacerbated them as the global gaze has turned inward. As a crisis, COVID‐19 straddles and challenges the boundaries between humanitarianism, development and global health – the frames and categories through which emergencies are so often understood and intervened upon. Reflection on these fundamental categories is, we argue, an important geographical endeavour. Drawing on Geoffrey Bowker’s analytical lens of the ‘infrastructural inversion’, we explore how humanitarianism has been upended by Covid‐19 along two axes that are of core concern to geographers: (1) the spatial; and (2) the temporal. We first contextualise current debates on the humanitarian endeavour and its future within recent geographical research. We then set out the complex structure by which COVID‐19 has been both imagined and intervened upon as a humanitarian emergency. In so doing, we then pave the way for a deeper empirical analysis of the spatial and temporal inversions that have been brought forth by COVID‐19. The paper concludes by examining the conceptual value of the ‘inversion’ in developing geographical research agendas better attuned to the increasing porosity of humanitarianism, development and global health.

show abstract