From the White Man’s Burden to the Responsible Saviour: Justifying Humanitarian Intervention in Libya

The digital writing of human rights narratives: Failure, recognition, and the unruly inscriptions of database infrastructures

“…The result is a plot that often reinscribes the uneven power relations of postcolonial globalisation by positioning the Global South as either barbaric savages or helpless victims who require the maturating assistance of a Western Saviour (Mutua, 2001). The ‘Kony 2012’ campaign, which invited Western audiences to help find and capture Ugandan rebel leader, Joseph Kony, as well as the recent framing of human rights issues in both North Korea and Libya represent recent iterations of this neocolonial narrative grammar (Chazal & Pocrnic, 2016; Song, 2021; Xypolia, 2022).…”

Accessorizing development: Fundraising bracelets for International Development as a New Development Responsibility

“…Emerging in the United States during the late 19th century, the concept has been understood as a duty asserted by White people to manage the affairs of non‐White people; it has been used to justify colonization—specifically, its civilizing mission (Bandyopadhyay, 2019). ‘Civilizing’ efforts fundamental to the White Man's Burden are now critiqued within contemporary ID work and attention is paid to discourses and practices that reproduce western standards for development (Bowden, 2009; Donnelley, 1998; Pailey, 2019; Xypolia, 2022). Although ID, like colonialism, has been historically conceptualized as a masculine space (Xypolia, 2022), women are increasingly and now disproportionately engaged in fundraising for, working in and caring about ID (Budabin & Hudson, 2020; Heron, 2007) and in volunteer tourism endeavours (Bandyopadhyay, 2019; Kipp et al, 2021).…”

“…‘Civilizing’ efforts fundamental to the White Man's Burden are now critiqued within contemporary ID work and attention is paid to discourses and practices that reproduce western standards for development (Bowden, 2009; Donnelley, 1998; Pailey, 2019; Xypolia, 2022). Although ID, like colonialism, has been historically conceptualized as a masculine space (Xypolia, 2022), women are increasingly and now disproportionately engaged in fundraising for, working in and caring about ID (Budabin & Hudson, 2020; Heron, 2007) and in volunteer tourism endeavours (Bandyopadhyay, 2019; Kipp et al, 2021). Yet women have been excluded in analyses of ‘White Burden’ in the context of ID and largely from examinations of how the discourses of responsibility for ID are changing.…”