The problem of understanding modern humanitarianism and its sociological value

Wilkinson, Iain

doi:10.1111/issj.12073

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…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

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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.

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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

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“…Fassin, 2012;Ticktin, 2006;Malkki, 2015;Feldman, 2012) have described how the moral project of NGOs humanitarianism frequently is unwittingly coopted or come to collaborate with the same power structures that NGOs are set out to critique, circumvent or present a remedy against. Humanitarianism includes a set of relations with deep-seated inequality of power and capacity between the giver and the receiver (Barnett, 2011;Bornstein, 2009;Bornstein & Redfield, 2011;Fassin, 2012;Feldman, 2008;Redfield, 2013;Wilkinson, 2017;Barnett, 2016, p. 14). The idea of humanitarianism as a regime of care has been critiqued in-depth (e.g.…”

Section: E Politics Of Humanitarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Humanitarianism is not a value-neutral field: it is a practice 'based on the relations and hierarchies of power utilized for the governance of populations' (Pallister-Wilkins, 2015, p. 59). The manifestations of humanitarianism are wide-ranging: it carries a vast number of different meanings and ideological assumptions (Wilkinson, 2017). These scholars have demonstrated the hegemonic status of humanitarian politics, its culturally laden ethics, and its depoliticizing forms of humanitarian operation and governance.…”

Section: E Politics Of Humanitarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The temporality of humanitarianism : Provincializing everyday volunteer practices at European borders

Bendixsen¹,

Sandberg

2021

Intersections

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While recognizing that ‘volunteering for refugees’ is entangled in ethical and political power dimensions, this article will discuss how we can ethnographically explore the everyday humanitarian practices of volunteers as shaped in intrinsic ways by their mode of being in the world as ethically concerned human beings. Building on recent scholarship within the anthropology of humanitarianism in which local and everyday versions of humanitarian practice are foregrounded, we wish to further the understanding of everyday volunteer practices through establishing a lens of temporality. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews among small-scale volunteer networks and NGOs in Greece and in Northern Europe working in response to the refugee influx to Europe since 2015, we suggest three different modalities of volunteering among non-professionals, which we designate: temporality of crisis, which concentrates on the impulse to help as an immediate response to a critical moment in time, temporality of care expressing the asymmetrical presences in the field of volunteering and temporality of reflexivity, which highlights ambivalence and doubt as intrinsic to the volunteer practices. In this article, we aim for a provincializing of everyday humanitarian practices and explore humanitarianism ‘from the ground’ and in specific locations and times.

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“…It is argued that we need to engage with a critique of critique that examines the values that are advanced as counterposed to humanitarianism in a bid to evaluate their human worth and practical consequences. Here we are made to adopt a standpoint in many longstanding debates surrounding the human values at stake in the attempt to broker rationality with sentiment; and particularly in connection to the ways this is played out in the relationship between critical thought and moral conduct (Wilkinson and Kleinman ).…”

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confidence: 99%