J. Paul Narkunas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280308
- eISBN:
- 9780823281534
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280308.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Reified Life: Speculative Capital and the Ahuman Condition addresses the most pressing political question of the 21st century: what forms of life are free and what forms are perceived legally and ...
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Reified Life: Speculative Capital and the Ahuman Condition addresses the most pressing political question of the 21st century: what forms of life are free and what forms are perceived legally and economically as surplus or expendable, human and otherwise. Reified Life theorizes the dangerous social implications of a posthuman future, whereby human agency is secondary to algorithmic processes, digital protocols, speculative financial instruments, and nonhuman market and technological forces. Narkunas contends that it is premature to speak of a posthuman or inhuman future, or employ an ‘ism, given how dynamic and contingent human practices and their material figurations can be. Over several chapters he diagnoses the rise of “market humans,” the instrumentalization of culture to decide the life worth living along utilitarian categories, and the varied ways human rights and humanitarianism actually throw members of the species like refugees outside the human order. Reified Life argues against posthumanist calls to abandon the human and humanism, and instead proposes the ahuman to think alongside the human. Reified Life elaborates speculative fictions as critical mechanisms for envisioning alternative futures and freedoms from the domineering forces of speculative capital, whose fictions have become our realities. Narkunas offers, to that end, a novel interpretation of the post-anthropocentric turn in the humanities by linking the diminished centrality of humanism to the waning dominion of nation-states over their populations and the intensification of financial capitalism, which reconfigures politics along economic categories of risk management.Less
Reified Life: Speculative Capital and the Ahuman Condition addresses the most pressing political question of the 21st century: what forms of life are free and what forms are perceived legally and economically as surplus or expendable, human and otherwise. Reified Life theorizes the dangerous social implications of a posthuman future, whereby human agency is secondary to algorithmic processes, digital protocols, speculative financial instruments, and nonhuman market and technological forces. Narkunas contends that it is premature to speak of a posthuman or inhuman future, or employ an ‘ism, given how dynamic and contingent human practices and their material figurations can be. Over several chapters he diagnoses the rise of “market humans,” the instrumentalization of culture to decide the life worth living along utilitarian categories, and the varied ways human rights and humanitarianism actually throw members of the species like refugees outside the human order. Reified Life argues against posthumanist calls to abandon the human and humanism, and instead proposes the ahuman to think alongside the human. Reified Life elaborates speculative fictions as critical mechanisms for envisioning alternative futures and freedoms from the domineering forces of speculative capital, whose fictions have become our realities. Narkunas offers, to that end, a novel interpretation of the post-anthropocentric turn in the humanities by linking the diminished centrality of humanism to the waning dominion of nation-states over their populations and the intensification of financial capitalism, which reconfigures politics along economic categories of risk management.
Jonathan Benthall
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781784993085
- eISBN:
- 9781526124005
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784993085.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Middle Eastern Cultural Anthropology
This book is the fruit of twenty years’ reflection on Islamic charities, both in practical terms and as a key to understand the crisis in contemporary Islam. On the one hand Islam is undervalued as a ...
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This book is the fruit of twenty years’ reflection on Islamic charities, both in practical terms and as a key to understand the crisis in contemporary Islam. On the one hand Islam is undervalued as a global moral and political force whose admirable qualities are exemplified in its strong tradition of charitable giving. On the other hand, it suffers from a crisis of authority that cannot be blamed entirely on the history of colonialism and stigmatization to which Muslims have undoubtedly been subjected – most recently, as a result of the “war on terror”.
The book consists of seventeen previously published chapters, with a general Introduction and new prefatory material for each chapter. The first nine chapters review the current situation of Islamic charities from many different viewpoints – theological, historical, diplomatic, legal, sociological and ethnographic – with first-hand data from the United States, Britain, Israel–Palestine, Mali and Indonesia. Chapters 10 to 17 expand the coverage to explore the potential for a twenty-first century “Islamic humanism” that would be devised by Muslims in the light of the human sciences and institutionalized throughout the Muslim world. This means addressing contentious topics such as religious toleration and the meaning of jihad.
The intended readership includes academics and students at all levels, professionals concerned with aid and development, and all who have an interest in the future of Islam.Less
This book is the fruit of twenty years’ reflection on Islamic charities, both in practical terms and as a key to understand the crisis in contemporary Islam. On the one hand Islam is undervalued as a global moral and political force whose admirable qualities are exemplified in its strong tradition of charitable giving. On the other hand, it suffers from a crisis of authority that cannot be blamed entirely on the history of colonialism and stigmatization to which Muslims have undoubtedly been subjected – most recently, as a result of the “war on terror”.
The book consists of seventeen previously published chapters, with a general Introduction and new prefatory material for each chapter. The first nine chapters review the current situation of Islamic charities from many different viewpoints – theological, historical, diplomatic, legal, sociological and ethnographic – with first-hand data from the United States, Britain, Israel–Palestine, Mali and Indonesia. Chapters 10 to 17 expand the coverage to explore the potential for a twenty-first century “Islamic humanism” that would be devised by Muslims in the light of the human sciences and institutionalized throughout the Muslim world. This means addressing contentious topics such as religious toleration and the meaning of jihad.
The intended readership includes academics and students at all levels, professionals concerned with aid and development, and all who have an interest in the future of Islam.
Britt Halvorson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226557120
- eISBN:
- 9780226557434
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226557434.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
American Lutherans have had a longstanding foreign involvement with Madagascar through pre-colonial evangelical missions that began on the island in 1888 and continued for over a century. This book ...
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American Lutherans have had a longstanding foreign involvement with Madagascar through pre-colonial evangelical missions that began on the island in 1888 and continued for over a century. This book explores Lutherans’ efforts to institute an aid alliance that departs from the inequalities of the earlier mission work on the island. Focusing on a 30-year-old medical aid program between Lutherans in Madagascar (Fiangonana Loterana Malagasy) and the U.S. (after 1988, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), it provides a close analysis of the tensions among humanitarian activity, capitalism and global religious fellowship. Since the early 1980s, Lutherans have pursued an increasingly common aid model that entails sending from Minneapolis to Antananarivo the often unused medical discards of the U.S. medical establishment, created primarily by planned obsolescence or biomedical innovation. The book draws upon twenty-four months of primary ethnographic research in the Midwest U.S. and shorter research periods in Madagascar among Lutheran clinicians, aid workers, volunteer laborers, healer-evangelists and former missionaries. It develops an approach to Christian aid spaces as “conversionary sites,” or under-analyzed cultural spaces that operate as busy moral crossroads between past and present, as well as between geographically dispersed religious communities and global commodity chains. The book therefore maintains that contemporary biomedical aid from the United States to Madagascar is a multifaceted cultural and historical transaction; it is an ongoing, incomplete conversion of the moral foundation, practices and ways of knowing tied to the colonial legacy.Less
American Lutherans have had a longstanding foreign involvement with Madagascar through pre-colonial evangelical missions that began on the island in 1888 and continued for over a century. This book explores Lutherans’ efforts to institute an aid alliance that departs from the inequalities of the earlier mission work on the island. Focusing on a 30-year-old medical aid program between Lutherans in Madagascar (Fiangonana Loterana Malagasy) and the U.S. (after 1988, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), it provides a close analysis of the tensions among humanitarian activity, capitalism and global religious fellowship. Since the early 1980s, Lutherans have pursued an increasingly common aid model that entails sending from Minneapolis to Antananarivo the often unused medical discards of the U.S. medical establishment, created primarily by planned obsolescence or biomedical innovation. The book draws upon twenty-four months of primary ethnographic research in the Midwest U.S. and shorter research periods in Madagascar among Lutheran clinicians, aid workers, volunteer laborers, healer-evangelists and former missionaries. It develops an approach to Christian aid spaces as “conversionary sites,” or under-analyzed cultural spaces that operate as busy moral crossroads between past and present, as well as between geographically dispersed religious communities and global commodity chains. The book therefore maintains that contemporary biomedical aid from the United States to Madagascar is a multifaceted cultural and historical transaction; it is an ongoing, incomplete conversion of the moral foundation, practices and ways of knowing tied to the colonial legacy.
Gerard Daniel Cohen
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195399684
- eISBN:
- 9780199918423
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195399684.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The end of the Second World War in Europe gave way to a gigantic refugee crisis. Thoroughly prepared by Allied military planners, the swift repatriation of millions of former forced laborers, ...
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The end of the Second World War in Europe gave way to a gigantic refugee crisis. Thoroughly prepared by Allied military planners, the swift repatriation of millions of former forced laborers, concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war nearly put an end to this dramatic episode. Yet in September 1945, the number of displaced persons placed under the guardianship of Allied armies and relief agencies in occupied Germany amounted to 1.5 million. A costly burden for the occupying powers, the Jewish, Polish, Ukrainian, Yugoslav and Baltic DPs unwilling to return to their countries of origin presented a thorny international problem. Initially thought of as temporary displaced persons, the DPs awaiting emigration in a myriad of camps stretched from Northern Germany to Sicily had become long-term refugees and asylum seekers. Based on the records of the International Refugee Organization, this book describes how reactions to the European DP crisis crucially impinged on the shape of the postwar order. The DP question directly affected the outbreak of the Cold War; the transformation of the “West” into a new geopolitical entity; the conduct of political purges and retribution; the ideology and methods of modern humanitarian interventions; the appearance of international agencies and non-governmental organizations; the emergence of an international human rights system; migration movements and the redistribution of “surplus populations”; Jewish nationhood; and postwar categorizations of political and humanitarian refugees.Less
The end of the Second World War in Europe gave way to a gigantic refugee crisis. Thoroughly prepared by Allied military planners, the swift repatriation of millions of former forced laborers, concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war nearly put an end to this dramatic episode. Yet in September 1945, the number of displaced persons placed under the guardianship of Allied armies and relief agencies in occupied Germany amounted to 1.5 million. A costly burden for the occupying powers, the Jewish, Polish, Ukrainian, Yugoslav and Baltic DPs unwilling to return to their countries of origin presented a thorny international problem. Initially thought of as temporary displaced persons, the DPs awaiting emigration in a myriad of camps stretched from Northern Germany to Sicily had become long-term refugees and asylum seekers. Based on the records of the International Refugee Organization, this book describes how reactions to the European DP crisis crucially impinged on the shape of the postwar order. The DP question directly affected the outbreak of the Cold War; the transformation of the “West” into a new geopolitical entity; the conduct of political purges and retribution; the ideology and methods of modern humanitarian interventions; the appearance of international agencies and non-governmental organizations; the emergence of an international human rights system; migration movements and the redistribution of “surplus populations”; Jewish nationhood; and postwar categorizations of political and humanitarian refugees.
Barry Crosbie and Mark Hampton (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097898
- eISBN:
- 9781526104403
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097898.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This book collects eleven original essays in the cultural history of the British Empire since the eighteenth century. It is geographically capacious, taking in the United Kingdom, India, West Africa, ...
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This book collects eleven original essays in the cultural history of the British Empire since the eighteenth century. It is geographically capacious, taking in the United Kingdom, India, West Africa, Hong Kong, and Australia, as well as sites of informal British influence such as the Ottoman Empire and southern China. The book considers the ways in which British culture circulated within what John Darwin has called the British “world system”. In this, the book builds on existing imperial scholarship while innovating in several ways: it focuses on the movement of ideas and cultural praxis, whereas Darwin has focused mostly on imperial structures —financial, demographic, and military. The book examines the transmission, reception, and adaptation of British culture in the Metropole, the empire and informal colonial spaces, whereas many recent scholars have considered British imperial influence on the Metropole alone. It examines Britain's Atlantic and Asian imperial experiences from the eighteenth to the twentieth century together. Through focusing on political ideology, literary movements, material culture, marriage, and the construction of national identities, the essays demonstrate the salience of culture in making a “British World”.Less
This book collects eleven original essays in the cultural history of the British Empire since the eighteenth century. It is geographically capacious, taking in the United Kingdom, India, West Africa, Hong Kong, and Australia, as well as sites of informal British influence such as the Ottoman Empire and southern China. The book considers the ways in which British culture circulated within what John Darwin has called the British “world system”. In this, the book builds on existing imperial scholarship while innovating in several ways: it focuses on the movement of ideas and cultural praxis, whereas Darwin has focused mostly on imperial structures —financial, demographic, and military. The book examines the transmission, reception, and adaptation of British culture in the Metropole, the empire and informal colonial spaces, whereas many recent scholars have considered British imperial influence on the Metropole alone. It examines Britain's Atlantic and Asian imperial experiences from the eighteenth to the twentieth century together. Through focusing on political ideology, literary movements, material culture, marriage, and the construction of national identities, the essays demonstrate the salience of culture in making a “British World”.
Gerard Daniel Cohen
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195399684
- eISBN:
- 9780199918423
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195399684.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The chapter shows how the DP episode transformed the ideology and practice of modern humanitarianism. Prior to 1945, the alleviation of human suffering was the responsibility of private charitable ...
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The chapter shows how the DP episode transformed the ideology and practice of modern humanitarianism. Prior to 1945, the alleviation of human suffering was the responsibility of private charitable organizations committed to war-stricken civilian populations. The “relief and rehabilitation” of Europe’s displaced persons was instead a coordinated international operation: traditional charity gave way to a “machinery of international relief to the prominent role played today by the United Nations and Western NGOs in the conduct of humanitarian interventions.Less
The chapter shows how the DP episode transformed the ideology and practice of modern humanitarianism. Prior to 1945, the alleviation of human suffering was the responsibility of private charitable organizations committed to war-stricken civilian populations. The “relief and rehabilitation” of Europe’s displaced persons was instead a coordinated international operation: traditional charity gave way to a “machinery of international relief to the prominent role played today by the United Nations and Western NGOs in the conduct of humanitarian interventions.
Barbra Mann Wall
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719099700
- eISBN:
- 9781526104397
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099700.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter analyses shifting dynamics within medical missionary work in Nigeria, from support for British colonialism to humanitarianism. It explores Irish Catholic missionaries as nurses, midwives ...
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This chapter analyses shifting dynamics within medical missionary work in Nigeria, from support for British colonialism to humanitarianism. It explores Irish Catholic missionaries as nurses, midwives and physicians from c.1937-1970, to the end of the Nigerian Civil War in 1970. It uses unpublished documents to disentangle, although not disconnect, modern missionary work from colonialism. Using gender as a category of analysis it focuses on women’s work during the Nigerian civil war compared to men’s activities, and how the media focused on one but not the other. By giving voice to the “silenced” in history it argues that there was a significant Nigerian presence in relief work during the war, differing from most research which focuses only on the work of whites. Significantly, in the 1960s and 1970s, Catholic mission hospitals became sites for shifts in the understanding of mission during periods of violence and upheaval. As Catholic women renegotiated their place in an emerging decolonised world, complex relationships developed among Irish sisters, Nigerian nuns, priests, Nigerian chiefs and international peacekeepers. Whereas in the 1930s and 1940s, Catholic sisters saw Africa as a fertile ground for converts, over time the Catholic mission tradition liberalised to promote humanitarianism.Less
This chapter analyses shifting dynamics within medical missionary work in Nigeria, from support for British colonialism to humanitarianism. It explores Irish Catholic missionaries as nurses, midwives and physicians from c.1937-1970, to the end of the Nigerian Civil War in 1970. It uses unpublished documents to disentangle, although not disconnect, modern missionary work from colonialism. Using gender as a category of analysis it focuses on women’s work during the Nigerian civil war compared to men’s activities, and how the media focused on one but not the other. By giving voice to the “silenced” in history it argues that there was a significant Nigerian presence in relief work during the war, differing from most research which focuses only on the work of whites. Significantly, in the 1960s and 1970s, Catholic mission hospitals became sites for shifts in the understanding of mission during periods of violence and upheaval. As Catholic women renegotiated their place in an emerging decolonised world, complex relationships developed among Irish sisters, Nigerian nuns, priests, Nigerian chiefs and international peacekeepers. Whereas in the 1930s and 1940s, Catholic sisters saw Africa as a fertile ground for converts, over time the Catholic mission tradition liberalised to promote humanitarianism.
Susan Armstrong-Reid
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719099700
- eISBN:
- 9781526104397
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099700.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter draws upon a rich collection of untapped private and public papers held in Canada, the USA, and Great Britain. With the promise to “go anywhere, do anything”, British surgical nurse ...
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This chapter draws upon a rich collection of untapped private and public papers held in Canada, the USA, and Great Britain. With the promise to “go anywhere, do anything”, British surgical nurse Elizabeth Hughes and American public health nurse Margaret Stanley were cast into unexpected adventures punctuated by danger and unremitting demands to care. As part of ‘Medical Team 19’, they joined Mao Zedong’s Eighth Route Army when the International Peace Hospital evacuated after the fall of Yennan in 1947. They illuminate ‘complex entanglements of nursing as it was imagined and practiced on the liminal frontiers between war and peace’ that have characterised the post-colonial era. This article is attentive to how multi-faceted power relations intersect with faith, gender, race, place and nation to shape nursing imperial exchanges. Their experiences question post-colonialists’ prevailing portrait of Western nurses as cultural imperialists and reinforce the need for a multidisciplinary framework to critically analyse the agency, assimilation and accommodation of both Western nurses and their Chinese colleagues. Recovering their stories suggests there may be more continuity with the major contemporary challenges for collective humanitarian responses to conflict-ridden complex crises than previously acknowledged.Less
This chapter draws upon a rich collection of untapped private and public papers held in Canada, the USA, and Great Britain. With the promise to “go anywhere, do anything”, British surgical nurse Elizabeth Hughes and American public health nurse Margaret Stanley were cast into unexpected adventures punctuated by danger and unremitting demands to care. As part of ‘Medical Team 19’, they joined Mao Zedong’s Eighth Route Army when the International Peace Hospital evacuated after the fall of Yennan in 1947. They illuminate ‘complex entanglements of nursing as it was imagined and practiced on the liminal frontiers between war and peace’ that have characterised the post-colonial era. This article is attentive to how multi-faceted power relations intersect with faith, gender, race, place and nation to shape nursing imperial exchanges. Their experiences question post-colonialists’ prevailing portrait of Western nurses as cultural imperialists and reinforce the need for a multidisciplinary framework to critically analyse the agency, assimilation and accommodation of both Western nurses and their Chinese colleagues. Recovering their stories suggests there may be more continuity with the major contemporary challenges for collective humanitarian responses to conflict-ridden complex crises than previously acknowledged.
Nicola Mai
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226584959
- eISBN:
- 9780226585147
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226585147.003.0011
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
How does the theorization of subjectivity and agency as embedded in mobile orientations help us to understand the nexus between migration, sex work, agency, and exploitation? The conclusion offers a ...
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How does the theorization of subjectivity and agency as embedded in mobile orientations help us to understand the nexus between migration, sex work, agency, and exploitation? The conclusion offers a final appraisal of the way migrants working in the sex industry both reproduce and challenge sexual-humanitarian selfrepresentations as they try to fulfill their mobile orientations. At the same time, the chapter analyzes how the “global sentimentality” produced by sexual humanitarianism around the issues of trafficking and “modern slavery” becomes complicit with neoliberal politics. The chapter also reflects on the broader social implications of these dynamics for the sustainability of the global democratic polity. It highlights the strategic role of sexual humanitarianism and the forms of affective global governance it engenders in the neoliberalization of everyday life and the deterioration of the democratic polity in three main ways: by promoting neo-abolitionist affective rhetoric over factual evidence; by obfuscating the inequalities engendered by neoliberalism and protecting those responsible for the precarization of global labor markets from facing their responsibility; and by preventing people from the Global North from acknowledging their own increased exploitability and precariousness in neoliberal times.Less
How does the theorization of subjectivity and agency as embedded in mobile orientations help us to understand the nexus between migration, sex work, agency, and exploitation? The conclusion offers a final appraisal of the way migrants working in the sex industry both reproduce and challenge sexual-humanitarian selfrepresentations as they try to fulfill their mobile orientations. At the same time, the chapter analyzes how the “global sentimentality” produced by sexual humanitarianism around the issues of trafficking and “modern slavery” becomes complicit with neoliberal politics. The chapter also reflects on the broader social implications of these dynamics for the sustainability of the global democratic polity. It highlights the strategic role of sexual humanitarianism and the forms of affective global governance it engenders in the neoliberalization of everyday life and the deterioration of the democratic polity in three main ways: by promoting neo-abolitionist affective rhetoric over factual evidence; by obfuscating the inequalities engendered by neoliberalism and protecting those responsible for the precarization of global labor markets from facing their responsibility; and by preventing people from the Global North from acknowledging their own increased exploitability and precariousness in neoliberal times.
Catherine Gegout
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190845162
- eISBN:
- 9780190943288
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190845162.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
Why Europe Intervenes in Africa analyzes the underlying causes of all European decisions for and against military interventions in conflicts in African states since the late 1980s. It focuses on the ...
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Why Europe Intervenes in Africa analyzes the underlying causes of all European decisions for and against military interventions in conflicts in African states since the late 1980s. It focuses on the main European actors who have deployed troops in Africa: France, the United Kingdom and the European Union. When conflict occurs in Africa, the response of European actors is generally inaction. This can be explained in several ways: the absence of strategic and economic interests, the unwillingness of European leaders to become involved in conflicts in former colonies of other European states, and sometimes the Eurocentric assumption that conflict in Africa is a normal event which does not require intervention. When European actors do decide to intervene, it is primarily for motives of security and prestige, and not primarily for economic or humanitarian reasons. The weight of past relations with Africa can also be a driver for European military intervention, but the impact of that past is changing. This book offers a theory of European intervention based mainly on the approaches of realism and post-colonialism. It refutes the assumptions of liberals and constructivists who posit that states and organizations intervene primarily in order to respect the principle of the “responsibility to protect.”Less
Why Europe Intervenes in Africa analyzes the underlying causes of all European decisions for and against military interventions in conflicts in African states since the late 1980s. It focuses on the main European actors who have deployed troops in Africa: France, the United Kingdom and the European Union. When conflict occurs in Africa, the response of European actors is generally inaction. This can be explained in several ways: the absence of strategic and economic interests, the unwillingness of European leaders to become involved in conflicts in former colonies of other European states, and sometimes the Eurocentric assumption that conflict in Africa is a normal event which does not require intervention. When European actors do decide to intervene, it is primarily for motives of security and prestige, and not primarily for economic or humanitarian reasons. The weight of past relations with Africa can also be a driver for European military intervention, but the impact of that past is changing. This book offers a theory of European intervention based mainly on the approaches of realism and post-colonialism. It refutes the assumptions of liberals and constructivists who posit that states and organizations intervene primarily in order to respect the principle of the “responsibility to protect.”
Taylor Owen
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199363865
- eISBN:
- 9780199363896
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199363865.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics, Political Economy
Digital communication technologies have thrust the calculus of global political power into a period of unprecedented complexity. In every aspect of international affairs, digitally enabled actors are ...
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Digital communication technologies have thrust the calculus of global political power into a period of unprecedented complexity. In every aspect of international affairs, digitally enabled actors are changing the way the world works, and disrupting the institutions that once held a monopoly on power. No area is immune: Humanitarianism, War, Diplomacy, Finance, Activism, or Journalism. In each, the government departments, international organizations and corporations who for a century were in charge, are being challenged by a new breed of international actor. Online, networked and decentralized, these new actors are innovating, for both good and ill, in the austere world of foreign policy. This book will bring these actors to light, explore their methods and tools, and demonstrate how they represent a new form of power. What is it that makes for successful digital international action? What are the tools being used by the actors increasingly controlling international affairs? How does their rise change the way we understand and act in the world? What are the negative consequences of a radically decentralized international system? And how can governments and corporations act to promote positive behaviour in a world of disruptive innovation? Disruptive Power explores the frontier of international affairs, profiles a wide range of emerging actors, and provides a road map for navigating a networked digital world. A world enabled by information technology, and led by disruptive innovators.Less
Digital communication technologies have thrust the calculus of global political power into a period of unprecedented complexity. In every aspect of international affairs, digitally enabled actors are changing the way the world works, and disrupting the institutions that once held a monopoly on power. No area is immune: Humanitarianism, War, Diplomacy, Finance, Activism, or Journalism. In each, the government departments, international organizations and corporations who for a century were in charge, are being challenged by a new breed of international actor. Online, networked and decentralized, these new actors are innovating, for both good and ill, in the austere world of foreign policy. This book will bring these actors to light, explore their methods and tools, and demonstrate how they represent a new form of power. What is it that makes for successful digital international action? What are the tools being used by the actors increasingly controlling international affairs? How does their rise change the way we understand and act in the world? What are the negative consequences of a radically decentralized international system? And how can governments and corporations act to promote positive behaviour in a world of disruptive innovation? Disruptive Power explores the frontier of international affairs, profiles a wide range of emerging actors, and provides a road map for navigating a networked digital world. A world enabled by information technology, and led by disruptive innovators.
J. Paul Narkunas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280308
- eISBN:
- 9780823281534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280308.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter diagnoses how humanitarian non-governmental organizations are filling a vacuum created ironically by governments outsourcing their governing functions that marks a transformation of the ...
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This chapter diagnoses how humanitarian non-governmental organizations are filling a vacuum created ironically by governments outsourcing their governing functions that marks a transformation of the Westphalian order of states by neoliberalism. The proliferation of non-state actors facilitates the politicization of human rights around how to recognize who or what is a human being endowed with natural rights, and who is a terrorist, outlaw, or posthuman. By tracing the connections between human rights and governmentality, human rights advocates must acknowledge their cozy relationship with powerful militaries, which has resulted in humanitarian interventions using the language of rights to justify neocolonial projects that often intensify human suffering. Humanitarianism may function as a deterritorialized form of governmentality that offers a theatrical illusion of protection and security, while undermining their possibilities structurally. Powerful states not only use human rights and humanitarian legitimations for their particularist geopolitical and economic ends, but also direct humanitarian NGOs strategically by proxy for their own interests. In the process the very idea of securing humans becomes instrumentalized as a form of outsourced governance that can be a model eventually for “expendable people” within nation-states.Less
This chapter diagnoses how humanitarian non-governmental organizations are filling a vacuum created ironically by governments outsourcing their governing functions that marks a transformation of the Westphalian order of states by neoliberalism. The proliferation of non-state actors facilitates the politicization of human rights around how to recognize who or what is a human being endowed with natural rights, and who is a terrorist, outlaw, or posthuman. By tracing the connections between human rights and governmentality, human rights advocates must acknowledge their cozy relationship with powerful militaries, which has resulted in humanitarian interventions using the language of rights to justify neocolonial projects that often intensify human suffering. Humanitarianism may function as a deterritorialized form of governmentality that offers a theatrical illusion of protection and security, while undermining their possibilities structurally. Powerful states not only use human rights and humanitarian legitimations for their particularist geopolitical and economic ends, but also direct humanitarian NGOs strategically by proxy for their own interests. In the process the very idea of securing humans becomes instrumentalized as a form of outsourced governance that can be a model eventually for “expendable people” within nation-states.
Jonathan Benthall
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781784993085
- eISBN:
- 9781526124005
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784993085.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Middle Eastern Cultural Anthropology
The Introduction summarizes the book’s content under the following headings. Since all the Chapters have been previously published elsewhere, it also adds some complementary material to bring the ...
More
The Introduction summarizes the book’s content under the following headings. Since all the Chapters have been previously published elsewhere, it also adds some complementary material to bring the book up to date on some important topics:
Part One: Chapters 1 to 9: Islamic charities
Summary of the Chapters
Some recurrent themes
Faith Based Organizations and “cultural sensitivity”
Islamic Relief Worldwide
The West Bank zakat committees
Banking problems
Towards a more complete description
Pakistan
Turkey
Domestic Islamic charity in the United Kingdom
A zakat movement?
Towards a more comparative approach
Part Two: Chapters 10 to 17: Islamic humanismLess
The Introduction summarizes the book’s content under the following headings. Since all the Chapters have been previously published elsewhere, it also adds some complementary material to bring the book up to date on some important topics:
Part One: Chapters 1 to 9: Islamic charities
Summary of the Chapters
Some recurrent themes
Faith Based Organizations and “cultural sensitivity”
Islamic Relief Worldwide
The West Bank zakat committees
Banking problems
Towards a more complete description
Pakistan
Turkey
Domestic Islamic charity in the United Kingdom
A zakat movement?
Towards a more comparative approach
Part Two: Chapters 10 to 17: Islamic humanism
Jonathan Benthall
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781784993085
- eISBN:
- 9781526124005
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784993085.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Middle Eastern Cultural Anthropology
This chapter outlines the historical background of the growth of Islamic charities over the last few decades, and of Faith Based Organizations in general. It also discusses the humanitarian ...
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This chapter outlines the historical background of the growth of Islamic charities over the last few decades, and of Faith Based Organizations in general. It also discusses the humanitarian consequences of the clampdown on Islamic charities post 9/11, and questions the academic standard of some counter-terrorist studies that have authorized this clampdown. It calls for sympathetic steps to ease the way for those Islamic charities that accept the principles of regulation and monitoring. It argues that high values and ideals are better expressed by actions than by mere dialogue. Islamic Relief Worldwide showed what can be done when it was appointed to represent all the major British relief agencies on television to launch a joint appeal for the Kashmir earthquake in 2005. Failure to recognize the potential of Islamic charities means losing a significant opportunity to defuse the purported “clash of civilizations”.Less
This chapter outlines the historical background of the growth of Islamic charities over the last few decades, and of Faith Based Organizations in general. It also discusses the humanitarian consequences of the clampdown on Islamic charities post 9/11, and questions the academic standard of some counter-terrorist studies that have authorized this clampdown. It calls for sympathetic steps to ease the way for those Islamic charities that accept the principles of regulation and monitoring. It argues that high values and ideals are better expressed by actions than by mere dialogue. Islamic Relief Worldwide showed what can be done when it was appointed to represent all the major British relief agencies on television to launch a joint appeal for the Kashmir earthquake in 2005. Failure to recognize the potential of Islamic charities means losing a significant opportunity to defuse the purported “clash of civilizations”.
Jonathan Benthall
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781784993085
- eISBN:
- 9781526124005
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784993085.003.0010
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Middle Eastern Cultural Anthropology
This Chapter, published by Depends on timing. the journal Asian Ethnology, is a theoretical exercise, inspired by Mary Douglas’s classic anthropological text Purity and Danger, that sets out to ...
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This Chapter, published by Depends on timing. the journal Asian Ethnology, is a theoretical exercise, inspired by Mary Douglas’s classic anthropological text Purity and Danger, that sets out to clarify the wide range of relationships between religions and humanitarian traditions as ideological movements, taking Islam as an instance. It postulates that the concept of the “sacred” is a special case of boundary maintenance or “purism”. Metaphorically, “puripetal force” (a neologism) is defined as a tendency common to all ideological systems, a resistance to social entropy or anomie. An explanatory model is proposed that accommodates forms of concentrated purism such as (within Islam) Wahhabi-Salafism and (within humanitarianism) the legacy of Henry Dunant, founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Specific Islamic charities and welfare organizations interact differentially with both religious and humanitarian traditions. Meanwhile, US government policy towards charities sometimes seems dominated by an urge to peer into purity of motives. Finally, it is suggested that the model could equally be applied to Christian and other religious traditions, with the concluding thought that the common ground between the institutions of international humanitarianism and religious traditions is currently expanding.Less
This Chapter, published by Depends on timing. the journal Asian Ethnology, is a theoretical exercise, inspired by Mary Douglas’s classic anthropological text Purity and Danger, that sets out to clarify the wide range of relationships between religions and humanitarian traditions as ideological movements, taking Islam as an instance. It postulates that the concept of the “sacred” is a special case of boundary maintenance or “purism”. Metaphorically, “puripetal force” (a neologism) is defined as a tendency common to all ideological systems, a resistance to social entropy or anomie. An explanatory model is proposed that accommodates forms of concentrated purism such as (within Islam) Wahhabi-Salafism and (within humanitarianism) the legacy of Henry Dunant, founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Specific Islamic charities and welfare organizations interact differentially with both religious and humanitarian traditions. Meanwhile, US government policy towards charities sometimes seems dominated by an urge to peer into purity of motives. Finally, it is suggested that the model could equally be applied to Christian and other religious traditions, with the concluding thought that the common ground between the institutions of international humanitarianism and religious traditions is currently expanding.
Britt Halvorson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226557120
- eISBN:
- 9780226557434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226557434.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
This chapter establishes the historical context through which the medical relief relationship between Madagascar and Minnesota has taken shape, arguing that aid relationships are formations in time ...
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This chapter establishes the historical context through which the medical relief relationship between Madagascar and Minnesota has taken shape, arguing that aid relationships are formations in time and of time. Specifically, it examines how, through the aid relationship, religious actors in both locations rework their sense of a shared colonial past, redeeming certain histories of colonial interaction while actively “forgetting” or breaking from other pasts. These ruptures crucially underpin the political ideology that humanitarian work is a more egalitarian and neutral activity, respectful of Malagasy sovereignty, than the colonial missions that came before. Southern Madagascar and the Midwest U.S. have been historically connected due to a century of American Lutheran (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) evangelism in Madagascar, in which American missionaries’ competition for healing authority with Malagasy ritual practitioners (ombiasa) figured prominently. After tracing significant colonial medical encounters between Americans and Malagasy, the chapter illustrates how Americans today actively recuperate late-colonial efforts to build footpaths between their work under colonial rule and current aid projects, while ideologically breaking from the earlier colonial past through the locally-elaborated, maligned figure of the “colonial missionary.” The chapter shows how religious actors reorient relations of past and present as they become humanitarians.Less
This chapter establishes the historical context through which the medical relief relationship between Madagascar and Minnesota has taken shape, arguing that aid relationships are formations in time and of time. Specifically, it examines how, through the aid relationship, religious actors in both locations rework their sense of a shared colonial past, redeeming certain histories of colonial interaction while actively “forgetting” or breaking from other pasts. These ruptures crucially underpin the political ideology that humanitarian work is a more egalitarian and neutral activity, respectful of Malagasy sovereignty, than the colonial missions that came before. Southern Madagascar and the Midwest U.S. have been historically connected due to a century of American Lutheran (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) evangelism in Madagascar, in which American missionaries’ competition for healing authority with Malagasy ritual practitioners (ombiasa) figured prominently. After tracing significant colonial medical encounters between Americans and Malagasy, the chapter illustrates how Americans today actively recuperate late-colonial efforts to build footpaths between their work under colonial rule and current aid projects, while ideologically breaking from the earlier colonial past through the locally-elaborated, maligned figure of the “colonial missionary.” The chapter shows how religious actors reorient relations of past and present as they become humanitarians.
Britt Halvorson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226557120
- eISBN:
- 9780226557434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226557434.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines the “biospiritual imaginaries” that underpin Lutherans’ increasing attention to healing and medicine as globally connecting religious activities. Bringing together research in ...
More
This chapter examines the “biospiritual imaginaries” that underpin Lutherans’ increasing attention to healing and medicine as globally connecting religious activities. Bringing together research in Malagasy Lutheran-led healing services and medical aid organizations in Minneapolis/St. Paul, the chapter analyzes the “bodies multiple” (Mol 2002) of Lutheran medical work and explores the global imaginaries and forms of community they foster, as well as their perhaps unexpected ideological fissures and contradictions for Minnesotan Lutheran aid workers. Taking the reader inside the Minneapolis NGOs, the chapter shows how middle-class American aid workers make the organizations into therapeutic spaces for addressing insecurities caused by job losses, financial problems, and health crises, grounding a humanitarian ethic of care in these lived realities. In strikingly different ways, therapeutic practices, as faith-based activities of social welfare, health and well-being, work to overcome insecurities spurred by neoliberal policies in both the Midwest U.S. and in Madagascar. Medical relief work thus attains significance as a multi-faceted healing activity with cultural and historical dimensions, emerging through a transnational field of faith-based medical activities.Less
This chapter examines the “biospiritual imaginaries” that underpin Lutherans’ increasing attention to healing and medicine as globally connecting religious activities. Bringing together research in Malagasy Lutheran-led healing services and medical aid organizations in Minneapolis/St. Paul, the chapter analyzes the “bodies multiple” (Mol 2002) of Lutheran medical work and explores the global imaginaries and forms of community they foster, as well as their perhaps unexpected ideological fissures and contradictions for Minnesotan Lutheran aid workers. Taking the reader inside the Minneapolis NGOs, the chapter shows how middle-class American aid workers make the organizations into therapeutic spaces for addressing insecurities caused by job losses, financial problems, and health crises, grounding a humanitarian ethic of care in these lived realities. In strikingly different ways, therapeutic practices, as faith-based activities of social welfare, health and well-being, work to overcome insecurities spurred by neoliberal policies in both the Midwest U.S. and in Madagascar. Medical relief work thus attains significance as a multi-faceted healing activity with cultural and historical dimensions, emerging through a transnational field of faith-based medical activities.
Britt Halvorson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226557120
- eISBN:
- 9780226557434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226557434.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
This chapter charts how aid accountability in Christian aid partnerships selectively combines neoliberal and biblical reasoning on what it means to be morally accountable, creating an emerging, ...
More
This chapter charts how aid accountability in Christian aid partnerships selectively combines neoliberal and biblical reasoning on what it means to be morally accountable, creating an emerging, religiously-informed medical audit culture. In the Madagascar-Minnesota medical aid program, aid workers interestingly bring together both bureaucratic accountability’s emphasis on transparency in the use of aid resources and a biblically-based ideology that being accountable means invisibly accompanying fellow Christians elsewhere, as Jesus did on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-35. While American Lutherans predominantly view their own immobility as the most ethical position, sending medical relief objects and not people or missionaries to Madagascar, accountability requirements certainly travel and have been increasingly woven into each donation of medical relief, financial support or equipment. Moving in the chapter from the Midwest U.S. to Madagascar, the chapter builds a multi-sited portrait of accountability work as a “mobile” or traveling form of humanitarian governance (Pandolfi 2010), understood and enacted in culturally distinct ways. Audit procedures lay bare a vexing set of questions for both Malagasy and Americans: What does it ultimately mean to be accountable, and how is it assessed? Do accountability requirements between fellow believers contradict contemporary principles of global religious communion?Less
This chapter charts how aid accountability in Christian aid partnerships selectively combines neoliberal and biblical reasoning on what it means to be morally accountable, creating an emerging, religiously-informed medical audit culture. In the Madagascar-Minnesota medical aid program, aid workers interestingly bring together both bureaucratic accountability’s emphasis on transparency in the use of aid resources and a biblically-based ideology that being accountable means invisibly accompanying fellow Christians elsewhere, as Jesus did on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-35. While American Lutherans predominantly view their own immobility as the most ethical position, sending medical relief objects and not people or missionaries to Madagascar, accountability requirements certainly travel and have been increasingly woven into each donation of medical relief, financial support or equipment. Moving in the chapter from the Midwest U.S. to Madagascar, the chapter builds a multi-sited portrait of accountability work as a “mobile” or traveling form of humanitarian governance (Pandolfi 2010), understood and enacted in culturally distinct ways. Audit procedures lay bare a vexing set of questions for both Malagasy and Americans: What does it ultimately mean to be accountable, and how is it assessed? Do accountability requirements between fellow believers contradict contemporary principles of global religious communion?
Britt Halvorson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226557120
- eISBN:
- 9780226557434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226557434.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
The conclusion asks how Malagasy and Americans reckon the time duration or end-time of medical relief. Many Malagasy and Americans express concerns about the long-term foreign presence and ...
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The conclusion asks how Malagasy and Americans reckon the time duration or end-time of medical relief. Many Malagasy and Americans express concerns about the long-term foreign presence and “dependency” of the medical relief model, a subject about which scholars of humanitarianism have written extensively. What is its end, and what futures can be imagined through its termination? Intertwining these imagined futures with the present-moment of aid, the conclusion considers how aid circulations are diverse projects of world-making for religious actors.Less
The conclusion asks how Malagasy and Americans reckon the time duration or end-time of medical relief. Many Malagasy and Americans express concerns about the long-term foreign presence and “dependency” of the medical relief model, a subject about which scholars of humanitarianism have written extensively. What is its end, and what futures can be imagined through its termination? Intertwining these imagined futures with the present-moment of aid, the conclusion considers how aid circulations are diverse projects of world-making for religious actors.
Robert Huish
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049106
- eISBN:
- 9780813046709
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049106.003.0011
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
At a time when many nations, including the United States, are seeking ways to embrace global health, Cuba provides an invaluable example of success. The case of Cuban medical internationalism ...
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At a time when many nations, including the United States, are seeking ways to embrace global health, Cuba provides an invaluable example of success. The case of Cuban medical internationalism illustrates how dedicated attention to global health can serve to fulfill national policy objectives while providing much-needed humanitarian assistance. Many Cuba scholars and policy critics, regardless of ideological affinity, have recognized Cuba’s impressive example of cooperation aimed at strengthening the most feeble health-care systems in the global South. Cuba’s medical internationalism is a working example of how ethical health strategies can assist low-income countries to build important foundations for comprehensive health-care capacity. Cuba’s provision of health-care services and its strategies for building long-term human resources capacity are seen as a success in both political and public health terms.Less
At a time when many nations, including the United States, are seeking ways to embrace global health, Cuba provides an invaluable example of success. The case of Cuban medical internationalism illustrates how dedicated attention to global health can serve to fulfill national policy objectives while providing much-needed humanitarian assistance. Many Cuba scholars and policy critics, regardless of ideological affinity, have recognized Cuba’s impressive example of cooperation aimed at strengthening the most feeble health-care systems in the global South. Cuba’s medical internationalism is a working example of how ethical health strategies can assist low-income countries to build important foundations for comprehensive health-care capacity. Cuba’s provision of health-care services and its strategies for building long-term human resources capacity are seen as a success in both political and public health terms.
