Aiden Warren and Damian Grenfell (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474423816
- eISBN:
- 9781474435314
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474423816.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Conflict Politics and Policy
Rethinking Humanitarian Interventions in the 21st Century examines the complex ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention since the end of the Cold War. These 12 essays focus on the challenges ...
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Rethinking Humanitarian Interventions in the 21st Century examines the complex ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention since the end of the Cold War. These 12 essays focus on the challenges associated with interventions, conflict and attendant human rights violations, unmitigated and systematic violence, state re-building, and issues associated with human mobility and dislocation. In a context where layers to conflict are so complex and fluid, it is difficult to imagine one book could ‘rethink interventions’ to the extent that is required. Nevertheless, a contribution to debates can be made. In this collection, important choices were made in terms of how to bring a collection together that allows for the richness as well as maintaining coherence. The task of ‘rethinking’ has meant many of the chapters are underpinned by critical theory with structures of power and the ends that they are deployed to serve never far from discussion. Overall, the chapters in this book address three central themes pertaining to the evolution of 1) humanitarian interventions in a global era; 2) the limits of sovereignty and the ethics of interventions; and the 3) politics of post-intervention (re-)building and humanitarian engagement. As such, they provide a valuable contribution to academics, students, instructors and intellectual communities engaged in research pertaining to humanitarianism, conflict and interventions and different conceptions of security and international relations, and who agree that the present challenges require a basic rethinking of interventions.Less
Rethinking Humanitarian Interventions in the 21st Century examines the complex ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention since the end of the Cold War. These 12 essays focus on the challenges associated with interventions, conflict and attendant human rights violations, unmitigated and systematic violence, state re-building, and issues associated with human mobility and dislocation. In a context where layers to conflict are so complex and fluid, it is difficult to imagine one book could ‘rethink interventions’ to the extent that is required. Nevertheless, a contribution to debates can be made. In this collection, important choices were made in terms of how to bring a collection together that allows for the richness as well as maintaining coherence. The task of ‘rethinking’ has meant many of the chapters are underpinned by critical theory with structures of power and the ends that they are deployed to serve never far from discussion. Overall, the chapters in this book address three central themes pertaining to the evolution of 1) humanitarian interventions in a global era; 2) the limits of sovereignty and the ethics of interventions; and the 3) politics of post-intervention (re-)building and humanitarian engagement. As such, they provide a valuable contribution to academics, students, instructors and intellectual communities engaged in research pertaining to humanitarianism, conflict and interventions and different conceptions of security and international relations, and who agree that the present challenges require a basic rethinking of interventions.
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.
Dolores Martín-Moruno and Beatriz Pichel (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042898
- eISBN:
- 9780252051753
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042898.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
Emotional Bodies provides a theoretical framework for studying the materiality of emotions. In line with recent research in the history of emotions, cultural studies, and new materialism, this volume ...
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Emotional Bodies provides a theoretical framework for studying the materiality of emotions. In line with recent research in the history of emotions, cultural studies, and new materialism, this volume focuses on what emotions do. Chapters interrogate how emotions do and undo us as both individual and collective bodies. With this aim, this book proposes “emotional bodies” as a tool to understand the performativity of emotional practices as the origin of particular configurations of bodies, such as patients, criminals, medieval religious communities, revolutionary crowds and contemporary humanitarian agencies. The multidisciplinary approach of this volume, which combines a diversity of sources as well as theoretical and historiographical approaches, challenges traditional notions of the body and the emotions, demonstrating the potential of “emotional bodies” to understand past and present societies.Less
Emotional Bodies provides a theoretical framework for studying the materiality of emotions. In line with recent research in the history of emotions, cultural studies, and new materialism, this volume focuses on what emotions do. Chapters interrogate how emotions do and undo us as both individual and collective bodies. With this aim, this book proposes “emotional bodies” as a tool to understand the performativity of emotional practices as the origin of particular configurations of bodies, such as patients, criminals, medieval religious communities, revolutionary crowds and contemporary humanitarian agencies. The multidisciplinary approach of this volume, which combines a diversity of sources as well as theoretical and historiographical approaches, challenges traditional notions of the body and the emotions, demonstrating the potential of “emotional bodies” to understand past and present societies.
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.
Carl J. Griffin
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526145628
- eISBN:
- 9781526152022
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526145635.00012
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Notoriously, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 moved beyond monetary relief to establish precise dietaries for the poor ‘relieved’ in union workhouses, out relief now something only to be given in ...
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Notoriously, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 moved beyond monetary relief to establish precise dietaries for the poor ‘relieved’ in union workhouses, out relief now something only to be given in absolute emergencies. By dictating what the poor ate, as opposed to what they might eat, workhouse dietaries established an absolute biological minimum for bodily survival decided by individual poor law unions within perimeters set by the central state through the Poor Law Commission. While the implications of workhouse dietaries have been subject to careful study, this chapter takes a broader perspective. It examines the makings of the idea of the dietary, analysing debates and discussion concerning both the physiological and practical science of pauper diet, as well as earlier examining antecedent, before going on to explore the implementation of workhouse dietaries in the new centrally-controlled but still locally operated system What emerges is a highly uneven system, patterned by varying ideological, practical, economic and political imperatives. The chapter also analyses the critiques of the system, exploring both the centrality of critiques to the politicking of radical politicians and to the rise of a particular type of humanitarianism, a concern with the bodily welfare of the poor.Less
Notoriously, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 moved beyond monetary relief to establish precise dietaries for the poor ‘relieved’ in union workhouses, out relief now something only to be given in absolute emergencies. By dictating what the poor ate, as opposed to what they might eat, workhouse dietaries established an absolute biological minimum for bodily survival decided by individual poor law unions within perimeters set by the central state through the Poor Law Commission. While the implications of workhouse dietaries have been subject to careful study, this chapter takes a broader perspective. It examines the makings of the idea of the dietary, analysing debates and discussion concerning both the physiological and practical science of pauper diet, as well as earlier examining antecedent, before going on to explore the implementation of workhouse dietaries in the new centrally-controlled but still locally operated system What emerges is a highly uneven system, patterned by varying ideological, practical, economic and political imperatives. The chapter also analyses the critiques of the system, exploring both the centrality of critiques to the politicking of radical politicians and to the rise of a particular type of humanitarianism, a concern with the bodily welfare of the poor.
Carl J. Griffin
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526145628
- eISBN:
- 9781526152022
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526145635.00015
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Hunger was not just understood directly but something mobilised and mediated through the plight of distant others. In particular, the devastating famines of 1840s Ireland and India were critical in ...
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Hunger was not just understood directly but something mobilised and mediated through the plight of distant others. In particular, the devastating famines of 1840s Ireland and India were critical in shaping political languages of hunger in the Empire as a whole as well amongst the people of Britain. This chapter explores not the central governmental response to these famines – though this provides a critical context – but instead examines popular responses to the hunger of distant others in the 1840s. In so doing, chapter six examines both the discourses of response (and how these helped to shape understandings of hunger) as well as schemes to relieve famine and the distant hungry. It is argued that against the ideologically-driven official governmental response to these different famines, those who were only one act of misfortune away from being incarcerated in the workhouse and only one or two generations away from experiencing absolute hunger were quick to respond setting up collections and relief schemes. It acknowledges that the popular politics of hunger were not bound by the body or borders but were rooted in the uneven contours of solidarity and reciprocity.Less
Hunger was not just understood directly but something mobilised and mediated through the plight of distant others. In particular, the devastating famines of 1840s Ireland and India were critical in shaping political languages of hunger in the Empire as a whole as well amongst the people of Britain. This chapter explores not the central governmental response to these famines – though this provides a critical context – but instead examines popular responses to the hunger of distant others in the 1840s. In so doing, chapter six examines both the discourses of response (and how these helped to shape understandings of hunger) as well as schemes to relieve famine and the distant hungry. It is argued that against the ideologically-driven official governmental response to these different famines, those who were only one act of misfortune away from being incarcerated in the workhouse and only one or two generations away from experiencing absolute hunger were quick to respond setting up collections and relief schemes. It acknowledges that the popular politics of hunger were not bound by the body or borders but were rooted in the uneven contours of solidarity and reciprocity.
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.
Renaud Morieux
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- November 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198723585
- eISBN:
- 9780191790379
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198723585.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Military History
War captivity is an ideal observatory to address three interrelated questions. First, I argue that in order to understand what a prisoner of war was in the eighteenth century, from a legal viewpoint, ...
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War captivity is an ideal observatory to address three interrelated questions. First, I argue that in order to understand what a prisoner of war was in the eighteenth century, from a legal viewpoint, we must forget what we know about this notion, as it has been shaped by twentieth-century international conventions. In the eighteenth century, the distinction between a prisoner of war, a hostage, a criminal and a slave was not always clear-cut, in theory and even more so in practice. Second, war captivity tells us something important about the eighteenth-century state, how it transformed itself, and why it endured. The third approach is a social history of international relations. The aim here is to understand how eighteenth-century societies were impacted by war: how the detention of foreign enemies on home soil revealed and challenged social values, representations, hierarchies, and practices. The book’s argument hinges on the experience of prisoners of war as the pivot of social relations within and outside the prison, between Britons and French and between prisoners and host communities. War does not simply destroy society, but it also creates new sorts of social ties.The book addresses a wide range of topics, such as the ethics of war, philanthropy, forced migrations, the sociology of the prison and the architecture of detention places. One of its strengths is the sheer magnitude and diversity of the archival material used, in English and in French, most of which have been little explored by other historians.Less
War captivity is an ideal observatory to address three interrelated questions. First, I argue that in order to understand what a prisoner of war was in the eighteenth century, from a legal viewpoint, we must forget what we know about this notion, as it has been shaped by twentieth-century international conventions. In the eighteenth century, the distinction between a prisoner of war, a hostage, a criminal and a slave was not always clear-cut, in theory and even more so in practice. Second, war captivity tells us something important about the eighteenth-century state, how it transformed itself, and why it endured. The third approach is a social history of international relations. The aim here is to understand how eighteenth-century societies were impacted by war: how the detention of foreign enemies on home soil revealed and challenged social values, representations, hierarchies, and practices. The book’s argument hinges on the experience of prisoners of war as the pivot of social relations within and outside the prison, between Britons and French and between prisoners and host communities. War does not simply destroy society, but it also creates new sorts of social ties.The book addresses a wide range of topics, such as the ethics of war, philanthropy, forced migrations, the sociology of the prison and the architecture of detention places. One of its strengths is the sheer magnitude and diversity of the archival material used, in English and in French, most of which have been little explored by other historians.
Faisal Devji
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- June 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190076801
- eISBN:
- 9780197520741
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190076801.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Security Studies
A global society has come into being, but possesses as yet no political institutions of its own. In his book, Faisal Devji argues that new forms of militancy, like that of Al Qaeda, achieve meaning ...
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A global society has come into being, but possesses as yet no political institutions of its own. In his book, Faisal Devji argues that new forms of militancy, like that of Al Qaeda, achieve meaning in this institutional vacuum, while representing in their various ways the search for a global politics. From environmentalism to pacifism and beyond, such a politics can only be one that takes humanity itself as its object, hence militant practices are informed by the same search that animates humanitarianism, which from human rights to humanitarian intervention has become the global aim and signature of all contemporary politics. This is the search for humanity as an agent and not simply the victim of history. To the militant, victimized Muslims represent not their religion so much as humanity itself, and terrorism the effort to turn this humanity into an historical actor – since it is after all the globe’s only possible actor. For environmentalists and pacifists as much as for our holy warriors, a global humanity has in this way replaced the international proletariat as the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ of history.Less
A global society has come into being, but possesses as yet no political institutions of its own. In his book, Faisal Devji argues that new forms of militancy, like that of Al Qaeda, achieve meaning in this institutional vacuum, while representing in their various ways the search for a global politics. From environmentalism to pacifism and beyond, such a politics can only be one that takes humanity itself as its object, hence militant practices are informed by the same search that animates humanitarianism, which from human rights to humanitarian intervention has become the global aim and signature of all contemporary politics. This is the search for humanity as an agent and not simply the victim of history. To the militant, victimized Muslims represent not their religion so much as humanity itself, and terrorism the effort to turn this humanity into an historical actor – since it is after all the globe’s only possible actor. For environmentalists and pacifists as much as for our holy warriors, a global humanity has in this way replaced the international proletariat as the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ of history.
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.
Emma Hutchison
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042898
- eISBN:
- 9780252051753
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042898.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter explores how the emotional dimensions of witnessing human hardship play a key role in shaping humanitarian practices. While images of suffering have evoked a range of emotions, ...
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This chapter explores how the emotional dimensions of witnessing human hardship play a key role in shaping humanitarian practices. While images of suffering have evoked a range of emotions, contemporary commentators lament that a “politics of pity” fuels Western humanitarian practices. Even if it could seem a recent phenomenon, these emotions have a history. This chapter examines the emergence of humanitarian emotions by linking early modern depictions of suffering with contemporary media images of crises. Furthermore, it analyses how representing distant suffering has led to a “politics of pity.” Exposing the contingency of such emotions, this chapter concludes by emphasizing how feelings hold immanent possibilities for political transformations.Less
This chapter explores how the emotional dimensions of witnessing human hardship play a key role in shaping humanitarian practices. While images of suffering have evoked a range of emotions, contemporary commentators lament that a “politics of pity” fuels Western humanitarian practices. Even if it could seem a recent phenomenon, these emotions have a history. This chapter examines the emergence of humanitarian emotions by linking early modern depictions of suffering with contemporary media images of crises. Furthermore, it analyses how representing distant suffering has led to a “politics of pity.” Exposing the contingency of such emotions, this chapter concludes by emphasizing how feelings hold immanent possibilities for political transformations.
Bertrand Taithe
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042898
- eISBN:
- 9780252051753
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042898.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter investigates the emergence, evolution, and performance of the concept of “compassion fatigue” in the humanitarian context. It tracks the uses made by humanitarians of bodily responses to ...
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This chapter investigates the emergence, evolution, and performance of the concept of “compassion fatigue” in the humanitarian context. It tracks the uses made by humanitarians of bodily responses to their work or representations of their work from a discourse on a danger of humanitarian excess to its redefinition as the embodiment of caregivers’ dilemmas and, finally, as a metaphor for understanding the potential for public disengagement with fundraising campaigns. This chapter seeks to determine how compassion fatigue has been embodied, represented, addressed, and politically used in humanitarian contexts. Its focus points are the social and political organizations that have framed the emotions of humanitarian actors and spectators as “compassion fatigue” as well as the effects that this categorization has had in both the understanding of the humanitarian work and of its political agenda.Less
This chapter investigates the emergence, evolution, and performance of the concept of “compassion fatigue” in the humanitarian context. It tracks the uses made by humanitarians of bodily responses to their work or representations of their work from a discourse on a danger of humanitarian excess to its redefinition as the embodiment of caregivers’ dilemmas and, finally, as a metaphor for understanding the potential for public disengagement with fundraising campaigns. This chapter seeks to determine how compassion fatigue has been embodied, represented, addressed, and politically used in humanitarian contexts. Its focus points are the social and political organizations that have framed the emotions of humanitarian actors and spectators as “compassion fatigue” as well as the effects that this categorization has had in both the understanding of the humanitarian work and of its political agenda.