Halfway Humanitarianism

Halfway Humanitarianism
Author: Katherine Nicole Smith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2014
Genre: Humanitarian assistance
ISBN:

The importance of considering gender in the effective delivery of international humanitarian assistance (IHA) is well appreciated by the international humanitarian community. Yet evidence suggests that the translation of this appreciation into effective policy and practice remains elusive. This thesis investigates the conceptualisation and implementation of gender policy across the international humanitarian system. It argues that global humanitarian responses continue to fail in consistently addressing gender-based issues and remain ad hoc despite a relatively constant global discourse on the issue. The thesis pursues this argument in three parts. Part One reviews the theory, ethics and policy that drive IHA, including its gender work. It explores the theories of cosmopolitanism and communitarianism in international relations and the place of feminist theories within these. Drawing on this analysis, the thesis then moves on to discuss the history and contemporary expression of the international humanitarian system, considering its effects for gender work. Part Two examines humanitarian response in the field, exploring three case studies where humanitarian organisations responded to different types of emergencies in disparate parts of the globe. These case studies focus on responses to the ongoing displacement crises in South Sudan (2011 onwards), the cholera outbreak in Papua New Guinea (2009-2011) and the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (2011). Through analysis of interviews and organisational documents, this section reveals that the implementation of gender policy is subject to the fulfilment of several conditions related to organisational mandate, emergency type, and pre-existing gender structures in the particular context. Together, these conditions suggest that the liberal feminist framework guiding gender work is inappropriate for, and ineffective in, the current international humanitarian system. Drawing together the arguments of Parts One and Two, Part Three elaborates that a deficit exists in the policy and practice of gender work in IHA as a result of its fundamental theoretical underpinning. To address this deficit, the thesis concludes by advocating for a change in prevailing approaches to gender in IHA. The thesis suggests that attention to a critical feminist ethics of care may be able to reform gender work to make it compatible with the various conditions of particular humanitarian contexts.

Bread from Stones

Bread from Stones
Author: Keith David Watenpaugh
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520279301

Bread from Stones, a highly anticipated book from historian Keith David Watenpaugh, breaks new ground in analyzing the theory and practice of modern humanitarianism. Genocide and mass violence, human trafficking, and the forced displacement of millions in the early twentieth century Eastern Mediterranean form the background for this exploration of humanitarianismÕs role in the history of human rights. WatenpaughÕs unique and provocative examination of humanitarian thought and action from a non-Western perspective goes beyond canonical descriptions of relief work and development projects. Employing a wide range of source materialsÑliterary and artistic responses to violence, memoirs, and first-person accounts from victims, perpetrators, relief workers, and diplomatsÑWatenpaugh argues that the international answer to the inhumanity of World War I in the Middle East laid the foundation for modern humanitarianism and the specific ways humanitarian groups and international organizations help victims of war, care for trafficked children, and aid refugees.Ê Bread from Stones is required reading for those interested in humanitarianism and its ideological, institutional, and legal origins, as well as the evolution of the movement following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the advent of late colonialism in the Middle East.

Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality

Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality
Author: Silke Roth
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 631
Release: 2024-02-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1802206558

This prescient Handbook examines how legacies of colonialism, gender, class, and other markers of inequality intersect with contemporary humanitarianism at multiple levels.

Ethics and Global Security

Ethics and Global Security
Author: Anthony Burke
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2014-06-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1135095086

This book will be the first systematic examination of the role that ethics plays in international security in both theory and practice, and offers the reader a concrete ethics for global security. Questions of morality and ethics have long been central to global security, from the death camps, world wars and H-bombs of the 20th century, to the humanitarian missions, tsunamis, terrorism and refugees of the 21st. This book goes beyond the Just War tradition to demonstrate how ethical commitments influence security theory, policy and international law, across a range of pressing global challenges. The book highlights how, from patrolling a territorial border to maintaining armed forces, security practices have important ethical implications, by excluding some from consideration, presenting others as potential threats and exposing them to harm, and licensing particular actions. While many scholars and practitioners of security claim little interest in ethics, ethics clearly has an interest in them. This innovative book extends the traditional agenda of war and peace to consider the ethics of force short of war such as sanctions, deterrence, terrorism, targeted killing, and torture, and the ethical implications of new security concerns such as identity, gender, humanitarianism, the responsibility to protect, and the global ecology. It advances a concrete ethics for an era of global threats, and makes a case for a cosmopolitan approach to the theory and practice of security that could inspire a more just, stable and inclusive global order. This book fills an important gap in the literature and will be of much interest to students of ethics, security studies and international relations.

Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism

Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism
Author: Edgar Landgraf
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-10-04
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1501335693

The literary and scientific renaissance that struck Germany around 1800 is usually taken to be the cradle of contemporary humanism. Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism shows how figures like Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang Goethe as well as scientists specializing in the emerging modern life and cognitive sciences not only established but also transgressed the boundaries of the “human.” This period so broadly painted as humanist by proponents and detractors alike also grappled with ways of challenging some of humanism's most cherished assumptions: the dualisms, for example, between freedom and nature, science and art, matter and spirit, mind and body, and thereby also between the human and the nonhuman. Posthumanism is older than we think, and the so-called “humanists” of the late Enlightenment have much to offer our contemporary re-thinking of the human.

Humanitarianism and the Quantification of Human Needs

Humanitarianism and the Quantification of Human Needs
Author: Joël Glasman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2020-01-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000762599

This book provides a historical inquiry into the quantification of needs in humanitarian assistance. Needs are increasingly seen as the lowest common denominator of humanity. Standard definitions of basic needs, however, set a minimalist version of humanity – both in the sense that they are narrow in what they compare, and that they set a low bar for satisfaction. The book argues that we cannot understand humanitarian governance if we do not understand how humanitarian agencies made human suffering commensurable across borders in the first place. The book identifies four basic elements of needs: As a concept, as a system of classification and triage, as a material apparatus, and as a set of standards. Drawing on a range of archival sources, including the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), and the Sphere Project, the book traces the concept of needs from its emergence in the 1960s right through to the present day, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call for “evidence-based humanitarianism.” Finally, the book assesses how the international governmentality of needs has played out in a recent humanitarian crisis, drawing on field research on Central African refugees in the Cameroonian borderland in 2014–2016. This important historical inquiry into the universal nature of human suffering will be an important read for humanitarian researchers and practitioners, as well as readers with an interest in international history and development.

Humanitarianism and Media

Humanitarianism and Media
Author: Johannes Paulmann
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2018-12-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1785339621

From Christian missionary publications to the media strategies employed by today’s NGOs, this interdisciplinary collection explores the entangled histories of humanitarianism and media. It traces the emergence of humanitarian imagery in the West and investigates how the meanings of suffering and aid have been constructed in a period of evolving mass communication, demonstrating the extent to which many seemingly new phenomena in fact have long historical legacies. Ultimately, the critical histories collected here help to challenge existing asymmetries and help those who advocate a new cosmopolitan consciousness recognizing the dignity and rights of others.

The Human Rights Manifesto

The Human Rights Manifesto
Author: Julie Wark
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2013-11-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1780996675

Universal human rights are intrinsically radical in espousing liberty, equality and fraternity for every single person. We must claim them. ,

Humanitarianism

Humanitarianism
Author: Tim Allen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2018-06-27
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1135355126

The field of humanitarianism is characterised by profound uncertainty, by a constant need to respond to the unpredictable, and by concepts and practices that often defy simple or straightforward explanation. Humanitarians often find themselves not just engaged in the pursuit of effective action, but also in a quest for meaning. That is the starting point for this book. Humanitarian action has in recent years confronted geopolitical challenges that have upended much of its conventional modus operandi and presented threats to its foundational assumptions and legal frameworks. The critical interrogation of the purpose, practice and future of humanitarian action has yielded a rich new field of enquiry, humanitarian studies, and many thoughtful books, articles and reports. So, the question arose as to the most useful way to provide a critical overview that might serve to bring some definitional clarity as well as analytical rigor to the waves of critique and shifting sands of humanitarian action. Humanitarianism: A Dictionary of Concepts provides an authoritative analysis that attempts to rethink, rather than merely problematize or define the issues at stake in contemporary humanitarian debates. It is an important moment to do so. Just about every tenet of humanitarianism is currently open to question as never before.