Aidnography

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 12 – Subversive humanitarianism - contributed by Robin Vandevoordt. From the introduction In recent years, however, scholars have drawn attention to other actors providing material and social support, often under conditions of – sometimes prolonged – emergencies. They have spawned a whole range of new concepts, some of which are embedded within studies of humanitarianism, such as ‘new’, ‘volunteer’ ( Sandri, 2018 ), and ‘South–South’ humanitarianism ( Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a ; 2019 ), while others have emerged from neighbouring fields such as ‘citizen aid’ from development studies ( Fechter and Schwittay, 2019 ; see also Chapter 13 by Choudhury Lahiri on Citizen’s groups and grassroots humanitarianism in this volume ) and ‘inclusive solidarity’ from social movement studies ( Schwiertz and Schwe...

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 11 – Political solidarity movements and humanitarianism: lessons from Catalonia, Spain (1975–2020) – contributed by Salvador Martí i Puig and Alberto Martín Álvarez. From the introduction A solidarity movement is a collective political actor that, as in the case of parties and lobbies, relies on the voluntary participation of its members, has a relatively stable activity and a set of common objectives among its members, who share a coordinated and organised line of action, and the will to intervene in the political sphere, thus influencing the management of a social conflict. Nevertheless, these – and other – movements have some features that are specific to them, such as a flexible organisation, with traits of informality; a transversal discourse based on a specific thematic field (in this ca...