Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality - Chapter 13 – Citizen’s groups and grassroots humanitarianism
This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 13 - Citizen’s groups and grassroots humanitarianism - contributed by Shoma Choudhury Lahiri.
From the introduction
Post disaster reconstruction in the Global South since early 2000s is marked by ‘the increasing involvement of non-Western aid actors including a widening range of state and non-state organisations based within Asia’ (Feener and Daly, 2016: 393). What characterises the terrain is a growth of humanitarian involvement of new donors and actors like non-governmental organisations, civil society groups, diaspora groups, faith-based organisations, local self-help groups, and individual citizens who direct their resources and labour to a plethora of activities aimed at improving human lives.
Citizens’ initiatives are a relatively under-theorised area in humanitarian studies, not only because the discipline prioritises collective efforts over individual actions, but also because the term ‘citizen aid’ is seen as an ‘unstable category’ (Fechter and Schwittay, 2019: 1770).
The overlap of citizen aid with notions of charity, solidarity, and development on the ground, also makes its theoretical conceptualisation difficult. Accounts of citizen aid by private individuals, groups, and local organisations are relatively scanty and more anecdotal as they leave their traces in personal accounts, organisational reports, newspaper reports, popular articles, blogs, and in new media. A focus on citizen’s groups shows a diversity of patterns of citizens’ involvement. While some forms of aid are short-term specific to a crisis, a few of them continue even after the crisis is over. Some of them are organised in the form of large networks and can mobilise resources, while others work in small groups and primarily rely on self-funding or donations from friends and relatives. Some of them develop into NGOs on the way, while others are quite particular in retaining their identity as a local group, working for socio-political transformation in a local area. In recent times, in almost all these initiatives, the role of the social media has been very important in seeking aid, strengthening social networks and in extending both individual’s and group’s reach in society.
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This chapter examines the nature, motivation and interests that drive citizen aid at the grassroot level by focusing on the myriad forms of aid-giving practices that were visible during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Amphan cyclone in Kolkata. It situates such practices of mutual support and solidarity in the existing literature on humanitarian aid and attempts to understand the distinctiveness of such initiatives within current global humanitarian context.
Note on contributor
Shoma Choudhury Lahiri is an assistant professor of sociology at St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous) Kolkata. Her research interests lie in the field of social movements, ecology, sociology of science and development, citizenship, and qualitative methods. She has a few publications in the form of articles and book chapters in national and international journals.
She has recently published an edited volume on qualitative research methodologies titled Doing Social Research: Qualitative Methods of Research in Sociology (Orient Blackswan, 2020).
Overviews are already available for the following chapters:
Introduction: humanitarianism and inequality – a re-orientation
Humanitarianism and colonialism
Humanitarianism and the global Cold War, 1945–1991
Humanitarianism and the new wars: humanitarianism, security, and securitisation
Humanitarianism, development and peace: a southern perspective
Localisation and the humanitarian sector
Human rights and humanitarianism
Humanitarian organisations: behemoths and butterflies
Faith actors in humanitarianism: dynamics and inequalities
Diaspora assistance
Subversive humanitarianism
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