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 36 - Quantitative Methods - contributed by Liesbet Heyse, Nina Hansen and Rafael Wittek. From the introduction  In the humanitarian sector, there are many information systems and databases that contain quantitative data, relating to different levels: regions and countries, organisations and projects, and groups and individuals. For example, there is The Humanitarian Data Exchange , Insecurity Insight , and ACAPs .  These are examples of databases that aim to bring together all kinds of data on humanitarian situations, such as contextual data about specific countries and assessment information of humanitarian needs. There are also databases that provide broader data that can be of relevance for humanitarian actors, such as Our World in Data that contains information about famines, hun...

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 35 - Archives and historical perspectives in researching humanitarianism - contributed by Katarzyna Nowak. From the introduction  This chapter deals with sources and methodology of researching and writing history of humanitarianism. Historical perspectives, to repeat after Eleanor Davey and Kim Scriven (2015) , do not simply offer lessons from the past but pose challenges to habitual ways of thinking, contributing to the critical reflection on humanitarian action. The chapter begins with discussing the state of field and challenges around researching and writing history of human-itarianism and inequality. Focusing in particular on the issue of sources, it treats archives as spaces of power and asks how the process of generating records reflects the existing systems of power and inequ...