Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality - Chapter 35 - Archives and historical perspectives in researching humanitarianism

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 inequalities inherent to them. The next section focuses on the issues of silence and polyphony in the archives, showing that expressions of aid recipients of various back-grounds can be unearthed by reading the archives against the grain. The collections of evoked sources through which we can access mediated voices are discussed in the subsequent section, emphasising that voices of aid recipients were preserved in various forms and genres. The final section focuses on the ethics of working in the archives holding records on humanitarianism, in particular the issues of access, confidentiality, and intrusion. Throughout the chapter inequality features as an important dimension: inequality in ability to preserve records, inequality in accessing records, and inequality of how individuals and groups are represented in the historical records and in historiographical narratives. Silences are generated also as a result of the powerful denying the marginal access to archives and when understood as such become a fruitful category of analysis (Carter, 2006). While this chapter cannot offer any holistic solu-tions on how to decolonise the Archives, it does suggest small strategies in research practice that challenge and disrupt the institutional categories. 
In this chapter I use my expertise in cultural and social history, Eastern European history, and refugee studies to reflect on how one can use archives to study humanitarianism.

Note on contributor 
Katarzyna Nowak is a historian specialising in cultural and social history of Eastern Europe, with a particular interest in refugee and migrant history. During her research at the University of Manchester, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, and Central European University, she focused on displaced persons in the early Cold War period in the global perspective. 
She has recently completed her first monograph, entitled Kingdom of Barracks. Polish Displaced Persons in Allied-occupied Germany and Austria (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023). Currently, she is researching the Vatican’s involvement in post-1945 refugee aid.

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

Political solidarity movements and humanitarianism: lessons from Catalonia, Spain (1975–2020)

Subversive humanitarianism

Citizen’s groups and grassroots humanitarianism

Humanitarianism and the military

Race, racialisation, and coloniality in the humanitarian aid sector

Humanitarian organisations as gendered organisations

Sexuality and humanitarianism: colonial ‘hauntings’

Class matters in humanitarianism

Humanitarianism and disability

Media representations of humanitarianism

Humanitarianism and pandemics

Humanitarian technologies

Linguistic inequality in the humanitarian sector: unravelling English-centric multilingualism

Climate change, disasters and humanitarian action

Refugee protection and assistance

Trafficking in persons, long-term vulnerabilities, and humanitarianism

Humanitarianism and Native America

Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Regions

International humanitarianism in East Asia

West Asia and North Africa

Africa’s long fight for humanitarian self-sufficiency

The Latin American experience: inequality's role in shaping humanitarianism

Varieties of European humanitarianism

Humanitarian research ethics and the ethics of research in humanitarian settings

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