Aidnography

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook onHumanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 17 - Sexuality and humanitarianism: colonial ‘hauntings’ contributed by Shweta M. Adur. From the introduction This chapter examines the discursive inter-connections between humanitarianism, sexuality, and the colonial experience to reveal enduring influences of colonial ideals of sex and sexuality on contemporary humanitarianism. In the first section, I begin by describing how ‘sexualities’ emerged as a mode of ‘modern’ governance in Europe. I trace its gendered and racialised contours to describe the ways in which it was deployed to establish the superiority of white, cis-gendered, and heterosexual masculinity. The second section, builds on the discussion to demonstrate the deeply sexualised, gendered, and racialised processes of conquest and colonialism. The colonial administration served as ...

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 16 - Humanitarian organisations as gendered organisations - contributed by Rianka Roy. From the introduction Humanitarian organisations are aid agencies and advocacy groups working internationally, nationally, and locally to support distressed populations. They bring together a range of activities and coalitions ( Möller et al., 2020 ) among United Nations agencies, international and national non-government organisations, communities, and other bilateral groups. Humanitarian organisations can be ‘multi-mandated’, combining development work, emergency relief during natural disasters and conflicts, peacebuilding, and human rights work ( Mosse, 2011 ; Harcourt, 2016 ). Although they provide aid to populations in crisis, quite paradoxically, humanitarian organisations themselves perpetuate structu...

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 15 – Race, racialisation, and coloniality in the humanitarian aid sector - contributed by Lata Narayanaswamy. From the introduction In this chapter I will elaborate on two key observations inspired by my own positionality both as a former development practitioner and a person of colour (PoC) academic/activist based in the UK/Global North, and both are inflected through the lenses of ‘impartiality and neutrality’. The first is that a manufactured distinction tends to be made in both discourse and practice between the delivery of humanitarian aid, which is about the immediacy of perceived need as a result of acute crisis, and longer-term (political) change processes that we might link to broader ‘development’ goals (see also Chapter 5 by Singh and Banerjee on Humanitarianism, development, and pe...

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 14 – Humanitarianism and the military - contributed by Silke Roth. From the introduction The concept of ‘military interventions’, i.e. the use of military force to address conflicts and human rights violations, and subsequent debates about the ‘shrinking humanitarian space’ became prominent in the 1990s during the peacekeeping missions in former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq ( Chandler, 2001 ; De Torrente, 2004 ). However, the entanglement of military action and humanitarian aid has a much longer history going back to the crusades and various patterns of the militarisation of relief organisations can be distinguished ( Perouse de Montclos, 2014 ; see also Terry, 2002 ; Greenburg, 2023 ). This chapter seeks to unravel the entanglements of civilian humanitarian actors and military f...

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 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 onl...

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...