Conceptualizing “Everyday Humanitarianism”: Ethics, Affects, and Practices of Contemporary Global Helping

ABSTRACT

Humanitarianism has become increasingly widespread in our public life— from celebrity culture to Twitter messaging and from Christmas shopping to concert-going. This Special Issue introduces the concept of  “Everyday Humanitarianism” for understanding an expanded series of practices in the lives of citizens that purport to make a difference outside the traditional boundaries of professional humanitarian activity.  The term can also refer to the quotidian practices of humanitarian workers as they negotiate within the boundaries of formal structures. Everyday humanitarianism can be found in shopping malls and international organizations alike, and the struggles over its ethics and politics are consistent. Key questions arise: What does helping look like in the age of market-driven, digital media-based action? What are the implications of such practices for the ethics and politics of contemporary compassion? The contributions to this Special Issue examine everyday humanitarianism and provide unconventional, interdisciplinary approaches to understanding selected aspects of this civic and organizational benevolence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Monika Krause, The Good Project: Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014), p. 7.

² Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).

³ Ibid.

⁴ Kennedy Denis, “Selling the Distant Other: Humanitarianism and Imagery – Ethical Dilemmas of Humanitarian Action,” The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance 28 (2009), pp. 1–25; Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte, Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); Lilie Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-humanitarianism (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013).

⁵ Lisa Ann Richey, “Humanitarianism,” International Political Economy of Everyday Life (September 2017), available online at: http://i-peel.org/homepage/humanitarianism/.

⁶ For accessible histories of humanitarianism, see Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011); M. Barnett and T.G. Weiss (eds), Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).

⁷ Craig Calhoun, “The Idea of Emergency: Humanitarian Action and Global (Dis)Order,” in Didier Fassin and Mariella Pandolfi (eds), Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), p. 29.

⁸ Jo Littler, “‘I Feel Your Pain’: Cosmopolitan Charity and the Public Fashioning of the Celebrity Soul,” Social Semiotics 18:2 (2008), pp. 237–51.

⁹ Clifford Bob, “Merchants of Morality,” Foreign Policy (March 1, 2002), available online at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2002/03/01/merchants_of_morality; Barnett and Weiss, Humanitarianism in Question.

¹⁰ Robert van Krieken, “Celebrity Humanitarianism and Settler Colonialism: G.A. Robinson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land,” in Lisa Ann Richey (ed.), Celebrity Humanitarianism and North-South Relations: Politics, Place and Power (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), pp. 189–209.

¹¹ Roberto Belloni, “The Trouble with Humanitarianism,” Review of International Studies 33:3 (2007), pp. 451–74.

¹² Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (London, UK: James Currey, 1997), p. 6.

¹³ Peter Redfield, “Humanitarianism,” in Didier Fassin (ed.), A Companion to Moral Anthropology (Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2012), p. 464.

¹⁴ Anke Schwittay, New Media and International Development: Representation and Affect in Microfinance (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), p. 9.

¹⁵ Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012).

¹⁶ Schwittay, New Media and International Development.

¹⁷ Ibid., 173–77.

¹⁸ Miriam Ticktin, “Transnational Humanitarianism,” Annual Review of Anthropology 43 (2014), p. 274.

¹⁹ Jacinta O’Hagan and Miwa Hirono, “Fragmentation of the International Humanitarian Order? Understanding ‘Cultures of Humanitarianism’ in East Asia,” Ethics & International Affairs 28:4 (2014), p. 412.

²⁰ Patricia Daley, “Rescuing African Bodies: Celebrities, Consumerism and Neoliberal Humanitarianism,” Review of African Political Economy 40:137 (2013), pp. 375–93.

²¹ Michel Agier, Managing the Undesirables: Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Government (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2011).

²² Liisa H. Malkki, The Need to Help: The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015); Lilie Chouliaraki, “The Mediation of Suffering and the Vision of a Cosmopolitan Public,” Television & New Media 9:5 (2008), pp. 371–91; Lilie Chouliaraki, The Spectatorship of Suffering (London, UK: Sage, 2006); Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator.

²³ Graham Harrison, The African Presence: Representations of Africa in the Construction of Britishness (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2013).

²⁴ Tanja R. Müller, “The Long Shadow of Band Aid Humanitarianism: Revisiting the Dynamics Between Famine and Celebrity,” Third World Quarterly 34:3 (2013), pp. 470–84.

²⁵ Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator.

²⁶ Nandita Dogra, Representations of Global Poverty: Aid, Development and International NGOs (London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2012), p. 5.

²⁷ Lilie Chouliaraki, “Post-Humanitarianism: Humanitarian Communication Beyond a Politics of Pity,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 13:2 (2010), p. 122.

²⁸ Chouliaraki, “Post-Humanitarianism: Humanitarian Communication.”

²⁹ Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator.

³⁰ Richey and Ponte, Brand Aid: Shopping Well.

³¹ Mark R. Duffield, “Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound: Everyday Life in Post-Interventionary Society,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 4:4 (2010), pp. 453–74.

³² Roger Mac Ginty and Oliver P. Richmond, “The Local Turn in Peace Building: A Critical Agenda for Peace,” Third World Quarterly 34:5 (2013), pp. 763–83.

³³ Elisa Randazzo, “The Paradoxes of the ‘Everyday’: Scrutinising the Local Turn in Peace Building,” Third World Quarterly 37:8 (2016), pp. 1351–70.

³⁴ Ty Solomon and Brent J. Steele, “Micro-Moves in International Relations Theory,” European Journal of International Relations 23:2 (2016), pp. 267–91.

³⁵ Dorothea Hilhorst and Bram J. Jansen, “Humanitarian Space as Arena: A Perspective on the Everyday Politics of Aid,” Development and Change 41:6 (2010), pp. 1117–39.

³⁶ Malkki, Need to Help.

³⁷ Peter J. Hoffman and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarianism, War and Politics: Solferino to Syria and Beyond (London, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018).

³⁸ The research network on Celebrities and North–South Relations based at Roskilde University in Denmark collaborated with the London School of Economics and Politics in the UK to convene an international conference to explore “everyday humanitarianism.” For more information, see https://celebnorthsouth.wordpress.com/activities/upcoming-conference-everyday-humanitarianism-ethics-affects-and-practices/.

³⁹ Miriam Ticktin, “A World without Innocence,” American Ethnologist 44:4 (2017), pp. 577–90.

⁴⁰ Craig Calhoun, “A World of Emergencies: Fear, Intervention, and the Limits of the Cosmpolitan Order,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 41:4 (2004), pp. 373–95; Calhoun, “Idea of Emergency.”

⁴¹ Calhoun, “Idea of Emergency,” p. 34.

⁴² Miriam Ticktin, “Transnational Humanitarianism,” Annual Review of Anthropology 43:1 (2014), pp. 273–89.

⁴³ Ilana Feldman and Miriam Ticktin (eds), In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).

⁴⁴ Ticktin, “Transnational Humanitarianism.”

⁴⁵ Krause, Good Project.

⁴⁶ Mark R. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (New York, NY: Zed Books, 2001); Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou, “Hospitability: The Communicative Architecture of Humanitarian Securitization at Europe’s Borders,” Journal of Communication 67:2 (2017), pp. 159–80.

⁴⁷ Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).

⁴⁸ Stefano Ponte and Lisa Ann Richey, “Buying Into Development? rand Aid Forms of Cause-Related Marketing,” Third World Quarterly 35:1 (2014) pp. 65–87.

⁴⁹ Didier Fassin, “Humanitarianism as a Politics of Life,” Public Culture 19:3 (2007), pp. 499–520.

⁵⁰ Hugo Slim, Marketing Humanitarian Space: Targeting and Method in Humanitarian Persuasion (Geneva, CH: Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2003), p. 4, available online at: https://www.hdcentre.org/publications/marketing-humanitarian-space-argument-and-method-in-humanitarian-persuasion/.

⁵¹ See particularly Chapter Two in Krause, Good Project, pp. 39–69.

⁵² Richey and Ponte, Brand Aid: Shopping Well; Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte, “Brand Aid and the International Political Economy and Sociology of North South Relations,” International Political Sociology 7:1 (2013), pp. 92–113; Stefano Ponte and Lisa Ann Richey, “Buying Into Development? Brand Aid Forms of Cause-Related Marketing,” Third World Quarterly 35:1 (2014), pp. 65–87.

⁵³ See the debate in the journal Media, Culture and Society, for example Andreas Hepp, Stig Hjarvard, and Knut Lundby, “Mediatization: Theorizing the Interplay between Media, Culture and Society,” Media, Culture & Society 37:2 (2015), pp. 314–24.

⁵⁴ Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator.

⁵⁵ Ticktin, “Transnational Humanitarianism.”

⁵⁶ Fassin, Humanitarian Reason.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Samfund og Erhverv, Det Frie Forskningsråd [6109-00158].

Notes on contributors

Lisa Ann Richey

Lisa Ann Richey is Professor of Globalization at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. She served as founding Vice-President of the Global South Caucus and Advisory Board Member of the Global Health Section of the International Studies Association (ISA). She is author of Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World with Stefano Ponte (2011), Population Politics and Development: From the Policies to the Clinics (2008), co-editor with Stefano Ponte of New Actors and Alliances in Development (2014), and editor of Celebrity Humanitarianism and North-South Relations: Politics, Place and Power (2016). She researches international aid and humanitarian politics, the aid business, new transnational actors and alliances in the Global South, and development theories. She leads the research project on Commodifying Compassion: Implications of Turning People and Humanitarian Causes into Marketable Things (2016–2020), funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research. She completed post-doctoral training in the Department of Population and International Health at Harvard University and a Ph.D. in the Department Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.