Humanitarianism Anthropological Perspectives PDF

Humanitarianism Anthropological Perspectives B Y: S OL OMON DEB EB E , ( MA )  Chapter One 1. Introduction  Anthropological View  We can distinguish two different ways in which anthropology can be of importance to humanitariani...

Humanitarianism Anthropological Perspectives B Y: S OL OMON DEB EB E , ( MA )  Chapter One 1. Introduction  Anthropological View  We can distinguish two different ways in which anthropology can be of importance to humanitarianism: anthropology in humanitarianism and anthropology of humanitarianism.  Anthropology in humanitarianism refers to the ways that anthropology and its concepts, perspectives, theories, methodologies and experiences of studying culture and societies all over the world can be applied in humanitarian action, i.e., how anthropology can make humanitarian action better, more effective, more receptive to local needs and so forth.  Anthropology of humanitarianism refers to what anthropology has learnt by turning its investigating eye towards humanitarianism itself, its work, organisations, ethics, to help humanitarians understand what it is they are actually doing, to make eventual contradictions, problems and inconsistencies apparent  Both represent two different ways in which anthropology may be useful to humanitarianism, and both have their value. It may even be argued that either one would be insufficient without the other.  While the former may be used for encounters with humanitarian victims, the latter for understanding the humanitarian aid workers. Hence, Humanitarian action contains both dimensions. 1.2 Meanings and scope of Humanitarianism and Humanity  Humanitarianism  Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional reasons.  One aspect involves voluntary emergency aid overlapping with human rights advocacy, actions taken by governments, development assistance, and domestic philanthropy. Other critical issues include correlation with religious beliefs, motivation of aid between altruism and social control, market affinity, imperialism and neo- colonialism, gender and class relations, and humanitarian agencies.  A practitioner is known as a humanitarian.  Humanity  Humanity is a virtue linked with basic ethics of altruism derived from the human condition. It also symbolises human love and compassion towards each other.  Humanity differs from mere justice in that there is a level of altruism towards individuals included in humanity more so than the fairness found in justice. That is, humanity, and the acts of love, altruism, and social intelligence are typically individual strengths while fairness is generally expanded to all.  Humanity can be classed as one of six virtues that are consistent across all cultures. (wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence).  The concept goes back to the development of "humane" or "humanist" philosophy during the Renaissance (with predecessors in 13th-century scholasticism stressing a concept of basic human dignity inspired by Aristotelianism) and the concept of humanitarianism in the early modern period, and resulted in modern notions such as "human rights".  Historical perspectives Group Discussion 1. Confucian Philosophy 2. Greek philosophy 3. Abrahamic religion Strengths of humanity 1. Love 2. Kindness 3. Social intelligence 4. Psychological wellbeing  Virtue and wellbeing  Confucian Philosophy  Confucius said that humanity, or “Ren” is a “love of people” stating “if you want to make a stand, help others make a stand.” That is, the Confucian theory of humanity exemplifies the golden rule.  It is so central to Confucian thought that it appears 58 times in the Analects. Similar to the Christian process of seeking God, Confucius teaches seeking Ren to a point of seemingly divine mastery until you are equal to, or better than, your teacher.  The Confucian concept of Ren encompasses both love and altruism.  Greek philosophy  Plato and Aristotle both wrote extensively on the subject of virtues, though neither ever wrote on humanity as a virtue, despite highly valuing love and kindness, two of the strengths of humanity.  Plato and Aristotle considered "courage, justice, temperance" and "generosity, wit, friendliness, truthfulness, magnificence, and greatness of soul" to be the sole virtues, respectively.  Abrahamic religion  Kindness, altruism and love are all mentioned in the Bible. Proverbs 19:22 states "the desire of a man is his kindness." On the topic of altruism, emphasis is placed on helping strangers (Hebrews 13:1) and the biblical adage "it is better to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35).  Humanity is one of Thomas Aquinas' "Seven Heavenly Virtues". Beyond that, humanity was so important in some positivist Christian cultures that it was to be capitalized like God.  Strengths of humanity Love & Kindness  Love  Love has many different definitions ranging from a set of purely biological and chemical processes to a religious concept. As a character strength, love is a mutual feeling between two people characterized by attachment, comfort, and generally positive feelings.  It can be broken down into 3 categories: love between a child and their parents, love for your friends, and romantic love.  Having love as a strength is not about the capacity to love, as such, it is about being involved in a loving relationship.  Love, in the psychological sense, is most often studied in terms of attachment to others. A degree of controversy surrounds defining and researching love in this way, as it takes away the “mystery of love.” Because love is mysterious, to an extent, it is most often studied in terms of attachment theory, because it can be studied in the way across ages. In infants, attachment is studied through the Strange Situation Test.  Evidence in support of the benefits of love are seen in the negative affect states that result from lacking love. Orphaned children have been targeted in studies about negative attributes resulting from lack of attachment.  Kindness  The strength kindness encompasses most related terms that evoke feelings of altruism, generosity, helpfulness and a general desire to help people. That is, a disposition for helping humanity. The following statements are from the Values in Action (VIA) psychological assessment, aimed at determining people's strengths in kindness: others are just as important to me, giving is more important than receiving, I care for the ungrateful as well as the grateful.  Kindness, as a part of humanity, is deeply rooted in philosophical and religious traditions, each having words for the altruistic love aspect of kindness, such as agape in Greek, chesed in Hebrew, and the Latin word philantropia, the root of the word "philanthropy."  There are numerous benefits from kindness and altruism on both sides of the action. For some, the motivation to be kind comes from a place of egoistic motivation, and thus the benefit to them is the positive affect state they receive from the action. Another study found that the process of being kind develops pro-social skills in children, which positively effects their attachments and relationships. Additionally, volunteerism in the elderly has shown to lead to decreased risk of early death, and mental health benefits. One thing to note is the difference between altruism as a trait and as an act.  Social intelligence  Social intelligence is the most modern of the three strengths associated with humanity. The Character Strengths and Virtues (CSV) psychological assessment defines social intelligence as the ability to understand “relationships with other people, including the social relationships involved in intimacy and trust, persuasion, group membership, and political power.”  Intelligence has many psychological definitions from Weschler's intelligence to the various theories of multiple intelligence. The CSV divides intelligence into hot and cold, hot intelligence being those intelligences related to active emotional processes. (338) Individuals with high social intelligence are very self-aware, and effective organizers and leaders. Additionally, it combines elements of the other two hot intelligences, personal and emotional intelligence.  1.3 Critical Interrogations  Humanitarian organizations generally present themselves as outside of politics, devoid of power, and ethically chaste, but the essays in this book provide critical reflections on these claims. Indeed, this moment, in which humanitarianism’s boundaries are in dispute, is particularly revealing of how humanitarianism is intertwined with politics, power, and ethics, explore tensions and instabilities as well as suggest various ways in which humanitarian organizations attempt to manage them.  Politics  Routinely, aid organizations portray their efforts as apolitical. Such statements make good copy and frequently accompany the mantra that humanitarianism exists when politics fails—they insist that we treat humanitarianism and politics as existing in separate domains. However, any boundary between the two is a social construction and thus is dependent on how knowledgeable actors attempt to create, maintain, and define these categories and the criteria for the segregation. Consequently, rather than embracing the representation offered by aid agencies, it is better to examine closely how different aid agencies operate with different and potentially contradictory conceptualizations of humanitarianism and politics, and then to critically assess that relationship.  Power  Although humanitarianism is frequently presented as devoid of power, this claim represents both a comfortable myth that aid workers tell themselves and simultaneously helps manufacture their power, which rests on their authority. Authority can be understood as the ability of one actor to use institutional and discursive resources to induce deference from others. When individuals have authority, we frequently know it because we give them the right to speak and we defer to their judgment (not that we necessarily do what they say). This makes authority slightly different from power. Power is frequently understood as the ability to get someone to do something that they do not want to do.  Ethics  Four ethical positions dominate the discussion regarding how we should judge and evaluate humanitarian acts. One position is deontological or duty-based ethics. Frequently deriving from Kantian claims, some actions are simply good in and of themselves regardless of their consequences. Ethical action, therefore, consists of identifying these intrinsically good actions and then performing one’s moral duty.  Chapter Two Anthropology and Humanitarianism Holism: Holism is the perspective on the human condition that assumes that mind, body, individuals, society, and the environment interpenetrate, and even define one another. In anthropology holism tries to integrate all that is known about human beings and their activities. From a holistic perspective, attempts to divide reality into mind and matter isolate and pin down certain aspects of a process that, by very nature, resists isolation and dissection. Holism holds great appeal for those who seek a theory of human nature that is rich enough to do justice to its complex subject matter.  An easier understanding of holism is to say that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Individual human organisms are not just x percent genes and y percent culture added together. Rather, human beings are what they are because of mutual shaping of genes and culture and experiences living in the world produces something new, something that cannot be reduced to the materials used to construct it. It is important to note that humans who grow and live together are inevitably shaped by shared cultural experiences and develop into a much different person than they would have if developing in isolation.  Sally Engle Merry, an anthropologist, got a call from a radio show asking her to talk about a recent incident that happened in Pakistan that resulted in a gang rape of a young woman authorized by a local tribal council. She explained to them that it was an inexcusable act and that the rape was probably connected to local political struggles and class differences. This relates to holism because the gang rape was authorized by higher authorities because it is a cultural norm for socially higher class men to feel more empowered over women. This emphasizes the connection between human actions and their environment and society.  Methodological Relativism  Methodological relativism refers to a stance by Anthropologists who are concerned with describing actual human behavior in which the researcher suspends or brackets his or her own cultural biases while attempting to understand beliefs and behaviors in their local contexts.  Methodological relativism holds that the ethnographer must set aside his or her own cultural norms in order to understand another culture and explain its worldview.  The definition of methodological relativism is when anthropologists would sacrifice his/her own culture, belief and value of what they been taught in order to better understand other people culture. The reason why anthropologists rely on this is because having a better knowledge to understand other cultures without interfering other people. It 's been trying to be being neutral in their own belief and culture which is one of the many ways how anthropologist does it.  The risk fact of ignoring is that they will be a lot disagreement and if they 're a lot disagreement how can we accept stuff if couldn 't understand how they 're way life is as normal as ours. Moral relativism is defined as the idea that whatever culture makes it okay, as along everyone in that culture agree with it then it 's okay. Moral relativism is good to keep everyone in peace by how everyone would agree with it and not debate about the arguments  Anthropologists in Humanitarian Crisis and armed conflict  The anthropological study of armed conflict differs from the perspectives of other disciplines, such as political science or law, in that it examines war as a social practice that is deeply embedded within the broader cultural context in which it occurs. In studying war, anthropologists are mainly concerned with its social dimensions. They ask questions, such as: how do cultural beliefs relate to the practice and experience of armed conflict? What are the norms and rules that govern warfare in different societies? How does armed conflict relate to other factors, including ecology, economy, kinship, gender, values and politics?  Although early anthropologists of the nineteenth century did not study war as such, their ethnographic accounts of small-scale societies include informative descriptions of feuding, raiding and warfare practices, offering important findings of cross-cultural variations in conflict resolution, the use of violence and the waging of war. With later anthropologists studying the phenomenon of war more explicitly, a lively debate has produced new valuable insights into the social dimensions of conflicts, violence and war.  Dominant themes that emerged are questions concerning the universality and inevitability of war, evolutionary accounts of primitive/tribal versus modern warfare, the causes and practices of warfare and the effects of armed conflict on socio-cultural systems.  More recently, new conflicts in the aftermath of the Cold War, the attacks on 11 September 2001, the so- called ‘global war on terror’ and the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have provoked new debates and research in anthropology and related disciplines.  Chapter Four Humanitarianism and its discontents A Portrait of Western Humanitarian Aid  Western relief aid’s nature is “to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain and protect human dignity during and in the aftermath of emergencies.” There are intrinsic characteristics that distinguish this Western form of aid from others. In its pure form, humanitarian action is intended to be short term. It is governed by four deontological principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.  Generally, these emergency responses manifest in the form of material relief assistance and services (i.e.healthcare, shelter, and water), emergency food aid (i.e. short term distribution and supplementary feeding programmes) and relief coordination, protection and support services (i.e. coordination, logistics and communications).  The main providers of this type of assistance are governments, private Movement), and multilateral organisations (like the World Bank and the International Organisation for Migration – IOM). Most actors have their own set of policies, protocols and manuals that define the way in which this assistance is provided. Some of these tools are common to a larger group of aid providers i.e. the Sphere Handbook: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response (June 2011 last version).  During responses, at the micro level, humanitarian workers of these major international actors deliver this type of assistance in the symbolic –and physical– humanitarian space. Spearin defines this space as “an environment where humanitarians can work without hindrance and follow the humanitarian principles.” humanitarian organisations (i.e. non- governmental organisations –NGOs– and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent.  In its physical dimension it refers for instance to refugee camps and humanitarian corridors where humanitarians deliver basic services. The metaphorical aspect invokes the room for manoeuvre of humanitarians to work without fear of attack in dangerous situations. Despite the fact that the effectiveness of humanitarian space has prove limited, it remains widely accepted as the expression and aspiration of humanitarian assistance.  A Retrospective: Unfolding Western Approach to Humanitarian Aid.  The origins: Unconscious Ethnocentrism  Suffering and the humanitarian gesture to alleviate it have long histories. Humanitarian action can be traced through hundreds of years of history across the globe. There are two main forms of humanitarian aid often mentioned in the literature. First, practices stemming from religious beliefs, like Christian ideas of charity and Islamic zakat – the duty to assist others.  Second, actions aiming to minimise the impact of war, for instance the creation of laws of war (i.e. in ancient Greece and Rome, or the ones articulated in The Art of War by Sun Tzu in China – dated 500 B.C.).  Albeit these global precedents, the contemporary international humanitarian system has its operational and institutional roots in European experience from the eighteenth century onwards. Authors present two key sources of practice and innovation in humanitarian action. First, they point at the philosophical and intellectual influence of the Enlightenment. Second, they refer to the practices of colonialism, where mainly British and French military, as well as religious medics played a part in colonial conquest and administration in Africa, India and Indochina.  Several academics agree on the fact that the most powerful event that has contributed to the blooming of modern humanitarian aid is related to the creation of the Red Cross in 1863. This episode was framed on European ethics and Christian values of compassion: the strong moral responsibility to reduce human suffering. In 1859, Swiss devout Calvinist businessman Henri Dunant witnessed the consequences of a battle between the French and Austrian armies in the town of Solferino (Italy), where thousands of wounded and dying soldiers were left on their own with no assistance. Dunant compiled his account of the events in Un Souvenir de Solférino that prompted an international response and led to the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).  Expansion: Serving Western Domination  From its origins until decolonisation, the colonial field served as a laboratory for the techniques of humanitarian action. The language of humanitarian action was both moral and medical, identifying wellbeing through species-level needs and health. Military and emergency medicine saw dramatic innovations, even calling for an ‘evidence-based action’, and took institutional form across the nineteenth century as areas of international  cooperation. Medicine became an important component of missionary work in African and Asian colonies. Like the aid provided in Europe, the first intended beneficiaries of this medicine were Europeans working in colonised territories. Nevertheless, treatments were later expanded to local populations, firstly aiming to promote conversion and secondly to protect colonial forces from disease.  Notably at this time, colonialism was making use of anthropology to bridge the knowledge gap between Western and non-Western culture. The discipline emerged as a mode of understanding the subjects of European colonialism. Its goal was to ‘scientifically’ recognise what factors produced human ‘difference’ and facilitate the governance of these ‘primitive’ societies. Anthropology, as Lévi-Strauss explains, “is the science of culture as seen from the outside”.  Both humanitarian assistance and anthropology were alien and imposed to their non-white subjects that had no power to question their application. It is relevant for this study to remark at this point the common roots and the historical moment when both branches of knowledge and practice converged for the first time. This shared background constitutes as well a backbone for coincident critiques to both fields of study and practice.  Humanitarian aid and anthropology –equally based on European values– met in the field and were used to support a Western system of political, cultural and economic domination.  The post colonialists’ idea of development discourses as “unconsciously ethnocentric, rooted in European cultures and reflective of a dominant Western world view…depicting the North as advanced and progressive and the South as backward, degenerate and primitive” could be extrapolated into humanitarian aid.  Privatisation: New Actors, New Emergencies  The second half of the twentieth century –the 70s and the 80s Cold War decades– witnessed a remarkable increase in humanitarian responses worldwide. The mediated encounter with distant suffering started to play a significant role amid an era of controversy, where its alleviation became a central topic in the international moral discourse.  Key events that occurred during this period contributed to shape the contemporary humanitarian aid industry, strengthening the private dimension of humanitarian action.  The institutional void, a consequence of the end of colonialism, in the (now called) Third World was promptly occupied by the superpower states –Russia and the United States– and also a large number of what James Rosenau calls “non-state actors” or “sovereignty- free actors” that coexist with state actors. The proliferation of these “non-state actors” was possible thanks to the improvements in technology and the democratisation of transportation that allowed individuals to expand their abilities and analytical skills.  The importance of actors at this stage is determined by their capability to initiate and sustain actions rather than by their legal status or sovereignty. A typology of these actors includes international organisations, humanitarian agencies and INGOs.  Effectiveness: Standardisation and Professionalisation.  Despite the increase in resources and notoriety, a big reform of the sector took place after the evident failure of the humanitarian response to the Rwandan genocide in 1994.  One of the critiques in the report of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda is that the unprofessional and irresponsible manner in which the humanitarian response was carried out actually “contributed to an unnecessary loss of life.” Accountability was not a major concern up to this moment. As a reaction to that, a process to modernise, professionalise and standardise relief operations started giving birth to four initiatives: the Code of Conduct, the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance (ALNAP), the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership-International (HAP-International) and the Sphere project.  This self-policing engagement was aimed at providing a framework for action as well as holding members accountable to a series of agreed principles and standards. In many cases, the performance of humanitarian agents is internally evaluated against the meeting of standards alone. There is an idea that standardisation is linked to accountability; therefore, the goal is to meet the standards. The Sphere project consists of a “set of universal minimum standards for what the victims of disasters need to acquire in order to survive.  The assistance provided to people affected by disasters, and to enhance the accountability of the humanitarian system and its response.” It is about people’s rights, in particular the right to life with dignity.  The conceptualisation of victim according to Meredith dispossesses people from potential and active identity, which deprives them from public expression.  An Introspective: Acknowledging the Current Status of the Humanitarian System  According to ALNAP’s report on The State of the Humanitarian System, in 2012 there were an estimated total of 274,000 humanitarian workers worldwide. They reckon the workforce has a 4% annual growth. Despite the global financial crisis that slowed down the monetary income, it is a field of almost 17 billion in funds.  This blooming of the system has incorporated diversity among humanitarian agents, which carried along a deeper fragmentation of humanitarian response. These actors have different approaches to humanitarian aid.  Currently, there are intense debates among academics and practitioners regarding the limits of humanitarian action. One of them refers to whether humanitarians should seek to transform –to develop– the places where they work or whether they should restrict their work to crisis management. Another debate points at whether their work should engage political questions and rights-based language or should be limited to provide life-saving aid.  Different Western organisations have diverse approaches and they stand at very opposite ends of the line. Whereas some – like the ICRC and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) – intend to maintain a sharp boundary between relief and development, others –like CARE, Oxfam, World Vision, and Save the Children– see their duties lying in both domains.  At the micro level, these distinctions are reflected in two major types of responses to crisis. On the one hand, emergency agencies like the ICRC and MSF, concentrated on relief and life-saving, tend to respect the core principles of humanitarianism standing outside politics (nevertheless, this point is highly debated by critics, not questioning causes and consequences, and creating a humanitarian space where aid workers could provide assistance to victims.  They prioritise action before thinking, the Kantian duty- based imperative to act that disregards consequences. Nevertheless, the témoignage (witnessing) policy adopted by MSF differentiates the two organisations  Another major element of controversy within the system is the incorporation of “new” actors in the humanitarian arena: the military and the corporate sector.  Some organisations put into question their role as they may have political or economic objectives underpinning their action, which in turn hinders impartial assistance to all people affected by the crisis.  Others stress the impact their presence has on the security of the people related with the programmes – both staff and beneficiaries  Chapter Five The Distributive Commitment of International NGOs  For the past several years, international nongovernmental organizations such as Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders have spent over $4 billion annually assisting people affected by earthquakes, famines, epidemics, violent group conflicts, and other disasters.1 This sum is significant, but it is nowhere near adequate to aid all disaster-affected people whom NGOs wish to assist. Although a few high-profile disasters, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, have elicited more contributions than NGOs can effectively utilize, for the most part there is not enough money to go around.  NGOs must therefore make wrenching decisions about how to distribute the scarce resources at their disposal. In this chapter I examine the moral and ethical commitments that inform these decisions. The principles that NGOs use to allocate disaster relief might at first seem readily apparent.  Since it was created in 1994, more than four hundred NGOs. (both international and domestic) have signed the Code of Conduct for the In- ternational Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief (henceforth, “the Code”).3 This Code has principles that pertain directly to aid distribution. Not every NGO that has signed the Code agrees with or consistently abides by all of its principles.  Nonetheless, the existence, prominence, and widespread acceptance of the Code suggests that its principles are seen by many in the NGO community as plausible, important, and not deeply contro-versial (yet also not so self-evident that their inclusion would be ridiculous).  Although it is a significant source of information, the Code does not begin to exhaust the morally relevant considerations that NGOs incorporate into their distributive decisions. At one level, this is not surprising because the Code con- sists of only general principles; it does not incorporate the myriad contextua judgments that NGOs must make when they apply these principles to specific situations. Nor does the Code say anything about how NGOs should decide among several courses of action, all of which are consistent with the Code.  If this were all that was left out of the Code, there would be no compelling reason to look beyond it. Yet, actual NGO practices, along with the explanations of those practices that NGOs offer, suggest that many NGOs allocate aid in part on the basis of general, normatively important distributive commitments that are not included in the Code  Although it is a significant source of information, the Code does not begin to exhaust the morally relevant considerations that NGOs incorporate into their distributive decisions. At one level, this is not surprising because the Code con-sists of only general principles; it does not incorporate the myriad contextual judgments that NGOs must make when they apply these principles to specific situations.  Nor does the Code say anything about how NGOs should decide among several courses of action, all of which are consistent with the Code. If this were all that was left out of the Code, there would be no compelling reason to look beyond it.  Yet, actual NGO practices, along with the explanations of those practices that NGOs offer, suggest that many NGOs allocate aid in part on the basis of general, normatively important distributive commitments that are not included in the Code.  In addition to enriching debates about how NGOs should distribute re- sources, a second reason to identify the full range of their distributive commitments is that doing so contributes to a better descriptive understanding of aid provision itself. This might seem counterintuitive, because theorists usually move from the descriptive to the normative.  That is, they usually describe a particular set of practices, such as the distribution of international aid by NGOs, and then ask what principles and commitments should guide those practices.  I am suggesting that the opposite approach is also fruitful: examining actors’ normative principles and commitments can generate an improved description of the practices that are the context for those principles and commitments. For example, many NGOs are committed to distributing resources fairly between refugees and host communities. This brings out a descriptive feature of international aid—refugee settlements are often located in popu- lated areas—that might otherwise have been deemed irrelevant or overlooked entirely.