History of Humanitarian Aid - Introduction Worksheet PDF

The history of humanitarian aid: Introduction, assessments and chronologies of humanitarian aid Learning Outcomes Learning Outcomes At the end of this section you will: Outline how the course and assessments work. To discuss the way historians have been thinking about th...

The history of humanitarian aid: Introduction, assessments and chronologies of humanitarian aid Learning Outcomes Learning Outcomes At the end of this section you will: Outline how the course and assessments work. To discuss the way historians have been thinking about the history of humanitarianism. To get an understanding of the chronology they use. Engage with why history matters to humanitarians. 1 Introduction This week we will talk about how the course works, what humanitarian history is, and how historians have approached it so far. Videos 1.5 Add title here If clicking does not work, please copy and paste the whole link into the browser Introduction to the course: https://video.manchester.ac.uk/lectures/46f29d49c2720867beb18735b3675ee0/a99f5842 1.5-1cc8-4f77-89b6-6ff14c1fe4fb/ On chronology: A good literature review will be underpinned by good, methodical searching and note-taking techniques. It also requires strong intellectual judgment in assessing the https://video.manchester.ac.uk/lectures/46f29d49c2720867beb18735b3675ee0/da15d22a key-362f-489a-9513-9d3b01248264/ concepts, theories, methods, trends and gaps in your topic area.. On developments in the 1980s and 90s: https://video.manchester.ac.uk/lectures/46f29d49c2720867beb18735b3675ee0/a47b58fd -103f-4058-bbc1-7279f1c5c660/ 1.5 Hints and tips History Many of you will not have studied much history before, so one of the aims of this week if to consider the value of history to humanitarians. We will also give a brief overview of what history is. In very general terms it is a discipline that studies change over time, seeking to understand changing power dynamics, systems of meaning, and material conditions; identify causes of significant events and processes. As this suggests history is a broad discipline that looks at politics, society, economics, culture, etc. It therefore borrows concepts and techniques from lots of other disciplines, such as international relations, anthropology and sociology. When analysing history, it’s important to be aware of the concepts and methods being used. One of the distinctive aspects of history is its focus on archival sources. These are traces of the past (e.g. written documents, images, recordings, buildings, etc.). Historians interpret them to understand the past, but must be aware of issues of partiality, perspective, significance. Primary sources are, at best, fragments of the past. In the course you will be given access to primary sources in most weeks, and are encouraged to read and discuss them. 2 The history of humanitarian aid is a growing field, with many important contributions from Manchester. Some of the things it analyses are: changing conceptions of humanity and humanitarianism; the (non-linear) development of humanitarian institutions and norms; changing technologies and expressions of humanitarianism; and the relationship between humanitarianism and social, economic and political contexts (e.g. empires, wars). This is a very condensed summary: we will discuss these things in more detail through the course! The history of humanitarian aid is a broad field consisting of many strands. In this week, we consider some of the ways that historians have periodised the history based on different processes, events and turning points. Periodisations help us put a messy history into some kind of order. It is important to understand the reasoning behind these periodisations and the values inherent in them. There are a number of biases in the historiography, including a Western, Protestant bias, a bias towards larger, international NGOs, and a favouring of political developments rather than social and cultural ones. How the course works Blackboard is your pain point-of-contact for the course. It includes the course guide, which you should download; the discussion boards, which you should use every week; where you submit assessed work; links to the zoom meetings for the synchronous weeks; and my contact details and office hours. Each week, we will release videos of lectures on Blackboard. These will give an overview of the key themes and issues for that week. You are expected to read at least two secondary sources and, where possible, look at some of the primary sources provided. It is important to read critically – to engage with the ideas and analysis presented by historians and where appropriate to critique them. Do not be shy about criticising your readings! It is of course important to base your criticisms in sound reasoning, but we would like you to err on the side of being critical. You are expected to contribute to the discussion boards on Blackboard. This will consist of: General discussion on the themes of the week. You are encouraged to give your considered opinions on the issues and readings. Reading notes. From next week onwards, you should submit at least four reading notes to the discussion boards over the duration of the course. I will give formative feedback within 10 working days. At the end of the course, you will submit three reading notes for summative assessment. 3 Using the discussion boards will help you hone your critical writing in discussion with me and your peers. It is a key part of the course and a preparation for your assessments. Synchronous weeks Weeks 5 and 6 are synchronous. On Monday 7, Tuesday 8, Monday 14 and Tuesday 15 March, leading historians of humanitarianism will lead live workshops and roundtables on their research. We will discuss these together on Zoom. The speakers are: Jean-Marc Dreyfus on genocide; Laure Humbert on post-WW2 relief and reconstruction; Antoine Burgard on humanitarian help to children; Bertrand Taithe on Elizabeth Wilson and ‘demotic’ humanitarianism; Hanna Matt, Niamh Hanrahan and Panogiotis Karagkounis on their PhD research. Assessments Your assessments are: Three reading notes. A reading notes is a critical summary of one of the key readings. They should not exceed one page of A4. A reading note should consider (a) the claims of the author (what are their central ideas/arguments? Who/what are they arguing against? How do they situate themselves in the broader literature?), and (b) the author’s methodologies (what guides their research? What questions do they ask/don’t they ask? What level of analysis do they adopt? What theories/concepts do they engage with? What sources do they use? What are the strengths and limits of their approach?). You are encouraged to be critical – i.e. to look for strengths and weaknesses in the arguments. A research essay. This is a 3,000 word essay. You will come up with the title, which should be approved by me. It can address any aspect of the history of humanitarian aid. It should be based on secondary sources. We will provide plenty of support for both of these assessments. I will host an essay writing workshop later in the course, as well as individual support through feedback on titles (compulsory), plans and other issues at office hours. I will also give feedback on your reading notes on Blackboard. If you are unsure how to do these, follow the guidance above and give one a go – you will have plenty of time to refine the work before your summative submission. Formatting standards 4 All written work must be submitted to the course Turnitin page as a Word document, 12 pt Times New Roman font, with standard 2.5cm (1 ”) margins. Reading notes can be single spaced and should not be more than 1 page long (excluding bibliography and endnotes) Students have to submit their work in English. Late submissions of assignments will be penalised. Papers should use footnotes in the Oxford or Chicago citation style or the Harvard referencing system. Be consistent. Please see Purdue OWL Chicago Manual of Style for guidelines on how to use this format and sample citations. Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated. Cheating includes any action in disregard of the rules and standards governing evaluation or re-using, all or part, of coursework for which credits or a degree have already been obtained and presenting it as an original piece of work. Plagiarism includes appropriating the work of a third party and presenting it as one’s own work, copying text, data, figures, images, etc. from external sources without citing the source or presenting ideas of other authors as original work. Turnitin includes plagiarism detection software which builds on a database of previously submitted coursework and publications. It is extremely sophisticated and sensitive. If in doubt on issues of plagiarism please discuss it with me. Library Guide: HCRI Subject Guide at the University of Manchester Library, with information on resources such as books, journals and databases, how to access them and support for study and research skills. See https://subjects.library.manchester.ac.uk/hcri/ Primary sources Primary sources do not have an argument in the same way as secondary sources. They are usually contemporary with the events being described, but are not necessarily more accurate. They need to be approached critically. When reading primary sources, consider a number of broad questions: Who wrote it? – authors/institution What is its purpose? Where and when? was it written How does it work? What genre is it – official document, scientific report, advertisement? Audiences and impact – who saw it (or was intended to), how many? 5 Not all of this can be found by looking at the document itself. Some knowledge of the immediate institutional context, but also the society, economy etc. in which it was made, may to be needed. Readings On humanitarian history: Borton, John and Davey, Eleanor, ‘The Use of History by humanitarians and the potential benefits of history to the humanitarian sector’, in P. Ramos Pinto and B. Taithe, eds, The Impact of History, Routledge, 2015. Taithe, Bertrand, ‘Humanitarian History?’ in R. MacGinty and J. Peterson eds, The Humanitarian Handbook, Routledge, 2015. Laqua, Daniel (2014) ‘Inside the humanitarian cloud: causes and motivations to help friends and strangers’, Journal of Modern European History, 12, no. 2, 175-85. Barnett, Michael, and Thomas Weiss (2008), ‘Humanitarianism: a brief history of the present’, in Barnett and Weiss eds, Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1-48. On chronology: Barnett, Michael. Empire of humanity: A history of humanitarianism. Cornell University Press, 2011. Dal Lago, Enrico, and Kevin O’Sullivan. "Introduction: Towards a New History of Humanitarianism." Moving the Social 57 (2017): 5-20. O'Sullivan, Kevin, Matthew Hilton, and Juliano Fiori. "Humanitarianisms in context." European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 23.1-2 (2016): 1-15. Paulmann, Johannes. "Conjunctures in the history of international humanitarian aid during the twentieth century." Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 4.2 (2013): 215-238. Readings on the broad concepts: Agamben, Giorgio. "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life." Trans. Daniel Heller- Roazen. Palo Alto: Stanford up (1998): 3-18 Calhoun, Craig (2010), ‘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 Interventions, New York: Zone Books, 29-58 Calhoun, Craig (2008), ‘The Imperative to Reduce Suffering: Charity, Progress, and Emergencies in the field of humanitarian action’, in Michel Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 73-97 Denis Kennedy, ‘Humanitarianism Governed: Rules, Identity, and Exclusion in Relief Work’ http://humanityjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/10.2.3-Kennedy.pdf Chandler, David (2001), ‘The road to military humanitarianism: how the human rights NGOs shaped a new humanitarian agenda’, Human Rights Quarterly, 23, no. 3, 678-700 Chomsky, Noam (2008), ‘Humanitarian Imperialism: The New Doctrine of the Imperial Right’, Monthly Review, 60, no. 4, 22-50 Burman, Erica (1994), ‘Innocent Abroad: Western Fantasies of Childhood and the Iconography of Emergencies’, Disasters, 18, no. 3, 238-53 Genel, Katia. "The question of biopower: Foucault and Agamben." Rethinking Marxism 18.1 (2006): 43-62. Patricia Owens, "Reclaiming ‘bare life’?: Against Agamben on refugees." International Relations 23.4 (2009): 567-582. 6 Posner, Eric (2014) ‘Against human rights’, from Posner, The Twilight of Human Rights Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, excerpt published in Harper’s Magazine, October 2014, 13- 16 Slim, Hugo (1997), ‘Doing the Right Thing: Relief Agencies, Moral Dilemmas and Moral Responsibility in Political Emergencies and War’, Disasters, 21, no. 3, 244-257 Slim, Hugo (2002), ‘Not Philanthropy but Rights: The Proper Politicisation of Humanitarian Philosophy’, International Journal of Human Rights, 6, no. 2, 1-22 Taithe, Bertrand (2004), ‘Reinventing (French) Universalism: Religion, Humanitarianism and the French Doctors’, Modern and Contemporary France, 12, no. 2, 147-59 Glossary History: The study of the past. Particularly human affairs and documents, policies, cultures and politics. In our understanding history is based on the study of records (written, material or oral, visual or textual) in order to write a coherent account of what happen, how it happened and why. Historiography: The study of the writing of history. History being a narrative, we need to study how it was written. All historical accounts relate to the present as well as the past. The study of historiography enables us to understand how historical accounts have been produced. Primary Source: A primary source is a document of any kind which is contemporary with events taking place in the past. We can consider any document produced at the time a primary source: an archival source for instance, a newspaper article, a recording of a photograph etc. Oral history sources which recall the past can be considered a primary source. Documents that emerge today but date from the relevant period can be considered primary sources. Primary sources are important because they reflect a fragment of events. They are always fragmentary and that means we need to understand what they are fragments of and how they relate to other sources (we need to triangulate evidence – compare and contrast evidence to establish the veracity of our sources). Secondary Source: A secondary source is usually a document informed by primary sources (hence the meaning of secondary). This usually refers to historical, journalistic or academic accounts of events. There is a blurring of primary and secondary when academics or commentators produce accounts of events at the time of these events. On the whole we should consider any documents based on primary evidence a secondary source. Secondary sources attempt to provide a narrative and establish an understanding of events. We need to understand how they do this and why (this is what you will do in your reading notes). Memory: and memorialisation is a way in which individuals and communities recall events. They can lead to commemorative practices or complete silence depending on circumstances. Memory is not the same as history and false memories are often central to commemorations. How people remember changes over time. Episteme: Scientific knowledge, a system of understanding; specifically (Foucault's term for) the body of ideas which shape the perception of knowledge in a particular period. Epistemic community: A community created and maintained by common understanding of ideas and practices. A group based around upholding values and promoting practices. Arguably humanitarians belong to an epistemic community, though how these values and practices became accepted and defended is the object of our course. Sociodicy: A justification (or similar discourse) of the nature of a particular society. In the context of humanitarianism according to Didier Fassin, the way humanitarians justify their action and define the remit of their action. In this course the concept will be used to describe how a group defined humanitarianism as what they did, how they did it forming the boundaries of their social organisation, why they did it the justification of their 7 understanding of humanitarianism, and framing new forms of humanitarianism by expanding the range of their action and adding new objects and subjects for their action. Next week We will talk about humanitarian memory, epistemic communities and refugee camps on the Cambodian border. 8