Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy
Editor(s): Richard Ashby Wilson & Richard D. Brown
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print Length: 330 pages
Genre: Non-Fiction / Anthropology, Social Science, Political Science
Area: Indonesia, Armenia, Argentina, Morocco, Algeria, Rwanda
Topic: Humanitarian Action & Humanitarianism, Suffering, Empathy, Pity, Ethics & Morality, Politics & Power, Charity, Social Movement, Solidarity, Social/Aid Workers; Law, Jurisprudence, Legal Theory; Human Rights, Restorative Justice, Media & Narratives, Abolition, Slavery, Hunger & Starvation, Victimhood, Citizenship, Children & Childhood, Holocaust, Refugees & Forced Migration, Refugee Durable Solution, Refugee Resettlement
Humanitarian sentiments have motivated a variety of manifestations of pity, from nineteenth-century movements to end slavery to the creation of modern international humanitarian law.
While humanitarianism is clearly political, this text addresses the ways in which it is also an ethos embedded in civil society, one that drives secular and religious social and cultural movements, not just legal and political institutions. As an ethos, humanitarianism has a strong narrative and representational dimension that can generate humanitarian constituencies for particular causes. Essays in the volume analyze the character, form, and voice of private or public narratives themselves and explain how and why some narratives of suffering energize political movements of solidarity, whereas others do not. Humanitarianism and Suffering explores when, how, and why humanitarian movements become widespread popular movements. It shows how popular sentiments move political and social elites to action and, conversely, how national elites appropriate humanitarian ideals for more instrumental ends.
Table of Contents
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction — Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard D. Brown
PART I. HISTORIES AND CONTEXTS
1. Mourning, Pity, and the Work of Narrative in the Making of “Humanity” — Thomas W. Laqueur
2. Contemporary Humanitarianism: The Global and the Local — David P. Forsythe
3. Humanitarian Reading — Joseph R. Slaughter
4. Global Media and the Myths of Humanitarian Relief: The Case of the 2004 Tsunami — Rony Brauman
5. Hard Struggles of Doubt: Abolitionists and the Problem of Slave Redemption — Margaret M. R. Kellow
6. “Starving Armenians”: The Politics and Ideology of Humanitarian Aid in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century — Flora A. Keshgegian
7. International Bystanders to the Holocaust and Humanitarian Intervention — Michael R. Marrus
PART II. NARRATIVES AND REDRESS
8. Victims, Relatives, and Citizens in Argentina: Whose Voice Is Legitimate Enough? — Elizabeth Jelin
8. Children, Suffering, and the Humanitarian Appeal — Laura Suski
9. The Physicality of Legal Consciousness: Suffering and the Production of Credibility in Refugee Resettlement — Kristin Bergtora Sandvik
11. “Can You Describe This?” Human Rights Reports and What They Tell Us About the Human Rights Movement — Ron Dudai
12. Financial Reparations, Blood Money, and Human Rights Witness Testimony: Morocco and Algeria — Susan Slyomovics
13. Remnants and Remains: Narratives of Suffering in Post-Genocide Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts — Lars Waldorf
Index
Richard Ashby Wilson is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Law at University of Connecticut, Gladstein Chair of Human Rights, and founding director of the Human Rights Institute. He is the author or editor of eleven books on anthropology, international human rights, truth and reconciliation commissions and international criminal tribunals. His articles have been published in American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Anthropological Theory, Current Anthropology, Human Rights Quarterly, and the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, as well as in media outlets such as The Guardian, The Independent, The Times Higher Education Supplement, and The Washington Post. His work has been translated into Chinese, Danish, Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, and Turkish. He served as the editor of the journal Anthropological Theory and associate editor of the Journal of Human Rights.
Source: https://anthropology.uconn.edu/person/richard-ashby-wilson/
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Richard D. Brown is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, at University of Connecticut. He is a 1961 graduate of Oberlin College who attended Harvard on a Woodrow Wilson Scholarship, earning his Ph.D. in 1966. Before coming to the University of Connecticut in 1971, he taught as a Fulbright lecturer in France and at Oberlin College. His research and teaching interests have been in the political, social, and cultural history of early America. He currently serves as president of New England Quarterly, owner and publisher of that journal. Most recently he is the author of Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2017).
Source: https://americanstudies.uconn.edu/person/richard-brown/
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