Humanitarianism at a Crossroads

Review by Jelena Subotic

Department of Political Science, Georgia State University

Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics. By Michael Barnett and ThomasG. Weiss. New York: Cornell University Press, 2008. 320 pp., $19.95 paperback (ISBN-13:9780801473012).

Humanitarianism is going through a transformation. The scope and intensity ofhumanitarian action is vastly expanding. The number and budgets of humanitar-ian aid organizations are on the rise, private donations are at an all time high,and the global presence of humanitarian groups is increasingly visible. At thesame time, the very purpose, mission, and methods of humanitarianism areunder the microscope. Humanitarian organizations are becoming increasinglypolitical, justifying this politicization with the changing reality of complexhumanitarian emergencies—major humanitarian disasters whose effects cannotbe remedied without dealing with their causes, always political in nature.

Humanitarian motives and techniques have been severely challenged. DavidRieff (2002) accused humanitarians of crossing the boundaries of their compe-tence, authority, and ethical commitments to use humanitarian action for what itwas not intended, as a substitute for political engagement. Terry (2002), Weiss-man (2004), and Lischer (2005) warned powerfully of the horrific unintendedconsequences of humanitarian aid when it becomes manipulated by the verypeople who caused the tragedy in the first place. This literature raised the alarmthat humanitarian agencies can lose their independence in the shadow of warand get entangled in larger political agendas in which they do not have a say butend up having a part.

So, humanitarianism is at a crossroads. Which way forward? Towards the politi-cal, embracing the new responsibilities and removing the invisible shields of‘‘neutrality’’ and ‘‘impartiality?’’ Or back to the mythologized ‘‘original,’’ per-haps safer sphere of humanitarian purity, away from politics, power, and domina-tion?

Humanitarianism in Question offers a comprehensive, detailed, nuanced, andthought-provoking overview of humanitarianism’s major debates, building on abody of theoretical and critical scholarship that has come out in the last fewyears (for example, Minear 2002; Hoffman and Weiss 2006). But this new volumedoes something even more valuable: it cracks open the very idea of humanitari-anism to explore its goals, its principles, and its politics. In the process, the bookrevisits many axioms of humanitarianism—its original ‘‘purity’’ from politics andits consequent ‘‘pollution,’’ the clear and fixed boundary between humanitarianand commercial enterprise, and humanitarian agencies’ relationship with theiraid recipients. By challenging the many myths both humanitarians and their crit-ics perpetuate about the motives, mechanisms and effects of humanitarian work,Humanitarianism in Question offers a much more complex picture of internal con-tradictions, necessary tradeoffs, and new challenges facing humanitarian work.

The book poses three major questions of humanitarianism today: what doeshumanitarianism aspire to accomplish, what are its defining principles, and whatare its relations to politics. The introductory framing chapter by Michael Barnett

� 2009 International Studies Association

International Studies Review (2009) 11, 187–189

and Thomas Weiss states the central problem of the book: the meaning ofhumanitarianism has expanded and its newly enlarged boundaries are now inquestion. Humanitarian action now includes projects once considered in thepurview of states or major international organizations: protection of humanrights, economic development, democracy promotion, and peace building(p. 29). This heavier portfolio of humanitarianism makes it central to thebroader global forces that control and remake the world (p. 42). It is, therefore,inevitable that scholarship on humanitarianism explores its many connections topolitics, power, and ethics.

The contributors to Humanitarianism in Question answer this call by providingdifferent diagnoses of humanitarianism’s development and change, and differentsolutions for its many contradictions. They all agree, however, that humanitarian-ism is a profoundly political endeavor and that, in fact, there is nothing inher-ently wrong about that. James Fearon explores the continuing rise in emergencyaid relief since the end of the Cold War, even in the face of decrease in thenumber of civil wars and refugee populations. His explanation is deeply political:the Cold War was followed by a number of major international interventions andpostconflict reconstruction projects (‘‘neotrusteeships’’) spearheaded by the Uni-ted States and other major powers, that were alluring emergency relief aid pro-jects (p. 71). Craig Calhoun’s analysis is also rooted in the political. He arguesthat humanitarian aid and humanitarian disasters are both shaped by their con-nections to states and markets. While humanitarian action has become a largeindustry, it still fundamentally remains a state project (p. 89). Stephen Hopgoodtraces the professionalization and privatization of humanitarianism as a logicalconsequence of neoliberalism. Humanitarian agencies are responsible, and per-haps even guilty, of ‘‘commodifying their moral authority’’ (p. 99); they arebeginning to ‘‘resemble firms’’ (p. 106); and they are absorbed by globalization(p. 103).

Humanitarianism in Question situates the humanitarian enterprise in the largerstructures of global order. Humanitarianism is shaped by the international sys-tem, and it also helps shape it. Humanitarian agencies, like states and interna-tional organizations, have their own ‘‘grand strategies,’’ argue Michael Barnettand Jack Snyder. They discover that humanitarian agencies increasingly act likepolitical actors. Humanitarian goals have become more politically ambitious tonow include postconflict reconstruction and not just humanitarian relief. Thesechanges follow on the heels of significant shifts in grand strategies of states,international organizations, and humanitarian agencies (p. 156).

This political dependence of humanitarian agencies on grand strategies ofstates and IOs is also illustrated in Laura Hammond’s disturbing chapter tracingthe increasing frequency of deliberate physical attacks against humanitarianworkers. She makes a very strong case that militarized humanitarian interven-tions inevitably undermine humanitarianism, as aid efforts become presentedand perceived as if they are in the service of larger political and military objec-tives. This conflation of the military and humanitarian aims makes it difficultand dangerous for humanitarian agencies to perform their duties (p. 182). Thedangers to humanitarians are not only on the rise; they are the direct and inevi-table result of a particular form of international action that, as the former USSecretary of State Colin Powell put it, sees humanitarian agencies as a ‘‘forcemultiplier.’’ It is this entanglement of humanitarianism with larger global politi-cal structures that makes it so intricately linked to politics, power, and ethics.

And because the main concern of the book—the expanding field of humani-tarianism—is laid out clearly in the framing chapter, while also remaining suit-ably vague for contributors to take the concepts and play with them, theindividual chapters work well together. They all address the principle theoreticalconcerns of the volume, and they do so persuasively, interestingly, and

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thoroughly. Individual authors’ recommendations for remedying the ‘‘crisis’’ ofhumanitarianism, however, are more uneven in promise and potential for execu-tion. For example, Stephen Hopgood argues that the only way humanitarianagencies can escape monetization and commodification is to dismantle the neo-liberal structure that produces disasters humanitarian agencies are asked to alle-viate. How exactly should they go about carrying this out and, more importantly,should this really be in the purview of humanitarian work? Janice Gross Stein’scall for redefining humanitarian accountability as an opportunity to learn, as anacknowledgment of uncertainty (p. 142) is similarly a controversial if lofty goalthat might not appease humanitarianism’s harshest critics.

But in a lovely coda to the book, Michael Barnett shares an inspirational visionof scholarly work that is itself rooted in humanitarian ethics, values, and con-cerns. He asks us to reconsider the positivist myth that social scientific inquiryneeds to be dispassionate, distant, even indifferent to the world we study in thepursuit of ‘‘objectivity’’ and ‘‘precision.’’ Instead, Barnett’s vision is of a socialscience infused with ethics, morality, and care, based on understanding andinterpreting the meaning people give to their lives and their experiences. Thisreconnecting with the core principles of social research is the path toward usinghumanitarianism as guide to a ‘‘scholarly life’’ (p. 263). If only we could makethis happen.

References

Hoffman, Peter J., and Thomas George Weiss. (2006) Sword & Salve: Confronting New Wars andHumanitarian Crises. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Lischer, Sarah Kenyon. (2005) Dangerous Sanctuaries: Refugee Camps, Civil War, and the Dilemmas ofHumanitarian Aid. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Minear, Larry. (2002) The Humanitarian Enterprise: Dilemmas and Discoveries. Bloomfield, CT:Kumarian Press.

Rieff, David. (2002) A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.Terry, Fiona. (2002) Condemned to Repeat?: The Paradox of Humanitarian Action. Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press.Weissman, Fabrice. (2004) In the Shadow of ‘‘Just Wars’’: Violence, Politics, and Humanitarian Action.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

189Jelena Subotic