Humanitarianism and World Order Research Circle, International Institute, Global Studies, Division of International Studies, Anthropology Department & African Studies Program Present:

Reflections on the ‘New Humanitarianism’: A Question of Ethical Mandates

Dr. Liisa Malkki
Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University

Monday, April 30th, 3:30 PM
Room 5230 Social Science Building

Recent years have seen significant new efforts to theorize “western humanitarianism”. While important and innovative, some of this work nevertheless seems a partial view because of the ways in which it produces a generalized western humanitarianism as a problem, and as an object of knowledge and policy-making. Alex de Waal has called it “the humanitarian international”. Much of this recent work reveals a broad, analytical acceptance that there is a “new humanitarianism” now, a second generation. This paper will explore, in particular, the cross-pull between humanitarian agencies that are committed to both “neutrality” and “confidentiality,” such as the International Committee for the Red Cross, and others who temper their commitment to “neutrality” with an insistence on “witnessing” and “speaking out” about human rights violations encountered.

Dr. Liisa Malkki is renowned anthropologist who has published path-breaking analyses on violent displacement, refugees and international humanitarianism. She is the author of Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (University of Chicago Press, 1995) and a forthcoming book, co-authored with Allaine Cerwonka, titled Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Field Research (University of Chicago Press, 2007).