Humanitarianism in the modern world : the moral economy of famine relief

This is an innovative new history of famine relief and humanitarianism. The authors apply a moral economy approach to shed new light on the forces and ideas that motivated and shaped humanitarian aid during the Great Irish Famine, the famine of 1921-1922 in Soviet Russia and the Ukraine, and the 1980s Ethiopian famine. They place these episodes within a distinctive periodisation of humanitarianism which emphasises the correlations with politico-economic regimes: the time of elitist laissez-faire liberalism in the nineteenth century as one of ad hoc humanitarianism; that of Taylorism and mass society from c.1900-1970 as one of organised humanitarianism; and the blend of individualised post-material lifestyles and neoliberal public management since 1970 as one of expressive humanitarianism. The book as a whole shifts the focus of the history of humanitarianism from the imperatives of crisis management to the pragmatic mechanisms of fundraising, relief efforts on the ground, and finance. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core Cover 1 Half-title 2 Title page 4 Copyright information 5 Contents 6 List of Figures 8 List of Tables 10 Acknowledgements 11 List of Abbreviations 13 Introduction 16 1 Famine Relief in Perspective 22 1.1 Social Origins of Famine 22 1.2 The Moral Economy of Aid 29 2 Case Studies 39 2.1 Three Ages of Humanitarianism 39 Chronology of Humanitarianism 41 2.2 The Great Irish Famine and Ad Hoc Humanitarianism 48 UK Relief 50 Catholic and Foreign Relief 55 Ad Hoc Voluntarism 57 2.3 The Russian Famine of 1921-3 and Organised Humanitarianism 59 Organised Humanitarianism 59 The Nationalisation of Universal Causes 64 Russian Famine Relief 66 Culmination 70 2.4 Famine in Ethiopia 1984-6 and Expressive Humanitarianism 71 An Age of Expressive Humanitarianism 72 Ethiopia, Famine, and Media-Driven Humanitarianism 76 International Response 78 3 Appeals 83 3.1 The Humanitarian Appeal 83 Irrational Donors and Rational Fundraisers 84 Moral Economy Dilemmas 87 3.2 Empire, Faith, and Kinship: Ireland 88 Imperial Relief 89 Catholic Relief 95 US Relief 103 3.3 Altruism, Self-interest, and Solidarity: Soviet Russia 108 Funding Approaches 109 Morally Worthy Recipients 111 Mixed Emotions: Children, Horrors, and Holidays 113 Self-interest as a Fundraising Strategy 118 Obligation to Give 122 Solidarity, Not Charity 125 Direct Appeals from Russians 128 3.4 Television, Shame, and Global Humanity: Ethiopia 131 Voluntary Organisations' Appeals 136 Are We the World? Celebrities and Participative Fundraising 142 3.5 Arousing Compassion: A Long View on Calls for Famine Relief 151 Worthy Victims and Guilty Governments 153 Ethics, Effectiveness, and Efficiency 156 4 Allocation 159 4.1 Allocating Gifts 159 Efficient versus Engaging Allocation 160 Humanitarian Logistics, Nutrition, and Their Pull-Effect 162 4.2 Fostering Local Efforts: Ireland 164 Aid for Sale: The BRA 165 Soup Kitchens 171 Money and Aid-in-Kind 175 Domestic and Overseas Migration 181 4.3 Live and Let Die: Soviet Russia 185 Organising Famine Relief 186 Kitchens and Food 191 To Feed or Not to Feed 194 Efficiency and Compassion 198 More than Food: Communist Relief 200 Don't Mourn: Organise 203 4.4 Relief, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement: Ethiopia 206 Working in Government-Controlled Ethiopia 208 Allocating Aid to Rebel-Held Areas 212 Food and Feeding 216 Resettlement 219 Rehabilitation and Newcomers to Aid 225 4.5 Targeting Aid: Realities on the Ground across Two Centuries 228 Suspicious Minds 229 Cash versus In-Kind Relief 230 Aid Agencies, Personnel, and Logistics 231 5 Accounting 234 5.1 Humanitarian Accountability 234 Moral Bookkeeping 235 Moral Economic Priorities 236 5.2 Figures, Narratives, and Omissions: Ireland 239 British Relief 242 Quaker Relief 247 US Accounts 248 Accounting Practices among Catholics 251 Accounts as Explicit and Implicit Disclosure 259 5.3 The Power of Numbers: Soviet Russia 260 Businesslike Relief and Overhead Costs 264 Two Genres of (Creative) Accounting 270 All Aid Is Relative 273 Accounting for Gratitude 277 5.4 More than 'Dollars' and 'Per Cent': Ethiopia 281 Impact of the Response on Voluntary Organisations 284 Expressive Accounting 293 Accountability and Abuse 298 Humanitarianism in the 1980s 305 5.5 Keeping the Record: A Bicentennial Perspective 306 Shape of Accounts 308 Impersonalisation and Relativity of Aid 309 Conclusion: The Moral Economy of Humanitarianism 313 Moral Economic Structures 314 Diachronic Perspectives 316 Whither Expressive Humanitarianism? 318 Towards a New History of Humanitarianism 322 References 326 Archives 326 Primary and Secondary Literature 327 Index 357 "The book takes a fresh look at humanitarian action through the concept of moral economy. It suggests a revised periodisation of humanitarianism by analogy to politico-economic regimes, rather than geopolitical sequencing: moving from ad hoc humanitarianism (c. 1800-1900); to organised humanitarianism (c. 1900-70); and expressive humanitarianism (since c. 1970). It moves the focus of the history of humanitarianism from the imperatives of crisis management in the outside world to pragmatic mechanisms of fundraising, relief efforts on the ground, and accounting, thus correlating their history with that of voluntary action and broader societal trends. The cases moreover provide new insights into the history of three humanitarian causes. The study of Irish famine relief in the 1840s redetermines the origins of the major British relief campaign. The study on Soviet famine relief in the 1920s provides a broader perspective than previous organisation-based studies and identifies similarities among competing ethnic, religious, political, and national relief cultures. Our analysis of the famine in Ethiopia of the 1980s is one of the few historical examinations of transnational food aid during that disaster that draws on newly-available archival sources"-- Provided by publisher Takes a fresh look at the history of famine relief and humanitarianism through a novel moral economy approach, drawing on case studies of the Great Irish Famine in the 1840s, the famine in Soviet Russia in 1921-3, and the famine in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s. This book is also avai-lable as Open Access on Cambridge Core