The Need to Help : The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism

In The Need To Help Liisa H. Malkki Shifts The Focus Of The Study Of Humanitarian Intervention From Aid Recipients To Aid Workers Themselves. The Anthropological Commitment To Understand The Motivations And Desires Of These Professionals And How They Imagine Themselves In The World Out There, Led Malkki To Spend More Than A Decade Interviewing Members Of The International Finnish Red Cross, As Well As Observing Finns Who Volunteered From Their Homes Through Gifts Of Handwork. The Need To Help, She Shows, Can Come From A Profound Neediness--the Need For Aid Workers And Volunteers To Be Part Of The Lively World And Something Greater Than Themselves, And, In The Case Of The Elderly Who Knit Trauma Teddies And Aid Bunnies For Needy Children, The Need To Fight Loneliness And Loss Of Personhood. In Seriously Examining Aspects Of Humanitarian Aid Often Dismissed As Sentimental, Or Trivial, Malkki Complicates Notions Of What Constitutes Real Political Work. She Traces How The International Is Always Entangled In The Domestic, Whether In The Shape Of The Need To Leave Home Or Handmade Gifts That Are An Aid To Sociality And To The Imagination Of The World. Introduction: Need, Imagination, And The Humanitarian Care Of The Self -- Professionals Abroad: Occupational Solidarity And International Desire As Humanitarian Motives -- Impossible Situations: Affective Impasses And Their Afterlives In Humanitarian And Ethnographic Fieldwork -- Figurations Of The Human: Children, Humanity, And The Infantilization Of Peace -- Bear Humanity: Children, Animals, And Other Power-objects Of The Humanitarian -- Imagination -- Homemade Humanitarianism: Knitting And Loneliness -- A Zealous Humanism And Its Limits: Sacrifice And The Hazards Of Neutrality -- Conclusion: The Power Of The Mere: Humanitarianism As Domestic Art And Imaginative Politics. Liisa H. Malkki. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 235-266) And Index. Du site de l'éd.: In The Need to Help Liisa H. Malkki shifts the focus of the study of humanitarian intervention from aid recipients to aid workers themselves. The anthropological commitment to understand the motivations and desires of these professionals and how they imagine themselves in the world "out there," led Malkki to spend more than a decade interviewing members of the international Finnish Red Cross, as well as observing Finns who volunteered from their homes through gifts of handwork. The need to help, she shows, can come from a profound neediness-the need for aid workers and volunteers to be part of the lively world and something greater than themselves, and, in the case of the elderly who knit "trauma teddies" and "aid bunnies" for "needy children," the need to fight loneliness and loss of personhood. In seriously examining aspects of humanitarian aid often dismissed as sentimental, or trivial, Malkki complicates notions of what constitutes real political work. She traces how the international is always entangled in the domestic, whether in the shape of the need to leave home or handmade gifts that are an aid to sociality and to the imagination of the world 9780822375364-vii 1 9780822375364-001 5 9780822375364-002 27 9780822375364-003 57 9780822375364-004 80 9780822375364-005 108 9780822375364-006 135 9780822375364-007 167 9780822375364-008 200 9780822375364-009 209 9780822375364-010 234 9780822375364-011 266 In this ethnography Liisa H. Malkki reverses the study of humanitarian aid, focusing on aid workers rather than aid's recipients. She shows how aid serves the needs of its recipients and providers.