In the face of the world’s disorders, moral concerns have provided a powerful ground for developing international as well as local policies. Didier Fassin draws on case materials from France, South Africa, Venezuela, and Palestine to explore the meaning of humanitarianism in the contexts of immigration and asylum, disease and poverty, disaster and war. He traces and analyzes recent shifts in moral and political discourse and practices — what he terms “humanitarian reason”— and shows in vivid examples how humanitarianism is confronted by inequality and violence. Deftly illuminating the tensions and contradictions in humanitarian government, he reveals the ambiguities confronting states and organizations as they struggle to deal with the intolerable. His critique of humanitarian reason, respectful of the participants involved but lucid about the stakes they disregard, offers theoretical and empirical foundations for a political and moral anthropology.
Humanitarian Reason A Moral History of the Present
About the Book
Reviews
“In this brilliant compilation . . . Fassin demonstrates why he is widely considered one of the world’s foremost researchers and theoreticians in medical anthropology. . . . One of the most thought-provoking books this reviewer has read in many years.”—Choice
“Meticulously researched, well balanced and absorbing. . . . Interesting and thought provoking.”—European Review Of History/Revue Europeenne D'histoire
“A very thought-provoking contribution to the literature. The analysis is precise and persuasive.”—Mark Welch Metapsychology Online Review
“Humanitarian reason constitutes an outstanding study of contemporary Western moral and political economy, and an excellent example of the critical contribution public anthropology can make by engaging ongoing public debates on larger social, moral and political issues.”—Social Anthropology
"A sober, powerful book."—Survival“This is a field-defining volume. Based on ten years of comparative field research and a unique combination of medical and anthropological expertise, Didier Fassin’s Humanitarian Reason avoids moralizing in favor of careful sociological analysis. Humanitarianism emerges both as a form of reason and as a key force in the contemporary arts of government. “ --Claudio Lomnitz, Columbia University, author of Death and the Idea of Mexico
“The rise of a field of humanitarian action accompanies cultural transformations in the category of the human and the idea of responsibility. In this important book, Didier Fassin addresses the nature of obligation to strangers and solidarity amid inequality, and connects these themes to the question of whether to think of global moral community as an attractive ideal, a problematic fantasy, or both.” --Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council and author of Nations Matter
Table of Contents
Preface to the English Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Humanitarian Government
PART I. POLITICS part
1. Suffering Unveiled
Listening to the Excluded and the Marginalized
2. Pathetic Choice
Exposing the Misery of the Poor
3. Compassion Protocol
Legalizing Diseased Undocumented Immigrants
4. Truth Ordeal
Attesting Violence for Asylum Seekers
LIMEN. FONTIERS
5. Ambivalent Hospitality
Governing the Unwanted
PART II. WORLDS
6. Massacre of the Innocents
Representing Childhood in the Age of Aids
7. Desire for Exception
Managing Disaster Victims
8. Subjectivity without Subjects
Reinventing the Figure of the Witness
9. Hierarchies of Humanity
Intervening in International Conflicts
Conclusion: Critique of Humanitarian Reason
Chronology
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Awards
- The Gregory Bateson Book Prize, Society for Cultural Anthropology