Παρουσίαση/Προβολή

(UNI403) -  ΡΕΓΓΙΝΑ ΕΛΕΝΗ ΜΑΝΤΑΝΙΚΑ

Περιγραφή Μαθήματος

By the end of the last century anthropologists have watched and written as the world has crossed into new humanitarian emergency, frontiers of ethical, logistical, legal, and cultural problematics. Humanitarianism, however, has existed in all forms of missionary European and western colonial presence for centuries, and later through the missionary endeavors to „save the soul through the body‟  (International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Since the collapse of Communism in the early 1990‟s, humanitarianism has transformed yet again into a massive institutional apparatus with an array of funding mechanisms, moral, ethical, and legal commitments, governmental and anti-governmental affiliations, and activities. Large scale humanitarian organizations like CARE, the IRC, ARC, Médécins sans Frontiéres, and OXFAM manage large scale water and sanitation projects, feeding programs, hospitals, reproductive health programs, job training, psycho-social rehabilitation for ex-combatants, reconstruction of disaster sites, and the care and housing of internally displaced person (IDP) and refugee populations. In addition, these organizations have developed massive fundraising, propaganda, and political operations. The course is giving an anthropological critical sight to all this body of knowledge, morality, justification and practices that overlap with colonialism, world crisis of inequality, conflicts, poverty and different types of migration. This course introduces the anthropological perspective in ‘humanitarian emergencies’. This approach includes a) the introduction of the native point of view in the identification of a so-called humanitarian emergency, the needs of the displaced populations and their survival strategies as they have been intrenched over time (habitus), b) an analysis of local power relations that are being redefined in the context of an ‘emergency’. These do not merely include changing relations among members of the affected populations (ie redefinition kinship and social obligations), they also entail a new delicate balance among victims, their hosts and the variety of ‘outsiders’ that move in to assist, and c) finally, it addresses the factors that lead to labelling a situation as an ‘emergency’ (Who decides? With what criteria? In whose interests?) and the impact aid programs help on the affected populations.

Ημερομηνία δημιουργίας

Τρίτη 24 Οκτωβρίου 2023