The ‘‘wars of national liberation’’ in the 1950s and 1960s posed new challenges to the International Committee in Geneva, because the humanitarian objective was repeatedly overlaid and endangered by Realpolitik.
Constitutionalism Beyond the State: Myth or Necessity? (A Pluralist Approach)
Despite the happy consciousness of those who proclaimed the end of history and the worldwide triumph of the liberal democracy in the early 1990s, the legitimating principles for domestic polities around the globe remain diverse.
Introduction: The Gender of Humanitarian Narrative
The editors of the special dossier on gender and humanitarian issues explain the motivations and main themes of the sequence of essays.
Bleeding Humanity and Gendered Embodiments: From Antislavery Sugar Boycotts to Ethical Consumers
Mimi Sheller returns to sugar and other boycotts in the era of antislavery—with their gendering of consumer action—and how they might help put contemporary Fair Trade movements in historical and political perspective.
The Rhetoric of Revelation: Sex Trafficking and the Journalistic Exposé
Soderlund provides a rhetorical analysis of tropes that pervade contemporary discourses of sex trafficking, relating them to past humanitarian sensibility and a gendered narrative of expose and rescue.
On “Humanitarian” Adoption (Madonna in Malawi)
Kerry Bystom examines the celebrated case of Madonna's adoptions to highlight celebrity involvement with African children and how such prominent practices of humanitarian adoption intersect conceptions of gender and family.
Old Questions in New Boxes: Mia Kirshner’s I LIVE HERE and the Problematics of Transnational Witnessing
The authors provide a close analysis of contemoprary Canadian actress Mia Kirshner's I Live Here project and how it moves ambiguously between building alliances for progressive humanitarianism while also silencing its objects of attention and inserting them in familiar tropes in an era of transnational witnessing.
Taking Better Account: Contemporary Slavery, Gendered Narratives, and the Feminization of Struggle
Taking up campaigns on behalf of Haitians and people of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic, Martínez explores how gendered notions of rescue and salvation obstruct a better understanding of political organization and agency among those reduced to being victims in key humanitarian representations.
Photo Essay: Nowhere People
Photographer Greg Constantine presents selections from two sets of his work, one called "Nowhere People" (on contemporary statelessness) and the other called "Nubians in Kenya" (depicting their political situation and everyday life).
Against all angels
Israeli Author Yoram Kaniuk passed away exactly one year ago, on June 8, 2013. His somewhat rambling and quasi-biographical essay Angels (“Mal’achim”) was published posthumously as a small book. The author is depicted on the book’s jacket in a long black coat. Standing on top of a lamppost like a crow, he overlooks the urban skyline of Tel-Aviv. White wings attached to his back suggest that he is the angel in the book’s title.