Everyday Humanitarianism: Ethics, Affects and Practices: Special Issue Call For Papers

Our starting point in this special issue is in opening up traditional understandings and practices of humanitarianism to bring multi-faceted approaches to a classical area of political inquiry. As the rhetoric and practice of humanitarian good-doing becomes increasingly widespread in our public life—from celebrity culture to Twitter messaging and from Christmas shopping to concert-going—key questions arise. What does humanitarianism look like in the age of market-driven, digital media-based action? What happens to traditional humanitarian ideals, at the time of increasing bureaucratization and celebrification of humanitarian practice? What are the implications of such practices for the ethics and politics of contemporary benevolence? Do we live in an age of “post-humanitarianism” where doing good for others is intrinsically linked with feelings of gratification for the self? Universal questions of justice and equality, which once justified humanitarian intervention, seem to be fading into the background as humanitarianism takes on myriad forms and practices at all levels of society from the individual to the state and from the community-based organization to the corporation. What other forms of justification or multiple conceptions of “the good” have taken their place?

This special issue attempts to address such questions, by opening up existing understandings of humanitarianism to interdisciplinary and multi-method approaches toward the study of “good-doing” and its multiple conceptions and forms of justification, today. Its aim is to define and analyze the diverse practices of everyday humanitarianism—their technologies, affects, and dispositions—and to reflect on their consequences for our public life.