Anthropology and Intercultural Aspects of Humanitarian Action 2200-9HA-5

Week 1, 20 Oct 2020 – What is Anthropology?
Required reading:
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, 2017, What is Anthropology?, 2nd ed., London: Pluto Press, 340.

Week 2, 27 Oct 2020 – What is Culture?
Required reading:
Baumann, Gerd, 1996, Contesting Culture: Discourses if Identity in Multi-Ethnic London,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pages TBA.

Week 3, 3 Nov 2020 – Anthropology in/of Humanitarian Action
Required reading:
De Waal, Alex, 2002, Anthropology and the Aid Encounter, in J. MacClancy (ed.), Exotic No
More: Anthropology on the Front Lines, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 251269.
Required video:
Calhoun, Craig, 2012, ‘Human Suffering and the Humanitarian Response’,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbJXaXEjciQ
Recommended additional reading:
Fassin, Didier, 2010, ‘Inequalities of Lives, Hierarchies of Humanity: Moral Commitments and
Ethical Dilemmas of Humanitarianism’, in Ilana Feldman and Miriam Ticktin (eds), In the Name
of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 238255.

Week 4, 10 Nov 2020 – Society, Structure, Suffering
Required reading:
Farmer, Paul, 1996, ‘On Suffering and Structural Violence’, Daedalus 125(1):261283.
Recommended additional reading:
Messer, Ellen and Parker Shipton, 2002, ‘Hunger in Africa: Untangling its Human Roots’, in J.
MacClancy (ed.), Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines, Chicago, The University of
Chicago Press, 227250.

Week 5, 17 Nov 2020 – Cultural Relativism, Gender, and Human Rights
Required reading:
Wikan, Uni, 2002, Generous Betrayal: Politics of Culture in the New Europe, Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1928, 6988, 91106.

Week 6, 24 Nov 2020 – The Political Economy of ‘Natural Disasters’
Required reading:
Oliver-Smith, Anthony, 2009, ‘Anthropology and the Political Economy of Disasters’, in A.C.
Jones and A.D. Murphy (eds), The Political Economy of Hazards and Disasters, Lanham, MD:
AltaMita Press, 1128.
Marino, Elizabeth K. and A.J. Faas, 2020, ‘Is Vulnerability an Outdated Concept? After Subjects
and Spaces’, Annals of Anthropological Practice, DOI: 10.1111/napa.12132.
Recommended additional reading:
Stirrat, Jock, 2006, ‘Competitive Humanitarianism: Relief and the Tsunami in Sri Lanka’,
Anthropology Today 22(5):1116.
Gamburd, Michele Ruth and Dennis McGilvray, 2010, ‘Sri-Lanka’s Post-Tsunami Recovery:
Cultural Traditions, Social Structures and Power Struggles’, Anthropology News, Oct 2010, 911.
Seal-Feldman, Aidan, 2020, ‘The Work of Disaster: Building Back Otherwise in Post-Earthquake
Nepal’, Cultural Anthropology 35(2):23763.
Sökefeld, Martin, 2020, ‘The Power of Lists: IDPs and Disaster Governmentality after the
Attabad Landslide in Northern Pakistan’, Ethnos,
https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2020.1765833.

Week 7, 1 Dec 2020 – Development and Its Discontents
Required reading:
Ferguson, James and Larry Lohmann, 1994, ‘The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development” and
Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho’, The Ecologist 24(5): 176181.
Li, Tanya M., 2008, ‘Social Reproduction, Situated Politics, and The Will to Improve’, Focaal 52:
111118.
Recommended additional reading:
Mosse, David, 2008, ‘International Policy, Development Expertise, and Anthropology’, Focaal
52: 119126.

Week 8, 8 Dec 2020 – Refugees beyond ‘Crisis’ (part 1)
Required reading:
Malkki, Liisa, 1996, ‘Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization’,
Cultural Anthropology 11(3):377-404.
Agier, Michel, 2002, ‘Between War and City: Towards an Urban Anthropology of Refugee
Camps’, Ethnography 3(3): 317–341.
Recommended additional reading:
Daniel, E. Valentine, 2002, ‘The Refugee: A Discourse on Displacement’, in J. MacClancy (ed.),
Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press,
270286.
Malkki, Liisa, 2002, ‘News from Nowhere: Mass Displacement and Globalized “Problems of
Organization”’, Ethnography 3(3): 351–360.
Hoffmann, Sophia, 2016, ‘A Sovereign for All: The Management of Refugees as Nation-State
Politics’, in A. De Lauri (ed.), The Politics of Humanitarianism: Power, Ideology and Aid,
London: I.B. Tauris, 147174.

Week 9, 15 Dec 2020 – Refugees beyond ‘Crisis’ (part 2)
Required reading:
Andersson, Ruben, 2017, ‘Rescued and Caught: The Humanitarian–Security Nexus at Europe’s
Frontiers’, in Nicholas De Genova (ed.), The Borders of ‘Europe’: Autonomy of Migration,
Tactics of Bordering, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 6494.
Cabot, Heath, 2015, ‘Crisis and Continuity: A Critical Look at the “European Refugee Crisis”’,
http://allegralaboratory.net/crisis-and-continuity-a-critical-look-at-the-european-refugee-
crisis/
Recommended additional reading:
Cabot, Heath, 2014, On the Doorstep of Europe: Asylum and Citizenship in Greece,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Vaughan-Williams, Nick, 2015, Europe’s Border Crisis: Biopolitical Security and Beyond,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Week 10, 22 Dec 2020 Introduction to Ethnographic Methods: Participant Observation and In-
Depth Interviewing
Required reading:
Dewalt, Kathleen M. and Billie R. Dewalt, 2002, Participant Observation: A Guide for
Fieldworkers, Lanham: AltaMira Press, pages TBA.
Practical exercise:
Students will be asked to conduct an in-depth interview with a selected humanitarian
practitioner. Details TBA.

Week 11, 12 Jan 2021 – Governing Health
Required reading:
Brada, Betsey B., 2016, ‘The Contingency of Humanitarianism: Moral Authority in an African
HIV Clinic’, American Anthropologist 118(4):755-771.
Gomez-Temesio, Veronica, 2018, ‘Outliving Death: Ebola, Zombies, and the Politics of Saving
Lives’, American Anthropologist 120(4):738-751.
Recommended additional reading:
Adams, Vincanne, 2020, ‘Disasters and Capitalism... and Covid-19’,
http://somatosphere.net/2020/disaster-capitalism-covid19.html/.
Caduff, Carlo, 2020, ‘What Went Wrong: Corona and the World after the Full Stop’, Medical
Anthropology Quarterly, DOI: 10.1111/maq.12599.
Erikson, Susan, 2019, ‘Global Health Futures? Reckoning with a Pandemic Bond’, Medicine
Anthropology Theory 6(3):77-108.
Kihato, Caroline W. and Loren B. Landau, 2020, ‘Coercion or the social contract? COVID 19
and spatial (in)justice in African cities’, City & Society, DOI: 10.1111/ciso.12265.

Week 12, 19 Jan 2021 – Introduction to Ethnographic Methods: Evaluation of the Practical Exercise
No required reading. The results of the exercise will be evaluated and discussed in the class.

Week 13, 26 Jan 2021 Wrapping Up: Assessing Humanitarianism
Required video:
Fassin, Didier,2010, ‘Critique of Humanitarian Reason’,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDT2mYg6mgo&ab_channel=InstituteforAdvancedStudy
Recommended additional reading:
de Torrenté, Nicolas, 2013, ‘The Relevance and Effectiveness of Humanitarian Aid: Reflections
about the Relationship between Providers and Recipients’, Social Research 80(2):607634.
De Lauri, Antonio (ed.), 2016, The Politics of Humanitarianism: Power, Ideology and Aid,
London: I.B. Tauris.