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Humanitarianism and Suffering

The Mobilization of Empathy

Richard Ashby Wilson editor Richard D Brown editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:26th May '11

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Humanitarianism and Suffering cover

This book shows how stories of suffering are created and their impact on global politics.

This book examines instances of humanitarian action and non-action, from the age of Napoleon to the era of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, and from the American anti-slavery movement to present-day Israeli human rights organizations. It examines how stories of suffering are framed and their impact on global politics.Humanitarian sentiments have motivated a variety of manifestations of pity, from nineteenth-century movements to end slavery to the creation of modern international humanitarian law. While humanitarianism is clearly political, this text addresses the ways in which it is also an ethos embedded in civil society, one that drives secular and religious social and cultural movements, not just legal and political institutions. As an ethos, humanitarianism has a strong narrative and representational dimension that can generate humanitarian constituencies for particular causes. Essays in the volume analyze the character, form, and voice of private or public narratives themselves and explain how and why some narratives of suffering energize political movements of solidarity, whereas others do not. Humanitarianism and Suffering explores when, how, and why humanitarian movements become widespread popular movements. It shows how popular sentiments move political and social elites to action and, conversely, how national elites appropriate humanitarian ideals for more instrumental ends.

'… a very timely volume that should appeal to a wide range of anthropologists.' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

ISBN: 9780521298384

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 18mm

Weight: 440g

330 pages