Politics of Care in Local Humanitarian Aid - Implications for Neutrality and the Localisation Agenda

Abstract

The feasibility of humanitarian neutrality has long been debated. In the wake of the 'localisation agenda' in 2016, this debate has taken on a new substance. Concerns have been raised about the ability of local actors to remain neutral, therefore questioning their legitimacy. This thesis brings an anthropological perspective to this contention by exploring the contingencies of political agency for various local actors. First, I examine the discursive process that allows international organisations to associate local politics with deviance. I argue that the framing of 'locality' as a space without history enables the interpretation of political actions as spontaneous transgressions. Second, I question the association between politics and deviance by building upon ethnographies of Somali and Syrian medical aid workers, exploring both the causes and purposes of politics in their humanitarian practice. Drawing on Didier Fassin's 'politics of memory' (2008), I argue the political dispositions of both aid worker and recipient are formed by various intersections between subjective experiences of history, and the objective realities of its conditions. Considering this analysis, a specific meaning of politics emerges - it is used as an operational device to establish humanitarian space. Given this conclusion, I argue the moral basis of these political practices is the defence of human life, therefore reconfiguring the bounds of legitimacy to include pragmatic politics of care.