Paper details

Paper authors	Eva Johais
In panel on	Taking ideology out of humanitarianism? The everyday, corporate interests and the politics of global solidarity
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Innovation has lost the inspirational force that comes from novelty. But was the turn to innovation more than the plainest guise of the constant imperative for improving humanitarian action? The paper starts from the assumption of a transformative effect that several authors have diagnosed (Madianou 2019, Sandvik 2017, Scott-Smith 2016): The humanitarian innovation movement privileges markets and technology as the ultimate solution for humanitarian problems. The paper draws attention to actors that play a central role in the humanitarian innovation arena: Humanitarian technologies incorporate its understanding of humanitarian needs and what kind of solutions are considered suitable to relieve human suffering. While the debate primarily revolves around digital technologies, the paper broadens the view to all kinds of humanitarian goods and architecture. Namely, it makes the case for an analysis of the politics of humanitarian design. For this, it develops a theoretical framework that draws on design theory and the concept of ‚dingpolitik‘(Latour 2005; Sims 2016). To put this into practice, the paper proposes an ethnographic approach that follows the life of an object. The aim is twofold: to gain insights into the commodity chains of humanitarian goods and shed light on the prescriptive capacities of their design.

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