Paper details

Paper authors	OLIVIA WILKINSON
In panel on	Privileging Forces in the Humanitarian System: Power and Marginalization
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

If the roots of humanitarianisms are often linked to religions, the branches of our contemporary humanitarian system are mostly removed from those religious origins. Investigating modern humanitarian norms, we see that there is a frequent assumption of modernity as technical, material, and resolutely of this world. This humanitarian conception of the modern world marks Western humanitarianism as secular because it grounds humanitarian thinking in a worldview that focuses on the physicality and immediacy of life. This position is often unrecognized and unanalyzed in humanitarianism, however. When coupled with an analysis of power and privilege in humanitarian action, we see that this worldview has limited other conceptions of humanitarianism from becoming dominant. This paper interrogates the advantages and disadvantages of the dominance of Western secular humanitarianism and asks how biases from this framing have affected the impact of humanitarian action, with examples from South Sudan and the Philippines.

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