Paper details
| Paper authors | Michael Barnett |
| In panel on | Hierarchies and Exclusion in Humanitarianism |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
This article develops a sociologically-inspired version of club governance to understand the rise and resilience of the Humanitarian Club. Whereas most versions of club governance derive from a political economy tradition, the sociological alternative illuminates how clubs, like many groups, are: distinguished by a sense of we-ness that often generate a distinction members and nonmembers.
Several concepts are central to this alternative view of clubs. The field is a collection of actors that have a common understanding of their shared purpose, rules, and practices. The field is dominated by elites that possess four kinds of capital: economic (money), symbolic (identity), social (trust), and cultural (knowledge). Capital in the right kinds and the right amount provides entrée into the right clubs, and these clubs also confer status on its members. Although international relations scholars have tied status to material or moral resources, also important is the perception of competence and the ability to contribute to the club’s goals. Capital and perceived distribution of competence can produce durable inequality between kinds of actors.
I trace the rise and resilience of a Humanitarian Club to a humanitarian elite whose capital and status creates positions of superiority occupied by Western-based organizations and of inferiority occupied by Southern agencies. These positions also generate judgments of competence. Despite on-going reform efforts, capital and perceived competence sustains a humanitarian governance with a Humanitarian Club dominated by Western-based organizations that excludes southern aid agencies.
