Paper details

Paper authors	Hayley Umayam
In panel on	The politics of food and technology in changing global and local crises
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

This year, as in the years before it, millions of people need humanitarian assistance. And just like in years past, only a portion of them will receive it. Humanitarian organizations appeal to the logic of ‘needs-based’ aid allocation to account for this discrepancy. Externally led processes of determining vulnerability have been critiqued for nearly as long as large-scale humanitarian assistance, yet humanitarian organizations continue to justify their decisions as need-based with increasing reliance on technocratic practices. This disconnect calls into question the assumptions behind paradigmatic humanitarian practices. Rather than investigating the discrepancy between international or local perspectives of need, this paper seeks to understand how need is done in practice to understand the ontological politics at play. Following Mol’s notion of multiplicity, I trace the material, discursive, and relational practices through which need is enacted. Drawing on field notes from South Sudan from 2017-2020, I analyze how the rollout of biometric registration technology in food distributions stabilize or disrupt different enactments of need. I argue that the practical work required to enact need – narratives about reaching the most vulnerable populations, and the techniques and technologies used to support such claims – both materialize and deflect the exclusions inherent in aid allocation.

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