Paper details
| Paper authors | Jeevika Vivekanathan |
| In panel on | Towards Plural Humanitarianisms: Decolonising Theory through Global-South Perspectives |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
Crisis-affected communities are at the centre of any crisis that affects their lives. They have the agency and resources to respond to the crises before external help arrives. They are not the passive actors in a crisis or passive recipients of aid as they are generally portrayed by the international media and the humanitarian regime. They are the "everyday theorists” (Fiddian‐Qasmiyeh, 2019) who experience, respond to, conceptualise, negotiate and resist different modes and actors of crisis responses, including their own. However, the mainstream discourse on ‘humanitarian crisis’ or ‘diaspora humanitarianism’ is highly influenced by the Western-centric actors and their perspectives. The conceptualisation of these notions lacks voices, worldviews and lived experiences of crises-affected communities, particularly those in the ‘Global South’.
My PhD research attempts to understand ‘crisis’ and diaspora assistance to crises in the homelands by foregrounding the perspectives of crisis-affected communities, using a decolonial lens. This presentation will thus shed light on the local perspectives from Sri Lanka and Tonga on the nature of crisis/disaster and the diaspora assistance to the crisis-affected homelands. I will also share the lessons learned from doing research with crisis-affected communities in the capacity of a PhD candidate from “in-between” and offer my reflections on the journey of "thinking-doing" and "doing-thinking" with a decolonial lens (Walsh and Mignolo, 2018).
