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Humanitarianism and Changing Cultures of Cooperation Humanitarianism and Changing Cultures of Cooperation Veranstalter: Centre for Global Cooperation
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Copyright Year | 2015 |
| Abstract | Humanitarianism – as a concept and as a practice – has become a major factor in world society: It channels an enormous amount of resources and serves as an argument for different kinds of interference into the „internal affairs“ of a country. It is therefore a fertile testing ground for successful and unsuccessful cooperation across borders. At the same time, humanitarian action is a form of cooperation that is rooted in cultures of gift-giving, even though they are sometimes exploited for strategic aims. Against this backdrop, the Centre for Global Cooperation Research, in cooperation with the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI), organized the conference „Humanitarianism and Changing Cultures of Cooperation“ from June 5-7, 2014. As suggested in the title, the aim of the conference was to shed light both on humanitarianism, its ambivalences and dilemmas, and its relevance for questions of global cooperation.1 Presenters came from the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Germany and Uganda. Among the speakers and audience there were both junior researchers and internationally renowned scholars, some of them with a long experience both as academics and practitioners. During the conference, three clusters of topics emerged: The question of motivations, legitimations and aims of humanitarian actions, the meaning of new global contexts and the emergence of new actors. These issues were discussed from different disciplinary angles including history, philosophy, anthropology, political science and sociology. With regard to the motivation and legitimation for humanitarianism, the lecture by FRITZ BREITHAUPT (Bloomington) turned to the question of empathy and its „dark sides“. Referring to Nietzsche’s description of the „objective man“ and also drawing on findings of cognitive science and his own narrative theory of empathy, Breithaupt argued that a culture of unlimited empathy would lead to collective self-loss and therefore the loss of a subject worthy of empathy. The commentators (Frank Adloff, Erlangen-Nürnberg and Christine Unrau, Cologne / Duisburg) questioned the incompatibility of empathy and „having a self“ and suggested differentiations between empathy, compassion, emotional contagion and idolization. Questions concerning the basis of humanitarianism were also discussed. JOCHEN KLERES (Gothenburg) discussed the relationship between certain „feeling rules“ (compassion / pity / solidarity) and hegemonic paradigms of humanitarian aid from a perspective of the sociology of emotions. In the panel dedicated to „Histories of Humanitarianism“, FLORIAN HANNIG (Halle) pointed out that empathy itself is not simply a timeless human capacity, but has a history. He illustrated this with reference to the Biafra crisis and the outburst of empathy it mobilized in Western Germany, not least as a result of massive media coverage and the use of emotionalizing images. As FRANCESCA PIANA (Geneva / New York) pointed out in the same panel, attempts to use pictures and even films to mobilize emotions and to attract support for specific humanitarian organizations can already be discerned in the visual politics of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after World War I. However, emotions are not the only foundation for humanitarianism, and universal values are equally important. When it comes to military humanitarian intervention, the question if universal values are the „authentic“ motivational basis or the legitimation for actions taken for economic, strategic or other purposes, is of course especially controversial. This became clear in the discussion ensuing after JEFF ROQUEN’s (Bethlehem / Pennsylvania) presentation, in which the Spanish-US war of 1895-1898 was interpreted as „America’s first humanitarian inter- |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/index.asp?id=5505&pn=tagungsberichte&type=tagungsberichte&view=pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
