Results by title

Between Rebels and Relief follows the frontline humanitarians who negotiate access with rebel groups in North Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, to foreground the work of local aid workers who are the backbone of humanitarian operations. Myfanwy James examines how global endeavors are built on the personal networks, knowledge, and skills of local personnel who are rarely given credit. Based on ethnographic research on Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), James uncovers the brokerage, translation, and creative identity work that keeps medical relief operations running, and the crucial role of locally hired staff in navigating violent political terrains and building trust with armed groups. 

Humanitarian agencies draw upon the personal profiles of different staff who learn to position themselves strategically for different audiences, casting and recasting themselves as a form of tactical agency in uncertain violent terrains. Identities are put to work—they become tools, influencing who can wield power, who can gain trust, and who is at particular risk of violence. Yet this produces a central paradox: To uphold a universalist mandate, humanitarian organizations leverage and reproduce the very borders between people—of race, gender, ethnicity, and personal history—that their egalitarian values seek to transcend.

One of the largest peace-keeping missions currently being undertaken by the United Nations is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the UN is attempting to deal with the civil wars and other conflicts that have plagued the country since 1996. In Intervention as Indirect Rule, Alex Veit uses a close study of the district of Ituri, a major battlefield and a laboratory for international intervention, to explore the micropolitics of warfare and statebuilding. Combining detailed firsthand empirical data with a historically informed analysis, Veit shows the effect that contemporary humanitarian interventions have on state-society relations. He also pays particular, and much needed, attention to the question of why the very organizations that should be helping with international statebuilding efforts—local authorities and civil society groups—so often instead turn out to be corrupt or hostile. Ultimately Veit argues that international intervention tends inadvertently to replicate—or even amplify—historical structures of political inequality, rather than establishing a liberal form of statehood.