People not psychiatry

BARNETT, Michael

Allen& Unwin

SACRED AID FAITH & HUMANITARIANISM P: Faith And Humanitarianism

The global humanitarian movement, which originated within Western religious organizations in the early nineteenth century, has been of most important forces in world politics in advancing both human rights and human welfare. While the religious groups that founded the movement originally focused on conversion, in time more secular concerns came to dominate. By the end of the nineteenth century, increasingly professionalized yet nominally religious organization shifted from reliance on the good book to the public health manual. Over the course of the twentieth century, the secularization of humanitarianism only increased, and by the 1970s the movement's religious inspiration, generally speaking, was marginal to its agenda. However, beginning in the 1980s, religiously inspired humanitarian movements experienced a major revival, and today they are virtual equals of their secular brethren. From church-sponsored AIDS prevention campaigns in Africa to Muslim charity efforts in flood-stricken Pakistan to Hindu charities in India, religious groups have altered the character of the global humanitarian movement. Moreover, even secular groups now gesture toward religious inspiration in their work. Clearly, the broad, inexorable march toward secularism predicted by so many Westerners has halted, which is especially intriguing with regard to humanitarianism. Not only was it a highly secularized movement just forty years ago, but its principles were based on those we associate with "rational" modernity: cosmopolitan one-worldism and material (as opposed to spiritual) progress. How and why did this happen, and what does it mean for humanitarianism writ large? That is the question that the eminent scholars Michael Barnett and Janice Stein pose in Sacred Aid, and for answers they have gathered chapters from leading scholars that focus on the relationship between secularism and religion in contemporary humanitarianism throughout the developing world. Collectively, the chapters in this volume comprise an original and authoritative account of religion has reshaped the global humanitarian movement in recent times.

Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism

Politics & Social Sciences

Stein, Janice Gross

Politics & Government

Oxford University Press

The global humanitarian movement, which originated within Western religious organizations in the early nineteenth century, has been of most important forces in world politics in advancing both human rights and human welfare. While the religious groups that founded the movement originally focused on conversion, in time more secular concerns came to dominate. By the end of the nineteenth century, increasingly professionalized yet nominally religious organization shifted from reliance on the good book to the public health manual. Over the course of the twentieth century, the secularization of humanitarianism only increased, and by the 1970s the movement's religious inspiration, generally speaking, was marginal to its agenda. However, beginning in the 1980s, religiously inspired humanitarian movements experienced a major revival, and today they are virtual equals of their secular brethren. From church-sponsored AIDS prevention campaigns in Africa to Muslim charity efforts in flood-stricken Pakistan to Hindu charities in India, religious groups have altered the character of the global humanitarian movement. Moreover, even secular groups now gesture toward religious inspiration in their work. Clearly, the broad, inexorable march toward secularism predicted by so many Westerners has halted, which is especially intriguing with regard to humanitarianism. Not only was it a highly secularized movement just forty years ago, but its principles were based on those we associate with "rational" modernity: cosmopolitan one-worldism and material (as opposed to spiritual) progress. How and why did this happen, and what does it mean for humanitarianism writ large? That is the question that the eminent scholars Michael Barnett and Janice Stein pose in Sacred Aid, and for answers they have gathered chapters from leading scholars that focus on the relationship between secularism and religion in contemporary humanitarianism throughout the developing world. Collectively, the chapters in this volume comprise an original and authoritative account of religion has reshaped the global humanitarian movement in recent times.

For decades, Arab states and societies have been involved in an ongoing conflict over the goals and norms of Arabism. In this comprehensive study, Michael Barnett explores the relationships between Arab identity, the meaning of Arabism, and desired regional order in the Middle East from 1920 to the present, focusing on Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. Barnett examines the state system in four distinct time frames: the mandate period to the establishment of the League of Arab States in 1945; 1945 through the Baghdad Pact of 1955; the Suez War through the 1967 war; and 1967 through the Gulf War. Within each of these time frames, the Arab states' relationship to unification, the West, and confrontation with Zionism are addressed. Does Arab unity depend on excluding Western influences? Can an Arab state be at once Islamic and democratic? Why can't the Arab states agree on a common government? Barnett argues that the Arab states' symbolic and strategic interactions were responsible for the alterations in the norms of Arabism, and ultimately, the fragamentation that currently defines the region.

Dialogues in Arab Politics

History

Middle East

Columbia University Press

Humanitarianism Contested: Where Angels Fear to Tread (Global Institutions)

This book provides a succinct but sophisticated understanding of humanitarianism and insight into the on-going dilemmas and tensions that have accompanied it since its origins in the early nineteenth century. Combining theoretical and historical exposition with a broad range of contemporary case studies, the book: <ul>
<li>provides a brief survey of the history of humanitarianism, beginning with the anti-slavery movement in the early nineteenth century and continuing to today’s challenge of post-conflict reconstruction and saving failed states</li> <li>explains the evolution of humanitarianism. Not only has it evolved over the decades, but since the end of the Cold War, humanitarianism has exploded in scope, scale, and significance</li> <li>presents an overview of the contemporary humanitarian sector, including briefly who the key actors are, how they are funded and what they do with their money</li> <li>analyses the ethical dilemmas confronted by humanitarian organization, not only in the abstract but also, and most importantly, in real situations and when lives are at stake </li> <li>examines how humanitarianism poses fundamental ethical questions regarding the kind of world we want to live in, what kind of world is possible, and how we might get there. </li> </ul> An accessible and engaging work by two of the leading scholars in the field, Humanitarianism Contested is essential reading for all those concerned with the future of human rights and international relations.

Weiss, Thomas G.

Social Sciences

Routledge

The International Humanitarian Order (Security and Governance)

One of the genuinely remarkable but relatively unnoticed developments of the last half-century is the blossoming of an international humanitarian order – a complex of norms, informal institutions, laws, and discourses that legitimate and compel various kinds of interventions by state and nonstate actors with the explicit goal of preserving and protecting human life. For those who have sacrificed to build this order, and for those who have come to rely on it, the international humanitarian represents a towering achievement cause for sobriety. What kind of international humanitarian order is being imagined, created and practiced? To what extent are the international agents of this order deliverers of progress or disappointment? Featuring previously published and original essays, this collection offers a critical assessment of the practices and politics of global ethical interventions in the context of the post-cold war transformation of the international humanitarian order. After an introduction that introduces the reader to the concept and the significance of the international humanitarian order, Section I explores the braided relationship between international order and the UN, whiles Section II critically examines international ethics in practice. The Conclusion reflects on these and other themes, asking why the international humanitarian order retains such a loyal following despite its flaws, what is the relationship of this order to power and politics, how such relationships implicate our understanding of moral progress, and how the international humanitarian order challenges both practitioners and scholars to rethink the meaning of their vocations.

Reference

Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda

Why was the UN a bystander during the Rwandan genocide? Do its sins of omission leave it morally responsible for the hundreds of thousands of dead? Michael Barnett, who worked at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1993 to 1994, covered Rwanda for much of the genocide. Based on his first-hand experiences, archival work, and interviews with many key participants, he reconstructs the history of the UN's involvement in Rwanda. In the weeks leading up to the genocide, the author documents, the UN was increasingly aware or had good reason to suspect that Rwanda was a site of crimes against humanity. Yet it failed to act. Barnett argues that its indifference was driven not by incompetence or cynicism but rather by reasoned choices cradled by moral considerations. Employing a novel approach to ethics in practice and in relationship to international organizations, Barnett offers an unsettling possibility: the UN culture recast the ethical commitments of well-intentioned individuals, arresting any duty to aid at the outset of the genocide. Barnett argues that the UN bears some moral responsibility for the genocide. Particularly disturbing is his observation that not only did the UN violate its moral responsibilities, but also that many in New York believed that they were "doing the right thing" as they did so. Barnett addresses the ways in which the Rwandan genocide raises a warning about this age of humanitarianism and concludes by asking whether it is possible to build moral institutions.

Africa

Cornell University Press

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