ANT 233 - Anthropology of Humanitarian Aid

Course Units: 1.0

(Not Offered this Academic Year) What does it mean to help others? When is it an imperative and when is it an option? What considerations arise when the subject of assistance is in another country, a member of a different religion, or another culture? This course draws upon global case studies of humanitarian intervention in order to encourage students to engage critically with the complexity of what seems like an unequivocal good: humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid plays a significant role in today’s society, from the United States’ recent and very complex engagement with the Ebola outbreak to aid that is dispensed as part of disaster relief. This course explores the ethics and politics of humanitarianism in global perspective. It addresses the cultural specificity of global humanitarian aid and the ways that humanitarianism has been theorized historically. This course examines the growing debate over the philosophical, moral, political, cultural and operational practices of such interventions. CC: LCC, SOCS