The everyday emotional lives of aid workers: how humanitarian anxiety gets in the way of meaningful local participation

IF 2.2 1区社会学 Q1 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

International Theory Pub Date : 2021-10-14 DOI:10.1017/S1752971921000166

Amoz J. Y. Hor

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引用次数: 3

Abstract

Abstract Participatory approaches to humanitarianism, peacebuilding, and international development promise to listen to the voices of local aid beneficiaries. However, aid workers often listen to these voices through reductive narratives of aid beneficiaries, ventriloquizing their voice and inhibiting meaningful participation. Why do aid workers – despite humane intentions – continue to rely on reductive narratives? This paper inquires how the everyday emotional lives of aid workers make reductive narratives persist. Based on 65 semi-structured interviews in Singapore, Jakarta, and Aceh, and 40 aid worker books and blogs, I show how aid workers regularly experience emotional anxieties that question their complicity in the suffering of others and their powerlessness to do anything about it. Reductive narratives resonate and persist because they allow aid workers to cope with these anxieties. I illustrate the emotional resonance of three reductive narratives – civilizing; romanticized; and impersonal narratives – in three common practices of local participation in aid work: professionalized standards; visiting the field; and hiring locals. Given the emotional origins of reductive narratives, rational critique is insufficient for reforming or decolonizing aid work. Rather, change must also involve engaging the underlying emotions of aid workers.

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救援人员的日常情感生活：人道主义焦虑如何阻碍当地有意义的参与

摘要人道主义、建设和平和国际发展的参与式方法承诺倾听当地援助受益者的声音。然而，援助工作者往往通过对援助受益者的简化叙述来倾听这些声音，用腹语表达他们的声音，并抑制有意义的参与。为什么救援人员——尽管有人道主义的意图——仍然依赖于简化的叙述？本文探讨了救援人员的日常情感生活是如何使还原叙事得以延续的。基于在新加坡、雅加达和亚齐进行的65次半结构化采访，以及40本援助工作者的书籍和博客，我展示了援助工作者如何经常经历情感焦虑，这些焦虑质疑他们与他人的痛苦有牵连，以及他们无力对此采取任何行动。还原性的叙事引起共鸣并持续存在，因为它们让援助工作者能够应对这些焦虑。我展示了三种还原叙事的情感共鸣——文明；浪漫化；以及非个人化的叙述——在当地参与援助工作的三种常见做法中：专业化标准；实地考察；以及雇佣当地人。鉴于还原叙事的情感起源，理性批判不足以改革或非殖民化援助工作。相反，变革还必须涉及到参与援助人员的潜在情绪。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

International Theory Multiple-

CiteScore

6.60

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Editorial board International Theory (IT) is a peer reviewed journal which promotes theoretical scholarship about the positive, legal, and normative aspects of world politics respectively. IT is open to theory of absolutely all varieties and from all disciplines, provided it addresses problems of politics, broadly defined and pertains to the international. IT welcomes scholarship that uses evidence from the real world to advance theoretical arguments. However, IT is intended as a forum where scholars can develop theoretical arguments in depth without an expectation of extensive empirical analysis. IT’s over-arching goal is to promote communication and engagement across theoretical and disciplinary traditions. IT puts a premium on contributors’ ability to reach as broad an audience as possible, both in the questions they engage and in their accessibility to other approaches. This might be done by addressing problems that can only be understood by combining multiple disciplinary discourses, like institutional design, or practical ethics; or by addressing phenomena that have broad ramifications, like civilizing processes in world politics, or the evolution of environmental norms. IT is also open to work that remains within one scholarly tradition, although in that case authors must make clear the horizon of their arguments in relation to other theoretical approaches.