{"title":"A Hierarchy of Refugees: Fixing Vulnerability among Refugees from Mali in Burkina Faso","authors":"Nora Bardelli","doi":"10.1163/25891715-bja10038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-bja10038","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article discusses the pragmatic dimension humanitarian classifications and discourses play in hierarchical and discriminatory practices taking place in the refugee regime. It does so by focusing on the notion of “vulnerability,” very much used in contemporary humanitarianism. The paper deconstructs the two main uses/understandings of this notion: its use as a humanitarian tool to categorize those most in need among the humanitarian beneficiaries – i.e. its use to categorize “people with specific needs;” and its “unofficial” use by humanitarian workers. In addition to being both limited and stereotyped, they are further in contradictions with each other; yet, they both ultimately reproduce hierarchies and inequalities among refugees from Mali. Eventually, performing the ideal, vulnerable refugee becomes impossible for urban refugees in Burkina Faso, and most other refugees too, thus making it harder for them to be perceived as legitimate refugees in the eyes of the humanitarian community.","PeriodicalId":108830,"journal":{"name":"Public Anthropologist","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123485940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Roberto J. González. War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future","authors":"Eva Johais","doi":"10.1163/25891715-bja10037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-bja10037","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":108830,"journal":{"name":"Public Anthropologist","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129295511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ahmad, I., ed. (2021). Anthropology and Ethnography Are Not Equivalent: Reorienting Anthropology for the Future","authors":"Anna-Sophie Hobi","doi":"10.1163/25891715-bja10035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-bja10035","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":108830,"journal":{"name":"Public Anthropologist","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126012094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Commentary on Ilan Kelman’s Disaster by Choice","authors":"Sébatien Penmellen Boret","doi":"10.1163/25891715-04010003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-04010003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":108830,"journal":{"name":"Public Anthropologist","volume":"129 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132223716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Commentary on Ilan Kelman’s Disaster by Choice","authors":"Roberto E. Barrios","doi":"10.1163/25891715-04010002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-04010002","url":null,"abstract":"While discussing the writing of academic book reviews, a colleague once told me a good review is one that informs the reader what a book is about, how well the book’s thesis is supported by evidence, and who the most appropriate audience for the book is. Following my colleague’s recommendation, I would say that Ilan Kelman’s Disaster by Choice: How Our Actions Turn Natural Hazards into Catastrophes is a very good book written for a non-academic audience that presents a number of global case studies to support the observation that disasters are by no means natural and rather are, to a great extent, the result of human actions. Moreover, the book asserts that if people’s actions are a critical dimension of the social production of disasters, then it may very well be within people’s ability to prevent them, hence the book’s main title. At the same time, I must confess I felt some unease while reading Disaster by Choice, a sensation that began the moment I read the preface’s first sentences:","PeriodicalId":108830,"journal":{"name":"Public Anthropologist","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129911601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Google’s Tech Philanthropy: Capitalism and Humanitarianism in the Digital Age","authors":"S. Henriksen, L. Richey","doi":"10.1163/25891715-bja10030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-bja10030","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Transnational tech companies have become important actors in global philanthropy. Led by tech giants such as Google, this tech philanthropy consists not just of donating funds to expert organizations and ngo s but also, importantly, in using the companies’ own expertise and products to create social impact. This philanthropy is celebrated as innovative and criticized as exploitative for its novel ways of combining capitalism with global helping. But in what way is tech philanthropy novel and to what extent does it continue the well-worn historical trajectory of humanitarianism and capitalism? In this paper, we analyze the philanthropic practices of Google focusing on the company’s current attempt to link philanthropy to the big business of artificial intelligence (ai). Based on ethnographic data collected at the “Google ai Impact Challenge Summit” in San Francisco and interviews with tech and humanitarian stakeholders, we highlight the entanglements of capitalism and humanitarianism in tech philanthropy.","PeriodicalId":108830,"journal":{"name":"Public Anthropologist","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133265237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exemplary Lovers: Humanity and Hierarchy in Muslim Philanthropy","authors":"Till Mostowlansky","doi":"10.1163/25891715-bja10029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-bja10029","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Islamic charity is an increasingly well-charted field of study that encompasses Muslim institutions and practices of “doing good” across time and space. What is less well charted, though, is the study of how these institutions and practices become part of a broader sphere of civic engagement through contact with Muslim and non-Muslim actors, concepts and exemplary figures. This article analyses such contact, focusing on Muslim philanthropists who lead projects and trusts across a range of social and geographical spaces, and exploring the humanitarian examples they draw on and the hierarchies they reproduce and create through their engagement. With an emphasis on exchanges between Muslim philanthropists in England, Iran and Pakistan, the article follows the spiritual connections, pilgrimage economy and moral sentiments that inform the ways these philanthropists carve out spaces for themselves.","PeriodicalId":108830,"journal":{"name":"Public Anthropologist","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129046954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Death of “Natural Disasters”? A Commentary on Ilan Kelman’s Disaster by Choice","authors":"Kristoffer Albris","doi":"10.1163/25891715-04010001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-04010001","url":null,"abstract":"When I first read Ilan Kelman’s Disaster by Choice, I got no further than a couple of sentences into the preface before a particular sentence gave me pause: “Stating that natural disasters do not exist because humans cause disasters seems insanely provocative” (emphasis added). It was not the claim that natural disasters do not exist that momentarily intervened in my reading, but rather the final phrase, which I will return to shortly. As an anthropologist that has studied disasters and crises for well over a decade, I am well aware of this reasoning and the discussions surrounding the problem with the language of “natural disasters”; while we can talk of natural hazards (floods, storms, earthquakes, etc.) that inevitably will occur due to the moving of the earth, wind, and water, disasters are caused only if such hazards intersect with patterns of vulnerability in societies. According to this logic, the term “natural disasters” is simply an error of linguistic convention, a phrase that should not exist in our language. However, as various scholars and commentators have pointed out, the problem with “natural disasters” goes well beyond semantics and linguistic conventions. Ksenia Chmutina and Jason von Meding have stated as such quite forcefully in an analysis of the persistence of the term “natural disaster” in scholarly discourse, claiming that:1","PeriodicalId":108830,"journal":{"name":"Public Anthropologist","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115236675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}