Humanitarianism from Below?: Universalism and the Politics of Inhumanity

The first global comparative analysis of the role of humanitarianism from below in political and social change.

Drawing on original ethnographic and historical research, Humanitarianism from Below? addresses a wide audience of scholars and students in humanitarian and development studies, anthropology, and political science. Drawing from timely case studies on the war in Ukraine, the Ebola pandemic in West Africa, the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, and the global flows of aid from Arab states to the Persian Gulf, the book considers humanitarianism’s multiple histories and offers a profound reassessment of humanitarian pluralism today. It critically discusses humanitarianism as a historically, politically, and culturally contingent phenomenon that entails unequal relations of power and multiple forms of universalism, as well as issues of dehumanization and inhumanity.

Till Mostowlansky is research professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute and a visiting professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. Elmira Muratova is a postdoctoral researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany.