Human Rights, Social Justice, and Humanitarian Intervention: The Anthropology of Global Aid

From child soldiers to starving refugees, Americans are inundated with media images of violent suffering in the developing world. Our politicians frequently present international humanitarian intervention as an unequivocal good, without examining the actual outcomes of aid initiatives. This course uses tools from anthropology to explore the motivations for global aid, along with the concrete--and often unexpected--effects it produces on the ground. Foregrounding an ethnographic approach, we seek to understand the enduring influence of the concept of "rights," the ways that local populations both welcome and resent humanitarian work, and the successes and failures of international charitable organizations. First-year students require an instructor override to register.