The Need to Help

The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism

Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Anthropology
Cover of the book The Need to Help by Liisa H. Malkki, Duke University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Liisa H. Malkki ISBN: 9780822375364
Publisher: Duke University Press Publication: September 3, 2015
Imprint: Duke University Press Books Language: English
Author: Liisa H. Malkki
ISBN: 9780822375364
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication: September 3, 2015
Imprint: Duke University Press Books
Language: English

In The Need to Help Liisa H. Malkki shifts the focus of the study of humanitarian intervention from aid recipients to aid workers themselves. The anthropological commitment to understand the motivations and desires of these professionals and how they imagine themselves in the world "out there," led Malkki to spend more than a decade interviewing members of the international Finnish Red Cross, as well as observing Finns who volunteered from their homes through gifts of handwork. The need to help, she shows, can come from a profound neediness—the need for aid workers and volunteers to be part of the lively world and something greater than themselves, and, in the case of the elderly who knit "trauma teddies" and "aid bunnies" for "needy children," the need to fight loneliness and loss of personhood. In seriously examining aspects of humanitarian aid often dismissed as sentimental, or trivial, Malkki complicates notions of what constitutes real political work. She traces how the international is always entangled in the domestic, whether in the shape of the need to leave home or handmade gifts that are an aid to sociality and to the imagination of the world.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In The Need to Help Liisa H. Malkki shifts the focus of the study of humanitarian intervention from aid recipients to aid workers themselves. The anthropological commitment to understand the motivations and desires of these professionals and how they imagine themselves in the world "out there," led Malkki to spend more than a decade interviewing members of the international Finnish Red Cross, as well as observing Finns who volunteered from their homes through gifts of handwork. The need to help, she shows, can come from a profound neediness—the need for aid workers and volunteers to be part of the lively world and something greater than themselves, and, in the case of the elderly who knit "trauma teddies" and "aid bunnies" for "needy children," the need to fight loneliness and loss of personhood. In seriously examining aspects of humanitarian aid often dismissed as sentimental, or trivial, Malkki complicates notions of what constitutes real political work. She traces how the international is always entangled in the domestic, whether in the shape of the need to leave home or handmade gifts that are an aid to sociality and to the imagination of the world.

More books from Duke University Press

Cover of the book Prescription TV by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book Inequalities of Love by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book Beyond the Sacred Forest by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book Free Speech, The People's Darling Privilege by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book Panic Diaries by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book A Century of Violence in a Red City by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book The Dukes of Durham, 1865-1929 by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book Cruel Optimism by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book Pleasure Consuming Medicine by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book The Archive and the Repertoire by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book Ecologics by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book The End of Concern by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book Beyond Belief by Liisa H. Malkki
Cover of the book American Empire and the Politics of Meaning by Liisa H. Malkki
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy