acase@tulane.edu

Throughout the Second World War, the Canadian Red Cross Society (CRCS) exerted its significant influence in the field of voluntary homefront labour to provide a vast number of services for the benefit of Canadian, Commonwealth and Allied servicemen, prisoners of war, and civilians affected by the horrors of war. These wartime programs, which cost the Society over $90 000 000, were made possible through voluntary contributions of millions of dollars from Canadian citizens mainly through the yearly Red Cross national campaigns. Because of the organization’s claim to reach over cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious lines, it benefitted from the support of various national groups within Canada. Another important group of contributors to the Red Cross structure were women who formed the backbone of the organization’s structure. Women served in nearly every capacity within the CRCS, which allowed them to gain valuable experience in a working environment outside of the home.

Throughout the Second World War, the Canadian Red Cross Society (CRCS) exerted its significant influence in the field of voluntary homefront labour to provide a vast number of services for the benefit of Canadian, Commonwealth and Allied servicemen, prisoners of war, and civilians affected by the horrors of war. These wartime programs, which cost the Society over $90 000 000, were made possible through voluntary contributions of millions of dollars from Canadian citizens mainly through the yearly Red Cross national campaigns. Because of the organization’s claim to reach over cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious lines, it benefitted from the support of various national groups within Canada. Another important group of contributors to the Red Cross structure were women who formed the backbone of the organization’s structure. Women served in nearly every capacity within the CRCS, which allowed them to gain valuable experience in a working environment outside of the home.

<p>The persistent presence of refugees challenges political theorists to rethink our approaches to citizenship and national sovereignty. I look to philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943), who brings to the Western tradition her insight as a refugee who attended to other refugees. Deploying the tropes of Threshold, Refuge, and Attention (which I garner and elaborate from her writings) I read Weil as an eminently political theorist whose practice of befriending political strangers maintains the urgent, interrogative insight of the refugee while tempering certain "temptations of exile." On my reading, Weil's body of theory travels physically and conceptually among plural, intersecting, and conflicting bodies politic, finding in each a source of limited, imperfect, and precious Refuge.</p><p>I then put Weil into conversation with several contemporary scholars - Michael Walzer, Martha Nussbaum, and Kwame Anthony Appiah - each of whom takes up a problematic between duties to existing political community and the call to engagements with political strangers. Bringing Weilian theory to bear on this conversation, I argue that polity depends deeply on those who heed the call to assume variously particular, vocational, and unenforceable duties across received borders. </p><p>Finally, by way of furthering Weil's incomplete experiments in Attention to the other, I look to "accompaniment" and related strategies adopted by human rights activists in recent decades in the Americas. These projects, I suggest, display many traits in common with Weil's political sensibility, but they also demonstrate possibilities beyond those imagined by Weil herself. As such, they provide practical guidance to those of us confronting political failures and refugee flows in the Western hemisphere today. I conclude that politico-humanitarian movements' own bodies of theory and practice point the way to sustained, cross-border, political relations.</p> / Dissertation

The thesis puts more emphasis on Scientific methodology,discuss Philosopher of Science--Paul Feyerabend's thinking. It discusses if science is a rational statement or not and has some reflections on how we think of Scientific methodology. In this reserch we can make a conclusion that Paul Feyerabend think Science doesn't have a so-called position.What we called "Science" today also follow a normal methodology.He suggest that we should get rid of the normal methodology and support the scientists do their reserch freely by using suitalbe methodology so human beings can devolop more knowledge probability

Inaug.-diss.-- Münster in Westfalen. / Lebenslauf. "Literaturverzeichnis": p. vii-xii.

As the language and ideology of human rights globalizes, some scholars have revisited pressing questions about the universality and cultural relativity of human rights as theory, discourse, and practice in philosophy, law, and culture. While some view the globalization of human rights negatively as Western cultural imperialism, others see it positively as a means to empower the oppressed. These arguments often reach an impasse because they presume human rights as a fixed entity. This project reconsiders this assumption in the debate about the globalization of human rights by attending to the discursive (and thus changeable and changing) nature of this language and ideology, and the networked system through which it globalizes. By modeling a global discourse network, it examines how a globalizing discourse of human rights might be affected by and be affecting its subjects, especially their individual identity and agency. Thereafter, it tests this model on three actors speaking from different subject positions and through different textual genres – a humanitarian NGO and a speech; a genocide survivor and an autobiography; and a global author and a novel. These case studies suggest that groups and individuals speaking from traditionally less-than-powerful subject positions (like the NGO and crisis survivor) in a typical human rights framework can benefit from the discourse and its network. They gain global presence and influence through the network’s amplifying effects on identity, influence, and conventions, which offer its users the chance of appearing as agents. But there are also instances (as with the author and novel) where the universalist rhetoric of the discourse and the global reach of its network (their power) cannot overcome the force of other more divisive discourses and networks oriented around markers of difference like nationality, ethnicity, class, or religion. This project thus outlines some possibilities and limits of speaking globally through a purportedly universalist discourse in a network situation, and identifies consistent problems of representing human rights crisis and causes as globalized speech acts and from postnational speaking positions, in a still nation-centered world. / text

This dissertation examines the paradoxes involved in offering medical aid to undocumented migrants in Berlin, Germany. Coinciding with the end of guestworker programs in the 1970s, undocumented migrants have increasingly filled gaps in the German labor market. Political pressures following reunification, along with border militarization in the wake of European Union expansion, have resulted in restrictions on legal entry. However, neoliberal reforms in the labor market and a rapidly aging population have resulted in high demand for undocumented workers in particular sectors of the economy. At the same time, soaring unemployment and nationalist sentiments have made immigration unpopular, with political parties negatively predisposed to assuring the rights of migrant workers. One such right is access to health care services in a nation with a traditionally universal system of coverage. Undocumented migrants are officially denied "medical citizenship" and must rely upon humanitarian aid provided by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).This study examines the experiences of multiple stakeholders, particularly physicians and NGOs that provide medical aid. It draws upon the anthropology of health policy, a critical approach within medical anthropology. Fieldwork in Berlin during 2004-2006 included participant observation at an outpatient clinic, which yielded case studies of 204 undocumented patients, along with sixty-one interviews. Results indicate that in Germany, certain minimal rights are technically available to migrants; however, they are not assured access to these rights. This underscores the importance of utilizing legal status as a unifying measure of analysis. I argue that the state absolves itself of responsibility by handing off the provision of services to the NGO sector. While laws criminalize the provision of medical aid, they are only selectively enforced, and organizations are recognized for their volunteer work through awards and commendations. These paradoxes allow the state to square the contradiction of condemning yet relying upon undocumented migration. This dissertation presents an ethnographic portrait of the single largest source of medical aid for undocumented migrants in Germany, providing an analysis of patient characteristics and illnesses. Prenatal care highlights the interplay between race, reproduction, and citizenship, and offers a particularly poignant window into the challenges of nation-building in contemporary Germany.

In taking into account the vast body of literature that exists on the topic of international humanitarianism, this thesis aims to provide a contribution to the field by way of an analysis of the dubious manner in which states apply the principles of humanitarianism. It derives conclusions around the level of commitment and sincerity of the international humanitarian regime to the principles of humanitarianism by exploring the dynamic relationship between the two of the main areas of humanitarianism: humanitarian intervention and refugee protection. From this analysis stems the argument is that while the governments of the wealthy Western states are often amongst the loudest trumpeters of humanitarian principles, they fail to live up to their humanitarian obligations. For, rather than committing to humanitarian action on the basis of need, they are only willing to commit to humanitarian action in cases that serve in their own national interests; cases of human suffering from which they do not stand to benefit remain caught in the margins of the international humanitarian regime.

This thesis examines the complexities in the resettlement of Bhutanese refugees. Using anthropological ethnographic field methods, this thesis explores the power dynamics between the employees of a resettlement organization and the refugees and the intricate webs of power within different institutions, such as local NGOs and healthcare institutions. The study argues that humanitarian actions and interventions are often driven by bureaucratic politics and policies that contradict what humanitarianism stands for as apolitical and value-neutral. These contradictions or paradoxes in humanitarianism also are also present in refugee resettlement. Analyzing these paradoxes that characterize resettlement, this thesis illuminates structural discontinuities or gaps that result from differences in expectations between the refugees and the employees of resettlement organization. Drawing on analyses of the paradoxes and complexities in resettlement, the study concludes that bureaucratic management of refugees reinforces social inequalities and hierarchies of power that masks state’s responsibility towards both the refugees and local NGOs making resettlement an unsettling process.