This dissertation explores the construction of humanitarian insecurity as a social problem; more particularly, it suggests the rise of a moral panic about a perceived "new and growing threat" to humanitarian actors in the post-Cold \Vax era. Whilst there is nothing that has radically changed in the nature of the threat to humanitarian actors throughout the twentieth century and earlier, the grmving perception of "shrinking humanitarian space" has encouraged the adoption of security policies that deepen the conditions for some of the problems that humanitarian actors face today. By linking moral panic theory with Bourdieu's social theory, this thesis shows that disproportionate reactions to humanitarian security can be sociologically understood, not as a collective mistake in understanding, but, rather, as a meaningful response to effects of hysteresis in the field of humanitarian aid. Particularly, it shows that the collapse of faith in the pre-modem humanitarian system and the rise of new ways of working "on" rather than "in" conflict precipitated a deeper sense of disorientation about what humanitarian actors stand for in the post-Cold War era. This, in turn, has provided a fertile ground for a moral panic about humanitarian insecurity to take root and flourish, as well as for humanitarian security experts to promote the adoption of a 'culture of security' across the aid community in an effective way. By encouraging reflexivity about the social processes and relations through which specific types of knowledge on humanitarian insecurity are transfonned into power, this dissertation helps develop a critical criminology of aid that breaks with expert and media predispositions towards the status quo and engages with the ways in which existing power structures directly contribute to the very "problem" of humanitarian insecurity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:591924 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Dandoy, Arnaud |
| Publisher | University of Kent |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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