PhD project "Decolonizing Humanitarianism. Race and Power in the humanitarian sector"

Decolonizing Humanitarianism. Race and Power in the humanitarian sector

PIs: Prof. Joël Glasman, Prof. Andrea Behrends

PhD-Student: Darja Wolfmeier

This project explores race inequalities and power relations in the humanitarian sector. Humanitiarian studies have already deconstructed the universalist claims of humanitarianism (Fassin 2011, Redfield 2013, Agier 2016). Critical race theory, in turn, has already uncovered the racial bias of developmentalism (White 2002, Kothari 2006, Pailey 2020). However, there has been barely any academic work on the sociological and practical realities of racial inequalities in emergency aid. There is an urgent need to offer empirical data on racial inequalities of humanitarian organizations. Humanitarian agencies are facing a growing critique on their politics of race without offering any sound solution and in the absence of solid empirical knowledge of past and present race inequalities in their own ranks (Efange 2020, Gray 2020, New York Times 2021). This project will offer one of the first historical sociology of racial inequalities of a leading humanitarian organization. It will focus on a well-known player in the humanitarian field. Archival work and interviews will allow for a grounded analysis of racialization processes in humanitarian and their links with gender inequalities and class structure. This research will thus make a decisive addition to the nascent literature on race relations in humanitarian aid (Benton 2016). Further, this research may contribute to the urgent discussion on postcolonial hierarchies in the humanitarian sector.