Drazkiewicz-Grodzicka, Elzbieta
(2017)
Humanitarian Developers and Neutrality in Foreign Aid: shifting contexts, shifting meanings – examples from South Sudan.
Focaal, 77.
pp. 90-102.
ISSN 0920-1297
Abstract
Since the late 1990s, researchers have been predicting that the era of neutrality
in aid politics is coming to an end and that foreign organizations will have
to take a more engaged stance. Yet while the boundaries between humanitarianism
and development are fading, in some cases the neutrality norm is actually expanding
rather than giving way to an engaged paradigm. Recognizing that the principles
of neutrality and independence have diff erent meanings for diff erent actors
and that they are applied in various ways, this article examines how the humanitarian
developers—small NGOs operating in Jonglei State in South Sudan—use these
paradigms. Th e article shows that their specifi c variant of neutrality is not so much
a pragmatic tool enabling operations in diffi cult settings, but instead is a structural
form of identity. In this variation, neutrality is not about the absence of a political
stance, but about standing apart from social structures and social immunity.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
development; foreign aid; humanitarianism; independence; neutrality; South Sudan; state; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology |
| Item ID: |
9459 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2017.77010 |
| Depositing User: |
Elzbieta Drazkiewicz-Grodzicka
|
| Date Deposited: |
09 May 2018 09:27 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Focaal |
| Publisher: |
Berghahn Journals |
| Refereed: |
No |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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