Written by Barbara Gurgel, Alisa Hogg, Caitlin McHugh, Garance Mollo, Isabella Smith, Holly Winters

An anthropological perspective can offer an in-depth and nuanced evaluation of aid workers and the roles that they perform. Over the last few months, we have studied different anthropological ideas and theories surrounding ‘professions of doing good’ and explored what it means to actually ‘do good’. Through this work, we have grown to understand and inquire about the complexities of being an aid worker, the outstanding motivations to do this work and the unintended impacts it can have on an organisation’s employees. Our game seeks to immerse players in the internal conflicts that arise between adhering to their assigned profile’s expectations and staying true to their personal values as they explore the complexities and ethical dilemmas faced by aid workers.

The aim of our game is for players to experience what it’s like to be an aid worker. The game is made up of a square board with an incomplete jenga tower in the middle. In 10 minutes you (the player) will have to get as many pieces of jenga with your colour on the tower as you can and not make it fall. At the start of the game, you will be given a ‘profile card’, which will define what type of humanitarian organisation you belong to: neutral, religious, for profit, or political. Your profile card will have a colour, which will define the colour of your jenga pieces. Your profile should influence the decisions you make in the game. During the game you will be led to have internal conflicts between what your profile is supposed to do and your own values… that’s the key message of the game. If you land on a question mark, you will have to answer it as your profile. All responses will have consequences making you win or lose jenga pieces. Some squares in the game will just make you lose or win pieces of jenga depending on humanitarian events. This shows the complexities and the ever-changing environment of being an aid worker. 

In our board game, players are placed in situations that mirror the complex ethical dilemmas and decision-making processes faced by humanitarian aid workers, since being an aid worker is a deeply situated position, influenced by both the broader humanitarian environment and the specific values of the organisation they work for. We draw on anthropological theories such as Moral Labour (Fechter, 2016) and Governmentality (Foucault, 2010), which highlight the ethical dilemmas aid workers face as they navigate tensions between organisational constraints and personal moral beliefs. On the one hand, navigating ethical dilemmas in aid work can be understood through Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, particularly the “conduct of conduct” (2010, p. 17), where power operates not through direct control but by shaping norms, structures, and expectations that subtly guide individual behaviour. For example, India’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program, particularly its Anganwadi initiative, demonstrates this form of governance. Focused on the health and nutrition of women and children, the program uses the family as a site for moral and social governance, encouraging healthier practices through education, nutritional supplements, and maternal care, rather than imposing top-down regulations. Similarly, in the game, players adopt profiles that create internal conflicts, forcing them to reconcile the expectations of their assigned organisation with their personal values. Fechter (2016) highlights this tension with the example of an aid worker lamenting, “I wished I could have directed the money to the others… they needed it more. But because of the way the budget was organised, I wasn’t allowed” (p. 7), reflecting how organisational policies can often clash with individual ethics.

This games exploration of the tensions between adhering to organisational values and navigating morally complex situations can also be found in Redfield’s (2006) article on Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) whose founding principles emphasise secular humanitarianism and a commitment to human dignity over neutrality. For MSF, being a ‘moral witness’ is important: that is bearing witness to suffering and speaking out about injustices encountered during humanitarian work. This principle of témoignage (testimony) involves not only providing aid but also actively drawing attention to the political and social conditions causing suffering, even when doing so challenges the neutrality traditionally associated with humanitarianism. Redfield highlights how MSF’s approach often requires navigating the tension between prioritising human dignity and the risks of becoming entangled in political controversies by exposing abuses or advocating for change. For example, when faced with the decision of whether to accept a media offer that seeks to depoliticize a project, players must choose between maintaining neutrality or engaging with political realities—echoing MSF’s shift from a strictly neutral position to one more willing to speak out against injustices. Similarly, the moral dilemma of working with individuals whose actions conflict with one’s values reflects MSF’s evolution in confronting political situations where neutrality becomes untenable, such as during conflicts in Biafra in the 1960s and 1970s. The decision MSF workers had to make during the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s of whether to stay in a refugee camp that may benefit both refugees and potentially harmful groups further echoes the challenges of providing aid without compromising ethical integrity. These are just some examples of the decisions the players will face, capturing the dual role of humanitarian actors as both professionals and moral witnesses, navigating a complex interplay between institutional expectations and personal ethics.

Our board game provides an interactive way to explore the complexities and ethical dilemmas faced by aid workers. Drawing on anthropological concepts like Moral/ethical Labour and governmentality, it highlights how both institutional values and personal morals shape aid work. Through role-specific profiles and scenarios that challenge neutrality and ethical clarity, the game sheds light on the contradictions within the ‘professions of doing good’.’ As players navigate morally complex situations, they face consequences—losing or gaining Jenga pieces—reflecting the unpredictable and ever-changing nature of humanitarian work.

Bibliography

Dean, M., 2010. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Fechter, A.-M., 2016. Aid work as moral labour. Critique of Anthropology, 36(3), pp. 228–243.

Redfield, P., 2006. A Less Modest Witness: Collective Advocacy and Motivated Truth in a Medical Humanitarian Movement. American Ethnologist, 33(1), pp. 3–26.

 

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Written by Nobusuke Akaike, Charlotte Antilogus, Bethany Croucher, Natalie, Kaza, Tilly Neville, Samson Page, and Madeleine Raggett.

Aims

By the end of the lesson, students will understand:

• That who people choose to help is based on their political assumptions of who they see as ‘in need’
• That we all have these biases and they have a considerable impact on our understanding of important ideas such as compassion
• That these biases and the choices based upon them are informed by global unequal power relations
• That this unequal power relation does not simply span between nations, but also within each nation, and can come in many forms
• That anthropology’s look at compassion is important in exposing these kinds of power relations and denaturalising the way we look at humanitarian action as a top-down viewpoint

Resources

• Example Google Docs Presentation – compassion SOAN beyond dev
• Computer, Projector and Screen
• Access to PowerPoint
• Mobile phone and access to wifi
• Mentimeter website (menti) – this is a website that allows students to input their answers anonymously to pre-designed questions. Answers can be made into mind maps or graphs which enables easy discussion about the question and encourages collaborative work.
• YouTube

Background (for teachers)

Scholars in anthropology and beyond complicate our understanding of compassion by relating it to the concepts of ‘pity’ and ‘inequality’, for example.

Political philosopher Hannah Arendt argues that compassion exists in a face-to-face situation and that pity arises in a more public, distant situation (Boltanski 1999). In other words, Arendt suggests that distance creates pity and not compassion.

Social anthropologist Didier Fassin (2012) argues that humanitarianism is always a mix of assistance and domination, of solidarity and inequality. In other words, Fassin shows that the compassion central to humanitarian action inherently consists of domination, inequality, and power.

Political and legal anthropologist Heath Cabot (2012) analyses how the process of becoming an asylum seeker in Greece is filled with uncertainty, with some being favoured unfairly over others. This humanitarian aid takes place in Greece which is seen as a ‘developed country’ and this reading therefore complicates the assumption humanitarianism only happens in developing countries.

Social anthropologist Miriam Ticktin (2006) ethnographically shows that medical aid reproduces inequalities, as migrants purposefully infect themselves with HIV to qualify as ‘good’ victims who deserve humanitarian compassion. Like Cabot’s work, this aid takes place in France, a developed country.

These two ethnographic examples illustrate the theoretical claims made by Fassin and Arendt. They show how compassion is political – it is enmeshed in global power relations and produced by cultural and political assumptions of who is ‘in need’ (and who is not).

Student Brief

Anthropology is the cross-cultural study of human society and culture. Its main aim is to question assumptions we may have of the world in order to understand ourselves and others better. Within this lesson we will look at compassion in relation to humanitarian aid anthropologically. Humanitarian aid is the material and logistical assistance offered to those in need of help and is often assumed to be given to developing countries from developed countries. The concept of ‘developing countries’ refers to countries with a low quality of life, less developed economy and diminished technological infrastructure relative to other more industrialized countries. Meanwhile ‘developed countries’ are considered to have a high quality of life, a developed economy and developed technological infrastructure. Using anthropological work on compassion we plan to complicate the assumption humanitarian aid only takes place in developing countries.

To prepare for this lesson, start thinking about how you understand ‘compassion’ and what other things you associate it with.

Sections 1 – 4

Section 1 – Outlining objectives

• Revisit Aims section.
• Briefly go over and clarify ‘developing’ vs ‘developed’ countries (BBC bitesize definition).

Section 2 – Exploring compassion

• Exploring how the class understands and defines compassion using the menti task below:
  • Menti Task 1: Each student comes up with three words for what they understand ‘compassion’ as (see below mind map with potential answers). You might expect answers such as love, sympathy, giving, kindness, etc.
  • Menti Task 2: group discussion – where does compassion come from? You might expect answers such as ‘from a feeling’, ‘from the heart’, etc.

• Then show that compassion is more that a ‘natural’ impulse or feeling:
  • Menti Task 3: group discussion, how would we choose to show our compassion? The students will debate how they would distribute £100? You might expect answers such as Oliver Twist and Annie receiving more of the £100 and Tony Stark and Homer Simpson receiving less. Teachers can change the characters to accommodate the specific interests of their students.
• Teachers will root these activities and the complication of compassion as natural in Arendt’s and Fassin’s understandings of the concept. Through this, students should reach the understanding that the decisions they have just made were based on preconceived ideas of what compassion is, and that this idea is more complicated than that.

Section 3 – Compassion beyond the developing world

• Now that the students have been introduced to how compassion is entangled within problems of inequality, use Ticktin and Cabot’s ethnographic examples to expand their understanding, by situating compassion within the developed world.
• To further illustrate Arendt and Fassin’s ideas in an age-friendly way, use the examples from the “barbiesavior” Instagram (below). This should engage them in how top-down patterns of aid may be problematic, or deemed patronising, as compassion is given to those considered in the poorest conditions. It also introduces them to colonialism, a key topic addressed in anthropology, as aid is often seen to be given to ‘third-world’ countries, despite being needed even within the UK.

 

    

Source: Instagram 2019

• Teachers should encourage the students to research and apply this to real-word topics, such as with the European migrant crisis. Note, this may contain distressing material so should be approached sensitively.

Section 4 – Summary

• Revisit the key points and learning objectives: repeat Menti task 1 to show how class understandings of compassion might have changed from their initial thoughts on the subject.
• Get into small groups to discuss how their understandings have changed, with each group then sharing with the class what they have learnt and taken away from the lesson. 

Bibliography

BarbieSavior (2021). Instagram. [online] www.instagram.com. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/barbiesavior/.

BBC Bitesize (2021). ‘Differences in levels of development between developing countries’. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zt666sg/revision/1

Boltanski, L. (1999). Distant Suffering. [online] assets.cambridge.org. [online] Available at: https://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/59536/excerpt/9780521659536_excerpt.pdf.

Cabot, H. (2012) ‘The Governance of Things: Documenting Limbo in the Greek Asylum Procedure’, Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR), 35(1), pp. 11–29.

Child Poverty Action Group (2020). ‘Child poverty facts and figures’. [online] CPAG. Available at: https://cpag.org.uk/child-poverty/child-poverty-facts-and-figures

Fassin, D. (2012) Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Paul, R. and Elder, L. (2001) Critical Thinking: Tools for taking charge of your learning and your life. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Ticktin, M. (2006) ‘Where Ethics and Politics Meet: The Violence of Humanitarianism in France’, American Ethnologist, 33(1), pp. 33–49.

UnicefUK (2012). ‘Pupils speak out about UK child poverty’. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBVYA-3ASt0

 

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