![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.projects.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/2010-11-01-18.17.42-201x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Anthropologists have excelled at offering critiques of development and humanitarian aid, revealing the power inequalities and unintendended consequences of efforts to ‘do good’. But students of anthropology often express frustration at this approach: how useful are these critiques for the everyday concerns of aid practitioners? Who has time <\/em>t<\/em>o worry about dehistoricizing refugees, for example, when you need to provide them with emergency food??<\/em><\/p>\n This project aims to help students articulate for themselves how anthropological critiques can speak to the issues, identities and hopes of aid practitioners, and vice versa. Some of the conclusions might be pessimistic–that anthropological critiques don’t have much to offer to ‘practical’ questions. But others could find promise in anthropology’s ability to alert us to our interdependent engagements and positionality in various worlds. There is no right or wrong answer here. Let’s explore the potentials and limits of anthropology today, specifically in understanding professions of ‘doing good’.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How can anthropological analyses help us understand development and humanitarian work better? Anthropologists have excelled at offering critiques of development and humanitarian aid, revealing the power inequalities and unintendended consequences of efforts to ‘do good’. But students of anthropology often express frustration at this approach: how useful are these critiques for the everyday concerns of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"Aims<\/h2>\nAs wars, poverty and disasters continue to persist in the world, there is a growing body of professionals engaged in humanitarian and development aid work. These aid actors are driven by a desire to help suffering others, at the same time that they create particular kinds of knowledge and regimes of governance. This module provides an anthropological overview of the institutions and practices of international aid through the lens of development and humanitarian expertise. Students will learn the conceptual frameworks through which anthropologists and aid actors imagine and act upon efforts to alleviate suffering and poverty. Using ethnographies of development and humanitarianism, the module explores how the tensions, negotiations and convergences between the ethics and politics of \u2018doing good\u2019 shape the complex system of aid interventions. The module covers analyses of development as a knowledge system and a form of global governance, the politics and ethics of humanitarianism, and the relationship between anthropological knowledge and aid expertise. A key point to remember is that anthropology is not about \u2018facts\u2019 or normative prescriptions about how the world ought to be. Anthropological approaches examine people\u2019s values, interpretations, practices and experiences that bring about phenomena in the world, such as the idea of \u2018development\u2019 or the diverse expressions of compassion behind aid. This course aims to help you understand the analytical tools that anthropologists use to study international aid. As such, it will also provide an introduction to anthropology for students unfamiliar with the discipline.\n\nThe module is structured around a visit in the last lecture (week 10) from aid practitioners who will discuss their work and how to get into the profession of development, humanitarianism and other related careers. The students will work in groups throughout the semester to prepare for this event, ultimately producing entries for a website that we will design to showcase what you think that anthropology can offer to understand or address humanitarian and development issues.","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-45","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}