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Between humanitarian tourism and moral compromises

Book review written by Ketil Fred Hansen
Humanitarian Action and Ethics
Forfatter: Ayesha Ahmad og James Smith (red.)
Forlag: Zed (Storbritannia)
New and insightful anthology discusses disaster relief's many dilemmas.

It's been exactly ten years since Michael Barnett and Thomas Weiss released Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics. Here, several of the world's leading disaster academics got to discuss theoretical issues that could arise during humanitarian relief efforts. The book was acclaimed in the academic world, but criticized for its lack of experience-based knowledge. Ayesha Ahmad and James Smith, the editors of the brand new anthology Humanitarian Action and Ethics, fines on it. In the book's 17 chapters, which all discuss ethical and moral dilemmas when working during humanitarian disasters, 22 practitioners and 13 academics speak. The vast majority write about their own experiences from work. . .

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Ketil Fred Hansen
Hansen is a professor of social sciences at UiS and a regular reviewer at Ny Tid.

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