Johannes Paulmann - Böcker

For as long as humanitarianism has been understood as a distinct human endeavor, mass media have helped to shape its forms, strategies, and contexts, whether mobilizing public sentiment over suffering in distant lands or influencing perceptions of heroism and villainy during periods of conflict. From early Christian missionary publications to the BBC's approach to charities, this interdisciplinary collection explores commonalities and novel developments in the interactions of humanitarianism and media across the long twentieth century, revealing that many seemingly new features of this relationship in fact have long historical legacies.

From Christian missionary publications to the media strategies employed by today’s NGOs, this interdisciplinary collection explores the entangled histories of humanitarianism and media. It traces the emergence of humanitarian imagery in the West and investigates how the meanings of suffering and aid have been constructed in a period of evolving mass communication, demonstrating the extent to which many seemingly new phenomena in fact have long historical legacies. Ultimately, the critical histories collected here help to challenge existing asymmetries and help those who advocate a new cosmopolitan consciousness recognizing the dignity and rights of others.

“This volume is interesting both because of its global focus, and its chronology up to the present, it covers a good century of changes. It will help define the field of gender studies of humanitarianism, and its relevance for understanding the history of nation-building, and a political history that goes beyond nations.” - Glenda Sluga, Professor of International History and ARC Kathleen Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, AustraliaThis volume discusses the relationship between gender and humanitarian discourses and practices in the twentieth century. It analyses the ways in which constructions, norms and ideologies of gender both shaped and were shaped in global humanitarian contexts. The individual chapters present issues such as post-genocide relief and rehabilitation, humanitarian careers and subjectivities, medical assistance, community aid, child welfare and child soldiering. They give prominence to thebeneficiaries of aid and their use of humanitarian resources, organizations and structures by investigating the effects of humanitarian activities on gender relations in the respective societies. Approaching humanitarianism as a global phenomenon, the volume considers actors and theoretical positions from the global North and South (from Europe to the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South East Asia as well as North America). It combines state and non-state humanitarian initiatives and scrutinizes their gendered dimension on local, regional, national and global scales. Focusing on the time between the late nineteenth century and the post-Cold War era, the volume concentrates on a period that not only witnessed a major expansion of humanitarian action worldwide but also saw fundamental changes in gender relations and the gradual emergence of gender-sensitive policies in humanitarian organizations in many Western and non-Western settings.

“This volume is interesting both because of its global focus, and its chronology up to the present, it covers a good century of changes. It will help define the field of gender studies of humanitarianism, and its relevance for understanding the history of nation-building, and a political history that goes beyond nations.” - Glenda Sluga, Professor of International History and ARC Kathleen Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, AustraliaThis volume discusses the relationship between gender and humanitarian discourses and practices in the twentieth century. It analyses the ways in which constructions, norms and ideologies of gender both shaped and were shaped in global humanitarian contexts. The individual chapters present issues such as post-genocide relief and rehabilitation, humanitarian careers and subjectivities, medical assistance, community aid, child welfare and child soldiering. They give prominence to thebeneficiaries of aid and their use of humanitarian resources, organizations and structures by investigating the effects of humanitarian activities on gender relations in the respective societies. Approaching humanitarianism as a global phenomenon, the volume considers actors and theoretical positions from the global North and South (from Europe to the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South East Asia as well as North America). It combines state and non-state humanitarian initiatives and scrutinizes their gendered dimension on local, regional, national and global scales. Focusing on the time between the late nineteenth century and the post-Cold War era, the volume concentrates on a period that not only witnessed a major expansion of humanitarian action worldwide but also saw fundamental changes in gender relations and the gradual emergence of gender-sensitive policies in humanitarian organizations in many Western and non-Western settings.

In the past 25 years or more, political observers have diagnosed a crisis of the sovereign nation state and the erosion of state sovereignty through supranational institutions and the global mobility of capital, goods, information and labour. This edition of the European History Yearbook seeks to use "cultural sovereignty" as a heuristic concept to provide new views on these developments since the beginning of the 20th century.