Care and Suspicion

Abstract

Despite the ubiquity of humanitarian language, action, and sentiment in our current world, there has been no consensus on the precise definition of humanitarianism. Humanitarian obligations, jurisdiction, limits, and even actors remain unsettled and often hotly contested. Suspicions about motives and probity, often articulated through the language of corruption, play a key role in these contests. Through a consideration of humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees, this essay advances several related arguments about how corruption operates in humanitarianism. Most broadly, suspicions and accusations of corruption play an important role in the on-the-ground work of defining what humanitarianism is for providers and recipients. They do so, in part, through (1) establishing and elaborating the refugee as a category of humanitarian governance and personhood and (2) articulating and consolidating an array of obligations and responsibilities across the humanitarian field. Viewed through the lens of concer...