Domesticating Humanitarianism: Stephanie Land’s Maid, This American Life, and the Imaginative Politics of Need

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of “domestic humanitarianism” as a critical lens to identify the cultural logics and moral economy that inform the production, narrative and reception of Stephanie Land’s memoir, Maid, and “Three Miles”, an episode of This American Life. This analysis provides insight into the humanitarian solutions and ad hoc gestures to economic precarity that come to substitute for the receding promises of the American Dream. Such compassionate responses, I argue, potentially distract our attention from the slower, collective work of economic redistribution necessary for seeding economic justice and sustainable living conditions.