Scaling Humanitarianism: Humanitarian Actions in a Bosnian Town

Abstract

ABSTRACTThrough an ethnographic focus on humanitarne akcije in Bosnia and Herzegovina – a local form of raising monetary donations to people who need medical treatments abroad – this paper explores humanitarianism and its understandings of life. Ethnographically tracking the course of a humanitarna akcija organised in one Bosnian town, this paper makes two related points. First, it ethnographically demonstrates that lives of the ‘helpers’ and ‘helped’ in humanitarne akcije were understood as immersed in the intense talk and gossip of the town and as exposed to the sociopolitical environment troubled in the same way. Comparing this understanding of life with the international humanitarianism, this paper suggests that the notion of ‘bare life’ in international humanitarian projects in emergencies may be the product of the separation of infrastructures, which enable and manage lives of the ‘savers’ and ‘saved’. Second, those who needed help through humanitarne akcije strongly criticised the lack of organised health care and social security in Bosnia and Herzegovina that pushed them to initiate humanitarne akcije. They criticised less how other people perceived them (the terms of their sociocultural recognition) and more the shrinking public health-care insurance, unavailability of medical treatments, unequal allocation of medicines, tissues and organs, and so forth (the unjust redistribution of resources). Their dissatisfactions imply that humanitarianism as an industry of aid can be criticised for failing to intervene in the global regimes of unequal redistribution of resources in a transformative way.