In the Name of Humanity

The Government of Threat and Care

Auteur: Feldman, Ilana; Ticktin, Miriam; Wilson, Richard Ashby; Malkki, Liisa H.; Hardin, Rebecca
Éditeur: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822348108
eISBN Pdf: 9780822393221
Lieu de publication: Durham , United States
Année de publication électronique: 2010
Mois : Novembre
Pages: 392
DDC: 301
Langue: Anglais

Légende

Scientists, activists, state officials, NGOs, and others increasingly claim to speak and act on behalf of “humanity.” The remarkable array of circumstances in which humanity is invoked testifies to the category’s universal purchase. Yet what exactly does it mean to govern, fight, and care in the name of humanity? In this timely collection, leading anthropologists and cultural critics grapple with that question, examining configurations of humanity in relation to biotechnologies, the natural environment, and humanitarianism and human rights. From the global pharmaceutical industry, to forest conservation, to international criminal tribunals, the domains they analyze highlight the diversity of spaces and scales at which humanity is articulated.

The editors argue that ideas about humanity find concrete expression in the governing work that operationalizes those ideas to produce order, prosperity, and security. As a site of governance, humanity appears as both an object of care and a source of anxiety. Assertions that humanity is being threatened, whether by environmental catastrophe or political upheaval, provide a justification for the elaboration of new governing techniques. At the same time, humanity itself is identified as a threat (to nature, to nation, to global peace) which governance must contain. These apparently contradictory understandings of the relation of threat to the category of humanity coexist and remain in tension, helping to maintain the dynamic co-production of governance and humanity.

Contributors. Arun Agrawal, Joao Biehl , Didier Fassin, Allen Feldman, Ilana Feldman, Rebecca Hardin, S. Lochann Jain, Liisa Malkki, Adriana Petryna, Miriam Ticktin, Richard Ashby Wilson, Charles Zerner

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Government and Humanity
When Humanity Sits in Judgment: Crimes against Humanity and the Conundrum of Race and Ethnicity at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
Children, Humanity, and the Infantilization of Peace
Narrative, Humanity, and Patrimony in an Equatorial African Forest
Inhumanitas: Political Speciation, Animality, Natality, Defacement
“Medication is me now” : Human Values and Political Life in the Wake of Global AIDS Treatment
Environment, Community, Government
The Mortality Effect: Counting the Dead in the Cancer Trial
Inequality of Lives, Hierarchies of Humanity: Moral Commitments and Ethical Dilemmas of Humanitarianism
The Politics of Experimentality
Stealth Nature: Biomimesis and the Weaponization of Life
Bibliography
Contributors
Index