Bureaucratizing The Good Samaritan

Bureaucratizing the Good Samaritan is about the organization of refugee relief programs. It describes the practical, political, and moral assumptions of the ?international refugee relief regime.? Tony Waters emphasizes that the agencies delivering humanitarian relief are embedded in rationalized bureaucracies whose values are determined by their institutional frameworks. The demand for ?victims? is observed in the close relation between the interests of the popular press and the decisions made by bureaucracies.This presents a paradox in all humanitarian relief organizations, but perhaps no more so than in the Rwanda Relief Operations (1994-96) which ended in the largest mass forced repatriation since the end of World War II. This crisis is analyzed with an assumption that there is a basic contradiction between the demands of the bureaucratized organization and the need of relief agencies to generate the emotional publicity to sustain the interest of northern donors. The book concludes by noting that if refugee relief programs are to become more effective, the connection between the press's emotional demands for ?victims? and the bureaucratic organizations's decision processes need to be identified and reassessed.

In From Migrants to Refugees Jill Rosenthal tells the history of how Rwandan migrants in a Tanzanian border district became considered either citizens or refugees as nation-state boundaries solidified in the wake of decolonization. Outlining the process by which people who have long lived and circulated across the Rwanda-Tanzania border came to have a national identity, Rosenthal reveals humanitarian aid’s central role in the ideological processes of decolonization and nation building. From precolonial histories to the first Rwandan refugee camps during decolonization in the 1960s to the massive refugee camps in the 1990s, Rosenthal highlights the way that this area became a testing ground for novel forms of transnational aid to refugees that had global implications. As local and national actors, refugees, and international officials all attempted to control the lives and futures of refugee groups, they contested the authority of the nation-state and the international refugee regime. This history, Rosenthal demonstrates, illuminates how tensions between state and international actors divided people who share a common history, culture, and language across national borders.

Since the early 1990s, refugee crises in the Balkans, Central Africa, the Middle East, and West Africa have led to the international spread of civil war. In Central Africa alone, more than three million people have died in wars fueled, at least in part, by internationally supported refugee populations. The recurring pattern of violent refugee crises prompts the following questions: Under what conditions do refugee crises lead to the spread of civil war across borders? How can refugee relief organizations respond when militants use humanitarian assistance as a tool of war? What government actions can prevent or reduce conflict? To understand the role of refugees in the spread of conflict, Sarah Kenyon Lischer systematically compares violent and nonviolent crises involving Afghan, Bosnian, and Rwandan refugees. Lischer argues against the conventional socioeconomic explanations for refugee-related violence—abysmal living conditions, proximity to the homeland, and the presence of large numbers of bored young men. Lischer instead focuses on the often-ignored political context of the refugee crisis. She suggests that three factors are crucial: the level of the refugees' political cohesion before exile, the ability and willingness of the host state to prevent military activity, and the contribution, by aid agencies and outside parties, of resources that exacerbate conflict. Lischer's political explanation leads to policy prescriptions that are sure to be controversial: using private security forces in refugee camps or closing certain camps altogether. With no end in sight to the brutal wars that create refugee crises, Dangerous Sanctuaries is vital reading for anyone concerned with how refugee flows affect the dynamics of conflicts around the world.

NGOs set out to save lives, relieve suffering, and service basic human needs. They are committed to serving people across national borders and without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, or religion, and they offer crucial help during earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, and pandemics. But with so many ailing areas in need of assistance, how do these organizations decide where to go—and who gets the aid? In The Good Project, Monika Krause dives into the intricacies of the decision-making process at NGOs and uncovers a basic truth: It may be the case that relief agencies try to help people but, in practical terms, the main focus of their work is to produce projects. Agencies sell projects to key institutional donors, and in the process the project and its beneficiaries become commodities. In an effort to guarantee a successful project, organizations are incentivized to help those who are easy to help, while those who are hardest to help often receive no assistance at all. The poorest of the world are made to compete against each other to become projects—and in exchange they offer legitimacy to aid agencies and donor governments. Sure to be controversial, The Good Project offers a provocative new perspective on how NGOs succeed and fail on a local and global level.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) coordinates the world's largest private relief system for conflict situations. Its staff operates throughout the world, and in recent years the ICRC has mounted large operations in the Balkans and Somalia. Yet despite its very important role its internal workings are mysterious and often secretive. This book examines the ICRC from its origins in the mid-nineteenth century up to the present day, and provides a comprehensive overview of a unique private organisation, whose governing body remains all-Swiss, but which is recognized in international law as if it were an inter-governmental organization. David Forsythe focuses on the policy making and field work of the ICRC, while not ignoring international humanitarian law. He explores how it exercises its independence, impartiality, and neutrality to try to protect prisoners in Iraq, displaced and starving civilians in Somalia, and families separated by conflict in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. David Forsythe received the Distinguished Scholar Award for 2007 from the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association.

In this book, author Tony Waters explores Max Weber’s thinking about the discipline of populations and its implications for understanding the origins of the modern globalized world.

Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society rediscovers Max Weber for the twenty-first century. Tony and Dagmar Waters' translation of Weber's works highlights his contributions to the social sciences and politics, credited with highlighting concepts such as "iron cage," "bureaucracy," "bureaucratization," "rationalization," "charisma," and the role of the "work ethic" in ordering modern labor markets. Outlining the relationship between community (Gemeinschaft), and market society (Gesellschaft), the issues of social stratification, power, politics, and modernity resonate just as loudly today as they did for Weber during the early twentieth century.

What might we learn if the study of ethics focused less on hard cases and more on the practices of everyday life? In Everyday Ethics, Michael Lamb and Brian Williams gather some of the world’s leading scholars and practitioners of moral theology (including some GUP authors) to explore that question in dialogue with anthropology and the social sciences. Inspired by the work of Michael Banner, these scholars cross disciplinary boundaries to analyze the ethics of ordinary practices—from eating, learning, and loving thy neighbor to borrowing and spending, using technology, and working in a flexible economy. Along the way, they consider the moral and methodological questions that emerge from this interdisciplinary dialogue and assess the implications for the future of moral theology.