The racialization of expertise and professional non-equivalence in the humanitarian workplace

This paper aims to explore the ways which expertise is covertly racialized in the contemporary humanitarian aid sector. While there are considerable discussions on the expat-local divide among aid professionals, such dichotomization is still inherently nationality-based, which may be an over-simplified explanation of the group dimensions within aid organizations. This study seeks to uncover that professional categorizations of “expatriate” and “local” are not race-neutral and, instead, colorblind. Organizations within the contemporary humanitarian aid apparatus have come to appeal to what Michael Omi and Howard Winant would characterize as a new racial discourse—one that does not require explicit references to race in order to be perpetuated, as racial subordination has been reconfigured to rely on implicit references to race woven within the everyday social fabrics of the humanitarian profession. The research suggests that embedded under the contemporary professional structure of the liberal humanitarian space is a covert power hierarchy fueled by perceptions of expertise and competency along racial lines—particularly around one’s whiteness.

Life after violence in North India: Islamic relief orgaizations and transactional relationships in a plural humanitarian space

Religious humanitarianism is often closely scrutinized, as it is either viewed as exerting a positive influence in post-conflict contexts—through peace-building and sense-making—or a negative one—through proselytism and division. This article contends that both these (negative and positive) perspectives on the role played by religious organizations overemphasize, to a certain extent, their transformative power in post-conflict contexts, at least in the short term. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with both Islamic and non-confessional humanitarian organizations supporting internally displaced people—victims of anti-Muslim violence in Muzaffarnagar, India—I suggest that the inherent plurality and competitive dimension of the humanitarian field leads to a form of transactional relationship between displaced people and organizations and tends to reduce the importance of ideological differences between organizations. Paying attention to this particularity of the humanitarian field and how displaced people deal with it can provide us with a better understanding of the actual influence of religious humanitarianism in post-conflict contexts.

Security, sustainability and supply chain collaboration in the humanitarian space

PurposeTo extend humanitarian supply chain relationships beyond logistics concerns of delivery, quality and cost. As humanitarian actors continue to face increasing numbers of natural disasters, armed conflicts and attacks on aid workers, security (risk) and sustainability are issues of growing importance. Aiming to inspire discussion, the paper concludes with a research agenda.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper inspired by relevant statistics, news reports and academic literature.FindingsWorldwide natural disasters and armed conflicts are on the rise. So are deliberate attacks on aid workers. Thus, humanitarian supply chain design must include considerations of security and sustainability. Agencies have several options for integrating matters of security and sustainability with the delivery of aid, from being reactive to creating internal solutions to forming proactive relationships with security and sustainability experts.Research limitations/implicationsThere are numerous opportunities for research in the areas of security, sustainability and supply chain relationships.Practical implicationsThrough advocacy and supply chain relationships, humanitarian agencies can enhance security for aid workers and civilians affected by conflict and disasters. Looking to the future, they can also make a positive difference on issues of sustainability.Social implicationsThere is an opportunity to enlarge the “humanitarian space” – and increase security for aid workers and civilians, especially in areas of armed conflict. In the long term, aid agencies can also help eliminate social problems such as gender inequality.Originality/valueThis appears to be among the first papers to discuss matters of security and sustainability in the context of humanitarian supply chain collaboration.

The Center for Economic History of the Central Russia and the Middle Volga Region: History, Development, Traditions and Innovations (to the 20th anniversary of creation)

Introduction. For its centuries-old history, in the development of various branches of scientific knowledge, Russia has relied on scientific schools – leading centers that determine the prospects for the development of science, its goals, objectives, strategic priorities, designed to unite and strengthen the work of scientists on certain issues. In the late 80s and early 90s of the last century, the researchers of our country addressed the problem of socio-economic development, attempts to identify the causes of their occurrence, to determine the ways out of the current situation, became the impetus for the creation of the Centers for Economic History. The purpose of the article is to study the history of formation, development, determination of the main directions of activity, analysis of the work and functioning of the Center for Economic History of the Central Russia and the Middle Volga Region at Mordovia State University. Materials and Methods. When solving the set research tasks, the materials of the Center for Economic History of Central Russia and the Middle Volga Region, information and analytical bulletins, conference programs, reports, scientific works of the team, reviews, analytical reviews were used. The article uses a micro historical approach, narrative, traditional methods of historical research. Results. The expediency of creating the Center is due to the processes that took place in many vital spheres of Russia, including science and education. The main purpose of the Center was the reproduction and generation of historical, historical and economic knowledge and knowledge of social and humanitarian informatics, as well as their transfer to the system of training bachelors, undergraduates, highly qualified personnel and the modern humanitarian space. Discussion and Conclusion. At the present stage, the economic history of the Republic of Mordovia is known to the wide scientific community largely due to the activities of the Center, which is represented in the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the problems of Russian and world economic history. Over the years, the scientists of the Center have accumulated significant experience in studying economic history, organizing and conducting scientific events, publishing, expanding the boundaries of scientific research, acquiring scientific connections and contacts. All this allows the staff of the Center to continue further research aimed at the formation of the humanitarian space and socio-cultural environment of modern society.

Art within philosophy of education. Part 2

Modern reformation-educational processes are influenced by digital technologies, electronic communications networks, media-art practices, etc. Hence we get the actuality of creative potential of art for pedagogical activity as the concept of philosophy of education. Human consciousness inherents organic interdependence theoretically-cognitive (knowledge, ideas, comprehension of the boundary principles of human existence, culture, procedure of philosophical reflection) and social-psychological (feelings, will) elements. Author’s perennial experience incorporates interactive forms of artistic knowledge activation of pedagogical specialties students: preparations and guided tours by students (museums, architecture of Lviv, etc.), developing skills to conduct dialogues about art and education of the countries which languages are taught in pedagogical institution (Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain). In accordance personal and pedagogical experience of intersubjective communication, existential and cultural self-determination is enriched. In the system of philosophy of education, art is designed to harmonize human existence, to balance the sensory-emotional and rational-intellectual spheres of consciousness. The spread of electronic media requires a thorough study of their impact on humans, given the cognitive problems of communication technologies, information and computer systems, digitalization. A variety of artistic phenomena form a holistic system. Moreover, beliefs are knowledge that has passed through the world of feelings and human will. An open humanitarian space, new dialogical, communicative, cultural opportunities for interaction of nature-man-culture-society-universe, the universal nature of self-organization of human life, education of intersubjective cultural communication between carriers of different types of worldview, values, spiritual traditions is methodologically important.

Interview with Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin

Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin is the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism. She was initially appointed to this position by the UN Human Rights Council in 2017 and was re-elected by member States for a further three-year term in 2020. In this capacity she works closely with States and UN entities to advance human rights protections in some of the most difficult contexts globally. She is also a University Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, and a Professor of Law at the Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland. In this interview, Ms Ní Aoláin discusses her duties as Special Rapporteur and illustrates the current challenges to the humanitarian space in the context of counterterrorism (CT) regulation.

MEDIACULTURE AS A NECESSARY FACTOR OF THE CONSERVATION, DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF ETHNIC AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

The article deals with the mental-existential relationship between ethnoculture, national identity and media culture as a necessary factor for their preservation, transformation, on the example of national original algorithms, matrix models, taking into account global tendencies and Ukrainian archetypal-specific features in Ukraine. the media actively serve the domestic oligarchs in their information-virtual and real wars among themselves and the same expansive alien humanitarian acts by curtailing ethno-cultural programs-projects on national radio, on television, in the press, or offering the recipient instead of a pop pointer, without even communicating to the audience the information stipulated in the media laws − information support-protection-development of ethno-culture national product in the domestic and foreign/diaspora mass media, the support of ethnoculture by NGOs and the state institutions themselves. In the context of the study of the cultural national socio-humanitarian space, the article diagnoses and predicts the model of creating and preserving in it the dynamic equilibrium of the ethno-cultural space, in which the nation must remember the struggle for access to information and its primary sources both as an individual and the state as a whole, culture the transfer of information, which in the process of globalization is becoming a paramount commodity, an egregore, and in the post-traumatic, interrupted-compensatory cultural-information space close rehabilitation mechanisms for national identity to become a real factor in strengthening the state − and vice versa in the context of adequate laws («Law about press and other mass media», Law «About printed media (press) in Ukraine», Law «About Information», «Law about Languages», etc.) and their actual effect in creating motivational mechanisms for preserving/protecting the Ukrainian language, as one of the main identifiers of national identity, information support for its expansion as labels cultural and geostrategic areas.