A New Book: Spaces of Aid How Cars, Compounds and Hotels Shape Humanitarianism

Lisa Smirl

Zed Books - 2015

Aid workers commonly bemoan that the experience of working in the field sits uneasily with the goals they’ve signed up to: visiting project sites in air-conditioned Land Cruisers while the intended beneficiaries walk barefoot through the heat, or checking emails from within gated compounds while surrounding communities have no running water. Spaces of Aid provides the first book-length analysis of what has colloquially been referred to as Aid Land. It explores in depth two high-profile case studies, the Aceh tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, in order to uncover a fascinating history of the objects and spaces that have become an endemic yet unexamined part of the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Stories from the field, stories of 'the field': how aid workers experience the space of the field mission
2. Exploring the humanitarian enclave
3. How the built environment shapes humanitarian intervention
4. Building home away from home: post-tsunami Aceh and the single-family house
5. Playing house: rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Katrina
Conclusion

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Critical Impairments to Globalizing the Western Human Rights Discourse

Nikitah O. Imani, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Nikitah O. Imani. "Critical Impairments to Globalizing the Western Human Rights Discourse" Sociologists Without Borders 3.2 (2008): 270-284.

ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the philosophical implications of Euro-centrism and Eurocentric discourse for the Western human rights narrative. It is argued that there is insufficient theoretical and practical consideration of those implications, particular for advocacy and activity in the so-called “Third World” where such arguments frequently become mere vehicles for the advance of economic and political neocolonialism. In many ways, colonialism with a humanistic, liberal democratic “face”. Finally, a proposition is advanced that if the Western human rights discourse is to be effectively corrected and evolve into a global one, critiques of Euro-centrism from outside the Western discursive world must be taken seriously.

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The facts — and a few myths — about Saudi Arabia and human rights

By Adam Taylor

The Washington Post - February 9, 2015

For almost 70 years, Saudi Arabia has been a vital U.S. ally in the Middle East. The relationship, which famously opened in a meeting on the Suez Canal between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the first Saudi king, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, is based around shared concerns about regional security and crude oil supplies. It has proved remarkably durable, despite a rapidly changing world.
Over the past few months, however, something seems to have shifted. Americans and other Westerners seem to have grown more and more skeptical about the true nature of their ally. In particular, an unusual set of circumstances -- including the fearsome rise of the Islamic State, the death of Saudi King Abdullah and renewed concerns about Saudi links to the 9/11 attacks -- has led to a significant public debate about Saudi Arabia's true values.

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