Overview

Like many other areas of life, humanitarian practice and thinking are being transformed by information and communications technology. Despite this, the growing digitization of humanitarianism has been a relatively unnoticed dimension of global order. Based on more than seven years of data collection and interdisciplinary research, #Help presents a ground-breaking study of digital humanitarianism and its ramifications for international law and politics.Global problems and policies are being reconfigured, regulated, and addressed through digital interfaces developed for humanitarian ends. #Help analyses how populations, maps, and emergencies take shape on the global plane when given digital form and explores the reorientation of nation states' priorities and practices of governing around digital data collection imperatives. This book also illuminates how the growing prominence of digital interfaces in international humanitarian work is sustained and shaped by law and policy.#Help reveals new vectors of global inequality and new forms of global relation taking effect in the here and now. To understand how major digital platforms are seeking to extend their serviceable lives, and to see how global order might take shape in the future, it is essential to grasp the perils and possibilities of digital humanitarianism. #Help will transform thinking about what is at stake in the use of digital interfaces in the humanitarian field and about how, where, and for whom we are making the global order of tomorrow.

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9780197648872

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Reviews

What happens when the objectives, beneficiaries, and participants of humanitarian activism are framed by digital technologies? When the door to humanitarian relief is opened or closed by algorithms? #Help lays out the distributive effects of recourse to digital interfaces by humanitarian actors: the re-ordering of powers and vulnerabilities between human groups, the routinization of emergencies, and the redirection of political action. This is a hugely interesting, politically relevant, and altogether new analysis of the transformations of the humanitarian imaginary resulting from its integration in the global digital revolution. * Martti Koskenniemi, Emeritus Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights * How does the diffusion of digital interfaces transform the practice, philosophy, and politics of humanitarian work? This essential and richly documented book discusses the normalization of binary thinking and datafication, the rise of new actionable objects and relations, and shifting temporalities and governance models. #Help offers an invaluable perspective that challenges what we thought we knew about how people today ask for help, and how others respond. * Marion Fourcade, Professor of Sociology and Director of Social Science Matrix at the University of California, Berkeley * Philosophically grounded, historically rich, and analytically sharp, this book brings much needed clarity to the complex field of digital humanitarianism. Johns shows how humanitarianism is changing in relation to computational practices, and why this matters for law and politics on a global scale. * Kate Crawford, Research Professor at USC Annenberg and Senior Principal Researcher at MSR New York * As humanitarianism has become a global language meant to represent and alleviate the suffering of the world, Fleur Johns critically explores its latest avatar: digital humanitarianism. Through fascinating case studies of recent tools claiming to characterize populations, map needs, and organize responses, #Help offers an original, rigorous and much-needed analysis of the ambiguous promise of this technological turn in the politics of compassion. * Didier Fassin, Professor at the Collège de France and the Institute for Advanced Study *

What happens when the objectives, beneficiaries, and participants of humanitarian activism are framed by digital technologies? When the door to humanitarian relief is opened or closed by algorithms? #Help lays out the distributive effects of recourse to digital interfaces by humanitarian actors: the re-ordering of powers and vulnerabilities between human groups, the routinization of emergencies, and the redirection of political action. This is a hugely interesting, politically relevant, and altogether new analysis of the transformations of the humanitarian imaginary resulting from its integration in the global digital revolution. * Martti Koskenniemi, Emeritus Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Director of the Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights * How does the diffusion of digital interfaces transform the practice, philosophy, and politics of humanitarian work? This essential and richly documented book discusses the normalization of binary thinking and datafication, the rise of new actionable objects and relations, and shifting temporalities and governance models. #Help offers an invaluable perspective that challenges what we thought we knew about how people today ask for help, and how others respond. * Marion Fourcade, Professor of Sociology and Director of Social Science Matrix at the University of California, Berkeley * Philosophically grounded, historically rich, and analytically sharp, this book brings much needed clarity to the complex field of digital humanitarianism. Johns shows how humanitarianism is changing in relation to computational practices, and why this matters for law and politics on a global scale. * Kate Crawford, Research Professor at USC Annenberg and Senior Principal Researcher at MSR New York * As humanitarianism has become a global language meant to represent and alleviate the suffering of the world, Fleur Johns critically explores its latest avatar: digital humanitarianism. Through fascinating case studies of recent tools claiming to characterize populations, map needs, and organize responses, #Help offers an original, rigorous and much-needed analysis of the ambiguous promise of this technological turn in the politics of compassion. * Didier Fassin, Professor at the College de France and the Institute for Advanced Study *

Author Information

Fleur Johns is Professor in the Faculty of Law & Justice at UNSW Sydney. She is also an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and a Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Fleur has held visiting appointments in Europe, the UK, the US, and Canada, and currently serves on a range of editorial boards, including those of the American Journal of International Law and the journal Technology and Regulation. She is a graduate of Melbourne University and Harvard University, and a member of the New York Bar.

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