Post-Humanitarianism

Reviews / Votes

"Mark Duffield's Post-Humanitarianism illustrates how the world of humanitarian emergency provided a practical stage for new forms of knowledge and governing agency, now being generalised across the globe. Brimming with empirical insight and innovative conceptual framings, this book will be a must read for students, academics and practitioners interested in contemporary transformations in development, security and governance and in the need for a critical alternative."
-David Chandler, University of Westminster

"In his latest book Mark Duffield combines compelling theoretical insights and practical experience of humanitarian work in Sudan to paint a rather sombre picture of a post-humanitarian world governed increasingly by computers and algorithms. Disasters have long shaped North-South relations, but humanitarianism has become pessimistic towards human agency and its transformative potential to build modern infrastructure protecting people from disasters. The humanitarian sector has adopted post-humanist thinking alienated from human hopes and understanding. Duffield explores 'post-humanitarianism' as 'the international face of post-humanism'. Post-humanitarian alienation shapes the new field of digital humanitarianism and is complicit with a technological barbarism seeking to use digital technology to manage disaster-affected populations and dis-affected people living in precarious conditions. Yet Duffield's book bursts with optimism about humanity's potential to build a better world. His underlying argument is that technocratic cybernetic approaches are not fit for political problems. Only conscious collective human agency and popular accountability may help found a humane world."
-Vanessa Pupavac, University of Nottingham