McKenzie2009

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McKenzie2009
BibType ARTICLE
Key McKenzie2009
Author(s) Kevin McKenzie
Title The Humanitarian Imperative under Fire
Editor(s)
Tag(s) armed conflict, accountability, discourse analysis, ideological dilemma, non-governmental organization, Palestine/Israel
Publisher
Year 2009
Language
City
Month
Journal Journal of Language and Politics
Volume 8
Number 3
Pages 333–358
URL Link
DOI 10.1075/jlp.8.3.01mck
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This paper explores how speakers manage the dilemmatic tension between competing demands for accountability in mundane explanations of humanitarian assistance in settings of armed conflict. Taking as analytic data talk recorded in interviews with the personnel of aid agencies and various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who work in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), we examine how demands for both non-partisan impartiality, on the one hand, and sympathetic alignment with the victims (or losing parties) of armed conflict, on the other, feature in the explanations that humanitarian aid workers formulate to account for their professional activities. While non-partisanship features as a source of legitimacy given that humanitarian assistance is regarded as a response to universal human suffering, the source of that suffering in armed conflict necessitates recognition of the antagonist-protagonist and victim relationship in order for aid recipients to be identified. Everyday accounts of aid work function to mitigate the otherwise mutually exclusive relationship between competing assumptions that inform the logic of humanitarian assistance.

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