Description
Book SynopsisAnthropological and cultural critics ask what it means to govern, fight, and care in the name of humanity, examining the question through the lenses of biotechnology, the environment, and human rights.
Trade Review“Most of the chapters in
In the Name of the Humanity raise more questions
than answers, but this makes it an ideal book both for courses on human
rights and globalization and for scholars working on human rights, humanitarian interventions, and globalization more generally. The accounts are remarkably balanced, neither cheerleading for globalization under the name of humanity nor pushing a relentlessly bleak image of globalization as neoliberalism.” - Jonathan Simon,
Political Theory“[E]ach chapter grapples informatively and engagingly with the central challenges of human existence…The scholarship and diversity of research in this book will make it a valuable resource for students. More experienced readers will enjoy its depth and appreciate the opportunity to sample such a range of thought provoking perspectives on this fascinating topic.” - Dominique Martin,
The Australian Journal of Anthropology“In a complex world where competing groups claim to be speaking on behalf of incommensurate versions of ‘humanity,’ the authors represented in
In the Name of Humanity ask not what humanity is but what are the epistemic, market, and governmental logics and environmental parsings that fashion humanity and the humans who will inhabit humanity in the twenty-first century.”—
Elizabeth A. Povinelli, author of
The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism“Like ‘nature,’ ‘humanity’ is a Protean concept that confers immense capacity on those able to act in its name. Exploring the term and its effects from three key vantage points—humanitarianism, medicine, and environment—the papers in this outstanding collection offer up a stream of provocative insights and challenging perspectives.
In the Name of Humanity is sure to become an essential reference point for future discussions of the human, its outsides, and its negations.”—
Hugh Raffles, author of
InsectopediaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: Government and Humanity / Ilana Feldman and Miriam Ticktin 1
When Humanity Sits in Judgment: Crimes Against Humanity and the Conundrum of Race and Ethnicity at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda / Richard Ashby Wilson 27
Children, Humanity, and the Infantilization of Peace / Liisa Malkki 58
Narrative, Humanity, and Patrimony in an Equatorial African Forest / Rebecca Hardin 86
Inhumanitas: Political Speciation, Animality, Natality, Defacement / Allen Feldman 115
"Medication is me now": Human Values and Political Life in the Wake of Global AIDS Treatment / Joao Biehl 151
Environment, Community, Government / Arun Agrawal 190
The Mortality Effect: Counting the Dead in the Cancer Trial / S. Lochlann Jain 218
Inequality of Lives, Hierarchies of Humanity: Moral Commitments and Ethical Dilemmas of Humanitarianism / Didier Fassin 238
The Politics of Experimentality / Adriana Petryna 256
Stealth Nature: Biomimesis and the Weaponization of Life / Charles Zerner 290
Bibliography 325
Contributors 359
Index 363
