guide humanitarianism, which sometimes sit in tension with the dilemmas
professional humanitarians encounter on the ground; (2) the relationship between
humanitarianism and politics in all its forms; (3) the boundaries and scope of
humanitarianism as a concept.^40 In the rest of this section, I will briefly summarise
the problems of contemporary humanitarianism according to this schema, before
arguing in the next section that an international political theory focus allows us to
bring these dilemmas to life, for they inevitably lead to a bigger question,
particularly well suited to the resurgent perspective of international political theory:
what is humanitarianism?^41 As humanitarians work through the contours of
humanitarian identity, they reveal both a political struggle to safeguard and ring-
fence their own legitimacy, but also much about the ways in which our human
identity is politicised and enacted in contemporary international politics. Because
humanitarian identity is so intertwined with ideas about human identity, they are
constantly faced with a tension described by Hugo Slim. “Laughter is a universal
good. What would the world be like if only clowns were allowed to be funny and
make people laugh? This would be a terrible world that confined humour to a
professional class and restricted a universal human desire and capacity.”^42 This is
the constant dilemma of the humanitarian identity crisis: how to simultaneously
preserve and spread their sense of humanity.
40
In this classification, I follow the summary by Barnett and Weiss who identify a
“contemporary debate over the purposes, principles and politics of humanitarianism.”
Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, "Humanitarianism: A Brief History of the Present", in
Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics , ed. Michael Barnett and Thomas G.
Weiss (London: Cornell University Press, 2008), 3-5. Weiss, "Principles, Politics, and
Humanitarian Action". 41
One of the overarching arguments of an outstanding essay by Stephen Hopgood is that
questions about the identity of humanitarianism necessarily take us back to this bigger
question. Stephen Hopgood, "Saying "No" To Wal-Mart? Money and Morality in
Professional Humanitarianism", in Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics , ed.
Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss (London: Cornell 42 University Press, 2008).
Hugo Slim, "Humanitarianism with Borders? NGOs, Belligerent Military Forces and
Humanitarian Action" (ICVA Conference on NGOs in a Changing World Order: Dilemmas and
Challenges, Geneva, 14 February 2003).