importantly for themselves and for leading policymakers, but also on a much wider
scale, among the individuals and communities whose small expressions of concern,
donations of time or money and applications of political pressure, form the enabling
context for any kind of humanitarian action. If they want to stimulate humanitarian
concern and action, what emotions do they need to engage? This question is
complicated by the fact that not all of these pull in the same direction: the appeal to
pity is somewhat different to the appeal to empathy, and we cannot assume that
the preferred appeal will necessarily be the most effective.
In an influential article, Neta Crawford suggested that “research on emotion
may lead to a fundamental reconceptualization of agents and agency in world
politics”.^4 In understanding the “politics of humanity”, it is important to see how
humanitarian agency is linked to emotional underpinnings, not least because, as
Michael Walzer warns us, to neglect the passions that nourish politics is to risk
setting out an implausible and impoverished account of politics.^5 This chapter will
explore these issues, assessing in turn debates on the role of sympathy and
empathy within humanitarianism, the lessons of bystanders, issues around the
mediation and communication of human suffering and the perils of the
“spectatorship of suffering”, and the issue of selectivity and impartiality.
I The Humanitarian Impulse as Emotional Capacity
The conventional shorthand used to express the way in which suffering triggers
humanitarian concern is the idea of a “humanitarian impulse”.^6 The phrase is rarely
unpacked, but often employed, a recognition perhaps that reason alone may not
account for humanitarianism, but the barest recognition in work that frequently
4
Neta C. Crawford, "The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional
Relationships", 5 International Security 24, no. 4 (2000): 156.
Michael Walzer, Politics and Passion: Toward a More Egalitarian Liberalism (London: Yale
University Press, 2004). 6
The earliest relevant instance of the phrase I have been able to find is in Francis S.L. Lyons,
Internationalism in Europe, 1815-1914 (Leyden: Sythoff, 1963), 263. Alex de Waal refers to
an “impulse for humanity and human rights”. Alex de Waal, "The Humanitarians' Tragedy:
Escapable and Inescapable Cruelties", Disasters 34, no. s2 (2010): 131.