The Institute for Public Knowledge (IPK) brings theoretically serious scholarship to bear on major public issues. Located at NYU, it nurtures collaboration among social researchers in New York and around the world. It builds bridges between university-based researchers and organizations pursuing practical action. It supports communication between researchers and broader publics. And it examines transformations in the public sphere, social science, and the university as a social institution as these change the conditions for public knowledge.
Programming on Humanitarianism
Seminar Series
The Institute’ Seminar Series on Humanitarian Action brings together senior practioners and scholars of humanitarian action to discuss issues of shared interest. Previous speakers in 2006/7 include Peter Taylor, Peter Redfield, Nicolas de Torrente and Alexander Cooley.
In events planned for spring 2007, Alex de Waal will speak on Feb 25. On March 10, James Dawes will speak about his new book “That the world may know. Bearing Witness to Atrocity”, which appeared with Harvard University Press in 2007. On April 14, Michael Barnett and Thomas Weiss will speak about “Humanitarianism in Question: Power, Politics, Ethics.”
The seminar builds on an earlier series organized for the Social Science Research Council by Michael Barnett. A collection of papers from the seminar is forthcoming as Thomas G. Weiss and Michael Barnett (ed.): Humanitarianism in Question: Power, Politics, Ethics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press with contributions from Craig Calhoun, James Fearon, Janice Gross Stein, Laura Hammond, Peter J. Hoffman, Stephen Hopgood, Peter Redfield, Jennifer Rubenstein, Jack Snyder, and the editors.
Emergency Imaginary Working Group
The first working meeting for the Emergency Imaginary working group was held in New York City on Monday, December 10, 2007. The intellectual motivation behind the project begins with two observations. First, the idea of "emergency" has come to represent an increasingly important political category, grounding intervention (both governmental and non-governmental) into various kinds of events and situations, including: political crises, the aftermath of natural disasters, and epidemics of infectious disease. Such emergencies are constructed as part of a broad social imaginary in which they are seen as exceptions to normal social life and global order-as sudden, unpredictable, and carrying strong moral imperatives for immediate action. Conceptualizing diverse events and situations in terms of a common structure of "emergency" serves to compel response-to galvanize attention and resources under the premise that the crisis is acute and can be resolved through short-term intervention. Moreover, the "emergency imaginary" may foreclose ways of understanding crisis situations in terms of longer-term social and political processes.
Second, while the language of "emergency" is embedded in an overlapping set of ethical and political discourses of intervention that are by turns both secular and religious, the different logics of intervention that are at play within this broader "emergency imaginary," and the at times complex and ambiguous relationships between them, have yet to be fully explored and understood.
Building on the seminar and working group, the IPK is expanding its work on humanitarianism.
a) It is cosponsoring with the Humphrey School at the University of Minnesota a recurrent workshop for PhD students studying the field in different settings. The next meeting will be at the American University of Cairo in June 2008.
b) It is exploring research on humanitarian action. Particular interests are
i. the organization of the field of humanitarian action and its relation to geopolitical and other changes;
ii. the relationship among democracy, human rights, humanitarianism, security, and development as agendas for international action;
iii. assessing the efficacy of interventions with either human rights or humanitarian foci.
iv. the representation of disaster, emergency, and human suffering in the media.
