The psychologization of humanitarian aid: skimming the battlefield and the disaster zone

De Vos, Jan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9659-504X 2011. The psychologization of humanitarian aid: skimming the battlefield and the disaster zone. History of the Human Sciences 24 (3) , pp. 103-122.

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Abstract

Humanitarian aid’s psycho-therapeutic turn in the 1990s was mirrored by the increasing emotionalization and subjectivation of fund-raising campaigns. In order to grasp the depth of this interconnectedness, this article argues that in both cases what we see is the post-Fordist production paradigm at work; namely, as Hardt and Negri put it, the direct production of subjectivity and social relations. To explore this, the therapeutic and mental health approach in humanitarian aid is juxtaposed with the more general phenomenon of psychologization. This allows us to see that the psychologized production of subjectivity has a problematic waste-product as it reduces the human to Homo sacer, to use Giorgi Agamben’s term. Drawing out a double matrix of a de-psychologizing psychologization connected to a politicizing de-politicization, it will further become possible to understand psycho-therapeutic humanitarianism as a case of how, in these times of globalization, psychology, subjectivity and money are all interrelated.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Publisher:	SAGE Publications (UK and US)
ISSN:	0952-6951
Last Modified:	09 Nov 2022 10:16
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/138894

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