Michael Barnett. Empire of Humanity

Michael Barnett adds a strong voice to a growing chorus of historically informed social scientists who skillfully use archives and comfortably traverse the usually too-rigid boundaries that define the disciplines of history, political science, and sociology. His welcome contribution is a testament to the power of well-deployed evidence and narrative to combine in a compelling analysis, whatever one's formally designated field of inquiry. He terms himself a “constructivist,” and his outstanding book freshly delineates the delicate and shifting relationships between human rights and humanitarianism, between ethics and politics, and between a paternalism that mostly aids the givers and assistance that might potentially transform and empower those who receive it. Barnett argues that an imperialist nineteenth-century humanitarianism, which was often faith-based and almost exclusively focused on short-term relief, depended on a myth of “staying out of politics” when in fact these commitments were intrinsically political and, unsurprisingly, intimately linked to the relief-givers' own worldview.

Art · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Faith · Humanity · Literature · Mythology · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Classics · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

• Humanitarianism and the responsibility to protect—between politics and morality

  Lili Chen•Journal of Intervention and…•2017

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