The provocation of the humanitarian social imaginary

Bibliographic Data

ID12700440
AuthorsIain Wilkinson (0000-0002-2390-0576, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume12
Issue3
Pages261-276
Publication date2013-07-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueVisual Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1470-3572 • E-ISSN: 1741-3214
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1470357213483061
OpenAlexW2029607884
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited43

This article reviews recent attempts to analyse the visibility that is brought to human suffering within ‘social imaginaries’ committed to humanitarian concerns. It questions the conventions of critique that operate to cast the humanitarian social imaginary as a negative development within our political culture. It is designed to encourage a more critically reflexive and historically informed approach to the work of critique. It also argues that it is possible to trace a tradition in which humanitarian campaigners operate with the aim of appropriating the critical reaction to their work as part of their political strategy. In this regard, campaigners are more concerned to provoke moral controversy than to fashion ‘winning arguments’. Here the visualization of human suffering is valued more for its potential to generate value conflicts than for the extent to which it serves as an authentic or ideologically uncontaminated representation of social reality

Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Humanitarian aid · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Reflexivity · Representation (politics · Social science · Sociology · The Imaginary · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Global Security and Public Health · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Psychology

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