Didier Fassin Presents a Critique of Humanitarian Reason

Angola nutrition center, Médecins sans frontiers. Photo by Sebastiao Salgado

Didier Fassin, James D. Wolfensohn Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, will present “Critique of Humanitarian Reason” on Wednesday, February 17, at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute’s campus.

Humanitarianism, which can be defined as the introduction of moral sentiments into human affairs, is a major component of contemporary politics – locally and globally – for the relief of poverty or the management of disasters, in times of peace as well as in times of war. But how different is the world and our understanding of it when we mobilize compassion rather than justice, call for emotions instead of rights, consider inequality in terms of suffering, and violence in terms of trauma? What is gained – and lost – in this translation? In this lecture, Fassin will attempt to comprehend humanitarian government, to make sense of its expansion, and to assess its ethical and political consequences.

Fassin joined the Faculty of the Institute in 2009. His body of work is situated at the intersection of the theoretical and ethnographic foundations of the main areas of anthropology—social, cultural, political and medical. Trained as a medical doctor, Fassin has conducted field studies in Senegal, Ecuador, South Africa and France, leading to publications that have illuminated important aspects of urban and maternal health, public health policy, social disparities in health and the AIDS epidemic. He recently turned to a new area that he calls “critical moral anthropology.” Fassin argues that morality should be treated as a legitimate object of study for anthropologists and analyzed in its political contexts. From this perspective, his work has been concerned with the “politics of compassion,” namely, the various ways in which inequality has been redefined as “suffering,” violence reformulated as “trauma” and military interventions qualified as “humanitarian.” Fassin is the author of seven books, including The Empire of Trauma. An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood (with Richard Rechtman, 2009) and When Bodies Remember. Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa (2007), as well as numerous articles in social science and medical journals.

Fassin earned his M.D. from the University of Paris 6 in 1982, and went on to receive a Masters in Public Health from the University of Paris 11 in 1986. He earned a Ph.D. in Social Science from L’Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in 1988, and he received an accreditation as Research Advisor in Public Health from the University of Paris 6 in 1994. He became Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris North in 1997 and Director of studies in Anthropology at the EHESS in 1999.

He served as Administrator and then Vice President of Médecins Sans Frontières from 1999–2003. In 2007, Fassin established the Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Enjeux Sociaux (IRIS), which has research activities on five continents and focuses on social, political and moral change. He is also associate editor of Medical Anthropology. Concerned with the social and political uses of science, Fassin is a member of the Scientific Council of the City of Paris and President of the Medical Committee for Exiles in France. In 2007, in recognition of his academic achievements and leadership, he was appointed Professeur de Classe Exceptionnelle and also a Chevalier des Palmes Académiques. In 2008, he was awarded the Advanced Grant “Ideas” by the European Research Council for his program on contemporary moral economies.

For further information about the lecture, which is free and open to the public, please call (609) 734-8175, or visit the Public Events page on the Institute website, www.ias.edu.