Thesis
Reference
Saving the Saviors: An International Political Sociology of the Professionalization of Humanitarian Security
BEERLI, Monique
Abstract
In recent years, a dominant discourse has emerged asserting that humanitarian work has become a dangerous profession. In response to growing insecurity in the field, humanitarian organizations have come to develop new security policies to better protect humanitarian staff and infrastructures. Drawing from Andrew Abbott's historical sociology of professions and Pierre Bourdieu's social theory of power, this thesis proposes an international political sociology of the professionalization of humanitarian security. To address the shortcomings of normative-functionalist explanations and poststructuralist critiques of humanitarian security, this thesis examines the conditions of possibility fostering the emergence of a microcosm of humanitarian security professionals. As a consequence of this seemingly insignificant transformation in the division of humanitarian labor, humanitarian organizations now classify some of world's neediest populations as beyond the limits of reasonable sacrifice. In the production of this exclusion, humanitarian actors reconstruct “populations in need” as
“dangerous populations.” By weighing [...]
BEERLI, Monique. Saving the Saviors: An International Political Sociology of the
Professionalization of Humanitarian Security. Thèse de doctorat : Univ. Genève, 2017, no.
SdS 90
URN : urn:nbn:ch:unige-982904
DOI : 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:98290
Available at:
http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:98290
Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.
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Monique J. Beerli – Saving the Saviors – Thesis IEP Paris & UNIGE – 2017 1
Saving the Saviors
An International Political Sociology of the Professionalization of Humanitarian Security
Monique J. Beerli
Doctoral thesis under the supervision of Didier Bigo and Marco Giugni
Summary
Whereas the rationale and technologies of humanitarian security as a mode of governing are well- documented, few scholarly studies bring the very agents of humanitarian security into the fold.
Both functionalist-normative narratives of the need to protect humanitarian field agents and critical readings of the power effects of such practices of protection fail to account for the multiplicity of struggles and processes that have given birth to a new domain of expertise and professional practice. Moreover, if security threats are in fact not new and humanitarian security management practices have been shown to jeopardize the very ethos of humanitarian professionals, how can we nonetheless explain relatively recent manifestations of security creep taking hold in a number of international humanitarian organizations (IHOs)? If universalistic principles are so essential to the legitimacy of humanitarian missions, how is it that, inversely, humanitarian actors appear to willingly compromise such commitments? In an effort to fill this gap, this thesis brings forth an account of the operators of humanitarian security, whose professional struggles and practices have come to inverse the hierarchy between the prerogatives of “saving lives” and “staying alive.” That is, with the professionalization of humanitarian security management, IHOs are less willing to come to the rescue of “populations in need” when the lives of aid workers and their operational capacities are threatened. Such transformations, however, cannot be analyzed as the linear result of the intentioned and rational strategy of a homogenous social group, but instead as the effect of the multiplicity and heterogeneity of socio- professional struggles. To develop my problematique, I draw most directly from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Andrew Abbott. Whereas Abbott’s historical sociology of battles between professionals allows for an analysis of shifts in distributions of power and authority over issues constructed as “professional problems,” Bourdieu’s structural sociology provides the tools to more finely analyze such struggles by bringing consideration for symbolic power and competing social dispositions into the fold. However, given my focus on humanitarian security professionals, which sits at the crossroads of the social fields of security and international aid, I abandon Bourdieu’s concept of field as a unit of analysis, preferring instead to limit the scope of analysis to a professional microcosm.
Monique J. Beerli – Saving the Saviors – Thesis IEP Paris & UNIGE – 2017 2
To develop and demonstrate my argument, the thesis is structured into nine chapters. Following a brief introduction, I sketch out the theoretical and methodological contours that have oriented the problematization and research strategy of this thesis. Chapter 1 enters into and dialogues with debates in the sub-fields of security studies, sociology of professions and work, and humanitarian studies to then develop a theoretical framework for a political sociology of the professionalization of humanitarian security. Chapter 2 proceeds by presenting textual sources that were analyzed, biographic interviews that were conducted, and field observations that were made in Haiti to investigate the emergence of a professional microcosm of humanitarian security and the stakes of such efforts to professionalize.
The following two chapters then put professional knowledge systems front and center. Going beyond analyses rejecting the novelty of security threats to humanitarian workers, Chapter 3 maps out a cartography of shifting jurisdictional boundaries and symbolic professional holds over the protection of humanitarian personnel as a task area. Shedding light on the transversal nature and increasing internal differentiation of the humanitarian socio-professional space, I trace disputes between legal professionals, human resources professionals, and lastly operations professionals to exhibit struggles to monopolize authority over the legitimate way of thinking and doing humanitarian security. Chapter 4 then details the specificity of humanitarian security management as a knowledge system. Pointing to the construction of a parallel social reality through the abstraction of security and the politics of proceduralization, I situate the emergence of humanitarian security as a distinct domain of professional practice in relation to the dispositions and trajectories of the founding fathers and the systems of legitimization upon which this small group of actors situates their entrepreneurial endeavors.
Having staked out the major fault lines of professional disputes in relation to jurisdictional authority over the protection of humanitarian staff and infrastructures, I then direct the reader’s attention to organizational dynamics of the professionalization of humanitarian security.
Engaging with wider debates on the expansion of humanitarian operations and growing inter- organizational competition, Chapter 5 analyzes the efforts of humanitarian organizations to professionalize humanitarian security in relation to the production of inter-organizational hierarchies. Given the densification of organizational actors situated in the humanitarian space, fierce struggles for material and symbolic resources, and pressures to standardize practice, I discuss an organization’s capacity or incapacity to produce security expertise as one defining element constitutive of hierarchies of professionalism and inter-organizational relations of domination. Looking instead to intra-organizational dynamics, Chapter 6 juxtaposes contexts in which a new class of humanitarian security professionals asserts itself as the legitimate holder of security competency against situations in which non-security professionals struggle to maintain their hold over security through strategies of knowledge assimilation.
Monique J. Beerli – Saving the Saviors – Thesis IEP Paris & UNIGE – 2017 3
After accounting for the diversity of ways in which authority over security is distributed and structured in humanitarian organizations, the thesis then engages more specifically with processes of consolidation and structuration in the emergence of humanitarian security as a distinct professional microcosm. Across organizational and national divides, Chapter 7 documents the rise in security-specific job titles, the formulation of a practical sense unique to humanitarian security professionals, and the role of professional associations, conferences, and forums in the transnational production of a professional order. After having established processes of consensus- making in the formation of a new professional group, Chapter 8 turns to the oppositional and hierarchical features of the microcosm of humanitarian security. Through a typology of dominant career trajectories, I examine differential valorizations of professional dispositions within this specific professional microcosm and the establishment of hierarchies of competencies. This stage of the analysis equally highlights unequal distributions of resources and the production of professional inequalities. Taken together, chapters two to eight bring forth struggles over the legitimate way of thinking and doing security, of organizing bureaucratic structures and distributing formal authority, and over what professional experiences and competencies should qualify one as a competent humanitarian security professional. Contributing to more generalized analysis of processes of bureaucratization, professionalization, and securitization in the humanitarian space, these chapters bring to life a rich mosaic of portraits of the very actors that orchestrate such socio-professional processes.
The thesis then closes with a discussion of the practical and scientific stakes of the thesis. In an effort to regroup and centralize discussion on the politics of humanitarian security presented diffusely throughout preceding chapters, Chapter 9 discusses the specific role of the humanitarian security professional microcosm in the destabilization of the humanitarian professional ethos. As a process of (in)securitization, humanitarian security professionals succeed in imposing their logic of practice as evidenced by the differential categorizations of human life specific to their professional domain, thereby disrupting and in contradiction to the notion of a common humanity. As opposed to first being considered with respect to their level of need, “vulnerable populations” are instead first considered with respect to the degree of danger they pose to humanitarian staff, which may result in their categorization as “dangerous populations,” moving them beyond the reach of humanitarian organizations, and their further marginalization. At the same time, I equally draw attention to forms of non-conformity and subversions of the order imposed by humanitarian security professionals. If the whole of the humanitarian field has in some way or another been exposed to the logic of practice imposed by a small group of security professionals and obliged to participate, the quotidian practices of humanitarians suggest the continuity of struggles and force the scholar to avoid a presentist-finalistic account. Finally, in my concluding remarks, I address the contributions and limitations of the thesis not only in relation to studies on humanitarian security but also more generally regarding the study of the international.
