The first global comparative analysis of the role of humanitarianism from below in political and social change.
Drawing on original ethnographic and historical research, Humanitarianism from Below? addresses a wide audience of scholars and students in humanitarian and development studies, anthropology, and political science. Drawing from timely case studies on the war in Ukraine, the Ebola pandemic in West Africa, the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, and the global flows of aid from Arab states to the Persian Gulf, the book considers humanitarianism’s multiple histories and offers a profound reassessment of humanitarian pluralism today. It critically discusses humanitarianism as a historically, politically, and culturally contingent phenomenon that entails unequal relations of power and multiple forms of universalism, as well as issues of dehumanization and inhumanity.
222 pages | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2026
Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Geography: Social and Political Geography
Table of Contents
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: a new politics of humanitarianism
Till Mostowlansky and Elmira Muratova
Part I: Geospatial orders
1 Humanitarian transversals: diaspora and solidarity during the West African Ebola crisis
Adia Benton
2 Martial citizenship: military voluntarism and the transformation of the Ukrainian nation-state
Taras Fedirko
Part II: Shifting ground
3 Goat humanity: housing and Islamic aid in small-town Kyrgyzstan
Till Mostowlansky and Mukaram Toktogulova
4 Starving for humanity: Thai youth’s hunger strike resistance in the Buddhist kingdom
Giuseppe Bolotta
5 Acting out the citizen: humanitarianism on unsteady ground
Alexander Ephrussi
Part III: Tactical universalism
6 Protecting Indigenous life: the Ne-Chee street patrol, liberatory politics, and humanitarian tactics
Krista Maxwell
7 From alter-politics to humanitarianism: the evolution of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Crimea
Elmira Muratova
Afterword: humanitarian assemblages
Stephan Kloos
Index