Seminar: "Ineffective Altruism? Everyday Humanitarianism in Times of Crisis in Tanzania", by Lisa-Ann Richey

Lisa-Ann Richey, from the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, will visit ICTA-UAB to give a public seminar.

Seminar: "Ineffective Altruism? Everyday Humanitarianism in Times of Crisis in Tanzania"

Speaker: Lisa-Ann Richey, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

• Date: Tuesday, June 10th, 2025
• Time: From 2.30pm to 4.30pm
• Venue: Sala Montseny (room z/022 & z/023) ICTA-UAB

Michael Walzer writes in his blurb of Nancy Rosenblum’s book, Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America, that: ‘From now on, neighbors will stand with citizens in our understanding of the politics of the everyday and of the human response to crisis.’ As scholars of African politics, we welcome the ‘neighborly’ understanding of crisis response and propose a paper that examines what we know about everyday peoples’ help and how this may spur critical reflections on the global politics of humanitarianism. As formal humanitarianism comes increasingly under scrutiny for the ideological racism and pragmatic inefficiency, local responses may provide insight.  Over the past five years, we have led a collaborative multidisciplinary research project trying to document and understand the ways that Tanzanians help each other in times of acute and protracted crisis: specifically, in Kagera on the Bukoba earthquake, in Kigoma on the refugees issue, in Morogoro on the flooding and nationally on the Corona crisis. Exhibitions of altruism on the part of ordinary people, both strangers and neighbors provide the positive face of every disaster. Drawing from aspects of African culture of brotherhood, ‘ubuntu’ and of ‘holding one another’s hand,’ everyday giving is part and parcel of life among elites in Tanzania. Yet, once ‘helping’ is stripped of its sentimentality, complicated relations of social and moral negotiation can be analyzed. These are never solely political or emotional, but they are practices that arc towards particular politics.  Our findings suggest that everyday humanitarianism differs from international humanitarianism in terms of impartiality: Tanzanians do not necessarily help their neighbors, but they always help their friends in the neighborhood.  Reflecting on the tensions between global and local humanitarianism, we sketch an argument for ineffective altruism.

Lisa Ann Richey @BrandAid_World is Professor of Globalization in the Department of Management, Society and Communication at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. She completed a PhD in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Post-Doc in Anthropological Demography at Harvard University. Her current research projects are Commodifying Compassion: Implications of Turning People and Humanitarian Causes into Marketable Things (2016-2023) and Everyday Humanitarianism in Tanzania (2019-2025). She is the author or editor of seven books including Celebrity Humanitarianism and North-South Relations: Politics, Place and Power (2016) and Batman Saves the Congo: Business, Disruption and the Politics of Development with Alexandra Budabin (2021). She works in the areas of international aid and humanitarian politics, the aid business and commodification of causes, and new transnational actors and alliances in the global South. Lisa was the founding Vice-President of the Global South Caucus of the International Studies Association (ISA). www.lisaannrichey.com