Realigning Humanitarianism in the Balkans

Čarna Brković is Professor of Cultural Studies and European Ethnology at the University of Mainz, Germany.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPrelude: The 1961 Founding of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade, YugoslaviaPart I: Humanitarianism in a Multipolar World1. Yugoslav Interventions in the International Humanitarian Debates in the 1970s: Legalistic Anti-racism of the Red Cross of Yugoslavia2. Progressive Peace Versus Peace of Conquerors and Aggressors: First Red Cross Peace Conference in Belgrade3. "Changing Consciousness": Building East–South Infrastructures of Humanitarian AidPart II: Humanitarianism After the Fall of SocialismInterlude4. Realigning Humanitarianism: Learning How to Tame Feelings5. "Changing Mentality": Ethno-racialized and Classist Hierarchies of Subjectivity6. From Hope ("If") to Irony ("As If"): Suspended Agency in a Capitalist Semi-peripheryConclusion: Worldmakings in a Global EastBibliographyIndex

"Through reviving forgotten worldmaking projects from the Cold War era, Realigning Humanitarianism is much needed reading in our current increasingly militarized period. It is also an important contribution to rethinking the place of anthropological critique and analysis of different scalar projects."—Martin Fotta, author of From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending in the Era of Financial Inclusion: Households, Debts and Masculinity among Calon Gypsies of Northeast Brazil"This landmark study takes the reader on a riveting journey from socialist to neoliberal humanitarianism. In the process, it touches on one of the central questions of our time: what kind of world to care for and work toward."—Till Mostowlansky, author of Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity along Tajikistan's Pamir Highway"This book is an essential read about world-making projects but also a world-making practice in itself as it reclaims this lost capacity epistemologically, addressing important themes of our political time from the largely disregarded problem-space of (post)socialist Yugoslavia."—Tanja Petrović, author of Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army