An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Pietro Stefanini (Postdoctoral Fellow, 2025-26)
Making Colonisation Humanitarian: A Genealogy of Settler Humanitarianism in Palestine/Israel
This book explores the historical and contemporary relationship between humanitarianism and settler colonialism through the case of Palestine. It argues that humanitarianism–commonly conceived as a just and moral instrument for alleviating the suffering of distant others in the name of humanity–is used in ways that further subjugate the dispossessed and legitimise dominant powers. By combining historical inquiry with ethnographic insight, it traces the trajectory of humanitarianism as it came to underpin the exigencies of settler colonisation in Palestine, from the period of British imperial rule, through the 1948 and 1967 wars, to the contemporary conjuncture and genocide in Gaza. The analysis suggests that the construction of settler colonialism as humanitarian is characterised by the enactment of two foundational practices. The first relates to managing the constitution of the settler society through governmental structures of humanitarian relief for Jewish settlers. The second involves the enactment of military violence legitimated through humanitarian discourse, thus enabling the dispossession of land and the elimination of Palestinian lifeworlds. The analysis provides tools to better understand the genealogy of the weaponisation of humanitarianism, and how distinctions between who counts as human and who is racialised as inferior are configured through a humanitarian paradigm.
Meeting ID: 384 971 962 716 1
Passcode: nV6Rg79e