Title: The Humanitarian Hangover
Subtitle: Displacement, Aid and Transformation in Western Tanzania
Editor: Loren Landau
Publisher: Witwatersrand University Press
Johannesburg, South Africa 2008
ISBN 9781868144556 / ISBN 978-1-86814-455-6
Paperback, 17 x 24 cm, 192 pages, several maps, tables and figures
The Humanitarian Hangover: Displacement, Aid and Transformation in Western Tanzania explores the anomalous spaces and practices generated by this influx of people and humanitarian aid, and shows how they have transformed the politics and governmental practices of the region. In more than fourteen months of qualitative and quantitative research, the author found that the refugee influx did not produce the deleterious economic and environmental effects often assumed. Outside the camps, a Tanzanian population long at the margins of their own country's economics and politics became incorporated into systems of power and authority which linked them to Dar es Salaam, central Africa, Geneva, Washington, and the grain farmers of the American Midwest.
Amidst the violence and conflict surrounding the camps, they became 'Tanzanian' as never before by exalting the territory, the nation, and a political leadership that delegated responsibility for security and services to others - the United Nations, nongovernmental organisations, and the citizenry. The result was a hybridised regime of power shaped by history, contingency, self-interest and perception: A political form that questions models of rural transformation and the functional basis of the modern nation-state. The Humanitarian Hangover is a valuable resource for scholars of displacement, political scientists and sociologists concerned with how displacement and humanitarianism can serve as primary catalysts for social, political and economic change.
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
Acknowledgements
Acronyms
Examining Displacement and Tanzanian Political Transformation
The Platonic State: Genesis, Departicipation, and Desiccation
The Humanitarian Influx
Challenge without Transformation: Inflation, Labour, and the Exit Option
Crisis and Disaggregation
Disengagement, Reification, and Territorialisation
Transformation and the Humanitarian Hangover
Bibliography
Index