Humanitarian Ethics, Global Markets, and Everyday Life

FAIN: FEL-257988-18

Tehila Sasson
Emory University (Atlanta, GA 30322-1018)

A book-length study on the development of humanitarianism from the 1940s to the 1980s.

"We Are the World" examines how between the 1940s and the 1980s humanitarian ethics became embedded in everyday practices in Britain and the world. Based on newly opened archives, it uncovers the ways in which the period saw a radical transformation in the ways in which a broad spectrum of people joined a new political constituency—“humanity”— that stretched beyond national borders. The history of this global community has previously been told from the perspective of diplomats, governmental agencies, and aid experts. "We Are the World" shifts this focus by charting how women, children, youth groups, religious organizations and even businessmen came to take part and join the project of feeding the world’s hungry. The book proposes that this revolution in ethics was the result of a turn towards market-based activism through everyday purchase.