Wir freuen uns, ankündigen zu können, dass nach langer Vorbereitung HumGlobal, das achte TUDiSC-Teilprojekt, am 01.05.2023 unter der Leitung von Dr. Patricia Ward beginnen wird. In den nächsten drei Jahren wird das Projekt die Organisation und die Auswirkungen eines zunehmend wichtigen Bereichs des globalen Lieferkettenmanagements untersuchen: die humanitäre Logistik. HumGlobal will untersuchen, wie letztere "soziale Probleme" in der Gesellschaft angeht, aber auch abgrenzt und konstruiert. Wir sind gespannt, wie sich dieses spannende Projekt entwickelt, und freuen uns auf die Erkenntnisse, die es ans Licht bringen wird.

Project Description:

What is humanitarian logistics precisely and what are its effects on society? How does the movement and ordering of things (e.g., material goods, money, ideas) in humanitarian supply chains shape the scope and perceptions of what constitutes (1) ‘good’ humanitarian practice and (2) ‘social problems’ more broadly?

These are just some of the questions that the DFG-funded project led by Dr. Patricia Ward and titled “Many Moving Parts: Continuity, Disruption and Change in Global Humanitarian Aid Relations” (HumGlobal) will explore over the next three years to understand broader questions of how aid and logistics mitigate but also produce social inequalities.

The scope and meanings associated with ‘humanitarian logistics’ remain loosely defined and ambiguous. HumGlobal therefore investigates this ambiguity as its point of departure to see how it first, may reflect competing and changing logics between state and non-state, private sector actors regarding ‘how’ humanitarian aid should be organized to prevent and respond to ‘social problems’ (e.g. human displacement from conflicts and disasters). Second, drawing upon critical scholarship on logistics in other sectors, this project looks at how this ‘how’ (the organization and contestation of what humanitarian logistics entails) produces ‘the what’ (social problems). In other words, how humanitarian logistics contributes to understandings of what constitutes social problems in the first place.

Empirically, HumGlobal brings particular attention to so-called ‘non-Western’ and ‘global South’ relations that largely remain unaccounted for in social science scholarship despite their international significance in this field (The Gulf, for example, is a case in point: boasting the largest facility for the warehousing and coordination of humanitarian relief supplies globally!). It is anticipated that this research will contribute to more rigorous understandings of the social effects of humanitarianism and logistics on society, and may ‘disrupt’ assumptions undergirding ‘how aid works’ beyond Global North-South explanations. 

HumGlobal is affiliated with the TUDiSC network and the Department of Sociology at TU Dresden and officially commences on 01.05.2023.