A01=Peter Redfield
anthropology
Author_Peter Redfield
Category=JHM
Category=MBP
charity
conflict studies
development
doctors without borders
engaging
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethics development
ethnography
global scale
good works
health
health policy
healthcare
historical
history
human condition
humanitarian aid
humanitarian medicine
humanitarian space
humanitarianism
international institutions
lively
medical ethics
medicine
msf
organizational history
outspoken protest
page turner
politics
public health
refugee
science and healthcare
social anthropology
social medicine
social science
Product details
- ISBN 9780520274846
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 25 Feb 2013
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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"Life in Crisis" tells the story of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders or MSF) and its effort to "save lives" on a global scale. Begun in 1971 as a French alternative to the Red Cross, the MSF has grown into an international institution with a reputation for outspoken protest as well as technical efficiency. It has also expanded beyond emergency response, providing for a wider range of endeavors, including AIDS care. Yet its seemingly simple ethical goal proves deeply complex in practice. MSF continually faces the problem of defining its own limits. Its minimalist form of care recalls the promise of state welfare, but without political resolution or a sense of well-being beyond health and survival. Lacking utopian certainty, the group struggles when the moral clarity of crisis fades. Nevertheless, it continues to take action and innovate. Its organizational history illustrates both the logic and the tensions of casting humanitarian medicine into a leading role in international affairs.
Peter Redfield is Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina. He is the author of Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana.
