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iCal calendarNext Inimkond will take place on Wednesday, 1 November at 16.15 in room A-325.
A public talk will be given by Alexander Horstmann, Associate Professor in South-East Asian Studies at Tallinn University.
In the Name of Humanity or What? Christian Humanitarians in Burma and in Iraq
Building on ethnographic fieldwork on humanitarian cultures in Karen state, Eastern Myanmar, since 2007 with a Thai research team, my talk examines the vastly expanded mobility as well as the newly acquired predicaments and impasses of displaced Karen villagers in the evangelical humanitarian movement Free Burma Rangers in the Thai-Burmese borderlands. While refugees are too often presented in the literature as victims, the article argues that by joining the mission, the Karen freedom fighters become ambassadors of a political ideology and evangelism. Bringing Christianity with them from their displaced homes, displaced Karen meet the evangelical humanitarian organization in the Thai refugee camps, train with them and supply the villagers left behind with emergency health care and religious messages. Funded by American free churches, the US military and resettled Karen communities in the West, the freedom fighters of the Free Burma Rangers mobilize people and resources all over the globe and expand their operations to the Kurdish areas of Iraq and the Nuban mountains of South Sudan, thus getting involved into a global struggle between the perceived good and the evil.
More information: Eeva Kesküla (eeva.keskula@tlu.ee)