International humanitarian operations under the siege of symbols
Date
2020
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The disaster and humanitarian literature have extensively documented the many problems that exist in post-disaster operations. This research explores how and the extent to which these problems might be generated by how actors, including humanitarian leaders and survivors, enact different symbolic constructions to interpret their surroundings. The question that drives this research is: how do institutional logics influence international humanitarian operations? The theory of institutional logics informs this research. It states that each institution (family, religion, state, market, profession, and corporation) distinguishes a set of organizing principles, practices, and symbols that act as a frame of reference for how individuals and organizations make sense of things, and consequently how they make decisions. ☐ The work includes three analytic chapters. The first focuses on: What is the impact of the institutional logics at the individual, the organizational, and societal levels on disaster deployment decisions? The rationale aligns with the framework of institutional logics that considers individuals, organizations, and institutions, as three nested levels within one another. The second chapter responds to the following question: How do institutional logics affect the way that western humanitarian architecture relates to those they serve? The focus here is on the discrepancies that exist between what humanitarians say and do, and the meaning they assign to local survivors. The third question, which is responded to in the third chapter is: what are the values and principles that guide human relations in the context of a post-disaster deployment? This chapter is based on the idea that the six existing institutional logics proposed by Friedland and Alford (1991) are not sufficient to explain how humanitarians relate to local survivors and analyses ‘relations’ as an institution with its dominant logic. ☐ The study relied on semi-structured interviews to collect data from 30 humanitarian officials as well as data gathered from field research trips in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. The analysis of the data was done through multiple coding cycles and a combination of deductive and inductive approaches.
Description
Keywords
Disaster response, Humanitarian operations, Institutional logics, Localization, Symbolic constructions