Realigning Humanitarianism in the Balkans
From Cold War Politics to Neoliberal Ethics

Čarna Brković (Author)

9780253075215

Hardback, published 4 March 2026

208 pages, 9 b&w illus.
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.5 cm, 0.666 kg

"Through reviving forgotten worldmaking projects from the Cold War era, Realigning Humanitarianism is much needed reading in our current increasingly militarized period. It is also an important contribution to rethinking the place of anthropological critique and analysis of different scalar projects."—Martin Fotta, author of From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending in the Era of Financial Inclusion: Households, Debts and Masculinity among Calon Gypsies of Northeast Brazil

"This landmark study takes the reader on a riveting journey from socialist to neoliberal humanitarianism. In the process, it touches on one of the central questions of our time: what kind of world to care for and work toward."—Till Mostowlansky, author of Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity along Tajikistan's Pamir Highway

"This book is an essential read about world-making projects but also a world-making practice in itself as it reclaims this lost capacity epistemologically, addressing important themes of our political time from the largely disregarded problem-space of (post)socialist Yugoslavia."—Tanja Petrović, author of Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army

During the Cold War, humanitarianism became the focus of intense debates among intellectuals, politicians, and diplomats from capitalist, socialist, and nonaligned countries about the boundaries between the political and nonpolitical. However, with the fall of socialism near the end of the twentieth century, these discussions over what humanitarianism is, what it could be, and what it ought to be were largely forgotten.

Realigning Humanitarianism in the Balkans examines how the fall of socialism changed humanitarianism in the Balkan region, beginning with the work of the Yugoslav Red Cross within the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1970s and continuing with work in Montenegro by local organizations in a refugee camp between 2000 and 2018. Author Čarna Brković traces how humanitarian regimes of care and discipline, implemented by local staff, have become the main source of support and the main channel of sociocultural integration of displaced communities in the Balkans. Within these regimes, though, structural problems generate a profound sense of disappointment for both the humanitarians and the displaced people.

By tracing the shifts in humanitarianism between the West, the East, and the South, Realigning Humanitarianism in the Balkans uncovers how the fall of state socialism shaped not only humanitarian practices but also how we analyze them – often in ways that have gone unnoticed.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Prelude: The 1961 Founding of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Part I: Humanitarianism in a Multipolar World
1. Yugoslav Interventions in the International Humanitarian Debates in the 1970s: Legalistic Anti-racism of the Red Cross of Yugoslavia
2. Progressive Peace Versus Peace of Conquerors and Aggressors: First Red Cross Peace Conference in Belgrade
3. "Changing Consciousness": Building East–South Infrastructures of Humanitarian Aid
Part II: Humanitarianism After the Fall of Socialism
Interlude
4. Realigning Humanitarianism: Learning How to Tame Feelings
5. "Changing Mentality": Ethno-racialized and Classist Hierarchies of Subjectivity
6. From Hope ("If") to Irony ("As If"): Suspended Agency in a Capitalist Semi-periphery
Conclusion: Worldmakings in a Global East
Bibliography
Index