Journeys in Aidland: An Autobiographic Exploration of Resistance to Development Aid

Abstract

The article is inspired by autobiographical and auto-ethnographic approaches to studying international relations, development and humanitarian aid.1 It consists of a collage of the authors’ personal experiences in two post-disaster contexts, respectively in Aceh, Indonesia and Haiti, and presents a dialogue between two autobiographical stories that reveal the shared experiences and emotional labour of the humanitarian aid practice. Addressing questions such as “What does it mean to feel like an outsider?”; “Outsider to what?”; “Is being an outsider a failure or a strategy of resistance?” This article circulates around the themes of mobility, temporality, intersections of class, gender and ‘whiteness’, and how they are embedded within the materiality and spatiality of humanitarian aid. Feelings of separation and discomfort point towards an opening for critical discussion on the ways in which these practices are both maintained and resisted. Although considered as an important vehicle for the care of the self, the authors struggle to offer any easy solutions, recognising their privilege of confession, and the risk of becoming trapped in the familiar circulation of truths of the Global North.