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"Doctors Without Borders and the Challenge of Global Action" Oct. 25

10/24/2012

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Peter Redfield

Peter Redfield, associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will present "Doctors Without Borders and the Challenge of Global Action” at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25, in the Shriver Center Heritage Room.

Redfield is author of a forthcoming book on the organization Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, and is co-editor of Forces of Compassion: Humanitarianism Between Ethics and Politics.

Visions of "global health" often involve international medical action by mobile volunteers. In his talk Redfield will examine the history of the humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders), from concept, to practice, to institutionalization. Since 1971, MSF has grown into a large, transnational NGO sponsoring a variety of worldwide medical projects.

To run its programs, MSF relies on local personnel in project sites, as well as international volunteers. Yet the group retains an emergency orientation and seeks to remain mobile enough to shift resources wherever it deems need to be greatest.

Amid recent efforts to "decolonize" its human profile, MSF has debated the appropriate role, motivation and remuneration of both volunteers and support staff it hires at mission sites. It is precisely such mundane details, however, that reveal tensions of acting across national borders and unequal economies, says Redfield.

His lecture, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Center for American and World Cultures with support from the department of anthropology and the Parent’s Fund.