EP #336 - 09.08.2021 - Humanitarian Aid in the COVID-19 Era w/Peter Redfield

Today I talk with anthropologist Peter Redfield, author of Life in Crisis, the Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders.

Peter Redfield is Professor of Anthropology and Erburu Chair in Ethics, Globalization and Development at the University of Southern California.  Trained as a cultural anthropologist sympathetic to history, he concentrates on circulations of science, technology and medicine in colonial and postcolonial contexts. The author of Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders (University of California Press 2013) and Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (University of California Press 2000), he is also coeditor of Forces of Compassion:  Humanitarianism between Ethics and Politics (SAR Press 2011), and an issue of the journal Limn (2018) on the theme of “Little Development Devices and Humanitarian Goods.”  He has held fellowships at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, in addition to serving as President of the Society for Cultural Anthropology.