Geographical Imaginations of Humanitarian Disasters and Rationalities of Aid Organisations

3.000多个人道主义组织正在德国慈善捐款市场上争夺捐赠者的注意力。这些人道主义组织在很大程度上依赖于个人的捐款。令人惊讶的是，特别是对不同人道主义灾难的捐款差异很大。虽然一些灾难导致捐款数额很高，但另一些灾难引发的慈善热情要低得多。尽管2004年东南亚海啸后仅德国捐赠者的捐款就达到6.7亿欧元，但对2010年巴基斯坦洪水或2011年东非干旱的兴趣仍然相对较低。以捐赠行为的这些显著差异为出发点，本研究项目试图从后结构主义话语理论的角度调查媒体在灾难发生后如何表现贫困的他人，如何产生和再现关于灾区和人道主义援助的地理想象，以及哪些不同的观点被这些框架边缘化。此外，它还分析了霸权话语如何影响人道主义组织的理性，即地理想象力在多大程度上影响了人道主义者提供援助的地区的选择，以及人道主义实践者如何处理他们对慈善捐赠的依赖与对灾难的不同表现之间的冲突。从而为地理发展研究做出贡献。该研究项目分析和比较有关人道主义灾难的媒体报道，如新闻广播、报纸报道等，并审查在具体案例中使用了哪些支持人道主义援助的论据，以及由此如何随意地构成和再现受灾地区的地理想象。然后，媒体分析的结果将作为与人道主义组织专家进行定性访谈的起点，以审查人道主义援助的地理想象和表述对人道主义从业人员的理性的影响。

More than 3.000 humanitarian organisations are competing for the attention of donors on the German market for charitable donations. These humanitarian organisations are to a large extent dependent on donations by individuals. It is striking that especially donations for different humanitarian disasters vary strongly. While some disasters lead to high donation amounts, others trigger much less charitable enthusiasm. Whereas giving after the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004 reached 670 million euros from German donors alone, the interest in the flooding in Pakistan in 2010 or the drought in East Africa in 2011 remained relatively low.Taking these striking differences in donation behaviour as a starting point, this research project seeks to investigate from a poststructuralist discourse-theoretic perspective how representations of the needy other are created after disasters in the media, how geographical imaginations about disaster regions and humanitarian aid are produced and reproduced and which alternative views are marginalised by these framings. Furthermore, it analyses how hegemonic discourses affect the rationalities of humanitarian organisations, i.e. to what extent geographical imaginations influence the choice of regions where humanitarians imply their aid and how humanitarian practitioners handle the conflict between their dependency on charitable giving and the contrasting representations of disasters. It thereby contributes to geographical development research. The research project analyses and compares media reports, such as news broadcasts, newspaper reports etc. about humanitarian disasters and examines which arguments are used in favour of humanitarian aid in the specific cases and how thereby geographical imaginations of disaster regions are discursively constituted and re-produced. The results of the media analysis then serve as a starting point for qualitative interviews with experts of humanitarian organisations in order to examine the influence of geographical imaginations and representations of humanitarian aid on the rationalities of humanitarian practitioners.