Geographical Imaginations of Humanitarian Disasters and Rationalities of Aid Organisations

超过3，000个人道主义组织正在德国市场上争夺捐赠者的关注，以获得慈善捐款。这些人道主义组织在很大程度上依赖个人捐款。令人吃惊的是，对不同人道主义灾难的捐款差别很大。虽然有些灾难导致了高额的捐款，但其他灾难引发的慈善热情却少得多。2004年东南亚海啸后，仅德国一国的捐款就达到了6.7亿欧元，而2010年巴基斯坦洪水和2011年东非干旱的捐款则相对较低。以捐款行为的这些显著差异为出发点，本研究试图从后结构主义话语理论的角度来探讨灾难发生后，媒体如何再现贫困的他者，关于灾区和人道主义援助的地理想象是如何产生和复制的，以及哪些替代观点被这些框架边缘化。此外，它分析了霸权话语如何影响人道主义组织的合理性，即在何种程度上影响地理想象力的选择，人道主义者意味着他们的援助和人道主义从业者如何处理他们的依赖慈善捐赠和灾害的对比表示之间的冲突。因此，它有助于地理发展研究。该研究项目分析和比较关于人道主义灾难的媒体报道，如新闻广播、报纸报道等，并审查在具体情况下支持人道主义援助的论点，以及如何由此形成和再现对灾区的地理想象。然后，媒体分析的结果作为与人道主义组织专家进行定性访谈的起点，以研究地理想象力和人道主义援助的代表性对人道主义工作者理性的影响。

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.