The Resilient Humanitarianism team is pleased to announce the publication of The Red Cross Movement – Myths, practices and turning points. Published by Manchester University Press as part of their ‘Humanitarianism: Key Debates and New Approaches’ series, the co-edited volume can now be purchased online.
Team members Professor Melanie Oppenheimer and Professor Neville Wylie, along with our Advisory Group member Dr James Crossland have worked with leading scholars and researchers from Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and America, to offer a ‘timely account of this unique, complex and contested organisation’ – the Red Cross Movement. The book covers a wide range of topics, from discussions about the founding myths of the Movement, to examinations of important turning points in its history, and to investigations of the modus operandi of the Red Cross.
The volume grew out of a chance encounter between two of the editors, Melanie Oppenheimer and Neville Wylie, at a First World War conference in Singapore in 2014. The pair discovered a shared interest in the history of the Red Cross Movement and discussion soon turned to the dearth of scholarship on the subject. They began to explore the possibility of gathering like-minded scholars together to discuss the matter further.
Over the next two years, Dr James Crossland (Liverpool John Moores University) and Associate Professor Christine Winter (Flinders University) joined the initiative and funding was secured from the Australian Red Cross, the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History, Flinders University and the University of Nottingham to organise an international conference.
The conference was convened at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, in September 2016. It brought together over fifty historians, archivists and practitioners and explored some of the continuities and changes that have defined the Red Cross Movement since its inception in the 1860s. Many of the ideas and papers first discussed at the conference have found their way into this volume, as well as the work of others who were unable to come to Australia and were interested in the subject.
In addition to the chapters by Resilient Humanitarianism team members, Melanie Oppenheimer, Neville Wylie and Rosemary Cresswell, Professor Davide Rodogno, a member of our Advisory Group, has contributed an introductory chapter titled, ‘Certainty, compassion and the ingrained arrogance of humanitarians’. You can read an interview with Davide, in which he discusses this chapter, here.
The editors wish to thank another of our Advisory Group members, Grant Mitchell, Manager, Library and Archive Services, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Geneva, for his invaluable ongoing support.
A sample chapter by Neville Wylie, Melanie Oppenheimer, and James Crossland can be downloaded here.
Review copies of the book can be requested from the publisher, Manchester University Press.
For further information, please contact Professor Melanie Oppenheimer at Flinders University: melanie.oppenheimer@flinders.edu.au