{"title":"Crisis as potential for collective action: Violence and humanitarianism on the Polish-Ukrainian border","authors":"Elizabeth Cullen Dunn, Iwona Kaliszewska","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.12797","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>The notion of crisis has evolved from a sudden, acute event to a broader disruption of stable historical narratives and the future. This article explores how the crisis surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine challenged the inevitability of Poland's membership in the West and threatened to catapult it back into a history of war and Russian domination. However, for Polish volunteers aiding Ukrainian refugees and the military, the crisis was also a temporality in which their actions took on outsize importance. By working on seemingly mundane tasks of provisioning and transport, they attempted to shape history and, in doing so, redefined the concept of humanitarianism in times of crisis. This article highlights how crisis can serve as a potential for collective action, blurring the distinction between individual and collective agency and redefining how people respond to crises.</p>","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Anthropology Today","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12797","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The notion of crisis has evolved from a sudden, acute event to a broader disruption of stable historical narratives and the future. This article explores how the crisis surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine challenged the inevitability of Poland's membership in the West and threatened to catapult it back into a history of war and Russian domination. However, for Polish volunteers aiding Ukrainian refugees and the military, the crisis was also a temporality in which their actions took on outsize importance. By working on seemingly mundane tasks of provisioning and transport, they attempted to shape history and, in doing so, redefined the concept of humanitarianism in times of crisis. This article highlights how crisis can serve as a potential for collective action, blurring the distinction between individual and collective agency and redefining how people respond to crises.
期刊介绍:
Anthropology Today is a bimonthly publication which aims to provide a forum for the application of anthropological analysis to public and topical issues, while reflecting the breadth of interests within the discipline of anthropology. It is also committed to promoting debate at the interface between anthropology and areas of applied knowledge such as education, medicine, development etc. as well as that between anthropology and other academic disciplines. Anthropology Today encourages submissions on a wide range of topics, consistent with these aims. Anthropology Today is an international journal both in the scope of issues it covers and in the sources it draws from.