Model Villages amidst the Ruins: Disaster Refugee Camps and Settlements as Functional Sites of Humanitarian ExhibitionNo Title

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

As I argue in this article, refugee camps and settlements have also served as critical spaces of humanitarian exhibition. At these sites, aid workers have historically put their philosophies of relief and their best practices on display. In these consciously designed spaces, humanitarians have attempted to influence camp residents — a necessarily captive audience — as well as wider publics, well beyond the formal boundaries of these sites.

Conceptualizing these humanitarian spaces as « model villages », they have utilized refugee camps to showcase not only modern methods of humanitarian relief, but also idealized sanitary, moral, and civic behaviors. Refugee camps, then, might be described as functional sites of humanitarian exhibition. They share many of the same characteristics as other, more obvious example of this genre — including the expositions, traveling shows, and summits discussed in this volume.

To illustrate these arguments, this essay analyzes two spaces for refugees displaced by disasters during the early XXth century. The first, a permanent resettlement scheme, was established in southern Italy, for survivors of a major earthquake and tsunami in 1908 ; the second, a temporary camp, housed survivors of the 1917 Hai River floods in northeast China. Both of these sites were financed by the American Red Cross and administered by U.S. military officers and troops, diplomatic officials, and civilian volunteers. The Americans who organized and oversaw these settlements understood them quite explicitly as exhibition sites, spaces in which to demonstrate best humanitarian practices while also modeling behaviors they deemed proper.
Although they viewed the Italian and Chinese residents of the spaces as their primary and immediate audiences, U.S. officials also labored to present them to the world at large. They invited influential visitors to tour these sites, published photographs and descriptions of them in mass-circulated books and periodicals, and created scale replicas of the camps to put on display. In addition to examining the settlements and camps themselves, this essay also considers these diverse forms of representation. In particular, it offers a close look at how American Red Cross leaders exhibited camps, settlements, and other international humanitarian projects to millions of spectators, attendees of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco, California.

Analyzing both the built (and re-built) environment of these spaces and the various ways humanitarians promoted and presented them, this article interrogates disaster refugee camps as functional sites of humanitarian exhibition.
Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationL’Humanitaire S’Exhibe (1867-2016)
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022

Disciplines

  • History

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