Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders

Cover......Page 1
Life in Crisis......Page 2
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Dedication......Page 6
CONTENTS......Page 8
List of Figures......Page 10
Signing of MSF Charter, Paris, 1971, two views of the table. The report of the meeting in Tonus used a composite shot. (MSF photos used by permission. All rights reserv
ed.)......Page 23
PART TWO. GLOBAL AMBITIONS......Page 82
PART THREE. TESTING LIMITS......Page 168
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Introduction......Page 16
PART ONE. TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT......Page 24
The Nobel Dream......Page 26
Life in Crisis......Page 29
Minimal Biopolitics......Page 33
A View from the Land Cruiser......Page 37
An Expansive Horizon......Page 42
A Real Doctor......Page 45
The Allure of Simplicity......Page 47
The Problem of Critique......Page 49
December 1971......Page 52
“A Being Not Meant to Suffer”......Page 54
The Secular Sense of Disaster......Page 57
Battlefield Passion, Medical Mission......Page 60
Discovering a Third World......Page 65
The Call of Biafra, the Allure of a Name......Page 68
Jacobins without the Guillotine......Page 72
Schisms and Expansions......Page 74
Secular Humanitarianism and Sacred Life......Page 79
The “Punch”......Page 84
Globalization on the Ground......Page 86
Precursors and Prototypes......Page 88
The Need for an Apparatus......Page 90
The Global Kit......Page 93
Variation, Adjustment, and Limits......Page 98
Mobile Medicine......Page 103
Following the Money......Page 105
The Price of Independence......Page 109
Witnessing Disaster......Page 113
Discovering Témoignage......Page 115
Refinements and Contestations......Page 117
Plural Practice......Page 122
An Appeal of Words, a Power of Numbers......Page 126
The Problem of Neutrality......Page 132
Specific Knowledge, Collective Speech......Page 135
A Tale of Two Borders......Page 139
Relative Motion......Page 142
“In My Former Life I Was an Unshaven, Cigarette-Smoking Frenchman”......Page 145
The Gravity of Local Attachment......Page 148
The Unbearable Lightness of Expats......Page 151
Discovering Gender and Age......Page 155
La Mancha and Problems of “Decolonization”......Page 160
Double Binds of Mobility......Page 165
6. The Problem of Triage......Page 170
Death amid Life......Page 171
Security and “Humanitarian Space”......Page 175
A Refusal of Sacrifice......Page 178
Triage and the Imperative to Choose......Page 182
The Ordinary Pathos of Closure......Page 190
A Human Question......Page 194
Crisis beyond Emergencies......Page 195
A Study in Sleeping Sickness......Page 198
AIDS: Tradition before Treatment......Page 202
ARVs and “Other Questions of Living”......Page 205
Caring for Life......Page 212
The Moral Economy of Access......Page 216
Amin’s Death......Page 220
The Relative Poverty of “Africa Lite”......Page 222
Finding History in Place......Page 225
MSF in Uganda......Page 228
A Belated Emergency......Page 232
The Psychosocial Horizon......Page 238
Uncertainty in Uganda......Page 241
The Rhetoric of Action......Page 244
A Contemporary Candide......Page 246
Life beyond Planning......Page 248
The Pathos of Minimalism and Residual Hope......Page 252
Action, Care, and Discontent......Page 256
Epilogue......Page 260
Notes......Page 264
References......Page 288
Index......Page 306