Humanitarianism and Mutual Aid Beyond Capitalism
Channel: Simpson Center
Date: 2021-05-25

Law professor Dean Spade and historian Cristian Capotescu talk about humanitarianism and mutual aid under conditions of crisis caused by capitalism and charity in a socialist context. In each talk, these scholars explore our theme Rethinking the Human by attending to what care means through practices that privilege equality, solidarity, shared suffering, and collective self-determination. Recorded from live webinar April 22, 2021

Part of the Mellon Sawyer Seminar speaker series "Humanitarianisms: Migrations & Care through the Global South." Made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation & supported by the Simpson Center for the Humanities.  

*Learn more about the series:* 
✔ https://www.humanitarianisms.org/​ 

*Clickable Chapter Markers*

00:00 Introduction to series
03:13 Introduction to speakers & discussant
05:09 Dean Spade: “Mutual Aid: Radical Care in Crisis Conditions”
06:12 Mutual aid, Street Watch LA in collaboration w. the unhoused population
08:20 Background assumptions regarding social change & crisis response
9:39 What is mutual aid? How to mobilize & survive?
12:19 Mutual Aid versus charity, principles of mutual aid 
19:11 Mutual Aid in Seattle, autonomous zones of care, displacement due to capitalism & climate crisis
21:15 Concluding remarks: Anti-police movement, tending to the unhoused & practicing new social relations
22:41 Cristian Capotescu, “Echoes of the ‘New Soviet Man’: Humanity & the Ethics of Giving in Late Socialism”
23:05 Revisiting utopian universalism, Eastern European socialism, practices of ethics in authoritarian contexts
24:40 Socialist Romania in 1980s, punitive austerity programs & socialist bloc's private humanitarians
28:18 The “moral code” of socialist giving, unsettling power asymmetries, anti-paternalistic approach to care
30:37 Mutual dependency, capitalism’s dualistic humanitarianism versus socialism’s monistic humanitarianism 
33:53 Concluding remarks:  Alternative practices of humanitarianism viewed from the Second World
37:18 Discussion w. Lynn Thomas
1:03:27 Q&A moderated by Gözde Burcu Ege 

Produced & edited by Simpson Center for the Humanities Program & Events Manager Caitlin Palo; assistance from Simpson Center Communications Manager C.R. Grimmer.

Full Webinar Credits: 
Co-Convened by Professors Arzoo Osanloo (Law, Societies, & Justice; Director, Middle East Center, UW) & Cabeiri Robinson (International Studies, Comparative Religions, & South Asian Studies, UW) & 
Discussant: Lynn Thomas (History, UW)
Moderator: Gözde Burcu Ege (Mellon Sawyer Doctoral Fellow)
Chapter Markings: Mediha P. Sorma (Mellon Sawyer Doctoral Fellow)
Poster & Background Graphic Design: Ana Karina Luna 
Intro/Outro Music:  Lobo Loco, “Night at Sahara Dune” on Diversity of Life. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. 
Video Production & Editing by Caitlin Palo 
Video Consultant: C.R. Grimmer

*Description of Dean Spade's and Cristian Capotescu's prepared remarks*
Dean Spade, “Mutual Aid: Radical Care in Crisis Conditions”
Humanitarianism, saviorism, and charity have been extensively critiqued as logics that undergird and legitimize war, colonialism, racialized-gendered control, and extraction. How do people organizing immediate survival support for each other in the face of crisis work together to resist these methods and build practices of solidarity and collective self-determination?

Cristian Capotescu, “Echoes of the ‘New Soviet Man’: Humanity and the Ethics of Giving in Late Socialism”
In the late 1980s, for many citizens of the former socialist bloc practicing and living socialism involved helping the less fortunate, the sick, and the poor through acts of giving. Such volunteer work and private assistance often invoked moral claims of a better life based on an ethics of shared suffering, dependency, and radical equality. This talk traces how socialist giving opened the possibility for ordinary people to enact notions of shared humanity in alternative ways that frequently eluded capitalist, Western modernity. 

*Speaker bios*
Dean Spade is Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law and author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) (Verso, 2020). http://www.deanspade.net/

Cristian Capotescu is the Postdoctoral Scholar for the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Humanitarianisms at the University of Washington. He completed his Ph.D. in History at the University of Michigan in 2020 and is currently working on his first book, Disasters and Solidarities: The Transnational Remaking of Crisis Socialism. https://www.capotescu.com/

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 ✔ https://www.humanitarianisms.org/​
 
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