Maître de conférences
Associate professor
Université Jean Moulin / LARHRA – Lyon, France
IFEA / Ifpo
Biography
Philippe Bourmaud is an assistant professor in Modern and Contemporary History at the Université Jean Moulin – Lyon 3 and a member of the Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes (LARHRA). For the year 2015-2016 he will be a researcher at the IFEA (USR 3131, UMIFRE 17) and an associate researcher at the Ifpo, Beirut (USR 3135, UMIFRE 6). His work concentrates on the social history of medicine and social problems in the Near East since the 19th century, the history of interreligious sociabilities and festivals and the history of expertise in the League of Nations mandates. He edited De la Mesure à la norme. Les indicateurs du développement (BSN Press, 2011) and an issue of the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History on Internationalizing Perspectives: Re-reading Mandate History through a Health Policy Lens (vol. 30/2, novembre 2013).
Research project
“Refugee assistance organizations and the categorization of refugees, with special focus on the organizations’ handling of the communal factor since the early 20th”
The importance of communal statistics in the post-Ottoman Middle East is well known, in particular in relationship with refugee crises. The development of humanitarianism in the nineteenth century did not follow purely secular patterns, but was on the contrary boosted by particularist religious solidarities, which European states took up and acted in consideration of. Rania Maktabi and Jihane Sfeir have shown the processes of inclusion and exclusion of refugees in the Lebanese citizenry and how they were guided by denominational preferences (MAKTABI, 1999 ; SFEIR, 2007). These works underline the rôle of the state andi, Jihane Sfeir’s case, of the international organizations in the process ; by contrast, will focus on private organizations, yet involved in refugee welfare in connexion with public institutions, so as to determine to what extent private or public status shapes the ways of categorizing and discriminating. Another focus of interest will be to make out to what extent discrimination is a reflexion of a regime of communal preference or of practicalities, such as differences in dietary, language and sociability practices. To span the twentieth and early twenty-first century, this contribution will analyze archives of the Near East Relief (Rockefeller Foundation, Tarrytown, NY ; SALT Galata, Istanbul) regarding post-World War I refugees, the Church Missionary Society (Birmingham University) regarding Palestinian refugees post-1948, and Médecins Sans Frontières (Paris & Geneva) as regards post-2003 Iraq, along with interviews of field workers from the latter organization.
Field Focus: the Middle East
Keywords
humanitarian intervention, refugees, ethnolocalism, Ottoman Empire, statistical analysis
