STORIES FROM THE FIELD, STORIES OF 'THE FIELD': HOW AID WORKERS EXPERIENCE THE SPACE OF THE FIELD MISSION

This chapter starts from the perspective of the aid worker to establish, first, the overall spatial structure of the humanitarian field mission and, secondly, the spatial and material characteristics of 'the field' as perceived by those that are in it. Drawing on the work of Victor Turner and Arnold Van Gennep, it suggests that the act of being in the field, as a humanitarian, creates a unique and liminal space. While the term liminal has previously been used by a handful of theorists to describe international development and humanitarian work, it has generally been done in the context of postcolonial analysis, which considers the emancipatory potential of a hybrid 'third space' where boundaries and divisions blur and the emergence of new and potentially emancipatory subjectivities and relationships is possible (Bhabha 2004; Khan 1998; English 2005; Barlow 2007). Through an analysis of aid workers' memoirs, this chapter challenges the third-space reading. Instead, it interprets the process as a highly structured, codified and predictable 'rite of passage' (Van Gennep 1960).

Within this rite of passage, the transition or liminal phase provides a useful theoretical tool with which to develop the idea that the space of the field has unique qualities and characteristics for the aid worker. Through the aid workers' narratives, I identify recurrent material tropes and themes which (re)produce what I term the auxiliary space of the field. In particular, the metaphor of enclosure stands out in its various guises: the compound, the border and the gate. So do threshold spaces of the airport, the car and the border crossing. Taken together, they provide insight into the humanitarian imaginary: how international humanitarianism is understood, narrated and performed.

Aid work as rite of passage

Liminality or 'third space' in humanitarian assistance The term liminality in its contemporary usage in humanities and social science is usually attributable to the anthropologist Van Gennep (ibid.). It refers to a state in human society of being between two phases. In his original description, Van Gennep identifies a series of liminal or transitional events including pregnancy and childbirth, marriage and funerals, as well as the physical transition from one place to another. Although originally published in 1909, the concept did not gain widespread attention until the 1960s, when it was rediscovered by Victor Turner, who applied and developed the concept in a variety of anthropological settings, from the Ndembu tribe of northwestern Zambia to "Western hippies" (Turner 1969). Turner developed and expanded the concept, which has subsequently been further elaborated through its use in a variety of disciplines from pilgrimage studies (Coleman 2002; Eade and Sallnow 2000; Yamba 1995) to management consultancy literature (Sturdy et al. 2006;Czarniawska and Mazza 2003). Turner himself was never extremely rigorous in his use of the term, and this ambiguity continued to plague the term in the way in which it was adopted and applied by subsequent theorists. Specifically, later theorists would concentrate their attentions on the liminal space as a unique space separated from the spaces on either side (for more on the origins and evolution of the term, see Martin 2007).

In theorizing the personage of the aid worker, liminality allows for the experience of the field to be considered as a unique and self-contained space: removed from the constraints and embedded power relations of late capitalist society. In this reading, new forms of development assistance could provide the opportunity to deconstruct historically oppressive binaries such as colonizer/colonized, teacher/student, donor/recipient, North/South by providing the opportunity for new, hybrid relationships and subjectivities to emerge (English 2005; Barlow 2007). For example, ideas of partnership or participatory development imply a fluidity of exchange and dismantling of power relations through personal interaction between the aid worker and the beneficiary.

This exchange is considered by some theorists to not only transform the beneficiary for the better, but to change the way in which the (First World) aid worker understands the (Third World) other. For example, English (2005) found that adult educators from the global North who take up positions in the global South consider themselves to be "nationless figures who inhabit a global community" and are able to "move away from the binaries that limit them, including those of geography and gender" (ibid.: 94). Similarly, Barlow (2007) found that Canadian social work students undertaking a practicum in India occupied and negotiated a third space where their beliefs, identities and preconceptions both about themselves and the other were challenged by what they saw and experienced. While there is the assertion, based on work by Bhabha (1990) and Spivak and Harasym (1990), that these spaces hold the potential for alterity and emancipation for aid worker and beneficiary alike, concrete examples are noticeably absent. Further, little (or nothing) is said about development work and liminality within the context of its more structured and common permutation: that of workers for multilateral organizations such as the UN and the World Bank and for international NGOs (INGOs) such as Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam or Save the Children.

While it can be said that the field is heterotopic, filled with vernacular globalizations (Bhabha 2004) and palimpsestic vistas (Tomlinson 1999), the ironies, juxtapositions, themes and tropes are remarkably similar from experience to experience. These experiences are nominally liminal, in the sense that they encompass multiple and competing allegiances, claims, identities, languages, cultures and expectations. For example, the African-American UN lawyer educating Liberian civil servants on human rights; or the British doctor in Somalia assisting women with sanitized genital suturing upon their request. However, the experiences are also highly structured and predictable.

Interviews and analysis with third-space practitioners reveal a structured cycle of interaction that occurs when experts from a host country move to a target country to provide assistance (Heron 2008). This cycle is so predictable, in fact, that it has been distilled to provide the basis for staff training modules which describe the process that the practitioner will experience through the course of his/her assignment, including initial exuberance followed by fatigue and, upon return, re-entry syndrome (Government of Canada 2009). Rather than a post-colonial third space, the experience described strongly echoes Van Gennep's original formulation of a liminal...