Animal welfare organizations assert themselves as a prominent sphere of social work in Lebanon—a country burdened by widespread poverty, corruption, and refugee crises—leaving its proponents faced with the criticism that “there are more important things.” This ethnography analyzes the discourse and practice of two local shelters to understand how they navigate the moral ambiguities of working in a context of pervasive human suffering.
I show that they situate their work as a humanitarian cause through the language of the “humane”, using human(e)itarianism to designate the formal intersections between animal welfare and humanitarianism. Humane is defined both as “showing benevolence or compassion” and “inflicting the minimum of pain,” and education that has a “civilizing effect on people.” With a definition so varied and internally conflicting, how does this “aporia” (Fassin 2007) manifest in human(e)itarian practice?
Rescue media invites audiences to show benevolence or compassion, with captions that produce victims to be saved and assimilated into a “forever home.” Meanwhile, the ubiquitous use of “humane” to describe the trap, neuter, and return (TNR) method for population control hinges on its meaning as inflicting the minimum of pain, ostensibly trading traditional care for street animals in favor of assimilation or elimination. I argue that human(e)itarianism reinforces domestic structures, rather than making space for refuge.
While recent critical scholarship has called for the inclusion of nonhuman forms in humanitarian discourse, this paper shows how animal welfare already advocates its work as a form of humanitarianism.