TY - JOUR TI - The sexual politics of humanitarian regulation DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T35Q4TJH PY - 2014 AB - This dissertation is a critique of humanitarianism through the lens of two pieces of United States policy: the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Through discursive analysis of the congressional record, in addition to materials from media and popular culture with which it interacts, this dissertation investigates the humanitarian impulses of these policies in relation to their intended and unintended effects. By examining the effects of both policies, I demonstrate that they are counterproductive, if taken at their face value as projects to help and save. Far from being a problem of failed implementation, I suggest that these policies suffer from systematic defects in their very design, beginning with the claim that they reflect confusion between human rights and humanitarianism. I claim that the logic of humanitarianism governs both policies. This humanitarian form of governance is by definition uneven, and while deployed as a reflection of humane values, nevertheless has complex political motivations and outcomes. Most notably, both policies mobilize neocolonial language and symbols that mark the global South as barbaric and uncivilized, and the global North as harbingers of civilization and equality. KW - Political Science KW - Humanitarianism--Political Aspects--United States KW - Human rights advocacy--United States KW - United States--Foreign relations LA - eng ER -