| This study examines the political and symbolic action of contemporary humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in order to better understand their role within a global/ized world. It is argued that within the context of modern globalization, there is an impending crisis of community, a crisis which is spurring a new movement of humanitarian nonstate actors to gain a stake in the shape our world will take. Contemporary humanitarian NGOs are important vehicles in this movement. Their influence is felt both at the level of political action and, importantly, at the level of symbolic action, in their ability to persuade and mobilize constituencies to take action on specific issues, and in their proclivity to rhetorically "craft" a new ethos of global community among various publics. Extensive discursive analysis of two humanitarian NGOs---Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, reveals unique and complex negotiations of group identity, conceptions of human rights and public space. Notable in these negotiations are the publicly constructed vocabularies for action which each NGO enlists for its cause. These vocabularies, made up of powerful yet fuzzy cluster terms, or what are referred to in the study as "discursigraphs," lend insight into the process by which rhetors and audiences come together in public episodes marked by choice and contingency, and they help to explain the motivations, aspirations and underlying values of their adherents. The study finds that NGOs are best understood not as monolithic organizational structures, but rather, as shifting flows of people, ideas, resources and power. Furthermore, the case studies demonstrate that NGOs fulfill a function of publicity which is vital to any project of global democracy. Findings also suggest that further study of the connections between political agency and rhetorical agency is warranted. Public communicative practice, as a viable form of social action, is intimately imbricated with political discourse, and as such, the two should be studied not in isolation but in tandem with one another. |
