ABSTRACT

Calls to localise humanitarian practice and to engage communities in emergency responses have gained prominence in recent years. Using the case study of the response to the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, this article probes into the assumptions underlying efforts to mobilise ‘community stakeholders’ to legitimise emergency measures, revealing how they envision authority within communities as static and independent of experiences of humanitarian intervention. Drawing inspiration from Raufu Mustapha’s intellectual legacy, it shows the limitations of these assumptions by paying attention to structural factors, historical legacies, and the empirical workings of power. Through an ethnographic account of how the Ebola response was experienced and remembered in a remote border town, the article proposes instead the concept of unsettled authority. Stories from these borderlands show how the legitimacy of local authority was dynamically negotiated, made and unmade, through encounters with humanitarian interventions as these became intertwined with longer-term contestations of power with unpredictable consequences.

摘要

近年来，呼吁将人道主义做法本地化并促使社区参与紧急响应的呼吁日益突出。本文以对塞拉利昂2014-16埃博拉疫情应对的案例研究为基础，探讨了旨在动员“社区利益相关者”使紧急措施合法化的基本假设，揭示了他们如何将社区内部的权威设想为静态且独立于经验人道主义干预。从劳夫·穆斯塔法（Raufu Mustapha）的知识遗产中汲取灵感，它通过关注结构性因素，历史遗留问题以及权力的经验性运作，证明了这些假设的局限性。通过对在边远边境城镇中如何体验和记住埃博拉应对措施的人种学研究，文章提出了尚未解决的权威概念。