Introduction: The meanings and making of humanitarian handicraft

The introduction to this volume proposes a novel category of analysis, ‘humanitarian handicraft’, which offers a new vector to illuminate this ubiquitous and long-standing feature of humanitarian projects. Humanitarian handicrafts involve the work of many hands and can embody the empathetic connections that exist once objects are passed from one hand to another. It therefore considers what handicraft signifies in moral economies of modern humanitarianism and developmental enterprises both today and in the past. It outlines how the chapters in this collection bring these issues into focus and offer new perspectives on the expansion of humanitarian programmes during the era of rapid industrialisation, imperial extension and social reconfigurations of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.