Peter Redfield, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina
"Doctors Without Borders and the Challenge of Global Action"

Visions of "global health" often involve international medical action by mobile volunteers. In this talk I examine the history of the humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF or Doctors Without Borders), from concept, to practice, to institutionalization. Since 1971, MSF has grown into a large, transnational NGO sponsoring a variety of worldwide medical projects. To run its programs, it relies on local personnel in project sites, as well as international volunteers. Yet the group retains an emergency orientation and seeks to remain mobile enough to shift resources wherever it deems need to be greatest. Amid recent efforts to "decolonize" its human profile, MSF has debated the appropriate role, motivation and remuneration of both volunteers and support staff it hires at mission sites. It is precisely such mundane details, however, that reveal tensions of acting across national borders and unequal economies.