Book Review: Doctors Without Borders: Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams of Medecins Sans Frontieres

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)

Fox Renée C. , Doctors Without Borders: Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Baltimore , Johns Hopkins University Press , 2014)

Book Reviews

Renée C. Fox's long career as a sociologist of medicine and a careful participant observer means that her book on Médecins Sans Frontières (msf) was very much awaited. Previous articles dedicated to msf and mdm (Médecins du Monde)¹show that she has been studying these (initially) French humanitarian organizations for a long time, and those familiar with msf know that she had gained access and acceptance within the organization. While diverse articles or books, sometimes edited by msf itself, explore some aspects of the organization, the book can be considered the first extensive social scientific description in English of msf, its origins and action in the field, and its cultural identity.

The aim of the book is precisely to describe the culture and history of msf and its internationalization (that is, the development of sections with different nationalities from the original French section). In particular, the author wants to examine what msf has meant for those who act in it and how they represent themselves. Reaching beyond the history of the organization--the schisms and tensions that it has undergone--the book aims to explore how these tensions are related to the field of operations and to what happens in the field.

All of these dimensions are explored in the book. It begins with a chapter, "Voices from the field", which uses the particularly rich source of blogs from humanitarian workers to examine the way they represent themselves, and find gratification and self-realization in action. Nevertheless, many acknowledge that they are "adrenaline junkies" (self mockery and criticism perhaps being the most powerful identity marker of msf), and they also acknowledge the limits of the actions undertaken.

The four following chapters are grouped in a part of the book ("Growing Pains") dedicated to diverse tensions that the organization has known since its inception. The first recalls the origins of msf, founded by young French physicians, some of whom had participated in an International committee Red Cross (icrc) mission in Biafra and were eager to talk about what they had seen there. It explains how this dimension...