"Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences (PARISS)" is a bi-annual journal published by Brill publishers that seeks to promote a plurality of ways of thinking, researching and writing and to give access to contemporary authors in the social sciences coming also from non-English-speaking countries. The journal covers Social Sciences, International Relations, Global Studies, Sociology & Anthropology, Transdisciplinary approaches, Art and Humanities. The four coeditors, Tugba Basaran, Monique J. Beerli, Didier Bigo, and Emma Mc Cluskey answer our questions about the journal and its aims.

Through a critical engagement with substantive and stylistic guidelines dictated by dominant journals in the social sciences, this article enquires on what it means to write like a social scientist in the twenty-first century. Academic production and diffusion now regularly take place beyond and across national borders, with English often standing in as the lingua franca of these global exchanges. Though just one effect of this restructuration, academic journals have become more transnational in scope with regards to the authors whose work they publish and the audiences whose readership they seek to attract. However, while one could expect the “globalization” of the social sciences to lead to the transnational circulation of national disciplinary traditions and perhaps multiple manifestations of cultural hybridization, we are instead witnessing the imposition of a strangely singular and harmonized mode of doing the social sciences. Paradoxically, standards of how long a scientific article should be or how one should fashion an argument are so familiar and intimately known, yet curiously opaque and of unknown origins. In interrogating the historical-contextual origins of conventions that so strongly shape the world of academic publishing and, dare we say, reasoning, we raise questions about the conditions of the present and the naturalization of standards on how to write a scientific article. As a consequence of this exploration, we propose alternatives guidelines that a new journal such as ours has to present to its anticipated authors and readers.

[...] "Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences (PARISS)" seeks to encourage transversal social inquires so as to support flows rather than academic enclosures and to cut across conventional planes of scholarship. Here, as has previously been noted, “[t]he notion of transversal lines is intended to articulate the distinctive contributions of various forms of knowledge, depending on the specific phenomena, trajectories and problems that are in question.” By doing so, "PARISS" seeks to reinvigorate scholarly engagements untroubled by canonic approaches and to provide a space for outstanding scholarship, marginalized elsewhere due to academic conventions. Drawing transversal lines requires not only a different way of thinking, but different intellectual practices – it requires intellectual collaborations between fragmented fields of knowledge. This includes collaborations between and among disciplines, but also linguistic collaborations that go beyond the anglophone canon, allowing the creation of novel, innovative and critical intellectual spaces. As such, we would like pariss to become a comitium, an open meeting space for scholars of various backgrounds seeking to draw transversal lines.

Tracing transformations in the way that humanitarian organizations respond to insecurity in the field, this article examines the bureaucratization and professionalization of security in relation to intraorganizational struggles between humanitarian professionals. Whereas some advocate for the triumph of remoteness and bunkerization as organizing principles of humanitarian action, others challenge the imposition of security as a humanitarian logic of practice through acts of nonconformity. These tensions are illustrative of professional struggles over how to do and think humanitarian action. In articulating a sociological and transversal reading, this article points to the heterogeneity and divisions structuring the humanitarian space. To provide empirical insights into the bureaucratic work practices of headquarters professionals and the everyday practices of frontline humanitarian professionals, this article draws upon an analysis of humanitarian security manuals, interviews with humanitarian professionals, and field observations in Port-au-Prince. The article sheds light on the development of the humanitarian profession and on the novelty of the work practices of humanitarian security professionals, while contributing to debates on bunkerization and the literature on transnational professionals.

Aujourd’hui, un discours dominant affirme que le travail humanitaire est devenu dangereux. Face à l’insécurité croissante, les organisations humanitaires ont développé de nouvelles politiques de sécurité afin de mieux protéger le personnel et les infrastructures. En se fondant sur la sociologie des professions d’Abbott, ainsi que sur la théorie du pouvoir de Bourdieu, cette thèse propose une sociologie politique internationale de la professionnalisation de la sécurité humanitaire. Afin de combler les lacunes des explications et des critiques de la sécurité humanitaire, ce travail examine les conditions de possibilités à l’émergence d’un microcosme de professionnels. Du fait de cette transformation de la division du travail, les humanitaires considèrent désormais que certaines des populations les plus nécessiteuses se trouvent au-delà des limites raisonnables du sacrifice. En comparant le coût de la perte d’une « vie d’humanitaire » à la valeur potentielle du sauvetage des vies, les humanitaires participent à l’intensification des inégalités mondiales. Les humanitaires ne contentent plus seulement d’atténuer la souffrance de lointains étrangers, mais ils contribuent aussi à redéfinir la notion de « populations dans le besoin », en les étiquetant comme « populations dangereuses ». Ainsi, la mise en place de la sécurité comme sens pratique de l’humanitaire inverse les impératifs humanitaires fondés sur le sauvetage des vies et sur la défense d’une humanité partagée. Tout en contribuant aux débats sur la sécurité humanitaire, cette thèse participe également à faire avancer les études sur les élites transnationales, sur la sécurité et sur les organisations internationales.

While humanitarian work has always implied a certain level of risk, in the last two decades there has been a growing concern that humanitarian and peacekeeping agents are exposed to unprecedented levels of insecurity. To determine whether or not such claims and perceptions are substantiated, researchers have developed quantitative datasets aimed at measuring and tracking threats to humanitarians and peacekeepers at the global level. In contrast to humanitarian practitioners which use such quantitative expertise to suggest aid work is becoming increasingly dangerous, the producers of quantitative representations of humanitarian security suggest instead that attack rates have remained for the most part fairly stable despite increases in absolute numbers. In order to make sense of this paradox, this article draws on neo-Bourdieusian approaches, the sociology of professions and organizations, as well as global governance literature on quantification to suggest that such inconsistencies relate to the use of quantitative data to legitimate organizational change and bureaucratic restructurations in relation to the institutionalization of security expertise. By understanding the dynamics of organizational change, this article sheds light on one of the ways through which international humanitarianism and peacekeeping is shifting from a paradigm of proximity to a paradigm of distance and remoteness.

Conflict, crime, development, security, human rights, and democracy, to name a few, are all examples of subjects that have been delimited and constructed in the form of databases and sets of quantitative indicators. While the state had traditionally held the exclusive monopoly of quantified production, today many actors participate in its fabrication and circulation, sometimes even working on the same theme. Taking the example of humanitarian security, this article argues for the need to investigate the factors that structure a researcher and a research center's choice to develop new areas of quantitative research. Giving an account of who has the power to count and calling into question the disinterested production of data, this article also points to the wider power effects of transforming insecurity into quantified measures.

The articles in this special section argue that, by looking at quantification as a technical and political technique of power, we can effectively engage with newly established types of transnational power and better understand how numbers can enable reconfigurations and hence reorderings of power relations. The section looks at how numbers, in the form of risk assessments, measuring for results, and governance indicators, have a crucial impact in current transnational politics, which in turn influences resource allocation and recognition, discourses on undesirable individuals, possibilities for political leverage, and potential ownership.

The articles in this special section argue that, by looking at quantification as a technical and political technique of power, we can effectively engage with newly established types of transnational power and better understand how numbers can enable reconfigurations and hence reorderings of power relations. The section looks at how numbers, in the form of risk assessments, measuring for results, and governance indicators, have a crucial impact in current transnational politics, which in turn influences resource allocation and recognition, discourses on undesirable individuals, possibilities for political leverage, and potential ownership.

S’appuyant principalement sur les éditions 2000 et 2010 du GPR 8, ce chapitre propose une description du contenu et des recommandations des guides de bonnes pratiques sur la sécurité humanitaire. Il aborde les questions suivantes : comment ces guides justifient-ils la nécessité de professionnaliser et d’institutionnaliser la gestion de sécurité ? Quelles sont leurs définitions de la sécurité et des bonnes pratiques censées la garantir ? Quels dispositifs proposent-ils de mettre en place ? Dans un second temps, ce chapitre met en lumière certaines des hypothèses et des présupposés normatifs véhiculés par ces manuels dits « techniques ».