Book Reviews
Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills:
Peacekeepers, Humanitarian Aid Workers, and the Media in the Midst of Crisis
I would like to highly recommend a book to you. It is on stress/adjustment issues for humanitarian aid workers and those who work in stressful/hazardous overseas assignments.
The name of the book is Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills, edited by Dr. Yael Danieli, and published by Baywood in New York (2002). The subtitle is Peacekeepers, Humanitarian Aid Workers, and the Media in the Midst of Crisis. There is nothing quite like this book and I found it very timely, very refreshing, and very relevant for my work in member care/human resource development. I believe you will too. Here are some of the features.
The book starts off with a helpful Forward by Kofi Annan, the General-Secretary of the United Nations. This is followed by 36 chapters on stress factors for peacekeepers, aid workers, and media personnel. There are some excellent research studies and reviews on stress among the military as well as among aid workers. And there are also some chapters on organizational approaches to stress reduction, human resource development, and in general, what life is really like for those who cross cultural boundaries to serve fellow human beings in need.
One of the most helpful aspects of the book is the "Voices" sections that are interlaced throughout the chapters. These are short accounts of personnel describing their pains and joys as they live and work in crisis settings. These "voices" validate what so many of us and our colleagues have experienced in such settings. I can see sharing some of these accounts with our personnel as a way to encourage them to know that others are experiencing similar things, and that they are not alone. There is some attention given to the challenges of nationl/local staff, a topic which needs much additional emphasis within the mission/aid community.
Another feature of the book that I like is that there is no "religious" talk in it. By that I mean there is no spiritualization of problems and no use of lots of spiritual terms that can sometimes interfere with getting at what is really going on for people. On the other hand, this helpful aspect of the book is a limitation as well. There is a dearth of material on the spiritual struggles and interventions that are core parts of the lives of both service receivers and services providers. This absence strikes me as being incongruent with the majority of the world' populations whose existential and spiritual cries for help also need to be sensitively addressed.
In many ways I see this book as a complement to the book I just edited (and vice versa), Doing Member Care Well: Perspectives and Practices from Around the World (2002). My book goes into the issues of the "faith based community" as they work in mission and aid contexts. Danieli's book focuses more on the "non-faith based community" and provides an excellent overview. I highly commend Danieli's book. I already refer to it often as I teach and write.
The only other drawback to point out is the cost. I believe that authors/editors and publishers deserve the financial fruit of their labor. The tricky part comes when the people we are trying to feed via our books cannot enjoy the fruits of our labor too. At $59 a copy, the pricing is prohibitive to many of the people who really need the book-namely those aid workers/organizations from the developing world. I sincerely hope that a special arrangement is being made to help this growing group of people access this invaluable resource.
To order copies, contact the publisher at: baywood@baywood.com
Dr. Kelly O'Donnell
Consulting Psychologist
Geneva, Switzerland
May, 2002
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