Description
Since its establishment in 2003, the free zone of the International Humanitarian City (IHC) in Dubai has expanded its facilities and services. Its members include key international humanitarian organisations, which established either an office or a warehouse in the zone and started speaking a common language. The paper asks how IHC members have grown into a community of practice made of humanitarian actors from the Gulf; humanitarians from the United Nations and Non-Governmental Organisations headquartered in and outside the West; and private sector companies. It argues that the practices of humanitarians in the IHC have become tightly intertwined through a process in four steps, culminating in an impact on IHC members' dispositions to act on the international scene. The study adds to mounting literature on communities of practice as an ordering principle in World Politics, but one that is consistent with the tenets of field theory since communities of practice must be located within broader dynamics that are primarily conflictual. The paper will also challenge the assumption that practices of humanitarian response by Western and Gulf organisations are incompatible.
