ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the concept of 'the humanitarian gaze' may help social work educators, practitioners, and activists in their activities to promote social equality through cultural representation in a glocalised world. It focuses on discursive power of 'the humanitarian' and also the practices of looking that emerge from such a discourse. The chapter argues that humanitarianism has developed as a global discourse reliant on unequal geopolitical relationships and reproduces via a consistent feed of negative and catastrophic images of 'the other' as frozen in continuous suffering or struggling to become 'like us'; the discourse is then further reproduced through practices of looking that centre on searching for and finding these figure types. It outlines four dimensions for glocal social work educators/practitioners/activists to consider in their selections of films/visual: the film subject, the intended audience, relationship between viewer and film subject, and context of screening.
