Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the epistemic navigation conducted by Congolese humanitarians whilst negotiating access with rebel groups in eastern DRC. Humanitarians become shapeshifters: they play different roles for different audiences as a tactic of social navigation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the epistemic navigation of Congolese humanitarians whilst negotiating access with armed groups in North Kivu, in east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Humanitarian agencies have been providing assistance in the region for decades. In order to operate, they need to negotiate access with a range of different political authorities and armed groups. Congolese humanitarians learn to become shapeshifters: they fashion different identities and reposition themselves for different audiences as a tactic of social navigation in highly uncertain political terrains. Because humanitarians encounter risks related to their perceived identity, they construct and reconstruct their identities in real time in order to facilitate the delivery of aid, and to manage their own safety. This involves playing upon identity categories and personal histories, situating themselves tactically during encounters with different armed actors through creative modes of self-fashioning. To do so, they appropriate and resist different crisis framings about the conflict, playing with the binary identities that are produced such as autochthonous/non-autochthonous, local/non-local, or armed combatant/apolitical women and caregiver. Shapeshifting is part of the relational and interpretive labour of local humanitarians which often remains hidden behind the discourse on humanitarian principles, and another example of the creative processes of epistemic navigation conducted by people working in contexts of uncertainty.