Paper long abstract:

While the military use of drones has been the subject of significant academic scrutiny since the mid-2000s, the more recent civil society, government, industry, and media interest in the use of drones for civilian and humanitarian purposes has so far received little scholarly attention. As evidenced by the ongoing drone wars, UAV technology enables a specific set of political and military rationales and projects that must be investigated, not for their often-alleged ´newness` but for the power they represent and the type of settlements they generate. In this paper, we argue that the prospect of using drones for humanitarian and other life-saving activities has produced an alternative discourse on drones, dedicated to develop and publicize the endless possibilities that drones have for 'doing good'. This has led to the material and discursive creation of what we label 'the Good Drone'. We explore the role of the Good Drone as an organizing narrative for political projects, technology development and humanitarian action. We aim to open up a critical conversation about the political currency of 'good'. To that end, we unpack the different meanings of 'good' in the discourses surrounding the actual development and use of drones, whether arising from the language of technological innovation, commercial imagination or political rhetoric.