COULD this be yet another PhD thesis in book form? Afraid so.

Tragically, Lisa Smirl died before she could finish it and so it has been published posthumously, which may go some way towards explaining why it comes across as an overlong and convoluted work, littered with academic jargon.

The context of Smirl’s book is not unfamiliar — there are big problems with the way aid to areas of need globally is distributed and with the form that it takes. Very often it is not done in a way that best benefits the supposed recipients, nor is it economically effective.

The author examines the way so many aid agencies today insulate themselves from the people that they are supposed to be helping. Invariably aid workers travel in the field in comfortable four-wheel drive trucks, stay in top hotels or in gated communities and rarely converse with those they are supposed to be helping or ask what sort of aid they really need.

While the dire and dangerous situations that exist in many parts of the world where aid agencies operate make such protective action understandable, it certainly doesn’t help tackle the problems.

Smirl focuses on two specific examples, the aftermath of the tsunami in Aceh and Hurricane Katrina in the southern US, to demonstrate her points.

While she examines the minutiae of aid agencies’ behaviours, she doesn’t question the whole ideology behind humanitarian aid or why such aid could not be better organised by the UN or another supranational body.

Interesting and pertinent her points may be but they certainly could have been made in a quarter of the space devoted to her thesis here.

Review by John Green