Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:27:00.944Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

32 - Philanthropy

from Part V - Institutional Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

By
China Scherz
Edited by
James Laidlaw
James Laidlaw
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Only a portion of the anthropological literature on philanthropy, charity, and humanitarianism explicitly engages with literature on the anthropology of ethics and morality, yet all of it describes a field of practice defined by a commitment to precisely these terms – the ethical, the moral, and the good. The first section of this essay reviews works that describe the moral and practical content and effects of philanthropic giving, focussing on the diversity of giving practices, logics, and outcomes. The second section describes how anthropologists have thought about humanitarian and philanthropic practices as the grounds upon and through which people cultivate and enact forms of ethical subjectivity. The third and final section considers anthropology’s relationship to ideas of moral clarity and moral judgement as these terms are used by anthropologists writing about, and taking part in, a range of social projects.

Keywords

philanthropycharitysufferinghumanitarianismwitnessingmoral claritygift exchangesubjectivityreligionmoral judgement
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics , pp. 817 - 838
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Vincanne. 2013. Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Adams, Vincanne, ed. 2016. Metrics: What Counts in Global Health. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Allahyari, Rebecca Anne. 2000. Visions of Charity: Volunteer Workers and Moral Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reason of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Atia, Mona. 2013. Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banerjee, Dwaipayan and Copeman., Jacob 2018. ‘Ungiven: Philanthropy As Critique’. Modern Asian Studies, 52(1): 325–50.Google Scholar
Benthall, Jonathan. 1999. ‘Financial Worship: The Quranic Injunction to Almsgiving’. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 5(1): 27–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benthall, Jonathan. 2012. ‘Charity’, in Fassin, Didier (ed.), A Companion to Moral Anthropology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell: 59–375.Google Scholar
Benthall, Jonathan. 2017. ‘Charity’, in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology. http://doi.org/10.29164/17charity.Google Scholar
Boltanski, Luc. 1999. Distant Suffering: Morality, Media, and Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornstein, Erica. 2009. ‘The Impulse of Philanthropy’. Cultural Anthropology, 24(4): 622–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornstein, Erica. 2012. Disquieting Gifts: Humanitarianism in New Delhi. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bornstein, Erica and Redfield, Peter, eds. 2011. Forces of Compassion: Humanitarianism between Ethics and Politics. Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowie, Katherine A. 1998. ‘The Alchemy of Charity: Of Class and Buddhism in Northern Thailand’. American Anthropologist, 100(2): 469–81.Google Scholar
Brada, Betsey Behr. 2016. ‘The Contingency of Humanitarianism: Moral Authority in an African HIV Clinic’. American Anthropologist, 118(4): 755–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Peter. 2002. Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Peter. 2012. Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Peter. 2015. The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Butt, Leslie. 2002. ‘The Suffering Stranger: Medical Anthropology and International Morality’. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 21: 1–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Calhoun, Craig. 2010. ‘The Idea of Emergency: Humanitarian Action and Global (Dis)Order’, in Fassin, D. and Pandolfi, M. (eds.), Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions. New York: Zone Books: 29–58.Google Scholar
Copeman, Jacob. 2008. Veins of Devotion: Blood Donation and Religious Experience in North India. Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1990. ‘Foreword: No Free Gifts’, in Mauss, M., The Gift: Form and Reason from Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge: vii–xviii.Google Scholar
Douzina-Bakalaki, Phaedra. 2017. ‘Volunteering Mothers: Engaging the Crisis in a Soup Kitchen of Northern Greece’. Anthropology Matters, 17(1): 1–24.Google Scholar
Durham, Deborah. 1995. ‘Soliciting Gifts and Negotiating Agency: The Spirit of Asking in Botswana’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1(1): 111–28.Google Scholar
Elisha, Omri. 2011. Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Farmer, Paul. 2001. Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Farmer, Paul. 2003. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Farmer, Paul and Gutierrez., Gustavo 2013. In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez. Ossining, NY: Orbis Books.Google Scholar
Farmer, Paul, Leandre, F., Mukhergee, J., Gupta, R., Tarter, L., and Yong Kim., J. 2001. ‘Community-Based Treatment of Advanced HIV Disease: Introducing DOT-HAART (Directly Observed Therapy with Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy)’. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 79(12): 1145–51.Google ScholarPubMed
Fassin, Didier. 2007. ‘Humanitarianism As a Politics of Life’. Public Culture, 19(3): 499–20.Google Scholar
Fassin, Didier. 2008. ‘Beyond Good and Evil? Questioning the Anthropological Discomfort with Morals’. Anthropological Theory, 8: 333–44.Google Scholar
Fassin, Didier. 2011. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present, trans. Rachel Gomme. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Faubion, James D. 2001. The Shadows and Lights of Waco: Millennialism Today. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Faubion, James D. 2011. An Anthropology of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, Ilana. 2007. ‘The Quaker Way: Ethical Labor and Humanitarian Relief’. American Ethnologist, 34(4): 689–705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, James. 2015. Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1984. ‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault’, in The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984. New York: New Press: 111–20.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1997. ‘The Ethics of the Concern for Self As a Practice of Freedom’, in Rabinow, P. (ed.), Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984. Volume 1. New York: New Press: 281–301.Google Scholar
Gardner, Katy and Lewis., David 2015. Anthropology and Development: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Griswold, Charles L. 1999. Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Halvorson, Britt. 2018. Conversionary Sites: Transforming Medical Aid and Global Christianity from Madagascar to Minnesota. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hont, Istan and Ignatieff., Michael 1986. Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Iweala, Uzodinma. 2017. ‘Reparations as Philanthropy: Radically Rethinking ‘Giving’ in Africa’, Le Monde, 13 November.Google Scholar
Kidder, Tracy. 2003. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Klaits, Frederick. 2011. ‘Asking As Giving: Apostolic Prayers and the Aesthetics of Well-Being in Botswana’. Journal of Religion in Africa, 41(2): 206–26.Google Scholar
Kochuyt, Thierry. 2009. ‘God, Gifts and Poor People: On Charity in Islam’. Social Compass, 56(1): 98–116.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 1995. Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy and Society among the Jains. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 2000. ‘A Free Gift Makes No Friends’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 6(4): 617–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 2014. Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. 2005. ‘Anthropology and Development: The Uneasy Relationship’, in Carrier, James G. (ed.), A Handbook of Economic Anthropology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar: 472–86.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Mahmood, Saba. 2004. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Makley, Charlene. 2014. ‘Spectacular Compassion’. Critical Asian Studies, 46(3): 371–404.Google Scholar
Malkki, Liisa. 2015. The Need to Help: The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mallaby, Sebastian. 2004. The World’s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crisis, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations. New York: Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Marett, R. R. 1939. ‘Charity and the Struggle for Existence’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 69(2): 137–49.Google Scholar
Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Trans. Halls., W. D. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Messac, Luke, Prabhu, Krishna, Farmer, Paul, Kim, Jim Yong, Kleinman, Arthur, and Basilico, Matthew. 2013. ‘Redefining the Possible: The Global AIDS Response’, in Paul Farmer et al. (eds.), Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction. Berkeley: University of California Press: 111–32.Google Scholar
Mittermaier, Amira. 2014. ‘Beyond Compassion: Islamic Voluntarism in Egypt’. American Ethnologist, 41(3): 518–31.Google Scholar
Muehlebach, Andrea. 2012. The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Neil, Kevis Lewis. 2013. ‘Left Behind: Security, Salvation, and the Subject of Prevention’. Cultural Anthropology, 28(2): 204–26.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa and Collier, Stephen J., eds. 2005. Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Osella, Filippo and Widger., Tom 2018. ‘“You Can Give Even if You Only Have Ten Rupees!”: Muslim Charity in a Colombo Housing Scheme’. Modern Asian Studies, 52(1): 297–324.Google Scholar
Parry, Jonathan. 1986. ‘The Gift, the Indian Gift and the “Indian Gift”’. Man (n.s.), 21(3): 453–73.Google Scholar
Parry, Jonathan. 1989. ‘On the Moral Perils of Exchange’, in Bloch, M. and Parry, J. (eds.), Money and the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 64–93.Google Scholar
Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2011. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Durham, NC: Duke University PressGoogle Scholar
Rabinow, Paul. 1989. French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rabinow, Paul. 1997. ‘Introduction: The History of Systems of Thought’, in Rabinow, P. (ed.), Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth: Essential Works of Foucault, Volume 1. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Rabinow, Paul. 2003. Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Redfield, Peter. 2005. ‘Doctors, Borders, and Life in Crisis’. Cultural Anthropology, 20(3): 328–61.Google Scholar
Redfield, Peter. 2012. ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Ex-Pats: Double Binds of Humanitarian Mobility’. Cultural Anthropology, 27(2): 358–82.Google Scholar
Redfield, Peter. 2013. Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rieff, David. 2002. A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Robbins, Joel. 2004. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in Papua New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, Joel. 2013. ‘Beyond the Suffering Subject: Toward an Anthropology of the Good’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19(3): 447–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanchez, Andrew, James Carrier, G., Laidlaw, James, Strathern, Marilyn, Yan, Yunxiang, and Parry., Jonathan 2017. ‘“The Indian Gift”: A Critical Debate’. History and Anthropology, 28(5): 553–83.Google Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1995. ‘The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology’. Current Anthropology, 36(3): 409–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherz, China. 2013. ‘Let Us Make God Our Banker: Ethics, Temporality, and Agency in a Ugandan Charity Home’. American Ethnologist, 40(4): 624–36.Google Scholar
Scherz, China. 2014. Having People, Having Heart: Charity, Sustainable Development, and Problems of Dependence in Central Uganda. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherz, China. 2017. ‘Persistent Forms: Catholic Charity Homes on the Boundary Line of the Moral Neoliberal’, in Rudnyckyj, D. and Osslla, F. (eds.), Religion and the Morality of the Market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scherz, China. 2018. ‘Enduring the Awkward Embrace: Personhood and Ethical Work in a Ugandan Convent’. American Anthropologist, 120(1): 102–12.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1976 [1790]. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Rafael, D. and Macfie, A., eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stoczkowski, Wiktor. 2008. ‘The “Fourth Aim” of Anthropology: Between Knowledge and Ethics’. Anthropological Theory, 8: 345–56.Google Scholar
Theodossopoulos, Dimitrios. 2016. ‘Philanthropy or Solidarity? Ethical Dilemmas about Humanitarianism in Crisis-Afflicted Greece’. Social Anthropology, 24(2): 167–84.Google Scholar
Ticktin, Miriam. 2011. Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Trundle, Catherine. 2014. Americans in Tuscany: Charity, Compassion, and Belonging. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Valenzuela-Garcia, Hugo, Lubbers, Miranda Jessica, and Rice, James, eds. 2019. ‘Ethnographies of Poverty and Marginality in Non-Profit and Charity Associations’ (special issue). Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 8(1).Google Scholar
Venkatesan, Soumhya. 2009. ‘Conversations about Need and Greed’, in Sykes, K. (ed.), Ethnographies of Moral Reasoning: Living Paradoxes of a Global Age. New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 67–89.Google Scholar
Venkatesan, S 2016. ‘Giving and Taking without Reciprocity: Conversations in South India and the Anthropology of Ethics’. Social Analysis, 60(3): 36–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Venkatesan, Soumhya and Yarrow, Thomas, eds. 2012. Differentiating Development: Beyond an Anthropology of Critique. Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Watanabe, Chika. 2014. ‘Muddy Labor: A Japanese Aid Ethic of Collective Intimacy in Myanmar’. Cultural Anthropology, 29(4): 648–71.Google Scholar
Watanabe, Chika. 2017. ‘Development As Pedagogy: On Becoming Good Models in Japan and Myanmar’. American Ethnologist, 44(4): 591–602.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1904. ‘“Objectivity” in Social Science and Social Policy’, in Shils, E. and Finch, H. (eds.), The Methodology of the Social Sciences. Glencoe, IL: Free Press: 49–112.Google Scholar
Weller, Robert P., Julia Huang, C., Wu, Keping, and Fan, Lizhu. 2018. Religion and Charity: The Social Life of Goodness in Chinese Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zigon, Jarrett. 2011. ‘HIV Is God’s Blessing’: Rehabilitating Morality in Neoliberal Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Zigon, Jarrett. 2018. A War on People: Drug User Politics and a New Ethics of Community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Philanthropy
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.032
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Philanthropy
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.032
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Philanthropy
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.032
Available formats
×