The Development Gift: The Problem of Reciprocity in the NGO World

Stirrat, R. L.; Henkel, Heiko

doi:10.1177/0002716297554001005

Cited by 118 publications

(92 citation statements)

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“…The durability and the quality of the relationship ("partners vs. facilitators") depended on the "quality" of the return-gift (see below), which reflected the reliability and trustworthiness of the recipient. The counter-gift apparently exists, even if contemporary gifts (including foreign aid) are mostly seen as based on the denial of reciprocity by placing the recipient in a dependent position, either turning them into a passive recipient of charity (Stirrat and Henkel 1997) or making them complicit "in the material order that brings [them] down" (Hattori 2006:160). The "exact return," however, remains unspecified in many gift relations: the timing, the quality, and the magnitude or amount of exchange depends on the receiver (Miller 1995:23).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By using an inductive approach, an initial set of substantive codes (e.g., gift-giving, exchange, and reciprocity) was identified during earlier phases of the research (Hattori 2001;Kapoor 2008;Karagiannis 2004;Stirrat and Henkel 1997). These encouraged me to interpret foreign aid relations within the theoretical framework of gift exchange (Mauss 2002(Mauss [1925; Pyyhtinen 2014).…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The last round of interviews, the main source of this paper, was completed in summer 2015. Data were processed by means of "constant comparative" method (Corbin andStrauss 2008 [1991]); findings were analyzed by applying the theoretical framework of gift exchange concerned with solidarity and the role of gifts in maintaining relations between actors (Blau 2003(Blau [1964; Emerson 1976;Gouldner 1960;Homans 1961;Komter 2005;Mauss 2002Mauss [1925 ;Pyyhtinen 2014;Stirrat and Henkel 1997). One of the most interesting findings is how return-gifts can be conceptualized in financially unreciprocated aid relations.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Contemporary Gifts: Solidarity, Compassion, Equality, Sacrifice, and Reciprocity from an NGO Perspective

Paragi¹

2017

Current Anthropology

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This study explores how nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at the recipient end of the foreign aid relationship perceive partnership and cooperation with donors. Empirical research in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has revealed that relations established by foreign aid resemble archaic gift exchange in the extent to which both foreign aid and gift exchange evoke concepts of solidarity, equality, reciprocity, and related power dynamics. The results of the research indicate that return-gifts exist even in financially unreciprocated foreign aid relations. Recipients return the "contemporary gifts" by providing a special material (documenting and sharing stories of suffering or poverty) to the donor, which leads to the constant circulation of the gift ("aid for pain" and "pain for aid," to put it bluntly). The study draws attention to the complex social and political factors that local NGOs need to navigate to secure contemporary gifts, while it may also strengthen the validity of critical theories concerning the missing rationale behind the official aims of foreign aid.The senses of compassion, pity, and solidarity are different but powerful forces guiding social relations between individuals, organizations, societies, and states. These emotions not only explain political actions (e.g., revolutionary motives; Arendt 1990 [1963]) but also entail benevolent gifts, foreign aid included. Giving, however, is a phenomenon that is too complex to occur without ambiguities and unintended consequences. Inspired by theories on gift, reciprocity, and social exchange (Blau 2003(Blau [1964Emerson 1976;Gouldner 1960;Homans 1961; Mauss 2002Mauss [1925; Sahlins 1972), a huge body of literature has focused on the philosophy of the gift (Derrida 1994(Derrida [1992Hénaff 2010a;Osteen 2002;Pyyhtinen 2014;Schrift 1997), on its role in social and economic relations in general (Bruni and Zamagni 2013; Kolm et al. 2006), and on its role in international relations in particular (Baldwin 1985;Furia 2015;Hattori 2001;Kapoor 2008;Karagiannis 2004;Keohane 1986).Foreign aid reflects, among other values, solidarity and compassion with the less fortunate within the international community.1 It aspires to connect quite distinct worlds: the developed and the developing, the peaceful and the conflictridden, and the democratic and the nondemocratic. Civil society actors (e.g., local and international nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] and grassroots organizations) play a prominent role in this process (Anheier 2014). However, the power of solidarity lies at least as much in exclusion from as in inclusion in relations established by gifts (Komter 2005). As emphasized by McMillan and Chavis (1986:20), "as the force of sense of community drives people closer together, it also seems to be polarizing and separating subgroups of people." Foreign aid, whether financing a macro-level program or a micro-level project implemented by an NGO, is not an exception. Modern gifts or their absence influence the distribution of goods in society and hence influence j...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Contemporary Gifts: Solidarity, Compassion, Equality, Sacrifice, and Reciprocity from an NGO Perspective

Paragi¹

2017

Current Anthropology

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“…and patterns of inequality that shape global, regional, and local relationships (Stirrat and Henkel 1997).…”

Section: Why Ecologically Unequal Exchange?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanitarianism and Unequal Exchange

Swamy

2017

JWSR

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This article examines the relationship between humanitarian aid and ecologically unequal exchange in the context of post-disaster reconstruction. I assess the manner in which humanitarian aid became a central part of the reconstruction process in India's Tamil Nadu state following the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. This article focuses on how the humanitarian "gift" of housing became a central plank of the state's efforts to push fishers inland while opening up coastal lands for various economic development projects such as ports, infrastructure, industries, and tourism. As part of the state and multilateral agency financed reconstruction process, the humanitarian aid regime provided "free" houses as gifts to recipients while expecting in return the formal abandonment of all claims to the coast. The humanitarian "gift" therefore helped depoliticize critical issues of landThis paper is concerned with the relationship between post-disaster humanitarian aid and ecologically unequal exchange. It critically examines the role of humanitarianism in mobilizing and deploying affect, primarily through the act of gift giving, in order to facilitate state plans to rebuild a devastated region by relocating its inhabitants and opening up land for investment. The specific context I examine is the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in southern India, specifically Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu state and adjacent Karaikal district (in Pondicherry state) on the Bay of Bengal coast. Prior to the tsunami two important domains of economic activity -the near-shore fishery and the coastal commons -were sought by the state for the expansion of exportled commercial fish and aquaculture production, both activities resulted in substantial ecological and patterns of inequality that shape global, regional, and local relationships (Stirrat and Henkel 1997).At the outset one might conceive of unequal exchange in terms of commodity production, exchange, and consumption. An ecologically focused approach to inequality in the world-system extends earlier concerns with the manner in which greater quantities of labor were embodied in commodities produced in the third world and exchanged with the global north at far below their real value, towards one that focuses attention on the resources and natural values embodied in these commodities (Foster and Holleman 2014;Hornborg 1998;Jorgenson 2016).Jorgenson (2016:6) defines ecologically unequal exchange as the combined "obtaining of natural capital" and "usurpation of sink-capacity" at the expense of less-developed countries. The historical role of many developing countries as taps and sinks for the accumulation needs of western capital has continued to shape production, exchange, and consumption choices and strategies in developing countries. Furthermore the world-system's inequalities are shaped by historical patterns of extraction and production that advantage the global north, whose market demands disrupt and constrain production strategies across the world. Neoliberal states in the...

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“…Stirrat and Henkel (1997) describe the esteem that attaches to the chief (and beyond, to the social group) in the agonistic form of the gift system, the potlatch, as an accumulation of symbolic capital:…”

Section: Systems Of Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Art and the Twenty-First Century Gift: Corporate Philanthropy and Government Funding in the Cultural Sector

Alexander¹

2014

Anthropological Forum

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Marcel Mauss's work on the archaic gift contributes to understandings of corporate and government support of arts organisations, or 'institutional funding'. His approach allows us to see institutional funding as a gift that is embedded in a system of exchange wherein gifts come with a variety of obligations, and self-interest and disinterestedness are inseparable.The institutional gift operates through money and contracts; nevertheless, it entails obligations to give, to receive and to reciprocate. This system of obligations has been joined, in the contemporary institutional gift, by another obligation: the obligation to ask.Institutional funding of the arts has acquired additional twenty-first century elements. The article elaborates these, using the UK as an example. It also argues that the ambivalence felt by some members of the arts world about institutional funding stems, in large part, from the obligations inherent in the gift. The recent imposition of the neo-liberal model into the arts is an intrinsic part of the exchange between institutional funders and arts organisations. Given that Mauss's work is strongly anti-liberal and anti-utilitarian, it is ironic that his ideas should prove so useful for understanding a form of twenty-first century gift in which neo-liberalism plays such a crucial role.2

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The Development Gift: The Problem of Reciprocity in the NGO World

Cited by 118 publications

References 3 publications

Contemporary Gifts: Solidarity, Compassion, Equality, Sacrifice, and Reciprocity from an NGO Perspective

Contemporary Gifts: Solidarity, Compassion, Equality, Sacrifice, and Reciprocity from an NGO Perspective

Humanitarianism and Unequal Exchange

Art and the Twenty-First Century Gift: Corporate Philanthropy and Government Funding in the Cultural Sector

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