Author: Erica Bornstein Publisher: Stanford University Press ISBN: 0804782083 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
“[This] artful ethnography . . . challenges us to reconsider both what giving looks like, and the relational possibilities of anthropological practice itself.” —Jocelyn L. Chua, American Ethnologist While most people would not consider sponsoring an orphan’s education to be in the same category as international humanitarian aid, both acts are linked by the desire to give. Many studies focus on the outcomes of humanitarian work, but the impulses that inspire people to engage in the first place receive less attention. Disquieting Gifts takes a close look at people working on humanitarian projects in New Delhi to explore why they engage in philanthropic work, what humanitarianism looks like to them, and the ethical and political tangles they encounter. Motivated by debates surrounding Marcel Mauss’s The Gift, Bornstein investigates specific cases of people engaged in humanitarian work to reveal different perceptions of assistance to strangers versus assistance to kin, how the impulse to give to others in distress is tempered by its regulation, suspicions about recipient suitability, and why the figure of the orphan is so valuable in humanitarian discourse. The book also focuses on vital humanitarian efforts that often go undocumented and ignored and explores the role of empathy in humanitarian work. “Bornstein . . . delineate[s] a ‘global economy of giving’ while questioning Western preconceptions about humanitarianism.” —Jonathan Benthall, Times Literary Supplement “Insightful and beautifully written . . . accessible and engaging.” —Pierre Minn, Social Anthropology “Conveys deep insights into international and intra-Indian charity and volunteering.” —Jonathan Benthall, University College London “Reveals the complexity of the contemporary moral economies of the gift.” —Didier Fassin, Institute for Advanced Study, author of Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present
Author: Pheng Cheah Publisher: Duke University Press ISBN: 0822374536 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
In What Is a World? Pheng Cheah, a leading theorist of cosmopolitanism, offers the first critical consideration of world literature’s cosmopolitan vocation. Addressing the failure of recent theories of world literature to inquire about the meaning of world, Cheah articulates a normative theory of literature’s world-making power by creatively synthesizing four philosophical accounts of the world as a temporal process: idealism, Marxist materialism, phenomenology, and deconstruction. Literature opens worlds, he provocatively suggests, because it is a force of receptivity. Cheah compellingly argues for postcolonial literature’s exemplarity as world literature through readings of narrative fiction by Michelle Cliff, Amitav Ghosh, Nuruddin Farah, Ninotchka Rosca, and Timothy Mo that show how these texts open up new possibilities for remaking the world by negotiating with the inhuman force that gives time and deploying alternative temporalities to resist capitalist globalization.
Author: Frederick Klaits Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319542443 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 189
Book Description
This collection revisits classical anthropological treatments of the gift by documenting how people may be valued both through the requests they make and through what they give. Many humanitarian practitioners, the authors propose, regard giving to those in need as the epitome of moral action but are liable to view those people’s requests for charity as merely utilitarian. Yet in many religious discourses, prayers and requests for alms are highly valued as moral acts, obligatory for establishing relationships with the divine. Framing the moral qualities of asking and giving in conjunction with each other, the contributors explore the generation of trust and mistrust, the politics of charity and accountability, and tensions between universalism and particularism in religious philanthropy.
Author: John J. Bodinger de Uriarte Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 149858327X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 383
Book Description
With contributions from anthropologists and cultural theorists, Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experienceexamines the culture and cultural implications of student travel. Drawing on rich case studies from the Arctic to Africa, Asia to the Americas, this impressive array of experts focuses on the challenges and ethical implications of student engagement, service and volunteering, immersion, research in the field, local community engagement, and crafting a new generation of active, engaged global citizens. This volume is a must-read for students, practitioners, and scholars. For more information, check out this presentation by Michael A. Di Giovine, coeditor of Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience, or these podcast episodes: Sustainable Study Abroad with Dr. Michael Di Giovine by ODLI on Air Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience by Meaningful Journeys
Author: Rina Agarwala Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197586422 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
A sweeping history of how India has used its poor and elite emigrants to further Indian development and how Indian emigrants have reacted, resisted, and re-shaped India's development in response. How can states and migrants themselves explain the causes and effects of global migration? The Migration-Development Regime introduces a novel analytical framework to help answer this question in India, the world's largest emigrant exporter and the world's largest remittance-receiving country. Drawing on an archival analysis of Indian government documents, an original data base of Indian migrants' transnational organizations, and over 200 interviews with poor and elite Indian emigrants, recruiters, and government officials, this book exposes the vital role the Indian state (from the colonial era to the present day) has long played in forging and legitimizing class inequalities within India through the management of international emigration. It also exposes how poor and elite emigrants have differentially resisted and re-shaped state emigration practices over time. By taking a long and class-based view, this book recasts contemporary migration not simply as a problematic function of neoliberalism or as a development panacea for sending countries, but as a dynamic historical process that sending states and migrants have long used to shape local development. In doing so, it re-defines the primary problems of global migration, exposes the material and ideological impact that migration has on sending state development, and isolates what is truly novel about contemporary migration.
Author: Giuseppe Bolotta Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 1526149397 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
This innovative and timely reassessment of political theology opens new lines of critical investigation into the intersections of religion and politics in contemporary Asia. Moving beyond a focus on the (post-) Christian West, this volume locates ‘development’ – conceptualised as a set of modern, transnational networks of ideas and practices of improvement that connect geographically disparate locations – as a vital focal point for critical investigations into Asian political theologies. Investigating the sacred dimensions of power through concepts of transcendence, sacrifice, victimhood, aspiration, and salvation, this collection demonstrates how European and Asian modernities are bound together through genealogical, institutional, and theo-political entanglements, as well as a long history of global interactions. With contributions by leading anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists, this volume brings new theoretical approaches into conversation with detailed empirical case studies grounded in modern Asia. In doing so, it offers a fresh and critical analysis of the ways in which political theology is imagined, materialised, and contested both within and beyond nation-states.
Author: Arzoo Osanloo Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 1805394932 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 513
Book Description
The vast majority of forced migrants & refugees seek shelter and respite in countries of the Global South, where humanitarian spaces and practices of care are no exceptions to international humanitarianism but rather part of a project founded on hybrid forms of care that include local and vernacular practices. Care in a Time of Humanitarianism presents complex histories of forced migration and humanitarianism in an accessible way. It applies a comparative approach to highlight the diverse cultural and religious traditions of care that are adopted across the Global South for the “distant others”.
Author: Anke Schwittay Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 113507609X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 206
Book Description
New Media and International Development is the first in-depth examination of microfinance’s enduring popularity with Northern publics. Through a case study of Kiva.org, the world’s first person-to-person microlending website, and other microfinance organizations, the book argues that international development efforts have an affective dimension. This is fostered through narrative and visual representations, through the performance of development rituals and through bonds of fellowship between Northern donors and Southern recipients. These practices constitute people in the global North as everyday humanitarians and mobilize their affective investments, which are financial, social and emotional investments in distant others to alleviate their poverty. This book draws on ethnographic material from the US, India and Indonesia and the anthropological and development studies literature on humanitarianism, affect and the public faces of development. It opens up novel avenues of research into the formation of new development subjects in the global North. This book will appeal to researchers and students of international development, anthropology, media studies and related fields, as well as practitioners and professionals in the field of international development
Author: Melani McAlister Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190213434 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 409
Book Description
Award of Merit, 2019 Christianity Today Book Awards (History/Biography) More than forty years ago, conservative Christianity emerged as a major force in American political life. Since then the movement has been analyzed and over-analyzed, declared triumphant and, more than once, given up for dead. But because outside observers have maintained a near-relentless focus on domestic politics, the most transformative development over the last several decades--the explosive growth of Christianity in the global south--has gone unrecognized by the wider public, even as it has transformed evangelical life, both in the US and abroad. The Kingdom of God Has No Borders offers a daring new perspective on conservative Christianity by shifting the lens to focus on the world outside US borders. Melani McAlister offers a sweeping narrative of the last fifty years of evangelical history, weaving a fascinating tale that upends much of what we know--or think we know--about American evangelicals. She takes us to the Congo in the 1960s, where Christians were enmeshed in a complicated interplay of missionary zeal, Cold War politics, racial hierarchy, and anti-colonial struggle. She shows us how evangelical efforts to convert non-Christians have placed them in direct conflict with Islam at flash points across the globe. And she examines how Christian leaders have fought to stem the tide of HIV/AIDS in Africa while at the same time supporting harsh repression of LGBTQ communities. Through these and other stories, McAlister focuses on the many ways in which looking at evangelicals abroad complicates conventional ideas about evangelicalism. We can't truly understand how conservative Christians see themselves and their place in the world unless we look beyond our shores.
Author: Erica Bornstein
Author: Hilal Alkan
Author: Pheng Cheah
Author: Frederick Klaits
Author: John J. Bodinger de Uriarte
Author: Rina Agarwala
Author: Giuseppe Bolotta
Author: Arzoo Osanloo
Author: Anke Schwittay
Author: Melani McAlister