Burden or Benefit?

Description

The effects of international aid in colonial and postcolonial contexts

In the name of benevolence, philanthropy, and humanitarian aid, individuals, groups, and nations have sought to assist others and to redress forms of suffering and deprivation. Yet the inherent imbalances of power between the giver and the recipient of this benevolence have called into question the motives and rationale for such assistance. This volume examines the evolution of the ideas and practices of benevolence, chiefly in the context of British imperialism, from the late 18th century to the present. The authors consider more than a dozen examples of practical and theoretical benevolence from the anti-slavery movement of the late 18th century to such modern activities as refugee asylum in Europe, opposition to female genital mutilation in Africa, fundraising for charities, and restoring the wetlands in southern, post-Saddam Iraq.

1. Introduction: What's Wrong with Benevolence?, Chris Tiffin and Helen Gilbert
2. A Short History of Benevolence, Patrick Brantlinger
I. Colonial Burdens?
3. Thomas Fowell Buxton and the Networks of British Humanitarianism, Alan Lester
4. Settler Colonialism, Utility, Romance: E. G. Wakefield's Letter from Sydney, Lisa O'Connell
5. Benevolence, Slavery, and the Periodicals, Chris Tiffin
6. "This Nineteenth Century of Progress and Humanity": The Life and Times of Frederick Weld, Leigh Dale
7. Women, Philanthropy and Imperialism in Nineteenth-century Britain, Sarah Richardson
8. Blixen's Africa: Wonderland of the Self, Kirsten Holst Petersen
II. Contemporary Benefits?
9. From Benevolence to Partnership: The Persistence of Colonial Legacies in Aotearoa-New Zealand, Chris Prentice
10. Refusing Benevolence: Gandhi, Nehru, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Relations, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
11. Rescuing African Women and Girls: Benevolence and the Civilizing Mission in Anti-FGM Discourse, Wairimu Njambi
12. Benevolence and Humiliation: Thinking Migrants, Integration, and Security in Europe, Prem Kumar Rajaram
13. Hearts, Minds, and Wetlands: Stakeholders and Ecosystem Restoration from Florida's Everglades to the Mesopotamian Marshlands, William E. O'Brien
Notes on Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Social Science
• Charities
• Sociologie, société et politique
• África
• Charity
• Charitable organization
• Philanthropy
• Philantropy
• World
• Cultural Studies
• History
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 12 mars 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253027825
• Langue: English

Extrait

BURDEN OR BENEFIT?
PHILANTHROPIC AND NONPROFIT STUDIES
Dwight F. Burlingame and David C. Hammack, editors
BURDEN OR BENEFIT?
IMPERIAL BENEVOLENCE AND ITS LEGACIES
Edited by Helen Gilbert and Chris Tiffin
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
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© 2008 by Indiana University Press All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or byany means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying andrecording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, withoutpermission in writing from the publisher. The Association ofAmerican University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutesthe only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirementsof American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanenceof Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burden or benefit?: imperial benevolence and its legacies / edited by Helen Gilbert and Chris Tiffin.        p. cm. — (Philanthropic and nonprofit studies)   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN-13: 978-0-253-35077-0 (cloth: alk. paper)   ISBN-13: 978-0-253-21960-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Benevolence —Great Britain—Colonies—History. 2. Social ethics—Great Britain—Colonies—History. I. Gilbert, Helen, date II. Tiffin, Chris.   BJ1474.B87 2008   177’.7—dc22
2007035719
1  2  3  4  5  13  12  11  09  08
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1. Introduction: What’s Wrong with Benevolence?
Chris Tiffin and Helen Gilbert
2. A Short History of (Imperial) Benevolence
Patrick Brantlinger
Part 1. Colonial Burdens?
3. Thomas Fowell Buxton and the Networks of British Humanitarianism
Alan Lester
4. Settler Colonialism, Utility, Romance: E. G. Wakefield’s Letter from Sydney
Lisa O’Connell
5. Benevolence, Slavery, and the Periodicals
Chris Tiffin
6. “This Nineteenth Century of Progress and Humanity”: The Life and Times of Frederick Weld (1823–1891)
Leigh Dale
7. Women, Philanthropy, and Imperialism in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
Sarah Richardson
8. Blixen’s Africa: Wonderland of the Self
Kirsten Holst Petersen
Part 2. Contemporary Benefits?
9. From Benevolence to Partnership: The Persistence of Colonial Legacies in Aotearoa–New Zealand
Chris Prentice
10. Refusing Benevolence: Gandhi, Nehru, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Relations
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
11. Rescuing African Women and Girls from Female Genital Practices: A Benevolent and Civilizing Mission
Wairimũ Ngarũiya Njambi
12. Benevolence and Humiliation: Thinking Migrants, Integration, and Security in Europe
Prem Kumar Rajaram
13. Hearts, Minds, and Wetlands: Stakeholders and Ecological Restoration from the Everglades to the Mesopotamian Marshlands
William E. O’Brien
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to acknowledge the University of Queensland for seed fundingof the project under its Small Grants scheme, and the members of the QueenslandPostcolonial Group for wide-ranging and productive discussion in the developmentof several of the papers. Amanda Lynch provided research assistanceto the project with customary energy, accuracy and imagination and Carol A.Kennedy scrutinised the manuscript with sympathetic yet forensic thoroughness.The editors would also like to thank the contributors for their generous responsesto requests for clarification or supplementation of their arguments andfor their patience as the book advanced to publication.
BURDEN OR BENEFIT?
1 Introduction: What’s Wrong with Benevolence?
Chris Tiffin and Helen Gilbert
A cartoon in the New Yorker shows an executive on his way to work tryingto avoid a panhandler who asks, “Spare a little eye contact?” 1 This cartoon wittilypresents some of the ambivalence and awkwardness associated with that relationshipvariously called “benevolence,” “philanthropy,” “charity,” or “humanitarianism.”It bespeaks goodwill, but it also speaks inequality; it involves thewillingness and power to give, but it also involves demands and obligations thatare sometimes complicated and unwelcome. “Benevolence,” like “peace” or“freedom,” is a quality that seems axiomatically positive and unexceptionable.To wish for the well-being of others, to desire their happiness, is manifestlypreferable to its antithesis. Yet in 1978 William Gaylin noted that it was “fashionablethese days to view... benevolence as obscene.” 2 Why should somethingso palpably positive for human life engender not only suspicion but even outrightrejection? What’s wrong with benevolence? This book proposes no glibanswer, but rather raises a set of philosophical and historical questions that areas fascinating as they are complex.
Optimistic philosophers see benevolence as innate to humans. They proposethat we are naturally attracted to other human beings and are disposed towish for their happiness and betterment. Moralists such as the third Earl ofShaftesbury (and after him Francis Hutcheson) even made benevolence the definitionaltest for virtue, while Percy Shelley believed that two human beingshad only to come together for the “social sympathies” to be aroused betweenthem, and that love was “the great secret of morals.” 3 For others, however, humanswere either not naturally benevolent (Thomas Hobbes) or benevolentonly within a specific range of contexts (David Hume). 4 Such limitations, ofcourse, raise the question of the relationship between benevolence and self-interest.Shaftesbury was able to argue that self-interest was compatible with benevolence so long as the interest of the species or the whole order of creationwas not compromised, 5 but a suspicion about self-interest has lingered, andgenuine benevolence has been thought to exclude donor gain, to overlap with, ifnot be identical to, altruism.
Benevolence thus has some inherent ambivalence as a concept, but the realproblems emerge only when we look at its practical implementation. The practice of benevolence is all-important, for we know benevolence not directly butby its consequences. Benevolence is essentially a disposition or attitude, but itmanifests itself in practical relationships and actions, and it is only throughthose actions that the “good” of the benevolent attitude can be assessed. 6 Oftenwhen we speak of “benevolence” we are actually discussing “beneficence”—notwilling well, but doing well. The major complexity comes with the considerationof the recipient of the benevolent action. It is useful, as David H. Smithhas done, to consider benevolence within the economy of the gift. 7 Smith notesthree levels of exchange, one a clear market transaction in which a good or serviceis offered in exchange for another (or a pecuniary sum), a second in which agift is offered in expectation of a reciprocal offering within the social structureat some time in the future, and a third in which a gift is offered with no expectationthat any reciprocal offering of any sort will be made. Smith’s example ofthe last category is someone being suddenly given concert tickets by a completestranger, and he notes that an element of “surprise” is often associated with thisform of giving. 8
The first category needs little explication because it is an overt exchangethat makes no claim that any spirit of “willing well” is involved. Two partiessimply “give” each other some good that furthers their individual self-interestwithout any motive apart from the satisfaction of that self-interest. We shouldnote, however, that there is a long tradition of associating commercial tradewith the mutual goodwill (and by extension, ethical positiveness) of the participants.Back in the eighteenth century, Joseph Addison ebulliently praised theRoyal Exchange as a site that evoked general benevolence: “As I am a great loverof Mankind, my heart naturally overflows with Pleasure at the sight of a prosperousand happy Multitude.... I am wonderfully delighted to see such a Bodyof Men thriving in their own private Fortunes, and at the same time promotingthe Public Stock.” 9
Smith’s second category is clearly exemplified to different extents in a rangeof societies. In Western societies one is invited to a wedding banquet and expectedto offer a gift to the newlywed couple. Not to do so would be to violatean unstated but clearly understood protocol. In Melanesian or Pacific AmericanNative societies, however, the exchange conventions of kula or potlatch respectivelycan be far more complicated, with much more stringent rules about the circulation of wealth. These latter exchange networks remind us that whilethere is an element of reciprocity in all such gift exchanges, the exchanged giftsmight not be equal. In fact, creating a deliberate imbalance by extravagant givingis a way of claiming