Conference Review
Enacting Improvement: the Ethics of Development and Philanthropy
6 October 2008
The one-day conference, Enacting Improvement: the ethics of development and philanthropy, was held on the 6th of October 2008 at CRASSH. Around 35 people were present throughout the day. The conference focused on development and charity workers, volunteers and agencies, and considered the contingent, complex and contradictory ethical frameworks that such practitioners in the enactment of improvement. The keynote address, The Impulse of Philanthropy, was given by Erica Bornstein from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Erica provided a vivid description of different practices of dan, or the Indic practice of giving, and argued for more attention to the giving impulse rather than just the outcomes of aid and charity. Harri Englund chaired the session, and drew connections with Bornstein's earlier work on child sponsorship programmes in Zimbabwe.
The first panel provided three diverse perspectives on development workers. David Lewis analysed the life histories of professionals who crossed between civil service and NGOs in Bangladesh, the UK and the Philippines. Monique Nuijen explored the ethical issues arising within slum upgrading programmes in Brazil from the perspectives of development workers and beneficiaries. The panel ended with Dinah Rajak discussing corporate social responsibility and philanthropy within a South African transnational mining company.
The second panel focused on medical NGOs in different contexts: Alexandra Argenti deconstructed the concept of empowerment and voice within NGOs providing trauma counselling to war victims in Sri Lanka; Ann Kelly looked at malarial medical research as development work in the Gambia; and Peter Redfield explored the notion of 'Biomorality' through a study of non-profit pharmaceuticals.
The third panel addressed affective relations within NGO and charity work. Thomas Yarrow discussed the moral ambiguities of friendship amongst catholic development NGOs in Ghana, while Deborah Mindry explicated the gendered ethics of caring and the depoliticizing of philanthropic power in South Africa.
Catherine Trundle and Nayanika Mathur
