Enacting Improvement: the Ethics of Development and Philanthropy

Description

Catherine Trundle and Nayanika Mathur (Social Anthropology, Cambridge)

 

The words 'development' and 'philanthropy' have slipped with great ease into the lexicon of 21st-century societies. Despite being billion-dollar global industries, the underlying premises of these practices — for instance altruism and the will to improve — are yet to be fully theorized. Focusing on the ethics of development and charity workers, volunteers and agencies, this conference will consider the contingent, complex and contradictory ethical frameworks that guide agents of philanthropy and development in the enactment of improvement. Attention will be paid to the ways that abstract ethical principles, such as utopian discourses of salvation, liberation, empowerment, humanism and freedom, must contend with the often messy pragmatics of administering aid and charity, as well as alternative visions of help and need from aid and charity recipients.

 

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