Drawing on Mauss's classical essay on “The Gift,” the authors examine the relationship between Western development nongovernmental organizations and their Southern counterparts. It is argued that what starts out as a seemingly free gift is transformed into a heavily conditional gift when it reaches the ultimate recipient. Despite the apparent one-way flow of goods, there are in practice symbolic forms of reciprocity that tie together the Northern donors and Southern receivers. While the complexities of this relationship do not make partnerships between North and South impossible, they certainly make them problematic: there is no such thing as a free gift.
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References
1.
Heiko Henkel and Roderick L. Stirrat, “Participation as Spiritual Experience: The Religious Roots of New Development Orthodoxy” (Paper delivered at the “Boundaries and Identities” conference, Edinburgh, 24-26 Oct. 1996).
2.
Robert Chambers , Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last (London: Intermediate Technology, 1997).
3.
3. Michael Edwards, “Die Helfer des Nordens am Scheideweg,”Der Überlick, 4:86-89 (1996).
4.
4. See Henkel and Stirrat, “Participation as Spiritual Experience.”
5.
5. Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditisation as Process,” in The Social Life of Things, ed. A. Appadurai (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
6.
6. Alan Fowler, “Distant Obligations: Speculations on NGO Funding and the Global Market,”Review of African Political Economy, 55:9-29 (1992).
7.
Ian Smillie , The Alms Bazaar: Altruism Under Fire: Non-Profit Organisations and International Development (London: Intermediate Technology, 1995).
8.
8. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Research for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Routledge, 1990). In passing, it should be noted that there are two English translations of The Gift. The second one, published in 1990, is far superior to the earlier version, which contained a number of very dubious passages.
9.
9. Mauss, Gift, p. 11.
10.
10. Ibid., pp. 5-6.
11.
11. Ibid., p. 74.
12.
12. Jonathan Parry, “The Gift, the Indian Gift and the `Indian Gift,' ”Man, 21:453-473 (1986).
13.
13. Of course, there are schemes that involve sponsorship of named individuals which deny this anonymity. Such schemes, however, are frequently viewed with suspicion in the NGO world because of issues of patronage.
14.
14. Peter Burnell, Charity, Politics and the Third World (London: Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1991).
15.
15. Mary Douglas, “Foreword: No Free Gifts,” in Gift, by Mauss, p. vii.
16.
16. See Michael D. Woost , “Alternative Vocabularies of Development? `Community' and `Participation' in Development Discourse in Sri Lanka,” in Discourses of Development: An thropological Perspectives, ed. R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat (Oxford: Berg, forthcoming).
17.
17. Smillie, Alms Bazaar, p. 181.
18.
18. Roland Hodson, “Elephant Loose in the Jungle: The World Bank and NGOs in Sri Lanka,” in NGOs, States and Donors, ed. Hulme and Edwards.
19.
19. On the wider patronal roles of NGOs, see the references given in Katy Gardner and David Lewis, Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenge (London: Pluto Press, 1996), p. 109.
20.
20. It is tempting to compare the relationship between Northern and Southern NGOs with the relationship between colonial governments and local political entities under systems of indirect rule.
21.
21. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research in Education, ed. J. Richardson (London: Greenwood Press, 1986), p. 242.
