The Aid Triangle: Recognizing the Human Dynamics of Dominance, Justice and Identity: Recognising the Human Dynamics of Dominance, Justice and Identity (Development Studies Association) - Hardcover

MacLachlan, Malcolm; Carr, Stuart; McAuliffe, Eilish

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1842779109 ISBN 13: 9781842779101

Verlag: Zed Books Ltd, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

The Aid Triangle focuses on the human dynamics of international aid and illustrates how the aid system incorporates power relationships, and therefore relationships of dominance. Using the concept of a triangle of dominance, justice and identity, this timely work explains how the experience of injustice is both a challenge and a stimulus to personal, community and national identity, and how such identities underlie the human potential that international aid should seek to enrich. This insightful new critique provides for the reader an innovative and constructive framework for producing more empowering and more effective aid.

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Professor Malcolm MacLachlan is with the Centre for Global Health and the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and is currently a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Rehabilitation Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa and at the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard University, USA. He is the Director of the International Doctoral School for Global Health.

Stuart C. Carr is Professor of Psychology, Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychology Programme, Massey University, New Zealand. He has worked and lived in UK, Malawi, Remote Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, and New Zealand/Aotearoa. His books are among the first to examine poverty reduction from an I/O, work psychology perspective.He co-edits The Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology.

Eilish Mc Auliffe is Director of the Centre for Global Health at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She has worked as a clinician, consultant and academic and lived in Ireland, UK, South African and Malawi, where she worked for Unicef and Irish Aid.
Professor Malcolm MacLachlan is with the Centre for Global Health and the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and is currently a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Rehabilitation Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa and at the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard University, USA. He is the Director of the International Doctoral School for Global Health.

Stuart C. Carr is Professor of Psychology, Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychology Programme, Massey University, New Zealand. He has worked and lived in UK, Malawi, Remote Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, and New Zealand/Aotearoa. His books are among the first to examine poverty reduction from an I/O, work psychology perspective.He co-edits The Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology.

Eilish Mc Auliffe is Director of the Centre for Global Health at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She has worked as a clinician, consultant and academic and lived in Ireland, UK, South African and Malawi, where she worked for Unicef and Irish Aid.

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The Aid Triangle

Recognizing the Human Dynamics of Dominance, Justice and Identity

By Malcolm MacLachlan, Stuart C. Carr, Eilish McAuliffe

Fernwood Publishing and Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2010 Malcolm MacLachlan, Stuart C. Carr, Eilish McAuliffe
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84277-910-1

Contents

Tables, figures and boxes, viii, 
Acknowledgements, ix, 
1 Introduction, 1, 
2 Aid, 10, 
3 Dominance, 23, 
4 Justice, 59, 
5 Identity, 80, 
6 Learning, 119, 
7 Conclusion, 141, 
Bibliography, 154, 
Index, 167, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1 Oxfamming the world

Binyavanga Wainaina's 'Continental Drift' column in the Mail & Guardian (South Africa) of 30 November 2007 presented an angry and sarcastic image of aid that people in the donor countries rarely see:

Hello kitty kitty kitty ... Are you an orphan? Are you Sudanese? Chadian? Are you sub-Saharan African suffering from mild mental retardation? Are you an African woman suffering from the African male? Would you like an Oxfam biscuit? Organic anti-retrovirals? Have you been raped? You might not know it, but you are an orphan, a refugee. Can we fly 103 of you to France to be loved? We can breastfeed you. We can make you a Darfur orphan. Even if you are not. If you are black and under 10 years old, please come and talk to us.

Come kitty kitty.

We can save you from yourself. We can save ourselves from our terrible selves. Help us to Oxfam the whole black world, to make it a better place....

Instead of sweatshops, we will have Ubuntu shops where you can arrive in biodegradable loincloths to make bone jewellery for caring people who earn $1million a year, live in San Francisco or Cape Town and feel bad about this. In our future world you will have three balanced meals a day.

In the afternoons Jeffrey Sachs will come and show the boys how to build a gender-friendly communal anti-poverty village where all base human emotions – lust, greed and competition – will be sustainably developed out of your heads, along with truly dangerous ideas such as rebellion. After playing non-violent games (rope skipping and hugging), you will write letters to your loving step-parent in Toronto. For an hour a day we will teach you how to make clothes, shelter and shoes out of recycled bottle tops in Ndebele colours....

Trust us. You can't do it yourselves. We have dedicated our lives to you. Come kitties, come to mummy (p. 32).

2 Philanthropy vs the generosity of the taxpayer

A letter in the Christmas edition of the Irish Times, 2007, presented a somewhat cynical impression, not so much of the gift-giving of the 'The Great and the Good', but of their eulogizing in comparison to the 42 per cent tax 'generosity' of the average Irish taxpayer:

Madam,

No doubt JP McManus deserves the award of Philanthropist of the Year and Niall Mellon is a worthy recipient of International Philanthropist of the Year. Sir Anthony O'Reilly basks in the warm glow of his altruism. Bono and Bob Geldof are fêted and renowned for their efforts at eliminating global poverty.

However, as a lowly taxpayer I and others like me have few opportunities to don a tuxedo or affect a carefully cultivated 'scruffy look'. Meanwhile every Euro in income tax paid by me and the rest of the State's resident workforce disappears into health and other state services to little acclaim.

I am not at all envious of those whose huge wealth requires that they live in offshore tax havens or who are able to structure their wealth in tax-efficient vehicles. I fully accept that the taxation system be used to fuel an entrepreneurial culture. However, I find it increasingly nauseating to have to endure the fawning and sycophantic eulogies delivered on those who are fortunate enough to select pet projects for their patronage.

I have no choice about where my money is spent. ... I too could manage a wry knowing smile as my generosity was fêted and my modesty would be evident in my thank you speech. Perhaps the Revenue Commissioners might institute the inaugural awards ceremony for Taxpayer of the Year, 2008 (Michael J. Shovelin, Sligo, p. 17).

This book is about the human dynamics of international aid. We illustrate how the aid system incorporates power relationships, and therefore relationships of dominance. We explore how such dominance can be both a cause and a consequence of injustice. We explain how the experience of injustice is both a challenge and a stimulus to personal, community and national identity, and how such identities underlie the human potential that international aid should seek to enrich. We argue that these three concepts can provide a framework that can be used to triangulate and improve our understanding of why aid sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, and more importantly how to make it work better.

Using the concepts of dominance, justice and identity, The Aid Triangle seeks to provide a framework for producing more empowering and more effective aid, based on an understanding of the human dynamics through which all aid must flow. We consider how people take actions which strive to maintain or achieve identity, esteem and empowerment, and how aid efforts and development work may present obstacles to this because, ironically, the human dynamics and symbolism embedded in the processes of development work often challenge rather than promote individuals' and communities' sense of identity. We consider the psychology behind the political reality of international aid and the dynamics that are common to relationships at all levels of the aid system.

This book thus seeks a new paradigm for aid, by thinking it through, in Schumacher's words, 'as if people mattered'. Aid is an emotive subject, both from the supplier's and the receiver's side, as is illustrated in the examples above. It resonates powerfully with ideas of justice and identity, and the nature of relationships between people.

The book has been written at a time when the global economy and global society are being forced to recognize the unfortunate consequences of unregulated and often unrestrained greed. We are cognizant that the interconnections between domnance, injustice and identity are perhaps relevant to a much wider arc of human activity than international aid. Let us first, though, explore briefly the concept of development.

The idea of development

Just what is it that international aid is supposed to be aiding? Ideally, it is the poorest of the poor; ideally, it is a process that empowers and enables the poor to take concrete steps to stay alive and to improve the quality and length of their lives. But what do we call that? It's not economic growth; that may be part of the process that achieves it, but it should not, in its own right, be a goal (as we argue later). People often call both the process and the outcome of the process of things getting better in poor countries 'development'. The term in itself is not problematic, but the uses it is put to are. For instance, the aid community talk about 'least developed countries', 'developing countries' and 'developed countries'. It is generally felt in the aid industry that people who are pedantic about the use of such terms are a bit of a pain in the arse! That everybody knows their limitations, but 'ah, sure, we'll use them anyway, and we don't mean any harm by them'.

Regardless of such thoughtless good intentions, what happens is that ideas of the extent of development...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Zed Books Ltd
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1842779109
• ISBN 13: 9781842779101
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 184
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland