No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy - Softcover

McGoey, Linsey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784786233 ISBN 13: 9781784786236

Publisher: Verso Books, 2016

Synopsis

The charitable sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. Nearly half of the more than 85,000 private foundations in the United States have come into being since the year 2000. Just under 5,000 more were established in 2011 alone. This deluge of philanthropy has helped create a world where billionaires wield more power over education policy, global agriculture, and global health than ever before.

In No Such Thing as a Free Gift, author and academic Linsey McGoey puts this new golden age of philanthropy under the microscope-paying particular attention to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As large charitable organizations replace governments as the providers of social welfare, their largesse becomes suspect. The businesses fronting the money often create the very economic instability and inequality the foundations are purported to solve. We are entering an age when the ideals of social justice are dependent on the strained rectitude and questionable generosity of the mega-rich.

About this title

About the Author

LINSEY MCGOEY is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. She has been a member of the World Health Organization's expert steering group on the impact of a human rights-based approach to health. She has published reviews and op-eds for the Guardian, Open Democracy, Spectator, and Globe and Mail. Prior to Essex, Linsey held research fellowships at the University of Oxford.

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1784786233
• ISBN 13: 9781784786236
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304