Having People, Having Heart: Charity, Sustainable Development, and Problems of Dependence in Central Uganda - Softcover

Scherz, China

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022611967X ISBN 13: 9780226119670

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2014

Synopsis

Believing that charity inadvertently legitimates social inequality and fosters dependence, many international development organizations have increasingly sought to replace material aid with efforts to build self-reliance and local institutions. But in some cultures—like those in rural Uganda, where Having People, Having Heart takes place—people see this shift not as an effort toward empowerment but as a suspect refusal to redistribute wealth. Exploring this conflict, China Scherz balances the negative assessments of charity that have led to this shift with the viewpoints of those who actually receive aid.

Through detailed studies of two different orphan support organizations in Uganda, Scherz shows how many Ugandans view material forms of Catholic charity as deeply intertwined with their own ethics of care and exchange. With a detailed examination of this overlooked relationship in hand, she reassesses the generally assumed paradox of material aid as both promising independence and preventing it. The result is a sophisticated demonstration of the powerful role that anthropological concepts of exchange, value, personhood, and religion play in the politics of international aid and development.

About this title

Review:

""Having People, Having Heart" is a profound ethnographic interrogation of sustainable development and Christian charity in Uganda. Breaking new ground in the anthropology of ethics, Scherz explores how local commitment to the morality of patron-client relationships troubles the ethical ambitions that drive NGO work. In a text that is at once ethnographically complex and exceptionally well argued, and that attends as much to the ethics of institutional as to personal life, she offers the kind of analysis of the politics and morality of aid in the contemporary world that reminds us why anthropology remains a crucial discipline going forward."--Joel Robbins, University of Cambridge

""Having People, Having Heart" is a fascinating and original book that unsettles preconceptions--and social science theories--about the evils of charity. Scherz convincingly shows how Ugandan nuns' practices of charity, which center not upon autonomy but on interdependence, are a better fit with the relational ethics of the region than are NGO workers' practices of development. This regional ethics of interdependence prescribes correct (and correctly flexible) relations between patron and client. In such a worldview charity is no insult and independence from others no laudable goal."--Claire Wendland, University of Wisconsin Madison"

"Having People, Having Heart"is a fascinating and original book that unsettles preconceptions and social science theories about the evils of charity. Scherz convincingly shows how Ugandan nuns practices of charity, which center not upon autonomy but on interdependence, are a better fitwith the relational ethics of the regionthan are NGO workers practices of development. This regional ethics of interdependence prescribes correct (and correctly flexible) relations between patron and client. In such a worldview charity is no insult and independence from others no laudable goal. --Claire Wendland, University of Wisconsin Madison"

"Having People, Having Heart" is a profound ethnographic interrogation of sustainable development and Christian charity in Uganda. Breaking new ground in the anthropology of ethics, Scherz explores how local commitment to the morality of patron-client relationships troubles the ethical ambitions that drive NGO work. In a text that is at once ethnographically complex and exceptionally well argued, and that attends as much to the ethics of institutional as to personal life, she offers the kind of analysis of the politics and morality of aid in the contemporary world that reminds us why anthropology remains a crucial discipline going forward. --Joel Robbins, University of Cambridge"

Having People, Having Heartis a fascinating and original book that unsettles preconceptions and social science theories about the evils of charity. Scherz convincingly shows how Ugandan nuns practices of charity, which center not upon autonomy but on interdependence, are a better fitwith the relational ethics of the regionthan are NGO workers practices of development. This regional ethics of interdependence prescribes correct (and correctly flexible) relations between patron and client. In such a worldview charity is no insult and independence from others no laudable goal. --Claire Wendland, University of Wisconsin Madison"

Having People, Having Heart is a profound ethnographic interrogation of sustainable development and Christian charity in Uganda. Breaking new ground in the anthropology of ethics, Scherz explores how local commitment to the morality of patron-client relationships troubles the ethical ambitions that drive NGO work. In a text that is at once ethnographically complex and exceptionally well argued, and that attends as much to the ethics of institutional as to personal life, she offers the kind of analysis of the politics and morality of aid in the contemporary world that reminds us why anthropology remains a crucial discipline going forward. --Joel Robbins, University of Cambridge"

"Having People, Having Heart is a fascinating and original book that unsettles preconceptions--and social science theories--about the evils of charity. Scherz convincingly shows how Ugandan nuns' practices of charity, which center not upon autonomy but on interdependence, are a better fit with the relational ethics of the region than are NGO workers' practices of development. This regional ethics of interdependence prescribes correct (and correctly flexible) relations between patron and client. In such a worldview charity is no insult and independence from others no laudable goal."--Claire Wendland, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Having People, Having Heart is a profound ethnographic interrogation of sustainable development and Christian charity in Uganda. Breaking new ground in the anthropology of ethics, Scherz explores how local commitment to the morality of patron-client relationships troubles the ethical ambitions that drive NGO work. In a text that is at once ethnographically complex and exceptionally well argued, and that attends as much to the ethics of institutional as to personal life, she offers the kind of analysis of the politics and morality of aid in the contemporary world that reminds us why anthropology remains a crucial discipline going forward."--Joel Robbins, University of Cambridge

About the Author:

China Scherz is assistant professor of anthropology at Reed College.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 022611967X
• ISBN 13: 9780226119670
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180