October 2, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Burden or Benefit? Imperial Benevolence and Its Legacies
edited by Helen Gilbert and Chris Tiffin
Philanthropy “bespeaks goodwill, but it also speaks inequality; it involves the willingness and power to give, but it also involves demands and obligations that are sometimes complicated and unwelcome,” write Chris Tiffin and Helen Gilbert in the introduction to this book of essays on colonialism, international philanthropic relationships, and the political effects of philanthropy.
Mr. Tiffin is an editor who teaches at the University of Queensland, and Ms. Gilbert is an author and a professor of theater at the University of London.
“Is benevolence always corrupted by the asymmetries of power that produce its possibility?” the editors ask.
The book, a collection of 13 essays, discusses the history of imperialism — particularly the history of the British Empire — and raises questions about whether its legacy of international aid helps or hurts recipient governments.
The essays also look at how colonial and postcolonial philanthropy has influenced ideas like humanitarianism, paternalism, charity, government aid, responsibility, progress, and civilization.
Wairimu Ngaruiya Njambi, a professor of women’s studies at Florida Atlantic University, discusses some “troubling aspects” of the Western campaign against African female circumcision. Ms. Njambi criticizes some activists’ reliance on “the discourses of barbarity, sadism, ignorance, and victimhood” to build support for ending the practice.
In another chapter, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, a visiting professor at New York University, describes the principled refusal of colonial benevolence by Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.
Other contributed essays focus on middle-class women’s roles in philanthropy in Ireland, Africa, and elsewhere; European emigrants and their integration into their host cultures; and other topics.
Publisher: Indiana University Press, 601 North Morton Street, Bloomington, Ind. 47404; (800) 842-6796; fax (812) 855-7931; iuporder@indiana.edu; http://iupress.indiana.edu; 229 pages; $22.95; ISBN 978-0-253-21960-2.
