The Request and the Gift in Religious and Humanitarian Endeavors

This collection revisits classical anthropological treatments of the gift by documenting how people may be valued both through the requests they make and through what they give. Many humanitarian practitioners, the authors propose, regard giving to those in need as the epitome of moral action but are liable to view those people's requests for charity as merely utilitarian. Yet in many religious discourses, prayers and requests for alms are highly valued as moral acts, obligatory for establishing relationships with the divine. Framing the moral qualities of asking and giving in conjunction with each other, the contributors explore the generation of trust and mistrust, the politics of charity and accountability, and tensions between universalism and particularism in religious philanthropy.

Auteur
Frederick Klaits is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. He is the author of Death in a Church of Life: Moral Passion during Botswana's Time of AIDS (2010).

Contenu

1. Introduction: Asking in Time.- 2. The Power of the Gift: Killing and Healing in Northwest Zambia.- 3. Seeking the Wounds of the Gift: Recipient Agency in Catholic Charity and Kiganda Patronage.- 4. When God Is a Moral Accountant: Requests and Dilemmas of Accountability in U.S. Medical Relief in Madagascar.- 5. How Asking and Giving Beget Distrust in Christian Child Sponsorship.- 6. Funding Meaning on Jewish Service Trips to Post-Katrina New Orleans.- 7. Universal Dignity: Fundraising, Zakat, and Spiritual Exchange.