• ISBN13: 9780367741044
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: Sociology and Anthropology
• Publisher: T&F
• Publisher Imprint: Routledge
• Publication Date: January 1, 2023
• Pages: 336
• Original Price: GBP 205.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 731 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, and Earth Sciences / Geography

This handbook builds a shared understanding of the troubling politics of philanthropy and the disturbing history and practices of humanitarianism.

While historical work on philanthropy has long suggested a link between imperial rule and humanitarian aid, these insights have only recently been brought to bear on contemporary forms of giving. In this book, contributors link the long history of colonial philanthropy to current foundations and their programs in education, health, migrant care, and other social initiatives. They argue that both philanthropy and humanitarianism often function to consolidate market rule, consolidating and expanding liberal market rationalities of neoliberal entrepreneurialism to a widening population and set of institutions.

Philanthropy and humanitarianism share a history, growing together out of modernist socio-economic relations and modes of imperial rule. However, the histories and contemporary politics of the two have not been brought together with such breadth or under such a critical lens before. Discussing philanthropy and humanitarianism together, combining both historical scope and contemporary iterations, highlights continuities and convergences-making the volume a unique introduction and critical overview of critical work in these sister-fields.

Katharyne Mitchell is dean of the social sciences and a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Polly Pallister-Wilkins is a political geographer and associate professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Amsterdam and is a co-editor of Geopolitics.