دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله هدیه – مارسل مائوس و کمک های بین المللی (نشریه تیلور و فرانسیس 2011)

هدیه – مارسل مائوس و کمک های بین المللی

The Gift – Marcel Mauss and international aid

Mauss’ Gift is a valuable although neglected lens for examining international aid. Having delineated the often misunderstood characteristics of the Gift, the article re-examines development assistance. Whereas the market and welfare state are compatible with the modernity project, the Gift is argued to be incompatible with them whilst still pervasive in human affairs. The article finds that donors downplay the Gift system and yet are dependent upon relationships that only the system of the Gift can provide; they push modernity’s market exchange where the Gift is the cultural norm; and they offer aid to promote autonomy whilst buying influence for themselves. The conclusion offers donors some possible responses including the separation of relationship management, humanitarian aid and development investment; providing for reciprocity; providing voice; and tapping into the potential of the Potlatch.

1 Introduction

Authors writing about international development assistance (IDA) have drawn attention to issues that are typically described as paradoxes (Ellerman, 2005; Knippers Black, 1999; Kowalski, 2006, 2010, 2011; Mohan, 2007). There is one in particular, which Berthe´lemy identified:

The motives of development assistance have been long disputed in the development finance literature. Discussions have been focussed since the 1970s on the opposition between egoistic behaviour, linking aid to the self-interest of the donors, and altruistic behaviour, relating it to recipient needs and merits. (2006, p. 179)

This in many ways recapitulates the paradox at the heart of Marcel Mauss’ system of The Gift (Mauss, 2002).

Now concern has been expressed over just how little thinking about The Gift has influenced sociology, which has led to the misunderstanding that The Gift is only relevant in archaic societies. For example Adloff and Mau suggested that:

sociologists have overlooked or paid little heed to forms of social interaction that can be localized neither on the side of self-interest nor on that of morality. In our view, it is the logic of the gift …that accompanies and structures all forms of interaction, from the social micro- to the macrolevel. (2006, p. 95)

Clearly if sociology in general has not responded adequately, the inescapable corollary is that this deficiency extends into discourses on development assistance (DA) in that, despite the basis of the whole enterprise being founded upon giving, concepts springing from Mauss’ The Gift have not been used in any systematic way to explore and enhance our understanding of DA. It is time to address this omission.