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

by China Scherz

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.

Genres: Anthropology

170 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Alyssa Terrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book. I read this as a TA for an anthropology 101 course, and I felt that it really gave my students a clear and unpretentious idea of what a solid ethnography should look like.
This book contrasts an NGO called Hope Child with a Catholic charity called Mercy House, both in Uganda. Scherz uses empirical evidence to show that the care-giving model of Mercy House was more suited to the culture of Uganda than the training and workshops provided by Hope Child. Mercy House followed Uganda's cultural pattern of patron and clients contributing to each other, whereas Hope Child disregarded Uganda's culture to follow modern trends of sustainable development.
This book will make you reconsider your Western concepts of charity vs. sustainable development.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough historical research. Interesting perspective. Impersonal. A little boring, but it is an ethnography after all.