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A dynamic tension exists in practices of giving: while impulsive philanthropic giving allows no claims on the donor by the recipient, welfare-oriented giving transforms the recipient into a claimant with rights. These conflicting pressures on giving frame this examination of contemporary humanitarian and philanthropic practice in New Delhi, and its relation to sacred Hindu conceptions of d?n (donation) in light of the response to the 2004 tsunami disaster. The February 13, 2009 talk, part of an ongoing series The Anthropology of Religion, Money and the Economy, co-sponsored by the Anthropology Department and the Berkley Center, drew upon a nexus of institutions and individuals: schools raising money for tsunami relief, NGOs delivering charitable goods, and individuals giving donations, to show how humanitarian efforts mirror larger ethical struggles about how money should be spent and tracked, how need is identified, and what constitutes a worthy recipient.
Erica Bornstein is assistant professor of anthropology at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has conducted research on philanthropy, charity, religious humanitarianism, and non-governmental organizations in Zimbabwe and India. Her first book, The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe (Stanford University Press 2005) focused on transnational Christian non-governmental organizations. She is currently writing an ethnographic monograph titled The Orphan: A Cultural Account in New Delhi on philanthropy, humanitarianism, and orphans in India, and is co-editing a book titled, Forces of Compassion: Humanitarianism between Ethics and Politics (with Peter Redfield, School for Advanced Research Press). She is also the author of scholarly articles that have appeared in American Ethnologist, Ethnos, Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR), and the Journal of Religion in Africa .
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