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‘Our Own Poor’: Transnational charity, development gifts, and the politics of suffering in Sylhet and the UK

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2018

KATY GARDNER
KATY GARDNER*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK Email: k.j.gardner@lse.ac.uk
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Abstract

Based on fieldwork in Bibiyana, northeast Bangladesh, this article compares the transnational charity offered to known individuals by migrant, UK-based families with the philanthropic efforts of the multinational company Chevron, which operate a large gas field in the neighbourhood. Applying Fassin's notion of the ‘politics of suffering’ to both types of exchange, the article argues that the two types of giving are underlain by incommensurate moral economies. While in instances of transnational charity, social inequality and the compassion felt towards the suffering of known people, or ‘our own poor’, underscore the exchanges, in the philanthropic efforts of ‘community engagement’ the inequality of giver and receiver is repressed and the exchange is animated by a moral economy. The latter is rooted in Christianity, in which compassion guides actions towards the suffering of unknown, anonymous strangers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 52 , Special Issue 1: Charity and Philanthropy in South Asia , January 2018 , pp. 163 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

*

The article is based on a three-year research project involving myself and a team of researchers from Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka. Running from 2008–2011, this was funded by the ESRC-DFID to whom I am grateful for their support. Fieldwork involved detailed household case studies conducted in Bibiyana by my colleagues Masud Rana and Fatema Bashir, interviews with local leaders conducted by Zahir Ahmed, and interviews in Dhaka, Bibiyana, and the UK with Chevron officials and transnational villagers, carried out by Zahir Ahmed and myself. This work was supplemented by a series of short visits I made to Bibiyana, an area where I have been conducting fieldwork since 1987.

References

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3 In 2014 the Bibiyana field expanded further and now has a capacity for producing 300 million cubic feet of gas a day.

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27 Garibpur was founded by leaders from Talukpur in the late 1960s who rehoused their servants on nearby khas (government) land. Directly adjacent to the gas field, people from here have become the major supply of casual labour for the construction of the plant, leading to extreme tensions with Talukpur: see Gardner, forthcoming.

28 Gardner, Global Migrants.

29 Ibid.; Gardner, ‘Lives in motion’; Gardner, Discordant Development.

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34 I did not meet any Londonis who gave to international Muslim charities, since all had their ‘own poor’. This may well be different for younger, British-born Bangladeshis, whom this research did not include.

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42 Personal communication from a field officer working for a regional NGO.

43 A scooter rickshaw, run on natural gas.

44 Bibyana Gas Field First Anniversary Report, p. 39.

45 Gardner, Rana, Bashar and Ahmed, ‘Elusive partnerships’. See also Zalik, ‘The Niger Delta’.

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50 Bornstein, ‘The impulse of philanthropy’, p. 629.

51 Benthall, ‘Financial worship’.

52 Bornstein, ‘The impulse of philanthropy’.