Week 12: The gift today

This week’s reading seek to relocate or re-position our understanding of the gift and the dichotomy on which gift -giving is premised…the distinction between the economic and the social spheres. Both Rajak and Shamir’s essays seem to articulate this position when they argue that there is an economization of the social and political spheres on account of the transition from capitalism to neo- liberal epistemology. Copeman’s analysis of how dan is re-interpreted in contemporary India, Bornstein’s illustrations of the regulation of the ‘impulse of philanthropy’ and Cross’ consideration of the corporate gift from the perspective of producer- receivers, also challenge the economic-social binary.

In Theatres of Virtue, Rajak looks at the ‘social life’ of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to argue that philanthropy/charity based development is detached from the the state and more firmly than ever located within ‘market logic’. Further,such positionality comes to be endowed with moral legitimacy. Poverty alleviation becomes embedded in private enterprise and this facilitates the coming together of disparate actors - businesses, NGOs, the UN, and labour representatives - in the development discourse and the creation of a unique coalition that elevates the idea that a global market is the fundamental way in which sustainable development can be achieved. The crux of this discourse is articulated in the quotes, ‘When you’re cut out of the market, you’re cut out of the social system, you’re not empowered.…’, and ‘..what’s good for business is good for development!’

Shamir reiterates this claim in his piece on the moralization of economic action with commercial enterprises increasingly performing tasks that once resided in the civic domain of moral entrepreneurship and welfare state. Shamir’s argument is that neo-liberal epistemology dissolves the distinction between economy and society and pushes to embed society in the market. As a result there is a parallel trend which is the economisation of the political and he states that both state and non-state actors are increasingly following the logic of economic sustainability and operate in a corporate- like manner functioning on the logic of economic rationality.

An interesting point that Rajak highlights is that in order to compete in this elite marketplace of corporate virtue, actors must take on many of the forms and practices of commercial markets upon which this market for corporate responsibility is, ultimately, contingent. On one side, corporations compete for index rankings, awards, and high profile partnerships, in pursuit of the intangible resource of “moral” capital. On the other, NGOs are in competition for a more obvious resource— money. Additionally NGOs have to strive to be the donor’s chosen collaborator and fight for limited funding. Thus in spite of the use of the language of partnership, what is actually at play is very much a relationship of patronage and in turn a hierarchy between donor and recipient.

Further, both the partnership paradigm and the market model of competitive responsibility attempt to claim CSR as a radical break from the legacy of corporate philanthropy, the former evoking an ideal of collaboration for common cause, the latter appealing to the economistic discourse of “enlightened self-interest.”

It seems like the gift in the form of philanthropy/charity becomes embedded in the economy and is reversing the Maussian claim of a separation between the social and economic spheres of action.

At this juncture Copeman’s piece on the remaking of the traditional gift exchange of dan with its varied meanings and manifestations, into a single entity that seeks to promote the ‘philanthropic impulse’ but in a regulated sense of instrumental rationality, becomes relevant. Copeman seems to reiterate Laidlaw’s insistence that there is no single logic of dan shared by all participants in Indian society. However, even as he acknowledges the multiplicities of form and valuation in dan, Copeman also seeks to understand the particularity of the gift exchange of dan in the Indian context. He argues the need for a nuanced perspective which recognises the prevalence of particular themes in Indian giving, and the fact that theories of gift have been and continue to be subject to considerable alteration over time.

Copeman draws upon Cohn’s analysis of how culture once turned into a conscious object can be used for political- cultural- religious battles, to understand how the notion of dan is reformulated in contemporary contexts. Philanthropic initiatives seek to redefine dan as purely selfless gift-giving rather than as an avenue to transfer undesirable bio-moral qualities.

He insists however that benign disambiguated understanding of dan should not simply be dismissed as inauthentic since they have become important manifestations of dan in contemporary India. However, ambiguities remain in the contemporary manifestations of dan too, even when understood as selfless gift giving. Social perceptions that moral-ethical transgressing lead a person to give dan, clearly reflects suspicion about the mode of exchange. In viewing the dan as a way to overcome sin incurred through transgressions, the purity of the gift is thus compromised by virtue of the fact that it is also purificatory.

Bornstein seeks to draw our attention to the 'impulse of philanthropy' that leads individual actors to make a gift. He argues that to coerce the impulse to alleviate suffering, to rational accountability is to make it unintelligible. However, viewing it purely as an impulse without rationalising it would reinforce social inequalities. Through a set of contemporary case studies, Bornstein seeks to understand acts of giving both in terms of the philanthropic impulse, and its regulation.
This impulse of philanthropy refers to simply giving spontaneously to alleviate suffering. However, this needs to be brought under rationalised control as impulsive philanthropy is condemned as out of reason. Using Weber’s categorisation of ideal types of action, Bornstein argues that traditional dan may have been value-rational, affectual or traditional. But dan becomes an instance of instrumental rationality when governed through tax benefits and state regulation.

It is equally true to assert that instances of giving which may be considered religious or affective are also subject to the logic of instrumental rationality. So, in the case studies considered, the woman who considers it important to give away food to the needy does not feel the ‘philanthropic impulse’ to offer any medical help even when it is clearly required, or the woman who seeks to ‘rehabilitate’ poor girls is disappointed in her lack of ‘success’. As Bornstein writes, the three case studies are examples of how the impulse to give is embodied in people’s lives and tempered by concerns of ‘instrumentally rational action’.

In his piece on the Corporate Gift, Cross seeks to understand its meaning for the producers - recipients within a mining company in Andhra Pradesh, and subsequently provide new ways of diminishing hegemonic claims of the modern corporation. Tracing the Marxist and Maussian roots of social theory, Cross argues that the dominant patterns of social analysis have been to see the corporate gift through the prism of political technologies of rule - they were seen as providing corporations ideological justifications for the pursuit of profit that sought to re-embed ideas of morality in the market. As against this line of analysis, drawing from Strathern’s work, Cross seeks to understand the multiple meanings attributed to the gift, with a focus on the receivers. For the producers or labourers, the gift signified a manifestation of their own past actions more than a recognition of value bestowed by the ‘corporate person’.

Cross raises several interesting questions about the creation of persons and knowledge embodied in persons through acts of exchange. An interesting insight raised in the realm of personhood of the corporation itself is how the act of corporate gift-giving cuts the corporate network, marking the corporate managers and shareholders as internal and producers as external to the ‘corporate person’.

Considering how the corporate gift can be traced back to the history of agrarian and feudal gift relations in India, he also explores the question of how gift exchange affirms social asymmetries, differences and hierarchies. However, as he concludes drawing from Strathern, this is an attempt to “simultaneously recognise oppression and not invest that oppression with more significance than it has.”

With these set of readings we seem to be confronted by practices of gift/dan/philanthropy that are embedded in rationality or at least blur the lines between being economically motivated and apparently selfless actions, embedded in hierarchies of power and instrumentality. If dan is meant to purify, CSR is about ‘enlightened self- interest’, and the impulse to alleviate suffering is suffused with expectations, could we find ourselves in a situation where all action is essentially governed by instrumentality?

- Keya and Savitha