Aid work as moral labour

Bibliographic Data

ID2361007
AuthorsA M Fechter (0000-0002-9654-156X, University of Sussex, corresponding author), Anne-Meike Fechter (University of Sussex)
Year2016
Volume36
Issue3
Pages228-243
Publication date2016-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritique of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-275X • E-ISSN: 1460-3721
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0308275x16646837
OpenAlexW2339886183
LanguageEN
Citations received20
References cited20

This paper argues that some of the engagements and practices of international aid workers can be productively understood as forms of moral labour. Taking Hardt's concept of 'immaterial labour' (1999) as a point of reference, the paper examines the moral practices that aid workers engage in the course of their work and personal lives. Much of the relevant literature focuses on the humanitarian imperative - that is, the implied moral responsibility of better-off nations and individuals to assist others in need. Less extensively, some development literature has adopted the understanding of aid and development assistance in moral frameworks of the gift, or 'doing good'. What happens, though, in terms of experienced and practiced moralities in the concrete situations and scenarios generated by such helping imperatives? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among aid workers in Cambodia, the paper examines some of the perhaps inevitable moral entanglements which these workers find themselves in, and have to negotiate. The analytical benefits of framing these efforts as 'moral labour' include a broadened understanding of how morality matters in aid beyond the helping imperative, as well as a recognition that the significance of this labour does not rest on products that may result from it, but lies in the performance of the labour itself

Environmental ethics · Ethnography · Framing (construction · Moral disengagement · Moral imperative · Moral responsibility · Morality · Negotiation · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Work (physics · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Psychology · Religion, Society, and Development · Social Psychology