Reconceptualizing Foreign Aid

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5771066
AutoresT Hattori (0000-0002-6631-8463, City University of New York, autor de correspondencia)
Año2001
Volumen8
Número4
Páginas633-660
Fecha de publicación2001-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaReview of International Political Economy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0969-2290 • E-ISSN: 1466-4526
EditorialRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09692290110077610
OpenAlexW2031208230
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas56
Referencias citadas63

What is foreign aid? This deceptively simple question has not been adequately addressed because aid scholars have tended to emphasize practitioners' concerns and thus have favoured the conceptualization of foreign aid in terms of security or development policy objectives. This article attempts to reconceptualize foreign aid in a larger systemic context of international relations, focusing first on the nature and conditions of the key social relation involved in foreign aid practice and then on specifying its functions and effects. It argues that what most clearly defines foreign aid is the symbolic power politics between donor and recipient. Aid practice transforms material dominance and subordination into gestures of generosity and gratitude. This symbolic transformation, in turn, euphemizes the material hierarchy underlying the donor-recipient relation. In this process, recipients become complicit in the existing order that enables donors to give in the first place. Keywords: Foreign Aid Donor-RECIPIENT Relation Giving Symbolic Domination Grant Philanthropy

Dominance (genetics · Generosity · Gratitude · Subordination · International Development and Aid · Peacebuilding and International Security · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development