This book looks closely at those who do humanitarian work in New Delhi to consider why people engage in humanitarian work and to urge a rethinking of giving and belonging in a global context.
Erica Bornstein is Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is author of The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe (Stanford, 2005).
"In a time when humanitarianism seems to have become a prerogative of the Western world, Erica Bornstein's inquiry into philanthropy in India opportunely provides novel insights on charity. Reappraising an object which has become a classic in anthropology since the pioneering study of Marcel Mauss, her rich ethnography reveals the complexity of the contemporary moral economies of the gift."