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.

While most people would not consider sponsoring an orphan's education to be in the same category as international humanitarian aid, both acts are linked by the desire to give. Many studies focus on the outcomes of humanitarian work, but the impulses that inspire people to engage in the first place receive less attention. Disquieting Gifts takes a close look at people working on humanitarian projects in New Delhi to explore why they engage in philanthropic work, what humanitarianism looks like to them, and the ethical and political tangles they encounter.

Motivated by debates surrounding Marcel Mauss's The Gift, Bornstein investigates specific cases of people engaged in humanitarian work to reveal different perceptions of assistance to strangers versus assistance to kin, how the impulse to give to others in distress is tempered by its regulation, suspicions about recipient suitability, and why the figure of the orphan is so valuable in humanitarian discourse. The book also focuses on vital humanitarian efforts that often go undocumented and ignored and explores the role of empathy in humanitarian work.

"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."