Suggested by Public Anthropologist – Against Charity

This time’s “everybody must read” book is Against Charity by Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark.

The book is both a critique of institutional charity as based on the unequal relationship between giver and receiver and a defense of kindness, understood as a call for equality and fraternity.

Raventos, a Spanish economist, and Wark, an Australian/Spanish human rights activist, develop a reflection that transcends disciplinary boundaries (anthropologists will be particularly familiar with the analysis of the “gift”) and promotes concrete instances such as the universal basic income. Against Charity is accessible and engaging. It presents a position not all readers will necessarily agree with, but one that everybody should certainly be fully aware of.

 

 

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