Trading Futures: Sadaqah, social enterprise, and the polytemporalities of development gifts

In this article, we explore what happens when idea(l)s of Islamic charity ( sadaqah ) and social enterprise converge within a low-cost public health clinic in Colombo, Sri Lanka. For both the clinic’s wealthy sponsors and the urban poor who use it, interpreting the intervention as a pious expression...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Focaal 2021-06, Vol.2021 (90), p.106-119
Main Authors: Widger, Tom, Osella, Filippo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Anthropology
Beneficiaries
Charities
Charity
Clinics
Commodities
Corporate sponsorship
Ethnography
Futures
Gift giving
Gifts
Health care expenditures
Health care policy
Health promotion
Health services
Humanitarianism
Intervention
Islam
Low income groups
Medical care, Cost of
Neoliberalism
Private sector
Privatization
Public health
Public services
Social interest
Social responsibility
Trading
Urban areas
Urban poverty
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Summary:In this article, we explore what happens when idea(l)s of Islamic charity ( sadaqah ) and social enterprise converge within a low-cost public health clinic in Colombo, Sri Lanka. For both the clinic’s wealthy sponsors and the urban poor who use it, interpreting the intervention as a pious expression of care toward the poor or as a for-profit humanitarian venture meant extending different futures to the poor. The ambiguous temporalities of gifts and commodities anticipated by benefactors and beneficiaries involved in this challenges anthropological assumptions concerning the marketizing effects of neoliberal development interventions. Our ethnography revealed a hesitancy among the clinic’s sponsors, managers, and users to endow the intervention with a final interpretation, undermining its stated goal of promoting health care privatization and “responsibilization” of the poor.
ISSN:0920-1297
1558-5263
DOI:10.3167/fcl.2020.072006