Transnational Giving and Evolving Religious, Ethnic and Political Formations in the Global South

Abstract

Conceptualising giving as a broad category encompassing philanthropy, charity, humanitarian aid and gifts, this Special Issue brings together researchers whose ethnographic and theoretical work examine different forms of transnational giving in the historical and contemporary Global South. In this Issue we contend that the Global South should not be seen as a passive recipient of these transnational welfare-oriented giving but as the site where their full social and religious meanings and moral obligations are actively realised or constructed. Through nuanced ethnographic and multi-sited research across Asia, Africa, and North America, articles in this Issue explore how the transnational scale of operability attaches newer meanings to belonging even as it shapes the subjectivities of actors and communities (givers and receivers) partaking in this process. We explore how gifts travel spatially and histories of transnational giving have contributed to the framing of communal histories, cementing of global connections and the creation of relationships of dependency as well as forging of new transnational solidarities. Moreover, we investigate how transnational giving also inflects the relationship between citizens and the state and (re)shapes national political communities.