Journal of Global Ethics
Volume 11, Issue 2, 2015
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjge20/.U2V-Elf4L0l#.VAJEj2N4WF8

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Moral economy reconfigured: philanthropic engagement in post-tsunami Sri Lanka
DOI:10.1080/17449626.2015.1054562
Carolina Holgersson Ivarssona*
pages 233-245
Published online: 29 Jul 2015
Abstract
This article focuses on the ‘gift of aid’ and its impact upon the local moral economy in a Sri Lankan village affected by the tsunami disaster in 2004. The importance of giving, receiving, and reciprocating for the shaping and consolidation of social relations has long been recognized. The act of giving reflects one of the most basic principles of morality and has constituted a classical anthropological field of inquiry. The impact that humanitarian aid had on the local moral economy of a community struck by disaster and the various ways the ‘gift of aid’ was understood and valued by donors, brokers, and recipients is explored. Also examined is how processes of change were set in motion, benefiting some people and relationships but marginalizing others. Local lifeworlds were shattered in multiple ways and became caught in tensions between competing moral discourses concerning modernity, the collective, and the global. Promoting material recovery disaster aid also generated disorder and fragmentation of local social and moral configurations.

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Accounts along the aid chain: administering a moral economy
Open access
DOI:10.1080/17449626.2015.1054563
Katarina Friberga*
pages 246-256
Published online: 29 Jul 2015
Abstract
The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it aims to delineate the flow of resources and the claims on those resources within the humanitarian aid system by locating task structures and functional units across the aid chain. Second, it draws on this account to highlight tensions in the system. Different stations in the organisational process are conditioned by the tasks assigned to them, how those tasks are anchored in a moral economy, and their historical interrelations. Third, it explores how aid organisations are perceived by experts in different parts of the aid chain. Four key agents were invited to recount their work experiences. We then consider how the outlook of the interviewees was shaped by their place in the aid chain. The interviews are an inventory of experiences, a preliminary corroboration of the organisational analysis that preceded them, and a source of future hypotheses.