Giving as a Mechanism of Consent: International Aid Organizations and the Ethical Hegemony of Capitalism
| Date | 01 June 2003 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00471178030172003 |
| Published date | 01 June 2003 |
| Subject Matter | Journal Article |
International Relations Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol 17(2): 153–173
[0047–1178 (200306) 17:2; 153–173; 033132]
Giving as a Mechanism of Consent: International Aid
Organizations and the Ethical Hegemony of Capitalism
To mohisa Hattori, Lehman College, the City University of New York, USA
Abstract
What is the connection between international aid organizations (IAOs) and the
transnationalization of capitalism? This article diverges from neo-Gramscian accounts
of international organizations by focusing on the distinctive material and relational
aspects of the practice in which IAOs engage: the solicitation and extension of gifts.
This perspective opens the inquiry to insights from theories of gift exchange and virtue
ethics, which allow further specification of IAOs as a means of what Philip Corrigan
and Derek Sayer call moral regulation, or the disciplining and conforming of recipients
to the new transnational capitalist order. More specifically, this article argues that the
extension and acceptance of the gifts of multilateral and non-governmental IAOs is a
mechanism of consent to the capitalist order. That amounts to what neo-Gramscians call
ethical hegemony because it allows donors to ethically judge recipients and compels
recipients to accept responsibility for their own plight.
Keywords: charity, consent, development assistance, foreign aid, giving, hegemony,
moral regulation, philanthropy, virtue
Introduction
The central characteristic of capitalist society for neo-Gramscian scholars is the
pervasiveness of consent to an otherwise burdensome order of things.1In
international political economy (IPE), they identify the principal locus of consent-
producing institutions and ideology as the growing array of intergovernmental,
non-governmental, and joint public–private organizations, which have been laying
the groundwork for the transnationalization of production in recent years.2Robert
Cox, for example, describes such organizations as providing ‘a stable conjunction’
of the material capabilities, institutions, and ideals of social order held by an
internationally oriented capitalist class.3For Craig Murphy, they provide insti-
tutional mechanisms that co-ordinate production and consumption for capitalist
accumulation.4
For most of these scholars, the dominant process behind the creation and
expansion of these organizations is the complex, incremental formation of a
transnational capitalist class. Stephen Gill, for example, identifies the Trilateral
Commission as the locus of an emerging transnational identity among capitalists
from the core industrial states of Europe, North America, and East Asia.5Mark
Rupert documents a direct capitalist influence on the origins of the North
American Free Trade Agreement.6For Jim Glassman, the classic Marxist drivers
of class struggle and inter-capitalist competition inexorably push certain class
r
i
fractions to the forefront of the transnational realm.7These scholars also identify
the ultimate effect of this process of transnational class formation as the
emergence of new political forms, which they variously describe as ‘transnational
apparatuses’ or a ‘new constitutionalism’.8This ‘internationalization of the state’
provides a conceptual counterpart to their other focus in IPE: the complex,
incremental formation of a transnational civil society.9
A group of international organizations that overlaps with, but does not quite fit,
this neo-Gramscian project are those which provide development grants to the
former colonial parts of the world. These include multilateral aid organizations,
such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), and non-governmental organizations like
CARE, Church World Service, and the Rockefeller Foundation.10 On the one
hand, what these international aid organizations do is entirely consistent with the
neo-Gramscian understanding of international organizations as a locus of
transnational hegemony. Their projects and programmes help to develop the
material capabilities, institutional norms and rules, and ideals of capitalist
development.11 They also frequently overlap with, and facilitate the work of, other
international organizations. The UNDP, for example, is formally linked to the
World Bank through the United Nations system and provides both ‘pre-
investment’ studies for the Bank and follow-up ‘post-investment’ technical
assistance, such as training and consultancy. On the other hand, agents with
recognizable ties to a transnationalizing capitalist class are largely absent from the
funding, policy-making, administration, and project implementation of these
organizations.12 The UN Specialized Agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Labour
Organization (ILO), for example, rely primarily on in-house experts rather than
private contractors to implement their projects. Although there are some private
foundations with recognizable ties to capitalists, the overwhelming majority
are intergovernmental and religious organizations whose funding comes
predominantly from taxpayers and individual donations.13 The puzzle for neo-
Gramscian scholars is the following: what is the process that connects these
international aid organizations to the transnationalization of capitalism? More
specifically, how is it possible that a group of international organizations with few
ties to a transnationalizing capitalist class contributes so clearly to its hegemony?
My approach to this question is to examine international aid organizations
(IAOs) through the analytical lens of gift exchange. A fundamental difference
between IAOs and other international organizations is that they engage in a very
specific kind of social practice: they solicit and distribute gifts. According to
anthropologists, the primary purpose of a gift is to initiate or reinforce a social
relationship between donor and recipient. With all other types of international
organizations, by contrast, the relation is defined by contractual obligations.
The terms of a loan from the International Monetary Fund, for example, are
carefully spelled out and – unlike a gift – must eventually be paid back. The rules
promulgated by the World Trade Organization define and enforce trade
154 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 17(2)
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