Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Non-governmental socioeconomic intervention is tainted by a history of unjust engagements between global powers and marginalized communities of the Global South and Africa, in particular. The arrangements of race and power in and beyond development intervention have thus have been used to affirm the sector’s affinity to its ‘former’ self. In particular, prevailing poverty in communities that are the highest consumers of non-state intervention, continues to substantiate the critiques leveled against the nobility and efficacy of philanthropy. This paper describes the ways in which the complexities of race and power unfold in non-state socioeconomic intervention. It traces the affinity between race and global philanthropy and then outlines the ways in which current arrangements of poverty, power and non-state mediation have a direct association with the historical hierarchisation of people. The paper then goes on to contend that contemporary mediums of charity and, in particular, non-state interventions are not devoid of but rather, interpolate with the broader societal orders of race and power. Data collected with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in Makhanda in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province inform the proposition that race and power remain central to socioeconomic intervention in part, through organizational structures, traditions of engagement with communities, dominant orientations towards poverty and depictions of ‘the poor.’ The paper concludes that the world and work of NGOs –despite dominant assertions of its neutrality– is inextricably bound to its historical and socio-political context and is thus a site wherein race and power are not only present but at play.