Trading Futures: Sadaqah, Social Enterprise, and the Polytemporalities of Development Gifts

Widger, Tom; Osella, Filippo

Abstract

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.

Citation

Widger, T., & Osella, F. (2021). Trading Futures: Sadaqah, Social Enterprise, and the Polytemporalities of Development Gifts. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2021(90), 106-119. https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2020.072006

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Jun 1, 2021
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2021
• Deposit Date: Jul 30, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 3, 2021
• Journal: Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology
• Print ISSN: 0920-1297
• Electronic ISSN: 1558-5263
• Publisher: Berghahn Journals
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2021
• Issue: 90
• Pages: 106-119
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2020.072006
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1269297