Poverty by Design: The Role of Charity and the Cultivated Ethical Citizen

Abstract

Across numerous countries with advanced welfare states, governments have relied on a hybrid of publicly funded and delivered welfare services and voluntary charity to meet the needs of people in poverty. Driven by austerity and economic downturns, many scholars agree that governments are increasingly relying on charity as a response to poverty. Taking Australia as a case study, this article demonstrates how the decayed welfare state is not just about outsourcing welfare provision to charities, but also a part of a broader project to cultivate a society in which social problems are responded to through spontaneous, community-led initiatives, powered by the ethical commitment of everyday citizens. We show how this project produces poverty through welfare state retrenchment, whilst simultaneously cultivating charity through material and symbolic support from the state. This results in the construction of charity as an end in itself, with little consideration given to its effectiveness in alleviating poverty.

Donors’ attitude towards fundraising efforts in UAE during COVID-19 pandemic: the moderating role of ethics

“…The results show that trust has a significant relationship with charity projects and donors’ attitudes toward fundraising. Similar results identified by the Erie (2016), Lev (2007), Parsell et al (2021), Pettinato (2021) stated that donors responded the charity projects spontaneously based on their ethical beliefs and commitments. The outcome of our research is an indication that the effects of ethical factors depend on the positive association between charity projects and the attitude of donors toward fundraising (Figure 2).…”

Schools and food charity in England

“…The role of charities in school-based food aid is important to note -it is suggestive of the increasingly important way in which governments in 'advanced' welfare states rely on 'charitable outsourcing' to provide welfare support to those in poverty and leads to the further 'mainstreaming' of charitable work within schools (Clarke and Parsell 2022;Parsell et al 2022;Rosenthal and Newman 2016;Taylor and Power 2018). Again, this can be attributed to a shrinking social safety net with charities stepping-in to try and make sure people's basic needs are being met.…”

“…The range of actors involved in providing food to schools, also highlights how school food aid is reliant upon charitable giving and voluntary contributions to make their food aid work viable. We can see that as part of the broader pattern of dealing with hunger and food insecurity through charity rather than state institutions (Parsell et al 2022) School's school food aid operations also varied substantially regarding their size, the frequency that food was distributed, the number of families that needed support and where food was sourced from. Katie who helped run a food bank reflected on the number of people they supported, 'there are a core of 20 people who are definitely always there'.…”

“…Thirdly, and complementing scholarship on the growing role of non-state actors in education, I suggest that school's food charity work reflects a new way in which businesses, the third sector, and charitable organisations are being further integrated into England's contemporary educational landscape (Ball and Junemann 2013;Junemann and Ball 2013). Finally, and relatedly, food aid in schools is a form of what can be called charitable outsourcing: where governments in many wealthy nations are outsourcing welfare activities and provision to non-state actors and particularly to charitable and non-profit organisations (Parsell et al 2021 andParsell et al 2022).…”

Checking Activation at the Door: Rethinking the Welfare-Work Nexus in Light of Australia’s Covid-19 Response

“…These paternalistic practices do little to achieve their stated outcomes and instead infantilise and further impoverish the already disadvantaged (Mendes et al, 2020). Researchers have argued that the combination of an insufficient amount of Newstart and punitive activation are designed to punish the poor (Parsell et al, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted some of these practices when suddenly a large number of job seekers joined the unemployment queue.…”