The Potentially Damaging Effects of Developmental Aid and Voluntourism on Cultural Capital and Well-Being
- PDF / 451,529 Bytes
- 19 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 52 Downloads / 343 Views
The Potentially Damaging Effects of Developmental Aid and Voluntourism on Cultural Capital and Well-Being Brien K. Ashdown 1
& Alessa
Dixe 1 & Craig A. Talmage 1
Received: 24 March 2020 / Accepted: 25 September 2020/ # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract In this perspective article, we argue that too often, foreign and developmental aid devolves into a form of imperialism and colonialism that we more fully define in the article. We believe that aided communities and community members are often expected (or required) to change their own cultural ways of living to continue receiving the aid or support they have been offered and may need. Ironically, the need for this aid is often driven by the way the aid is provided, creating potential cycles of imperialism and dependency, which can negatively impact individual and community well-being. Fortunately, better practices and ethical guidelines are available to direct the ways that both providers and receivers – communities and individuals – of aid are fully engaged in the process to ensure that all people benefit while being able to continue to live according to their own cultural worldviews. This perspective article provides our ideas about better practices and ethical guidelines for how community development professionals, psychologists, and other behavioral scientists who engage in international aid (in any of its forms) do so in ethical and appropriate ways. Keywords Ethical foreign aid . Imperialism . Neo-colonialism . Voluntourism . Cultural
psychology
Being generous often consists of simply extending a hand. That’s hard to do if you are grasping tightly to your righteousness, your belief system, your superiority, your assumptions about others, your definition of normal. – Patti Digh
* Brien K. Ashdown [email protected]
1
Department of Psychological Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY 14456, USA
International Journal of Community Well-Being
The United States (along with many other countries) has a long history of providing aid and support in various forms to other countries around the world—especially those in the Global South (Ashdown and Buck 2018). These countries are also sometimes referred to as “developing” countries, the “majority” world (because this is where we find the majority of the world’s population), or, in times past, as “third-world” countries (Sherraden 2007). The aims of aid from the U.S. (as well as other wealthy countries and related non-governmental organizations [NGOs]) often appears well-intended, but intentions can be more nuanced. Still, the most positive development intentions do not uniquivocably lead to positive development processes and outcomes for receiving individuals and communities. In this perspective article, we argue that practitioners and scholars of community development and community well-being must critically address international and foreign aid as a particular form of imperialism and/or colonialism. This kind of aid has the potential to damage cultural capital and thus harm individual
Data Loading...
