-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Meghan Elizabeth Kallman, Review of “Amateurs Without Borders: The Aspirations and Limits of Global Compassion”, Social Forces, Volume 100, Issue 3, March 2022, Page e5, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soab095
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
Toward the end of Amateurs Without Borders: The Aspirations and Limits of Global Compassion (University of California Press 2021), sociologist Allison Schnable argues that “grassroots international NGOs are best understood as supply-driven organizations with strong expressive characteristics.” This framework informs the book, which builds on a trajectory of Schnable’s work that began with her PhD thesis. The project takes on the ballooning sector of grassroots, nonprofessionalized aid organizations, seeking to explain their origins and motivations and—to a much lesser extent—their place in the ecology of development aid.
A fair amount of the book itself is dedicated to simply mapping the contours of these grassroots international NGOs (The Introduction and Chapter 1 look at “origin stories” and the general outline of this phenomenon). This is useful, as they are pieces of the development apparatus that have historically either gone uncatalogued or been rolled into the larger category of “NGO” for analytic reasons. Chapter 2 outlines in quantitative terms the locations, project sectors, recipients, and roles for such INGOs. Chapter 3 aims to analyze how such groups understand development, and how those understandings shape their approach to aid work. Chapter 4 contrasts this work with mainstream (professionalized) NGO work. Chapters 5 and 6 explore the relationships between founders and organizations in more depth, and the connections that exist between INGOs and their donors in the United States. Chapter 7 looks at the role of religion in this development work, while the Conclusion considers questions of assessment and synthesis.
