Description
Book SynopsisAn anthropological study of the impact of cash grants on the economic dynamics and relationships among Kenya's urban poor
Trade Review'Across the world, welfare systems are being remade in the image of 'basic income'. Tom Neumark powerfully intervenes in this debate by showing how Nairobi's grant recipients experience care and violence, freedom and bureaucracy. It has implications far beyond Kenya'
-- Kevin P. Donovan, Lecturer of African Studies at University of Edinburgh
‘Approaches a key laboratory of 21st century African experimentality, unconditional cash transfers, from the recipients’ end, attending to relations of care and, notably, care for relations, among Nairobi’s urban poor. Instead of simply critiquing the obvious limitations of such programmes, Caring Cash explores their ‘poetics of care’ and fragile ‘ethics of solidarity’, against the backdrop of a violently strained social fabric’
-- Paul Wenzel Geissler, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway
‘Grapples with a contentious intervention in international development – cash grant programmes – in a caring yet critical way, rehabilitating this often-critiqued approach to poverty alleviation while unpacking its relative limited sustainability. A must read’
-- Chambi Chachage, Assistant Professor, Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Canada
‘A great introduction to the cash grant literature for students and practitioners, so much of it being programmatic and policy oriented, and removed from describing the work that cash grants actually do’
-- Sibel Kusimba, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of South Florida
Table of ContentsPrologue
Introduction: Grants and the Care for Relationships
1.The Ghetto: A Place of Refuge and Charity
2. Scoring the Poor
3. Under the Aegis of Mistrust
4. Detaching from Others, Surviving with Others
5. A Mother’s Care
Conclusion
Bibliography
Notes
Index
