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

Widger, Tom; Osella, Filippo

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Authors

Filippo Osella



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 Mar 28, 2024
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

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