Caring Cash Free Money and the Ethics of Solidarity in Kenya

The idea of giving cash, no-strings-attached, to the poor has become popular in the 21st century. While hardly a radical form of global redistribution, these cash grants, often known as unconditional cash transfers, claim to offer a new type of care that is less paternalistic than other forms of assistance.
Caring Cash explores the caring practices that these grant experiments produced in the Nairobi ghetto of Korogocho. After receiving the grants, people there did not only look after themselves and their family, friends, lovers, clients and patrons, but also maintained the bonds that held them all together.
Putting his interlocutors' lives in conversation with ideas around care, ethics and economies, Tom Neumark argues that for those in the ghetto, caring for relationships is as important as the care that takes place within relationships. Seeing care in this way reveals the importance of managing one's proximity, distance and detachment to others, and raises questions about the disquieting decisions that allow people to live together amidst violence and poverty.

About the author

Tom Neumark is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment and the Institute of Health and Society, at the University of Oslo. He was awarded his PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge.

Summary

An anthropological study of the impact of cash grants on the economic dynamics and relationships among Kenya's urban poor

Product details

• Authors: Tom Neumark
• Publisher: Pluto
• Content: Book
• Product form: Paperback / Softback
• Publication date: 01.02.2023
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Education > Social education, social work; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general)
• EAN: 9780745340142
• ISBN: 978-0-7453-4014-2
• Pages: 224
• Series: Anthropology, Culture and Society; Anthropology, Culture and Soci; Anthropology, Culture, and Soc
• Subjects: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Marriage & Family, Nairobi, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Poverty & Homelessness, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economics / Microeconomics, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Development / Economic Development, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Developing & Emerging Countries, Autonomy, Global South, East Africa, Kenya, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Poverty & unemployment, Developing Countries, Economic Geography, Mau Mau, NGOs, Ethnography, Sociology: family & relationships, Social and cultural anthropology, Sociology: family and relationships, Development Studies, Development economics & emerging economies, Microeconomics, Development economics and emerging economies, Poverty and precarity, Reciprocity, microfinance, Economic Anthropology, Dependency, critical development studies, Global South / Developing countries, kinship networks, interdependency, Economic inequality, paternalism, Urban Poverty, Government Grants, Korogocho, charity sector in Africa, cash grants, caring economies, African Slums