Charity and Poverty in Advanced Welfare States

Cameron Parsell, Andrew Clarke, Francisco Perales

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367713812
• eBook ISBN: 9781000449969
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

This book conceptualises the role of charity to people who are poor in wealthy countries and outlines a set of practical and conceptual ideas for how it could be reimagined.

Despite professionalised welfare states and strong economies, in many advanced industrialised nations, charity continues to play a major role in the lives of people who are poor. Extending what we know about how neoliberalism drives a decayed welfare state that outsources welfare provisioning to charities and community initiatives, this book asks how can we understand and conceptualise society's willingness to engage in charitable acts towards the poor, and how can charity be reimagined to contribute to justice in an unjust society? Through interrogating multiple data sources, including government datasets, survey datasets, media analyses, and ethnographic data, this book shows that charity is not well-suited to addressing the material dimension of poverty. It argues the need for a revised model of charity with the capacity to contribute to social solidarity that bridges social divisions and is inclusive of the poor. Presenting a model for reimaging charity which enables reciprocity and active contributions from recipients and providers, this book shows how power imbalances flowing from the unidirectional provision of charity can be reduced, allowing opportunities for reciprocal care that foster both well-being and solidarity.

This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of social policy, public policy, social welfare, sociology, and social work.

1 The endurance of charity

Introduction

It must be easy to point to a non-existent long term solution [to homelessness] that will likely never occur without legislation and government funding. Because [charity’s] not THE perfect solution, it must [be] … a waste of time, right? Do we have a responsibility to do better as a society? Absolutely. [Charity] is at least bringing awareness, visibility, and activism to the issue and starting conversations like this one. Or we can keep waiting around for someone else to make the perfect solution for us. That seems to be working wonders so far.

The problem is only the Government has the resources to provide this [affordable housing, adequate income], and they don’t. Nor, it seems, do they have sufficient appetite to do so. Our national housing shortage has been growing for years. What the [charities] provide is short-term amelioration, not a long-term solution. That’s all that’s within their reach. If I were on the street myself, I’d be glad for their efforts.

It’s easy to criticise [charity to the poor]. Harder to suggest an alternative.

These comments were posted to respond to a 2019 online news article written by the first author of this book (Parsell 2019). The comments speak to widely held public sentiment about the role – and indeed value – of charity as a response to poverty in contemporary and wealthy societies. Individual acts of charity towards people experiencing poverty, and collectively what charity is understood to represent for society, are widely perceived as necessary and positive. As Rose Lindsey and colleagues point out, voluntary charity is seen as a good in its own right, without the need for further scrutiny (Lindsey et al. 2018).

Engaging in charitable care – for example, giving food and money to people who are hungry and poor, or volunteering to provide temporary pop-up accommodation to people who otherwise sleep on the streets – embodies a form of civic action that many believe we ought to celebrate. People interpret these acts of charity optimistically, seeing them as a sign that society has not descended into a selfish dystopia. The well-off providing their resources, time, and money to the poor is taken as evidence that a caring society does in fact still exist; its antithesis would be a good indicator of nihilistic individualism. Our political leaders – conservative and progressive alike – are unequivocal in drawing a direct connection between volunteering in charities that help the marginalised and a caring society. Lord William Beveridge (1948, p. 10), a key architect of the post-war British welfare state, described the presence of voluntary groups to better others’ lives as “distinguishing marks of a free society,” in contrast to what is found in a “totalitarian society.” For Richard Titmuss (2019), altruism and the desire to help each other is evidence of solidarity within society.

Despite the self-evident appeal of, and public support for, charity, the online article reflected upon its limitations. Specifically, the article addressed a charity that temporarily transforms commercial city carparks into pop-up accommodation by installing inflatable mattresses for homeless people to sleep on overnight. In the article, Parsell criticised the charity for soothing the consequences of homelessness and poverty, rather than addressing the problems with evidence-based solutions. The pop-up accommodation charity model received unanimous praise. The media even reported a waitlist of volunteers who wanted to set up mattresses in the carpark and spend time with “the homeless.” Parsell’s critique asked why we celebrate such inadequate responses, given that there is significant evidence that rough sleeping can be permanently ended (rather than temporarily ameliorated) through the provision of affordable housing and professional services, and the profound wealth that exists in Australia to act upon that evidence.

At their core, the comments introducing this book – consistent with the numerous emails, letters, and criticism the authors receive when they questions the worth of charity – convey three connected sentiments. First, charity is an acceptable response to people in poverty as an “in the meantime” response (Cloke et al. 2017). Yes, supporters agree that charity is not perfect. Charity is not all that is required, but its limitations are not a sufficient reason to discount charity out of hand. The first defence of charity relies on accepting its limitations to deal with the fundamental problem, but stresses that, until those fundamental problems are addressed, charity is justified in the meantime. This justification is encapsulated by the aphorism that we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Perfection can never be achieved – ending poverty or homelessness – so let us not waste our time and energy striving for perfection when doing so prevents us from doing what is needed in the immediacy, what is good enough: providing inflatable mattresses in a carpark.

The second defence of charity illustrated by the comments draws on a nuanced understanding of charity’s presence as driven by structural problems and systemic failures. Defenders of charity acknowledge that volunteers are doing their best to respond to problems not of their making. Moreover, the problems are too big, too complex, too wicked, for charity volunteers to resolve. This position sees poverty as structurally determined. Accordingly, it is only government that can reasonably be expected to solve the structural problems within which poverty is embedded and where its structural solutions lie. As the comment above pleads: “The problem is only the government has the resources to provide.” The emergence of the problem is government’s fault. It is government who are not only responsible, but also capable of addressing the problem. This argument works from the premise that volunteers and charities can in no way address structural problems – acts of charitable care are “all that’s within their reach.” They can help soothe the consequences of government failure. Indeed, acting charitably is framed as exerting agency, as opposed to passively waiting for governments to do what they are otherwise reluctant to do. Further, it is not simply the active efforts of the charitable that support this defence. The comment asserts that people accessing charity would prefer to eat what volunteers or foodbanks provide than go without altogether, or to sleep in an undercover carpark rather than out in the weather.

The third defence of charity is implicit in each of the comments, and explicit in the last: it is inadequate to criticise the efforts of the charitable, especially so when sitting (or writing) on the sideline, without offering a viable alternative. This position is encapsulated by the aphorism that the weak criticise; the strong act. This argument, that it is easy to criticise charity for its failings whilst failing to do anything practical oneself, is frequently expressed and challenging to confront. It is challenging simply because acting charitably towards people who are poor can offer genuine moments of care. We do not have to look far or think hard, on either religious or secular grounds, to understand that care, as Joan Tronto (2015, p. 38) says, is “the key to living well.” Moreover, “a truly free society makes people free to care” (Tronto 2015, p. 38). Challenging acts of care is a dangerous enterprise. We go to great lengths in this book to advocate for the significance of care. In criticising charity, we need to ensure the criticism is directed at a system that renders charity both necessary and ineffective, rather than at the charitable volunteers themselves, and we need to simultaneously offer alternatives that are desirable and workable to both those on the providing and receiving end of charitable care. It is indeed, as commenter suggests, harder to achieve structural change than to roll up one’s sleeves and do something practical in the here and now.

The critique of charity, and the defence of it, invigorates debate about what we ought to do as individual citizens when confronted with structural poverty. This debate forms part of a conversation about what society ought to look like. Debate about charity is, at the same time, debate about public welfare and State provision. The comments above reflect the dilemma of how we can be justified – and just – in individually acting to soothe the consequences of poverty through charity, rather than working collectively to end poverty. For John Stuart Mill (2004), it was a mistake of philanthropists “to nibble at the consequences of unjust power, instead of redressing the injustice itself.” Will Kymlicka (2001) reflects on this point well. Informed by the assumption that public institutions command their authority over citizens by being just, Kymlicka (2001) argues that charity can only be the second best option.

As citizens, what should we do when we see people who are poor? If charity can only be the second best option, one can understand, as the comments above suggest, that the best option may seem out of hand. It is easy to empathise with volunteers who would rather provide people who are poor with food, or volunteer in charities that provide pop-up accommodation in carparks, than wait for structural change; structural change that seems beyond their capacity to enact. As the comments introducing this book make clear, people can act charitably to the poor and advocate for the continuation of charity that soothes poverty, whilst also understanding that poverty is the result of structural failure. If poverty is a product of structural systems that disadvantage some people, and we believe that it is, how can people be justified to provide voluntary care to those in poverty when they do not also attempt to disrupt the structural causes of poverty?

These questions and dilemmas animate this book. To identify a better approach than models of charity that merely soothe the consequences of poverty, we need to understand how charity sits within prevailing social and political systems. The first question this book engages with is, how can we understand and conceptualise society’s willingness to continually engage in charitable acts towards the poor? In addressing this question, we seek to demonstrate that individual charitable acts cannot be understood at the individual level. Both the experience of poverty and charitable care to those experiencing poverty are deeply embedded within social and public policy institutions; and as we demonstrate throughout the following chapters, much of what is voluntarily given through charity is enabled and funded by the State and the social norms and ideals it promotes. Further, we show that the conditions that lead to the need for charity among people who are poor, and the institutions that enable charities to work with people who are poor, are driven by deliberate policy decisions. As John Weeks (2020) shows, what governments present as necessary policy decisions, for example reducing welfare entitlements to balance their budgets, are actually political decisions that reflect government’s normative prescriptions for society. From this premise, the book considers how the provision of charity to people who are poor constitutes a site where the boundaries of a normative society are debated. Charity’s significance lies in what its presence and function says about the organisation of society, the responsibility of the State, and the role of citizens.

We take seriously the position that the strength of critique lies in its capacity to prescribe a meaningful alternative. Erik Olin Wright (2013) explicitly engages emancipatory social science to theorise and promote real utopias. He sets out a framework for imagining alternative social structures based on moral principles, but he understands that the task is not simply about identifying what is morally desirable. Emancipatory social science must explain what is viable and achievable. Without viability and achievability, prescriptions of the desirable are plainly utopian (Wright 2013). Taking heed of the necessity to offer viable and achievable alternatives, the book also addresses the question, how can charity be reimagined to contribute towards a more just society?

This is a hard question. A utopic response to this question would go something like: provide all citizens access to a living income, affordable housing, and universal services and the myriad charities that provide all manner of ameliorative resources would be superfluous. From this perspective, the question is not how to reimagine charity, but rather how to alter society to put charity out of business, so to speak. This reasoning would be generally consistent with advocacy for a Universal Basic Income. We philosophically agree with some of the Universal Basic Income (Standing 2020), and our prescription for transforming charity acknowledges the need for structural reform, so that volunteers and their charities are not in the business of moppi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of boxes
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The endurance of charity
• 2 The practice of charity
• 3 Neoliberalising charity
• 4 Creating conditions for charity
• 5 Cultivating charity
• 6 Representing charity
• 7 The meaning of helping
• 8 The meaning of being helped
• 9 Transforming charity
• Index