Forty years ago, a bunch of superstars converged on a recording studio in London to record a hastily-written song to raise funds to help famine victims in Ethiopia, under the monicker Band Aid. The single, Do they Know It’s Christmas? raced to number one, raising £8 million within a year. Along with subsequent versions, it has since raised over £200 million for charity.
However, this year’s 40th anniversary mega-mix has been embroiled in controversy after Ed Sheeran said he had not wanted his contribution to the 30th anniversary recording to be used again because his “understanding of the narrative associated with this has changed, eloquently explained by @fuseodg.” British-Ghanaian rapper Fuse ODG had said that he had turned down an invitation to take part in Band Aid 30 “because I recognised the harm initiatives like it inflict on Africa. While they may generate sympathy and donations, they perpetuate damaging stereotypes that stifle Africa’s economic growth, tourism, and investment, ultimately costing the continent trillions and destroying its dignity, pride and identity.”
Sheeran’s change of heart mirrors broader cultural shifts in attitudes towards foreign aid. The slogan of the street paper The Big Issue – a hand-up, not a hand-out – has become the ethos for giving more generally. As the overused metaphor has it, we moved away from giving people fishes and instead gave them the tools to fish for themselves. For example, a decade or so ago it became popular to “give a goat” for Christmas. Instead of giving someone a present for themselves, we were encouraged instead to donate money on their behalf to help provide a poor farmer in Africa with livestock or equipment. But even this evolution in giving seems to have become out of date. For many it still smacks of “white saviour complex”: the idea that Africa’s salvation can only come from privileged outsiders, acting out of philanthropy rather than duty.
A very different problem with goat-giving is that it just doesn’t fulfil the main objective of a gift, which is to give something to the recipient, for the recipient. It’s fine if family or friends agree that they won’t exchange presents this year but will donate to charity instead. But to unilaterally decide that you are not going to give someone a present at all but rather make a donation on their behalf seems puritanical and paternalistic.
All this might make you nostalgic for a simpler age in which giving to charity was unambiguously A Good Thing and buying presents a simple matter of getting someone something you think they would like. However, in all the cases I’ve mentioned, the complexities are not so easily dismissed. They point to fundamental issues concerning the nature and ethics of gifting.
To see why, think about two fundamentally different ways of conceptualising our social lives. I take these (once again) from the work of comparative philosopher Tom Kasulis. The model that is most dominant in the contemporary West is the one in which individuals are the fundamental units, and social relations emerge as our little atoms of being interact with each other. On this model, our personal agency is central: we do unto others and they do unto us.
The other way of looking at it is that our relationality is primary, and our individuality secondary. We are all fundamentally connected so everything we do affects others, not just what we intentionally do unto them. We don’t start as individuals and then make connections. Rather, we start connected and any individuality we have is a product of these connections. All the things you are – a son or daughter, sibling, neighbour, member of a community – depend on your relationships to others.
The atomistic model is dominant in our culture and with that comes certain benefits. Most importantly, it fosters greater respect for personal autonomy and liberty. But it also has drawbacks. One is that we systematically over-value our own agency. For example, when we buy a goat for someone who didn’t ask for one, we are allowing our own values to matter more than theirs. Gift-giving, which should be focused on the desires and wishes of the recipient, instead becomes primarily about the giver, even when the intent is philanthropic.
When it comes to charity, the atomistic framing encourages us to think about our intentions, what we want to do and how we feel good about ourselves, at the expense of what might actually be best for others.
In cultures where our relationality is dominant, the main drawback is a potential stifling of difference. But when it comes to gift giving, the relational framing seems more helpful. On the atomistic view, gifting is a practice in which individuals try to do good to other people. It is also transactional: I give to you, you give to me and hopefully the two balance each other out. But on the relational view, the main aim of gift giving is to nurture relationships. It is not about buying credit with another, or creating duties of reciprocation. It is about strengthening bonds.
How does this illuminate the Band Aid furore? Criticism of the project centres on the accusation that it is too much about wealthy westerners acting on poor Africans, treating them as passive victims who require outside assistance. Worse, this help comes bound up with ignorance about the reality of life in Africa, where rains and rivers do flow, there is snow, and millions of Christians know full well it’s Christmas.
You might object to that matters most is that people in need get help and as the song’s co-writer, Bob Geldof said, “This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive,” adding “‘Colonial tropes’, my arse.”
But as Fuse ODG argued, the worry is that what helps in the short-term hinders in the long-term. Band Aid is indeed a Band Aid (what Americans call a sticking plaster) but one that also hinders the ability of what it is applied to to breathe and grow. All the time the solution to poverty and disaster is to give top-down aid, there is never any chance for sustainable change coming from the bottom-up.
However, I don’t think this adds up to a persuasive case against aid per se. It just means that the model has to be one of building relationships between equals, not donors doing things to passive recipients. To take an obvious example: what would most help a poor cocoa farmer? Would it be sending them the occasional donation to help them deal with their poverty? Or would it be to buy chocolate that earned them a decent enough wage so that they weren’t poor in the first place? Wouldn’t the best way to avoid catastrophes like the one in Sudan to be help African states to become strong and prosperous, rather than treating them as tools for our geo-political power games or dumping grounds for our excess agricultural production?
All this is easier said than done. And given that there just is huge global inequality, it seems inevitable, a relationship of full equality seems to be an aspiration for the future, not something that can be established immediately. Developed countries will continue to have to provide some assistance in ways that reflect these uncomfortable imbalances. Still, it is good to have in mind an ideal of relationship, if only to curb with the worst excesses of paternalistic condescension.
As for what we gift each other, it might also be helpful to remember that what matters most is the relationship between us and the person we are buying for. The best presents are ones that reflect the depth of that relationship, and the desire to nurture it. Think of gifts that affirm the values and preferences a person has, not the ones we think they do or should have. Or those that show our real understanding of what they like, not false assumptions about them. Best of all, perhaps, are those gifts that highlight our connection with them: a passion in common, or something that relates to a past shared experience.
It is often said at this time of year that giving is better than receiving. But even this framing focuses on exchanges, one to another, and singles out the benefits to each party, treating them as discrete atoms. It is not giving or receiving that matters most in gifting: it is that we both in the spirit of building deeper relationships.