The Solidarity Economy: Nonprofits and the Making of Neoliberalism after Empire
By (Author) Tehila Sasson
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press
4th September 2024
United States
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Human rights, civil rights
Colonialism and imperialism
Decolonisation and postcolonial studies
Capitalism
Economic history
Business ethics and social responsibility
330.9044
Hardback
320
Width 156mm, Height 235mm
The untold story of the role of humanitarian NGOs in building the neoliberal order after empire
After India gained independence in 1947, Britain reinvented its role in the global economy through nongovernmental aid organizations. Utilizing existing imperial networks and colonial bureaucracy, the nonprofit sector sought an ethical capitalism, one that would equalize relationships between British consumers and Third World producers as the age of empire was ending. The Solidarity Economy examines the role of nonstate actors in the major transformations of the world economy in the postwar era, showing how British NGOs charted a path to neoliberalism in their pursuit of ethical markets.
In the 1960s, nonprofits sought to establish an alternative to Keynesianism through their welfare and development programs. Encouraging the fair trade of commodities and goods through microfinance, consumer boycotts, and corporate social responsibility, these programs emphasized decentralization, privatization, and entrepreneurship. Tehila Sasson tells the stories of the activists, economists, politicians, and businessmen who reimagined the marketplace as a workshop for global reform. She reveals how their ideas, though commonly associated with conservative neoliberal policies, were part of a nonprofit-driven endeavor by the liberal left to envision markets as autonomous and humanizing spaces, facilitating ethical relationships beyond the impersonal realm of the state.
Drawing on dozens of newly available repositories from nongovernmental, international, national, and business archives, The Solidarity Economy reconstructs the political economy of these marketsfrom handicrafts and sugar to tea and coffeeshedding critical light on the postimperial origins of neoliberalism.
Tehila Sasson is assistant professor of history at Emory University. Her writing has appeared in leading publications such as the American Historical Review, Past & Present, and Dissent.