School of History, UCC
Dr Kevin O'Sullivan, School of History and Philosophy, University of Galway
Thursday 3 November 2022, 16.00 (4 PM), MS Teams
The paper will be delivered via MS Teams. Teams links can be obtained from Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel, School of History UCC, j.aandewiel@ucc.ie, or see link below
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3a8414a845c3514c128a485f997599667c%40thread.tacv2/1667148116264?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2246fe5ca5-866f-4e42-92e9-ed8786245545%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22aadc93b1-d834-47e2-966c-f54e1402076b%22%7d
Paper We take it for granted now, not only that we should care about poverty and suffering anywhere in the world, but that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can and should intervene to do something about it. Yet such an assumption is a relatively recent phenomenon. In this paper (and the book on which it is based), I trace the origins of this compassion to the period between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s – a moment of profound transformation in the West’s relationship with the Third World. How and why, I ask, did non-governmental aid become global? What factors shaped the sector’s rise to prominence? And what made it so attractive to supporters and donors? Answering those questions, I argue, allows us a unique insight into the globalisation process in the late twentieth-century: in the baggage NGOs carried from the colonial period; in the triumph of a ‘progressive’ model of aid, development and human rights over solidarity with the global poor; and in how compassion was shaped by the Global Cold War. I conclude the paper with some reflections on the legacy of this period for the West’s long-term relationship with the Global South.
Dr Kevin O’Sullivan is a lecturer in History at the University of Galway and an associate director at the Moore Institute for the Humanities and Social Studies. He has written extensively on issues of aid, development, human rights, global justice, and Western encounters with the Global South, including the books, The NGO Moment: The Globalisation of Compassion from Biafra to Live Aid (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and Ireland, Africa and the End of Empire (Manchester University Press, 2012). His current research project, ‘Green Futures’, explores how people in the past understood the future of the environment, and what this means for present-day climate change adaptation strategies.