Martin Vander Weyer
Just Giving?
No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy
By Linsey McGoey
Verso Books 3296pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
A ‘free gift’ can be a morally complex thing. To give £5 to a rough sleeper, without specifying how it should be spent, with or without thanks in return, is a simple act of kindness or charity. To give £50,000 towards a new rough sleepers’ hostel is an act of philanthropy, though you might be accused of vanity if the hostel names a room after you and of self-interest if the project clears rough sleepers from your neighbourhood. To give £5 million to build the whole hostel – to your own specifications, managed by people you have chosen – is an act of ‘philanthrocapitalism’. And, according to Linsey McGoey, it is an act that society should regard not with gratitude but with the deepest suspicion.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Reading Taylor’s book has also made me join a book club. I did not like the January book; I did enjoy drinking gin while saying why.'
@clamorousvoice explores the history of women readers.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/she-readers
'When the language starts functioning as a character in fiction, when it is there drawing attention to itself ... It’s not anything that anybody really takes seriously.'
Our interview with Anthony Burgess from 1983.
http://ow.ly/5u0y50yrjoO
'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe