CANCELLED Anna Bocking-Welch: “Donor demands and political controversies: Oxfam, Barclays, and South Africa”
1:30pm - 3:00pm /
Monday 16th March 2020
/ Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, Rendall Building
Type: Seminar /
Category: Department
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The University is closely monitoring national and international developments in relation to COVID-19 and taking actions as appropriate. As a result, we have taken the decision to cancel or postpone all University led public events until the end of April 2020. Thereafter, events will remain under review.
The health and wellbeing of our students, staff and visitors is our highest priority and while we realise that the cancellation of events will cause some inconvenience and disappointment, this temporary measure is aimed at ensuring that our response to the current situation remains responsible and informed by the latest public health advice and expertise.
We regret that the University cannot be held liable for any loss or damage, including but not limited to travel and accommodation costs, arising from this event cancellation.
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The paper is about the relationship between Oxfam, their supporters in the UK, and apartheid South Africa. It will focus specifically on Oxfam’s entanglement in the Boycott Barclays campaign in the 1980s –which formed part of the wider anti-apartheid campaign–and use this case study to think about how humanitarian NGOs engage with their supporters in dealing with controversial issues and, more broadly, about the changing political nature of aid and development in this period. Scholarship on humanitarianism is a rapidly expanding field but there is still as Bertrand Taithe has argued, ‘much work to be done on what these charities actually represent to those who contribute to their existence.’ The paper analyses letters of complaint that Oxfam received about its South Africa policies between 1970 and 1990. It argues that the letters give a much richer sense of the public’s engagement with humanitarianism than the quantitative data from opinion polls and donation income that we might otherwise rely on as indicators of public opinion.
The health and wellbeing of our students, staff and visitors is our highest priority and while we realise that the cancellation of events will cause some inconvenience and disappointment, this temporary measure is aimed at ensuring that our response to the current situation remains responsible and informed by the latest public health advice and expertise.
We regret that the University cannot be held liable for any loss or damage, including but not limited to travel and accommodation costs, arising from this event cancellation.
*
The paper is about the relationship between Oxfam, their supporters in the UK, and apartheid South Africa. It will focus specifically on Oxfam’s entanglement in the Boycott Barclays campaign in the 1980s –which formed part of the wider anti-apartheid campaign–and use this case study to think about how humanitarian NGOs engage with their supporters in dealing with controversial issues and, more broadly, about the changing political nature of aid and development in this period. Scholarship on humanitarianism is a rapidly expanding field but there is still as Bertrand Taithe has argued, ‘much work to be done on what these charities actually represent to those who contribute to their existence.’ The paper analyses letters of complaint that Oxfam received about its South Africa policies between 1970 and 1990. It argues that the letters give a much richer sense of the public’s engagement with humanitarianism than the quantitative data from opinion polls and donation income that we might otherwise rely on as indicators of public opinion.