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Abstract
The proliferation of Web 2.0 platforms that aim to facilitate social action, often connected to international development or environmental sustainability, has contributed to the ongoing popularisation of development. In this article, I argue that it has resulted in the digitally-enabled constitution of everyday humanitarians, who are everyday people supportive of poverty alleviation. Kiva.org, a US-based online microlending platform that invites everyday humanitarians to make US$25 loans to Kiva entrepreneurs around the world, is a prime site to study these processes. I show how Kiva cultivates supporters through the mediated production of affective investments, which are financial, social and emotional commitments to distant others. This happens through the design of an affective architecture which in turn generates financial and spatial mediations. While these result in microloans and attendant sentiments of affinity, they also lead to financial clicktivism and connections that obscures the asymmetries and riskscapes resulting from Kiva’s microlending work.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Meike Fechter for the enjoyable collaboration in organising the original workshop on Citizen Aid at Sussex and in working on this special issue. All workshop participations provided valuable comments which, together with two Third World Quarterly reviewers, have made this a better paper. The workshop was funded by a Sussex Research Opportunity Fund and the Department of Anthropology.
Notes
1 https://www.kiva.org/team/bobharrisdotcom, accessed November 30, 2018.
2 Harris, First International Bank of Bob.
3 Cited in Heim, “Web of Giving.”
4 Laqueur, “Mourning, Pity,” 32.
5 Flannery, “Kiva and the Birth,” 37.
6 Bateman and MacLean, Seduced and Betrayed.
7 Mader, The Political Economy.
8 Roy, Poverty Capital, 22.
9 Ibid.
10 Khandelwal and Freeman, “Pop development.”
11 Bajde, “Kiva’s Staging.”
12 Black, “Microloans and Micronarratives.”
13 There are studies by computer scientists and business scholars on Kiva, but these tend to be more uncritical and instead concerned with understanding the organisation’s technology and business model per se.
14 Roy, “Subjects of Risk,” 151.
15 Vestergaard, “Humanitarian Appeal,” 446.
16 Harding and Pribram, “Losing our Cool?” 879.
17 While some authors argue for the importance of analytical and linguistic distinctions between affects, sentiments and emotions, I follow the many scholars who use the terms almost interchangeably.
18 Richard and Rudnyckyi, “Economies of Affect,” 63.
19 Grossberg, “Postmodernity and Affect,” 285.
20 Cited in Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 1.
21 Rorty, “Human Rights.”
22 Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 269.
23 Malkki, “Children, Humanity,” 83.
24 Haskell, “Capitalism and the Origins,” 358.
25 Wilson and Brown, Humanitarianism and Suffering, 10.
26 Sliwinski, “The Aesthetics of Human Rights,” 24.
27 Bornstein and Redfield, Forces of Compassion.
28 Wilson and Brown, Humanitarianism and Suffering.
29 Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 272.
30 Haskell, “Capitalism and the Origins.”
31 Calhoun, The Idea of Emergency.
32 Rozario, “Delicious Horrors.”
33 Feldman, “Ad Hoc Humanity,” 201.
34 Brainard and LaFleur, Making Poverty History? 9.
35 Chouliaraki, “The Theatricality of Humanitarianism.”
36 Richey and Ponte, Brand Aid.
37 Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 100.
38 Cohen, States of Denial.
39 Sontag, Regarding the pain of others.
40 Fassin, Humanitarian Reason.
41 Rozario, “Delicious Horrors.”
42 Wright, “Emotional Geographies of Development”; Clouser, “Nexus of Emotional.”
43 Arrillaga-Andreessen, Giving 2.0.
44 Braund and Schwittay, “Scaling Inclusive Digital Innovation.”
45 Flannery, “Kiva and the Birth,” 31.
46 Gillespie, “The Politics of Platforms,” 359.
47 Ibid., 349.
48 https://www.kiva.org/about, accessed April 15, 2019.
49 Black, “Microloans and Micronarratives”; Black, “Fictions of Humanitarian Responsibility.”
50 Flannery, “Kiva and the Birth,” 40.
51 Bajde, “Kiva’s Staging,” 96.
52 Ibid., 100.
53 https://www.kiva.org/teams, accessed April 15, 2019.
54 Quoted in Bajde, “Kiva’s Staging,” 97.
55 Flannery, “Kiva and the Birth,” 34.
56 Büscher, “Conservation and Development 2.0,” 164.
57 Ibid., 166.
58 Ibid.
59 Wilson, “’Race’, Gender,” 323.
60 Cohen, States of Denial, 211.
61 Madianou, “Humanitarian Campaigns.”
62 Yunus in Schwittay, “Muhammad Yunus,” 77.
63 Black, “Microloans and Micronarratives.”
64 Black, “Fictions of Humanitarian Responsibility,” 108.
65 Dowla and Barua, The Poor Always Pay Back.
66 Guérin et al., Microfinance, Debt and Over-Indebtedness.
67 Vestergaard, “Humanitarian Appeal.”
68 Cited in Schwittay, “Muhammad Yunus,” 71.
69 Flannery, “Kiva and the Birth.”
70 Suski, “Children, Suffering,” 213.
71 Bornstein, “Child Sponsorship.”
72 O’Neill, “Left Behind.”
73 Flannery, “Kiva and the Birth.”
74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXk4GUGXNTQ, accessed April 16, 2019.
75 Bajde, “Kiva’s Staging,” 99; Vestergaard, “Humanitarian Appeal.”
76 Roodman, “Kiva is not Quite.”
77 Paraphrased by Hardt, “For Love or Money,” 679.
78 Konings, “Financial Affect.”
79 Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 18.
80 Jackley, “Poverty, Money – and Love.”
81 Flannery, “Kiva at Four,” 40.
82 Jackley, “Poverty, Money – and Love.”
83 Guérin et al., Microfinance, Debt and Over-Indebtedness.
84 Mader, The Political Economy.
85 https://www.kiva.org/about, accessed April 15, 2019.
86 Bajde, “Kiva’s Staging.”
87 https://www.kiva.org/lend/1735943, accessed April 15, 2019.
88 Moodie, “Microfinance and the Gender.”
89 Guérin et al., Microfinance, Debt and Over-Indebtedness.
90 Brett, “We Sacrifice and Eat Less”; Hayes, “The Hidden Labor”; Schuster, Social Collateral.
91 Karim, Microfinance and its Discontents.
92 Moodie, “Microfinance and the Gender,” 280–1.
93 I thank one of the article’s reviewers for this observation.
94 Silverstone, “Proper Distance.”
95 Chouliaraki and Orgad, “Proper Distance,” 343.
96 Burtch et al., “Cultural Differences,” 773.
97 Flannery, “Kiva and the Birth.”
98 Black, “Microloans and Micronarratives.”
99 Flannery, “Kiva at Four.”
100 Chouliaraki and Orgad, “Proper Distance.”
101 Silverstone, “Proper Distance,” 476.
102 US lending has led to more meet-ups between lenders and borrowers in the same area, sometimes enabled by Kiva.
103 Schwittay, New Media and International Development, 143.
104 Ibid.
105 Ibid., 162.
106 Ibid., 148.
107 Ibid., 148.
108 I thank one of the article’s reviewers to pointing out this nuance to me.
109 Black, “Microloans and Micronarratives.”
Additional information
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Anke Schwittay
Anke Schwittay is a Senior Lecturer in International Development and Anthropology at the University of Sussex. She is the author of New Media and International Development: Representation and Affect in Microfinance and numerous articles on the use of digital media for development, the intersection of development and design and corporate citizenship among high-tech companies. She has previously worked at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and the University of California, Berkeley, from where she holds a PhD in Anthropology.