Global nationalisms, pastoral identities: Association for India's Development (AID) negotiates transnational activism

Abstract

Acknowledging that AID's work is influential – and that it has a large following within the diasporic and expatriate community in the United States and India – this essay shows how the language and practice of ‘giving back’ under a rubric of liberal multiculturalism and humanism is still deeply steeped in neoliberal discourses and practices that make assumptions about power, individual agency, and privacy. Classified as a country with ‘soft currency,’ India is dependent on the very economic exchanges – such as free market trading and the outsourcing of labor to the West – against which the organization structures its philosophy. Such contradictions exist side by side, and the identities that emerge from these contradictions are what this research defines as global nationalism and pastoral identities.

Notes

^1. Names have been changed for privacy.

^2. http://www.aidindia.org/hq/chapters/index.htm

^3. Based on interviews with various activists at the AID Annual General Meeting held in San Francisco, 25–27 May 2002.

^4. Ibid.

^5. Interview with US-based male activist on 26 May 2002 at the AID Annual General Meeting in San Francisco.

^6. Interview in San Francisco, 26 May 2002.

^7. Indigenous or local self-sufficiency.

^8. Interview with US-based male activist at the AID Annual General Meeting in San Francisco, 27 May 2002.

^9. AID activist who is also part of ‘Corpwatch,’ an organization that studies the negative impact of corporations across the globe. Presentation given on 27 May 2002 at the AID Annual General Conference in San Francisco.

^10. Discussed during various presentations at the 2002 AID conference and also in the decade report published by AID in 2002.

^11. AID Decade Report – 1991–2001, p. 8.

^12. http://www.aidindia.org/hq/publications/dishaa.htm

^14. http://www.aidindia.org/hq/misc/vcounts/voice_counts.html

^13. http://oneforindia.org

^15. Interview with senior administrator of AID in Chennai, India on 16 December 2002.

^16. Female activist based in the United States.

^17. Female activist based in the United States.

^19. Female activist based in the United States.

^18. Male activist based in the United States.

^20. Female activist based in the United States.