The Aid Triangle

Recognising the Human Dynamics of Dominance, Justice and Identity

Stuart C. Carr, Malcolm MacLachlan, Eilish McAuliffe

The Aid Triangle focuses on the human dynamics of international aid, from impoverished farmers to aid workers, donor diplomats to multilateral bureaucrats, celebrities to activists, and to the unconcerned and uninvolved. This timely work illustrates how the aid system incorporates power relationships, and therefore relationships of dominance. It explores how such dominance can be both a cause and a consequence of injustice and how the experience of injustice is both a challenge and a stimulus to personal, community and national identity – and argues that these identities underlie the human potential that international aid should seek to enrich. Using these concepts of dominance, injustice and identity The Aid Triangle provides an innovative and constructive framework for producing more empowering and more effective aid. Written by three authoritative academics with the dirt of aid and development under their fingernails, this book beckons a new paradigm for aid by thinking it through, ‘as if people mattered.’

Contents

Introduction •  Aid • Dominance • Justice • Identity • Learning • Conclusion • References • Index

About the Authors

 Stuart C. Carr is Professor of Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology Programme, Massey University. He co-edits the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology.

 Malcolm MacLachlan is with the Centre for Global Health and the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Rehabilitation Studies, Stellenbosch University and Research Advisor to Southern African Federation of the Disabled.

 Eilish Mc Auliffe is Director of the Centre for Global Health and Senior Lecturer in Health Policy and Management, Trinity College Dublin.