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Six Community development, venture philanthropy and neoliberal governmentality: a case from Ireland

  • Niamh McCrea
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Abstract

This chapter considers the alliance between a venture philanthropy foundation and a community development organisation campaigning on migrant workers’ rights in Ireland. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, the chapter suggests that the organisation’s worker mobilisation strategies and its alliances with trade unions contradict the neoliberal capitalist origins of its funder. It is argued that philanthropic funding does not inevitably moderate community development’s political goals. However, its worker empowerment agenda cannot be regarded as a complete victory for counter-hegemonic rationalities given Irish trade unionism’s complicity within the complicated history of Irish neoliberalisation. The chapter thus cautions against viewing the relationship between community development and philanthropy — or between community development and neoliberalism – in either/or terms and points to the narrowing space for resistance outside the parameters of neoliberal governmentality itself.

Abstract

This chapter considers the alliance between a venture philanthropy foundation and a community development organisation campaigning on migrant workers’ rights in Ireland. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, the chapter suggests that the organisation’s worker mobilisation strategies and its alliances with trade unions contradict the neoliberal capitalist origins of its funder. It is argued that philanthropic funding does not inevitably moderate community development’s political goals. However, its worker empowerment agenda cannot be regarded as a complete victory for counter-hegemonic rationalities given Irish trade unionism’s complicity within the complicated history of Irish neoliberalisation. The chapter thus cautions against viewing the relationship between community development and philanthropy — or between community development and neoliberalism – in either/or terms and points to the narrowing space for resistance outside the parameters of neoliberal governmentality itself.

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