In “Conjunctions: Life Narratives and Human Rights” Schaffer and Smith discuss the idea of how human rights awareness has increased since the Holocaust and fuelled civil rights movements (1-2) around the world. It is interesting how we can directly link the increase in human rights life narratives to the increase in charity culture throughout western society. As having lived in 3 countries, and travelled around quite a few, I can definitely assert that charity culture is something that is not new and also something that many people are involved in. Charity culture seems to be a response or an effect of human rights life narratives which Schaffer and Smith would refer to as empathetic identification (9). However, is charity culture just to be cool and fit in to society or to actually help?

I think that there are two approaches: the short-run and the long-run action. The idea of short-run action is an empathetic identification (9) that needs immediate response to a certain situation that is ocurring around the world. I think that this is the clearest example of how charity culture is present for people to actually help. Take for example, “The Tahrahumara case” in Mexico. This case consisted of an indigenous group that lives in the north of Mexico and started to commit massive group suicides because of famines (http://news.yahoo.com/mexico-hit-rumors-indian-famine-suicides-214914790.html). I chose this example because I was the organizer of food collection within my school. It was amazing to see the turnout that everyone had towards the issue and in a small school like mine, we managed to collect over 3 tonnes of non-perishable food. I believe this is a decent amount considering there are only approximately 1000 people in my former school. This means that on average everyone brought approximately 3kg of food each to aid this community. This would have not been possible if the video “Testimonio sobre suicidio colectivo” had not become popular. This video was released through several media outlets that called the immediate aid of this indigenous community in which a man would explain why women would commit suicide when they could not provide for their children (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdZXbuULXPQ). Proving the importance of a life narrative that would explain the suffering that the Tarahumaras were going through.

However, when we see charities that are done in the long-run, I believe that this empathetic identification (9) is existent but in a smaller way. With charities like for example, TOMS, we see that they have long project goals and extremely intelligent and responsible business model, in which for every pair sold, another is given for free to children in underdeveloped nations. However many people now buy them just because they are really cool, moving away from the true benefit from that kind of shoe. I first noticed this when I saw other companies and pirated fake copies in a street market. This is almost like downloading a hurricane relief album illegally, sounds kind of disturbing but it is indeed true. So in the end, I feel that the true message of the charity is lost if goals are too long term but also if something becomes too popular. But are we expected to sit around and wait for something bad to happen for us to act?

Bibliography: Schaffer, K. and Smith, S. 2004. Conjunctions: Life Narratives in the Field of Human Rights. Biography, 27 (1), pp. 1-9. Available from: doi: 10.1353/bio.2004.0039 [Accessed: 26 Nov 2013].