Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology

J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 20: 249–261 (2010)

Published online 24 November 2009 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/casp.1029

National Identity and International Giving:Irish Adults’ Accounts of Charitable Behaviour

CLIFFORD STEVENSON1* and RACHEL MANNING2

1University of Limerick, Ireland2University of the West of England, UK

ABSTRACT

Research on helping behaviour has emphasized the importance of the group and particularly the

nation in establishing the norms and boundaries of emergency helping. Less attention has been paid to

the role of the national group in longer-term routine helping such as charitable giving. This is

particularly important given recent research on intergroup helping which points to the impact of

power relations on willingness of national groups to give and receive aid. The present research

examines people’s accounts of charitable giving in their day-to-day lives in Ireland, a country which

has recently undergone a transformation in economic development and international relations.

Discursive analysis of five focus groups with 14 Irish university students illustrates how participants

proactively invoke national identity to account for giving or withholding charity. Our findings

demonstrate how Irish national identity can be strategically and flexibly used to manage participants’

local moral identity in the light of Ireland’s changing international relations and in particular how

participants display concerns to be seen to intend ‘autonomous’ rather than ‘dependency’-oriented

helping. The findings suggest that both national identity and international relations provide resources

for individuals negotiating the complex demands and concerns surrounding charitable giving.

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key words: charity; helping behaviour; national identity; social identity; intergroup relations;

discourse analysis

Charitable behaviour is typically treated as an accountable matter, whereby the reasons for

donating to (or withholding aid from) specific charities require extensive justification

(Dalton, Madden, Chamberlain, Carr & Lyons, 2008; Harper, 1996; Radley & Kennedy,

1992; 1995). Recent experimental research on helping behaviour has investigated the role

of national categories in people’s decisions to donate in emergency situations, but little

research has examined how people account for their decisions to give to longer-term

international charity appeals. This study examines, from a discursive perspective, how Irish

people use national identity and international relations as interpretative resources to

* Correspondence to: Dr Clifford Stevenson, Department of Psychology, University of Limerick, Castletroy,Limerick, Ireland. E-mail: clifford.stevenson@ul.ie

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 11 October 2009

250 C. Stevenson and R. Manning

account for their particular decisions about when to give and when not to give. By doing so,

it aims to contribute, firstly to our understandings of the role of national identity and

international relations in helping behaviour, and secondly to understandings of the

potential ways in which charitable behaviour might be facilitated.

Over the past two decades, the impact of group membership upon intra and intergroup

helping behaviour has received increasing attention (Dovidio, Piliavin, Schroeder &

Penner, 2006; Nadler, 2002). In particular, research looking at pro-social behaviours has

been influenced by social identity approaches (e.g. Dovidio, Gaertner, Validzic, Makota,

Johnson & Frazier, 1997; Levine, Prosser, Evans & Reicher, 2005). These researchers

argue that shared identity will extend the generic proclivity towards ingroup bias and form

the basis for extending helping behaviour to fellow group members. Moreover, the

boundaries of group inclusion are flexible and amenable to re-definition. Levine and

Thompson (2004), for example, found that making the identity of ‘European’ (as opposed

to ‘British’) salient before eliciting responses to imaginary disasters in Europe or South

America increased emergency helping in response to European disasters, but not the South

American equivalent.

Reicher, Cassidy, Hopkins and Levine (2006) have broadened this approach to consider

the norms and interests of a particular national category. Employing a qualitative

methodology, they use the example of Bulgaria’s refusal to deport its Jewish community

for extermination during the Second World War to examine how rhetorical constructions of

national boundaries have been proactively used to extend helping behaviour. The authors

identified three rhetorical strategies in the political literature of that period: Firstly

constructing the Jewish group as integral to the nation; secondly depicting Bulgarians as

responsible for vulnerable groups; thirdly presenting Jewish persecution as part of a more

general Nazi threat. The end result, that Bulgaria remained one of the few places under

Nazi occupation to effectively resist extermination of the Jewish community, suggests that

these strategies of group inclusion may have had psychological purchase among the wider

population.

While this social identity theory-informed research has used a number of different

methods to examine a variety of helping behaviours, it has not looked in detail at issues

surrounding charitable behaviour. Research on day-to-day charitable giving, which

constitutes the bulk of international aid (Sargeant, 1999), has overwhelmingly been

concerned with factors such as demographic characteristics and past experiences as well as

individual responses, perceptual reactions, emotional responses and evaluations of

charitable appeals and organizations (e.g. Mathur, 1996; Sargeant, 1999). While such

models of charitable giving do consider social norms and the influence of others, they do

not consider how membership of groups, and in particular national groups, impact on

individuals’ donations to charity. Neither do they avail of qualitative investigation to

explore how people themselves articulate and negotiate the issues surrounding charitable

donation.

As noted above, an exception to this broader pattern is a small body of qualitative work

which has examined how people talk about their charitable giving. Radley and Kennedy

(1995) reported that collective charitable activities act as a cohesive force among group

members and that membership of charitable organizations provide a focus and ideological

rationale for charitable giving. Harper (1996) has made the case for a discursive approach

to examining explanations of poverty in order to provide a more adequate understanding

and critical appreciation of it. With respect to national identity, Dalton et al. (2008)

illustrated how New Zealand students explained their willingness or unwillingness to give

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 20: 249–261 (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/casp

National identity and international giving 251

to other countries on the basis of judgements about their own and other national groups.

However this body of research has yet to examine how social identity processes relate to

international giving. The first purpose of the present paper is thus to bring a discursive

approach to social identity (cf. Reicher et al., 2006) to bear upon the topic of everyday

charitable giving, in order to examine how individuals flexibly construct national identity

to include or exclude those deserving help.

The second goal of this paper is to place these identity processes within their

(international) intergroup context. Callero, Howard and Piliavin (1987) point to the

importance of social structure and the history of helping relations, to the extent that helping

‘can be defined only within a specific social context’ (p. 247). Recent research on

intergroup helping points to the impact of international power relations on the willingness

of national groups to give different types of aid (Nadler, 2002). In general terms, the donor

nation benefits from increased (or maintained) status, self-enhancement and positive self-

regard (Batson, 1994; Brown & Smart, 1991; Nadler, 1991) while the psychological effects

on the recipient nation may be negative, such that receiving help undermines the group’s

self-image (Nadler, 2002). Hence the donor nation is motivated to maintain the benefits of

this status quo. Nadler and other experimental researchers in this tradition (Nadler, 2002;

Van Leeuwen, 2007) thus distinguish between ‘autonomy-oriented helping’ (designed to

foster the independence of the helped nation) and ‘dependency-oriented helping’ (designed

to maintain the reliance of the recipient nation on the donor) and demonstrate that,

especially under conditions of perceived threat from the recipient group, members of donor

nations tend to prefer the latter. For example, in the case of Arab-Israeli relations, Israelis

typically endorse aid to their Arab counterparts insofar as this maintains the status quo of

Israeli dominance (Nadler, 2002). To date though, the qualitative study of how these factors

are understood by people themselves in relation to national boundaries and longer-term

charitable giving remains undeveloped. The present paper adopts a discursive approach to

investigate how Irish people use representations of their national identity and international

relations in talk to negotiate the complex moral business of accounting for charitable

giving.

The Irish context

The current study examines accounts of charitable giving in the Republic of Ireland.

Historically the voluntary sector in Ireland has been developed by religious organizations

(Williams, 1999) and a strong ethos of local community cooperative activity (Donohue,

1998). Moreover, a number of high-profile Irish musicians including Bono and Bob Geldof

have promoted issues of global poverty and international debt though large-scale

gatherings including ‘Live Aid’ in 1985 and ‘Live 8’ in 2006. This has to a degree been

matched by the commitment of the Irish government to overseas aid, it being one of the few

European Union member states set to meet the goal of 0.7% GDP given in international aid

by 2012 (Irish Aid, 2007).

A second feature of Irish society which recommends it to investigation is Ireland’s recent

economic success (and even more recent economic crisis) and the implications of this for

its international relations. Prior to the 1990s, Ireland was relatively economically

underdeveloped within the European Union. By the 1990s though, the country underwent a

period of unprecedented economic development (Breathnach, 1998) attaining the second

largest GDP in Europe by 2007. Research conducted on charitable giving in Ireland

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 20: 249–261 (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/casp

252 C. Stevenson and R. Manning

(Carroll, McCarthy & Newman, 2005) has indicated that the rise in GDP has not been

matched by a corresponding rise in individual contributions to charity. However, the

relationship between these economic vicissitudes, Irish national identity and charitable

behaviour remain unexplored.

METHOD

Five focus groups were conducted with 14 undergraduate students attending the University

of Limerick. Ages ranged from 17 to 45, all were born in Ireland and (on inquiry after the

focus group discussion) all considered themselves to be Irish. Participants were recruited

from undergraduate courses and informed that they would be asked about different aspects

of their own experiences of charities. The focus groups comprised between two and three

students (in order to ensure that each participant was identifiable from the recording) and

lasted between 45 and 70 minutes. All were conducted in a qualitative research laboratory

and led by trained moderators.

Focus groups were used as, if conducted effectively, they can be egalitarian, participant-

focussed exchanges, more akin to everyday conversation than formalized one-to-one

interviews (Wilkinson, 2003). The discussions were loosely structured in nature and

designed to elicit participants’ own experiences of charities and charitable behaviours.

Participants were initially asked to report the various charities they encountered in their

day-to-day lives and then encouraged to discuss the reasons why they do or do not donate to

each. Most importantly, national identity was never introduced into the discussion by the

facilitators and was only explored when participants themselves made it relevant. The

discussions were transcribed verbatim and the analysis was conducted using principles

derived from discursive and rhetorical psychology (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Edwards

& Potter, 1992) as previously applied to related research on participants’ accounts of third

world poverty (Harper, 1996). Specifically the manner in which national identity and

intergroup relations were constructed and used to negotiate the complex moral issues

around charitable giving was examined. Our analysis focussed on how participants invoked

national identity to account for charitable behaviour as well as on the key concerns

participants negotiated in their accounts of Irish charitable behaviour.

FINDINGS

Overall, our participants’ talk of their charitable behaviour bore marked similarities to

those taking part in previous qualitative research (Dalton et al., 2008; Harper, 1996; Radley

& Kennedy, 1995). It was evident that accounting for charitable behaviour was fraught with

a range of competing moral injunctions. On one hand, participants consistently displayed a

desire to present themselves as generous and concerned for the welfare of others rather than

selfish or xenophobic. On the other, they talked of the limits to their ability to help and the

need to prioritize which charities to target, as well as the goal of giving responsibly so that

their aid was directed towards the most deserving and effective appeals. In order to

reconcile these competing demands, participants strategically invoked a range of category

memberships, entitlements and mitigations to account for why they do or do not give to

specific charities. We focus here on how the contents and boundaries of the national

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 20: 249–261 (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/casp

National identity and international giving 253

category, as well as its international relations, were proactively and strategically used to

manage a moral identity in talk.

(Dis)claiming a charitable nation

National and international contexts were often spontaneously invoked in the course of

managing charitable identities. In general, charity was seen as a positive attribute of Irish

people and its absence was deemed an accountable matter. As noted above, Irish national

identity was only ever introduced by participants themselves into the discussion. This

happened indirectly through mentioning charities that were national in remit and contained

the term ‘Irish’, through banal references to ‘this country’ or ‘here’ (Billig, 1995), and

explicitly though the invocation of the particularly Irish dimension of charities, as in the

following extract where participants have been discussing the various campaigns they

recall concerning international aid to Africa:

Extract 1: ‘An Irish Thing’

(1) A

Copy

nn: Yeah, like I don’t remember Live Aid ,but yet I’ve heard all about it and it’s

(2) s

een as an Irish thing because of Bob Geldof as well, so (pause). Like even I

(3) k

now about the famine in Ethiopia, years on like, d’you get me? Because he

(4) m

ade it so famous, Irish see it as their thing kind of as well.

(5) E

d: I think Irish people take pride in the fact that we’re considered to be a

(6) c

haritable nation, it’s recognized to be good for charity. In a sense that Irish

(7) p

eople are (pause)

(8) M

od: Why do you think that is?

(9) E

d: I think Irish people are very charitable, I think it’s a fact.

Here participants provide a straightforward claim that Irishness is associated with

charity. Ann accomplishes this through invoking the success of a previous large-scale

charity campaign on raising popular awareness of ‘famine in Ethiopia’, which is presented

as worthy of awareness even among those who do not recall experiencing it firsthand. Thus

Irish charities are positioned as effective (‘so famous’), and having enduring success. This

particular historical example of successful charity sets out a past behaviour of the Irish

as charitable, the memory of which is still alive today as an example of their inherent

charitableness.

The Irishness of the charity is taken to be derived from the nationality of the key figure

who promoted the cause, though the characteristic is attributed to Irish people more

generally ‘Irish see it as their thing kind of as well’ (line 4). This is developed by Ed who,

like Ann, attributes the association between charity and Irishness to a wider international

audience ‘we’re considered to be a charitable nation, it’s recognized to be good for charity’’

(line 6). This ‘consideration’ and ‘recognition’ are arguably from the non-Irish, thereby

positioning the Irish as internationally acknowledged as charitable. In return, being seen as

charitable on an international stage is something that the Irish are proud of (line 5). The

pride itself further shores up this reputation in asserting the veracity of the judgement of

others. When the moderator questions the basis of this reputation, Ed makes this inference

explicit ‘I think Irish people are very charitable, I think it’s a fact’ (line 9). Thus the Irish

become unproblematically, charitable-in-fact.

Accounts of why Irish people may on occasion not give to particular causes were also

presented. In line with the findings of Dalton et al.’s (2008) study of young New

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DOI: 10.1002/casp

254 C. Stevenson and R. Manning

Zealanders, the limited ability of the nation to give to others and the moral obligation to

look after co-nationals were occasionally given as reasons for lack of international aid. In

the extract that follows, participants have been discussing the statement ‘Charity begins at

home’:

Extract 2 ‘We’re more selfish that we’ve more money now’

(1) I

Copyr

nt: So you would prefer it to be in your neighbourhood or in your town rather

(2) th

an going abroad?

(3) J

ake: Yeah, yeah well I think. Well it seems easier to do like.

(4) N

ancy: It does yeah, seems easier to do.

(5) M

od: Yeah, and do you think as worthwhile giving to your local, d’you know, that

(6) s

tatement obviously has [inaudible] that it’s more important to look after your

(7) o

wn before you go look after the rest of the world. What would you think of

(8) th

at?

(9) N

ancy: It’s to do with, I suppose, as well, you actually see the changes being done and

(10) I

can’t really see the point going off giving to homeless people in America or

(11) s

omething when there’s homeless people around here. They should be dealt

(12) w

ith first in our own society before we help other societies, ‘cos if we are a

(13) s

tronger society then we probably can help better.

(14) M

od: Yeah, do you not think Ireland’s a strong society?

(15) N

ancy: Ahm, I don’t think they’re as giving as they were when, I know people had

(16) le

ss money years ago, but I still think people probably gave more money.

(17) T

here’s more charities now though.

(18) M

od: So you’d say Ireland used to be more charitable?

(19) N

ancy: Yeah but they hadn’t as much money so they couldn’t have given as much, but

(20) I

think they’re, yeah and they probably felt like they wanted to give more,

(21) w

hereas now we’re more selfish that we’ve more money now.

In response to the moderator’s question about ‘looking after your own’ regarding giving

to local charities rather than international ones, Nancy initially responds by using the

notion of visibility. Thus it is the tangible, visible effects of giving that provide legitimacy

(‘you can actually see the changes being done’, line 9). Being able to see the proximal

effects of charity contrasts with the more distal places where one’s charity might be ‘going

off’ (line 10) to. Nancy continues by deploying a number of parallels which work to retain

the imperative of giving to the most deserving but prioritising the needs of conationals.

Firstly she establishes equivalence between charitable causes by focussing on the homeless

in Ireland and elsewhere. Secondly she chooses a much larger and richer country, America,

for comparison which removes the moral obligation for Ireland to give help. Thirdly, the

purpose of helping within the nation is presented as potentially enabling more effective

charitable giving in the future ‘cos if we are a stronger society then we probably can help

better’ (lines 12–13). In this way the category of nation is strategically used to reconcile the

objection to international helping with the acknowledged moral value of this activity.

However, the moderator problematizes this account by asking if Ireland does in fact

require intragroup helping ‘Yeah, do you not think Ireland’s a strong society?’ (line 14).

Nancy exhibits difficulty in responding (line 15) and in her contribution we see attempts to

reconcile the relative economic strength of the country with her previous claim of the need

for intragroup helping. This is done by invoking an historical comparison. Nancy’s claim

that although people had less money they ‘probably gave more’ (line 16) in the past, builds

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National identity and international giving 255

on this depiction of a former age in Ireland where people were more generous. In contrast to

Extract 1, where we saw Ann using the past behaviour of the Irish as evidence of their

inherent charitableness, here we see a past Ireland being contrasted to a contemporary

Ireland that is less charitable than it was. This is strengthened by the invocation of a

narrative of modernization, whereby economic prosperity is accompanied by an increase in

selfishness and a proliferation of charities. This choice of charities presents difficulties for

the potential donor, who is now faced with deciding not just whether to give or not, but who

to give to.

Nancy’s final turn here works to further reconcile these competing concerns. She

reformulates her previous claim regarding the Irish giving more money in the past (line 16),

instead claiming that, in fact, this couldn’t have been the case (‘but they hadn’t as much

money so they couldn’t have given as much’, line 19), instead they ‘wanted to give more’

(line 20). Thus the past Irish may have had the desire but not the ability to donate more to

charity. In contrast Ireland’s current state is characterized by the ability to give, but not the

desire. By relocating the ‘problem’ in the characteristics of the inhabitants (‘selfish’) rather

than in the economic state of the nation, Ireland’s increased affluence is reconciled with

decreased helping behaviour.

The above extracts illustrate that the possibility and desirability of helping behaviour

was negotiated by invoking different aspects of the broader historical and economic

national context. In addition the characteristics of the population could be flexibly used to

explain the occurrence or lack of charitable behaviour in different circumstances. Our first

finding is thus that the contents and context of the national category were strategically used

as discursive resources to address the changing demands of the conversational interaction.

Constructing a giving relationship

The manner in which participants constructed the relationship between donors and

recipients was also used to negotiate competing moral concerns. Participants talked of the

efficacy of international aid and the impact of giving upon both recipients and donors. The

following extract exemplifies one frequently recurring trope within the discussions, that

autonomy-oriented helping is preferable to dependency-oriented giving. The respondents

have been discussing whether, in principle, poverty can be alleviated solely through giving

money to those in need.

Extract 3: ‘Teach a man to fish’

(1) S

Copy

ue: . . .Money makes the world go around, so

(2) C

ass: But would it not be better to look at the bigger picture? Why are these people

(3) i

n the situation they’re in, they are obviously poor for a reason, if you throw

(4) m

oney, fair enough. What’s that ad? If you give a man a fish he eats that day,

(5) b

ut if you teach a man to fish he eats for the rest of his life. Fair enough,

(6) m

oney does make the world go around, but if you teach people skills to keep

(7) p

eople going, you’d be much better off at solving their problems. Charity

(8) d

oesn’t make people feel good anyway, most people would prefer to be out

(9) m

akin’ their money.

This extract illustrates how participants typically oriented to the need to present

themselves as other-focussed in their giving. The emphasis on the usefulness of teaching

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256 C. Stevenson and R. Manning

skills is pitted against the indiscriminate donation of financial aid, here characterized as

‘throw[ing] money’ at the problem (lines 3–4). This works to display discernment on

behalf of the speaker as to the efficacy of the charity. Competing cliches were typically

used to demonstrate the commonsense of the argument, and here Cass contrasts Sue’s

phrase ‘money makes the world go around’ (line 6) with the alternative of ‘if you teach a

man to fish’’ (line 5). Participants positioned themselves as adopting the recipients’

perspective, focussing on the problems of the recipients (line 7) and their feelings rather

than speaking on behalf of the donor (lines 7–8). Additionally Cass attributes the desire for

autonomy and self-sufficiency to the recipients, thereby reinforcing their position as

deserving rather than wilfully mendicant. In this way participants typically maintained

their position as properly other-focussed rather than self-serving in their donations.

Where this trope was used explicitly within the international frame of reference, we see

that its use has similar implications to those noted in relation to the previous extract for this

type of charitable giving.

Extract 4: ‘Dealin’ with the issue rather than puttin’ a band-aid on it

(1) E

Copy

ileen: It’s the same, like, out in Africa, you can give money but sure that’s going to

(2) b

e spent, like, compared to teaching a person how to grow crops or something.

(3) A

nn: Some of the Irish charities, they do that, they have, they set up workshops to

(4) tr

ain the locals, so they when they leave everything won’t collapse.

(5) E

d: I think there’s an underlying basis of why poverty exists and it’s a matter of

(6) d

ealin’ with the issue rather than puttin’ a band-aid on it an’ patchin’ it up.

As in the previous extract, the concern that charities will use donations effectively is

articulated through the use of the trope of autonomous helping: ‘you can give money but

sure that’s going to be spent, like, compared to teaching a person how to grow crops or

something’ (lines 1–2). In effect, spending money is seen as problematic when compared to

the more substantial and enduring form of charity denoted by the teaching of skills.

Ann develops Eileen’s depiction of appropriate charity through claiming it as

characteristic of ‘some of the Irish charities’ (line 3) in particular, in terms of both current

and previous behaviour (‘they do that, they have’, line 3). The tension between the reliance

of the recipients of help on the donor and the attempt to foster autonomy is worked though

in Ann’s contribution such that the dependence of the recipients of aid is to be avoided

through a proactive training programme. Positioning these (national) charities as teachers/

trainers presents them as supporting the ideology of autonomous, rather than dependency,

helping—ensuring that ‘everything won’t collapse’ (line 4) after the aid has been

delivered. In this sense then, while respondents often made judgements as to the merits of

charities on the basis of acute need, the more chronic implications of the type of aid

delivered were also taken into consideration (such as those that address the ‘underlying

basis’ of poverty, as highlighted by Ed (line 5)). Our second funding is therefore that

respondents actively constructed their helping relationships as autonomous-oriented and

future-directed in order to emphasize the other-focussed nature of their donations.

Helping the undeserving

While the bulk of participants’ talk concerned giving to more impoverished nations,

participants also talked of the nations to whom they would not donate. As illustrated above

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National identity and international giving 257

in extract 2, more powerful countries such as America could be spontaneously invoked as

examples where charitable giving would be inappropriate. However, when asked directly

about which countries were less deserving of aid, participants often demonstrated a

requirement to manage further conflicting priorities:

Extract 5: ‘They’re getting themselves into some messes these days’

(1) M

Copy

od: What countries do you think we would not consider deserving of our help?

(2) (

pause) Or that maybe we just wouldn’t be inclined to help as much?

(3) C

ass: The English, it’s a stupid thing that we have, like, with the Americans as well.

(4) S

arah: Yeah they’re getting themselves into some messes these days - just look at the

(5) w

ar in Iraq. They created that, that’s their fault.

In this extract Cass and Sarah exhibit some difficulty in talking about countries they

would not help as indicated by a noticeable pause after the moderator’s first question. When

the moderator reformulates the question in a less direct way ‘maybe we just wouldn’t be

inclined’ (line 2) the examples they cite are of countries which are recognizably powerful.

These are described in terms of their international agency ‘they’re getting themselves into

some messes’ (line 4) and consequently responsible for their current difficulties and less

deserving of aid. However, the participants qualify these statements in order to distance

themselves from any perceived prejudice. Anti-Englishness or anti-American sentiment is

presented as ‘stupid’ by Cass, before Sarah presents a more elaborated, hence rational,

argument. In these ways participants flexibly deployed the perceived power and

contemporary international behaviour of countries as means of justifying a lack of

charitable behaviour while attending to possible accusations of xenophobia.

More intriguing though were the instances in which participants justified giving to more

powerful countries:

Extract 6: ‘I heard a lot of old people like saying ‘‘oh we shouldn’t be helping them’’’

(1) E

r

ileen: Another group you can tell, like, English people we wouldn’t help, like, ‘cos

(2) o

f what they did to the Paddies back in, like, the 60’s like.

(3) M

od: That’s interesting, if there was the Hurricane Katrina disaster that wiped out

(4) N

ew Orleans basically. Do you think, I mean, was there a, I wasn’t living here

(5) a

t the time, but was there a kind of a feeling that we should be helping the

(6) p

eople of New Orleans? It was Hurricane Katrina wasn’t it?

(7) A

nn: Yeah, I heard a lot of old people like saying ‘oh we shouldn’t be helping

(8) t

hem, they have enough money to help themselves, we should be givin’ money

(9) t

o Africa’.

(10) M

od: You know despite their superior economy we gave nearly as much to New

(11) O

rleans as we did the tsunami, do you think America were undeserving of that

(12) o

r do you think there are no [countries undeserving of charity?

(13) A

nn: [They’re not undeserving but it’s just as if, am, a lot of people felt America

(14) a

ren’t. . .! (15) E ileen: We’re strongly linked to America like, d’ya know? We are though like, the

(16) S

hannon [airport] stop-over and everything, so we think like ‘oh we must’, the

(17) I

rish are over there too, like, so maybe that’s why?

Eileen begins by talking about English, people with whom Ireland has had difficult

historical relations characterized by colonialism. Here she cites anti-Irish discrimination in

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258 C. Stevenson and R. Manning

England (‘what they did to the Paddies back in like the 60s like’, line 2) as a reason for not

considering donating to English charities and in effect the past relationship between

England and Ireland in the 1960s is used to explain why Irish people would withhold help.

In this way participants often referred to the broader context of historical, as well as

current, relations between countries when accounting for international aid.

The moderator then probes participants about international aid following Hurricane

Katrina and its impact on the city of New Orleans in the United States, which could

potentially be seen as a more powerful recipient of help. Ann orients to the inferred power

relations reporting that there was a popular perception that America was affluent enough to

help itself in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Initially this is attributed to ‘old people’

(line 7), a subsection of the population rather than the entire nation. In doing so, she

provides a contrast between ‘old’ and ‘contemporary’ charity, as noted in extract 2 above.

‘Old people’ are presented as talking about such countries as ‘having enough money to help

themselves’ (line 8) thus they should not require the help of others. Using ‘old people’ to

present this point of view, Ann is able to distance herself from the claim (and the potential

position of being seen as uncaring), while also keeping open the possibility of being able to

defer to their more knowledgeable status. However, the charitable ideology of ‘old people’

is presented as being focussed on ‘money’ (line 8), in contrast to the contemporary charity

that necessitates more substantial, autonomy-orientated aid, as articulated in Extracts 3 and

4. When the moderator explicitly notes the ‘superior economy’ (line 10) of America,

adopting the national footing ‘we gave nearly as much’ (line 10), and questioning whether

the recipients were ‘undeserving’ (line 12), Ann initially rejects this representation of

America and reformulates her claim to the more generic ‘a lot of people’ (line 13). This

interchange illustrates the difficulty in reconciling large amounts of charitable giving to

countries that are characterized as economically prosperous.

Ann’s representation of the resistance to help America as characteristic of ‘old Irish

charity’ is not treated as sufficient to militate against the claims made by the moderator

regarding America’s superior economy. In the face of this failure to resolve the potential

contradiction, Eileen instead suggests that helping America may reflect a close relationship

between the two countries. This ‘strong link’ (line 15) is emphasized through the air traffic

connection (‘the Shannon stop-over’), which is located near to the site of the focus groups

and has played an important economic role in the region. Thus a geographical link is

established that signals the presence of America-relevant spaces within the Irish nation,

which in turn provides a possible moral imperative (‘we think like ‘oh we must’’, line 16)

for giving. Also, the presence of Irish people in the US is offered as a possible reason for the

degree of helping the richer country ‘the Irish are over there too like so maybe that’s why?’

(lines 16–17). In other words, the boundaries of the nation are being extended

geographically to include people in the United States as a way to account for why Ireland

may be helping a more affluent and powerful country. In sum, our third finding is that

respondents explicitly oriented to the power differences between countries in their talk and

could flexibly deploy international history and boundaries when accounting for giving.

DISCUSSION

Given the limitations of our student sample, the findings presented here are not taken to

represent the prevalence or range of views or experiences of Irish people, but afford a

consideration of the various possible ways available to participants to talk about the topic of

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National identity and international giving 259

international charity within an Irish context. On this basis, our examination of participants’

talk of charity firstly highlights the centrality of collective identities and intergroup

relations to talk of charitable behaviour. Our analysis suggests that charitable behaviour for

this sample is an intensely moral topic and their accounts were treated as reflecting the

moral identity of the individual as well as their national group.

At the national level of discussion, Irishness was commonly associated with charitable

giving, though the nature of charitable giving was carefully negotiated in relation to a range

of competing demands. On occasion, the notion of the Irish as selfish could also be invoked

when respondents attempted to reconcile Ireland’s recent economic prosperity with a

preference for ingroup helping. This parallels the research of Dalton and colleagues (2008)

who found that their New Zealand respondents invoked national autostereotypes of ‘self-

reliance’ and ‘independence’ to justify helping conationals rather than potentially more

deserving recipients elsewhere.

Additionally, our findings build upon research on both intra and intergroup helping

behaviour. Participants displayed a clear concern that international aid should reflect

economic power relations between countries (Nadler, 2002), such that it should be given to

the poorest, neediest countries, and it was an accountable matter to help a richer, more

powerful country. In other words, participants oriented to the broader context of intergroup

relations in their accounts of international giving. Also in line with the work of Reicher and

colleagues (Levine et al., 2002; Reicher et al., 2006), our participants were able to

strategically construct the boundaries of Irishness to include or exclude those in need of

help.

Where our research adds to these Social Identity informed traditions is in the finding that

these intra and intergroup processes were often interdependent. Participants could extend

the boundaries of Irishness to explain why aid is occasionally given to a richer, more

powerful country. On the other hand, the restriction of charitable helping to conationals

was treated as an accountable matter when the relative economic prosperity of Ireland

became a topic of discussion. In this way participants strategically constructed the

boundaries as well as the content of the nation in order to negotiate the ethical challenges of

giving posed by the broader context of international relations.

Moreover our findings shed light on the types of helping behaviour seen by participants

as appropriate in the context of power relations between countries. Participants were keen

to demonstrate that charitable giving was not for selfish or ‘egoistic’ purposes, but was

other-oriented. They stated that foreign aid to more deprived countries should have as its

goal the benefit and eventual autonomy of the recipients. In contrast to the work of Nadler

(2002), which demonstrates dependency-orientation among donor nations, our participants

displayed a concern to be perceived as autonomy-oriented in their giving.

Though previous research has identified selflessness and the perceived efficacy of

charities as factors affecting willingness to donate (Radley & Kennedy, 1995; Sargeant,

1999), our findings illustrate why specific types of efficacy, those which demonstrably

foster autonomy, might be of particular concern to the donor. In conversational interaction

at least, they allow the donor to manage their collective moral identity through displaying

concern for the future of the recipient. In addition to displaying a desire that the aid is not

wasted and that the need is not perpetuated, this allows participants to emphasize concern

for the welfare of the recipient rather than for the moral or status reward to their own nation.

It is perhaps noteworthy that one potential implication of this preference for autonomy-

orientation is that it implies a time-limit upon the helping relationship. Our respondents

typically talked of charities leaving once their task was complete rather than having an

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DOI: 10.1002/casp

260 C. Stevenson and R. Manning

indefinite helping role in recipient countries. While this was presented as in the interests of

the recipient, it does have wider implications for the maintenance of boundaries between

the donor and recipient nations. Effectively it precludes considering the recipient to be a

part of an extended ingroup (in the longer term at least) by advocating a future of

independence for the outgroup. Conversely, in the instances noted above in which aid was

advocated through extending the boundaries of the national community, this implies a

longstanding responsibility for the recipient rather than a one-off intervention. Further

research could fruitfully explore whether there is a relationship between how group

members see the boundaries between themselves and the recipients of aid, their preferred

timeframe for helping, and the type of aid they would prefer to donate.

Finally, the use of the past in accounting for (non)charitable behaviour was used to

effect a range of positions for the nation. Using examples of past behaviour, the Irish

could be presented as authentically charitable and in a position of expertise in relation

to appropriate and effective charity. In addition, the history of international relations,

in particular regarding Ireland’s past in relation to other countries, could be mobilized

to support charitable behaviour. However, the past was most notably invoked in order

to legitimate particular versions of Irish (non)charity (and identity) in a contemporary

global context. Our participants utilized the past in order to construct contemporary

versions of charity that highlighted the dilemmas of choice in relation to charity, that were

contrasted against ‘older’ versions of charity pertaining to duty. While previous research in

this area has tended to treat helping as located solely in the present, this highlights the

necessity of examining charitable behaviour in the light of intra and international historical

context.

Analysis of the type presented here has a number of potential practical implications.

Firstly, it suggests that previous research focussing on the personality, cognitive and

demographic factors contributing to charitable giving has overlooked the key component

of social identity. Consequently efforts to profile, segment or individualize potential donors

may be limited precisely because this approach ignores the collective nature of

international giving. Secondly, the dependence of understandings of charitable behaviour

upon the context of intergroup relations suggests that international charity appeals may be

enhanced by attention to the presentation of the form and function of aid in the context of

these (historical) power relationships. Charitable appeals to members of nations which are

perceived as rich and powerful may need to address different concerns than those perceived

as less so. Specifically, appeals based on perceived similarity or having shared a similar

plight in the past may be more effective in less-powerful countries while appeals based on

feelings of responsibility for other countries in need may be more effective for the

populations of more affluent countries. Future research would clearly benefit from a cross-

cultural examination of how different national identities and histories differentially impact

upon nationals’ understanding of their charitable behaviour.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This research was supported by a Seed Funding Grant from the University of Limerick.

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and advice

offered by Dr Flora Cornish and two anonymous reviewers on a previous draft of this

manuscript.

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National identity and international giving 261

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