Objectives

Global assistance has now reached global proportions. The scope of NGO activities now encompasses all those once peripheral places whose study anthropologists took as their field. Through participation in NGO volunteer and assistance activities, people once studied by anthropologists now form relationships that transcend the traditional boundaries of ethnicity and place. People who participate in NGO activities now find themselves enmeshed in global social networks. At the same time, anthropologists doing fieldwork frequently now encounter individuals who participate in local or global NGO activities, in which the anthropologists themselves may be deeply involved, even sometimes as agents providing assistance. In light of this situation, in which NGOs and anthropologists come into increasingly close contact, this research project aims to use the micro perspective of anthropology to illuminate the new kinds of relationships formed by participation in NGO activities and their relation to the mechanisms of global assistance. Another major objective is to explore the role of NGO and other civil society actors in reshaping the national and global order in an era of “grassroots globalization” made possible by direct contact across national boundaries using new electronic media.

Research Results

New types of support activities free from the boundaries of regions, nations, ethnic groups and genders are spreading to every corner of the globe along with globalization. This research set up several opportunities from the outset to discuss the creation of “global support” as a concept to understand the abovementioned phenomenon and provide a definition of this “global support”. These discussions resulted in our sharing of a notion that “global support” did not only mean the support activities carried out globally, but also meant the support activities mainly aiming for empowerment of people based on the issues and values accepted universally and globally, including poverty reduction, environmental conservation, disease control and prevention, education, indigenous people’s rights, and disaster relief activities. Then, sharing this notion of “global support”, our research group had a great number of discussions about the diversity and multilayeredness of actors in support activities including NGOs and about what new social relationships at the scenes of support activities would lead to, based on case studies around the globe conducted by each member.

Meanwhile, this research also paid attention to the fact that people’s imagination was creating a new cooperative relationship different from conventional relationships as the globalization in information was promoted. As shown in some examples such as making a donation to an NGO carrying out support activities overseas and participating in support activities as a volunteer, people are not only helping families, relatives and friends who live nearby, but also extending help to those who live far away and are unknown to them, feeling strong affinities with them. Such support activities by people at a global level are considered to have appeared comparatively recently in the modern times or later. Modern human beings, who appeared about 200,000 years ago, have spread to every corner of the world, cooperated, helped and shared with each other until today while surviving the times of war and competition. Nowadays, a great deal of attention is being paid to “cooperative behaviors (or, altruistic behaviors)” and “sharing” in the fields of archaeology, primatology, neuroscience and psychology, which human beings have passed on in the course of their evolution. This research also attempted to approach these themes from an anthropological viewpoint, but this resulted in the appearance of a large number of issues.

The characteristic of this research is that every researcher did not just end up with a report on individual cases, which has frequently been seen in conventional research about NGOs, but worked to discuss individual cases while placing at the center their own awareness of the current situation where human cooperation is spreading and becoming ubiquitous at a global level, which is the phenomenon appearing in this new phase of human history. New types of support activities free from the boundaries of regions, nations, ethnic groups and genders are spreading to every corner of the globe along with globalization. This research set up several opportunities from the outset to discuss the creation of “global support” as a concept to understand the abovementioned phenomenon and provide a definition of this “global support”. These discussions resulted in our sharing of a notion that “global support” did not only mean the support activities carried out globally, but also meant the support activities mainly aiming for empowerment of people based on the issues and values accepted universally and globally, including poverty reduction, environmental conservation, disease control and prevention, education, indigenous people’s rights, and disaster relief activities. Then, sharing this notion of “global support”, our research group had a great number of discussions about the diversity and multilayeredness of actors in support activities including NGOs and about what new social relationships at the scenes of support activities would lead to, based on case studies around the globe conducted by each member.

Meanwhile, this research also paid attention to the fact that people’s imagination was creating a new cooperative relationship different from conventional relationships as the globalization in information was promoted. As shown in some examples such as making a donation to an NGO carrying out support activities overseas and participating in support activities as a volunteer, people are not only helping families, relatives and friends who live nearby, but also extending help to those who live far away and are unknown to them, feeling strong affinities with them. Such support activities by people at a global level are considered to have appeared comparatively recently in the modern times or later. Modern human beings, who appeared about 200,000 years ago, have spread to every corner of the world, cooperated, helped and shared with each other until today while surviving the times of war and competition. Nowadays, a great deal of attention is being paid to “cooperative behaviors (or, altruistic behaviors)” and “sharing” in the fields of archaeology, primatology, neuroscience and psychology, which human beings have passed on in the course of their evolution. This research also attempted to approach these themes from an anthropological viewpoint, but this resulted in the appearance of a large number of issues.

The characteristic of this research is that every researcher did not just end up with a report on individual cases, which has frequently been seen in conventional research about NGOs, but worked to discuss individual cases while placing at the center their own awareness of the current situation where human cooperation is spreading and becoming ubiquitous at a global level, which is the phenomenon appearing in this new phase of human history.