But I Meant Well : Unlearning Colonial Ways of Doing Good.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thomas, James.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (0 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bradford : Ethics International Press Limited, 2025.

Summary:

Discussions of decolonization often only enable intellectualization of the topic, not action or transformation. But I Meant Well: Unlearning Colonial Ways of Doing Good, enables readers to see coloniality in their everyday lives, to confess their complicity, to begin to delink from colonial ways of doing good, and to detect emerging noncolonial ways. The book is written for those who want to "make the world a better place", to lessen misery and inequality through careers in fields like global health, humanitarian aid, nonprofit charities, and harnessing market forces for good. The author, James Thomas, has worked in global health as an epidemiologist and ethicist in more than 40 countries. Not content to be just an academic, he founded an organization in East Africa that sought to provide an alternative to the typical donor-recipient model of nonprofits. Early in his career, he became aware that as a White male descendant of colonial settlers, many modern social systems, including those claiming to improve the world, were created by and for people like him. He came to see that he had uncritically adopted colonial narratives and methods. Inspired by Kenyan novelist, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Thomas sought to decolonize his mind, a process he describes as unlearning colonial ways. Those who read this book will be guided on a similar journey. Drawing from a wide variety of disciplines - including sociology, history, religion, philosophy, economics, psychobiology, and political science - Thomas presents a jargon-free narrative that draws the reader in. Students of public health, social work, medicine, nursing, business and more will find the journey not just informative but personally and professionally transformative.

Contents:

Intro

Images

Preface Start Here

Shared language

My background

Book structure

Part One

Intentions

Chapter One Who am I to Write Such a Book?

Replacing the tools

Evasion

Liberation

Swimming in narratives

Conviction and transformation

Unlearning in the academy

My faith-based failure résumé

So, who am I to write such a book?

Chapter Two Good Intentions

To hell with good intentions

Examining my intentions

Why I was there

Hellish good intentions

Others' intentions

Colonial and political intentions

Home grown intentions

Confluence

Revolutionary intentions

What came of my intentions?

Intentionality and coloniality

Conversation with Christine Folch

Part Two

Narratives

Chapter Three Identity

Narrating our identities

Narratives and place

Place as a way of knowing

You're not from here

Sanctioned subjugation

The invention of Whiteness

Erasure

Narratives, identity, and ways of doing good

Chapter Four Escape

A hinge moment

Chapter Five The Master's Tools

Encoded in a system

Patriarchy

Theology and secular philosophy

Identity

Knowledge

Economy

Authority

Drain and fulfillment

Conversation with Ben Boswell

Part Three

Colonial Ways

Chapter Six Global Health

What the data show

Technological progress in global health

Medicalization of the global health industry

Following the funders

Measurement burden

Defining reality

Working with blinders on

Alternative models for improving health

The development set

Chapter Seven Charity

The charity alphabet

The charity pantheon

Religious intentions

Secular missionaries

Coloniality in charity

Control

Telling other people's stories

Sewing chaos

Distracting from root causes

Does altruism exist?.

Charity otherwise

Chapter Eight The Market

The costs of growth

Environmental depletion

Inequality

Violence

Sanding off the sharp edges

Philanthrocapitalism

Effective altruism

Corporate social responsibility

Microfinance

Relational economies

Free market ways of doing good

Conversation with Elijah Zehyoue

Part Four

Doing Better

Chapter Nine The Humanity We Lose

Being human

Perpetual angst

Isolation

Narcissism

Moral injury

Conditioning our brains

Acceleration

Recovering our humanity

Chapter Ten Unlearning

What unlearning is not

What unlearning is

Unlearning abstraction

Unlearning control

Unlearning independence

Unlearning materialism

Unlearning consumerism

Foundational practices

What unlearning feels like

Resisting

Chapter Eleven Seeing systems

What is a system?

Characteristics of complex systems

Unpredictability

Colonial Ways That Blind Us to Systems

Colonial Ways of Bypassing Systems

Food Aid as a Colonial Way of Doing Good

Solutions from Within

Alternative Systems

Seeing, resisting, reducing harm

Conversation with Patty Krawec

Epilogue Do-Over

The next extraction

Questioning

Imagining

Confessing

Resisting abstraction

Resisting control

The mirage of purity

For Further Reading (nonfiction)

Colonization

Decolonization

Environment and Nature

Global Health and Development

Indigenous Perspectives

Modernity

Philanthropy and Charity

Political Economics

Race

Technology

Systems Thinking

World History

Colonialism in the Arts

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-83711-185-5