The Aid Triangle: Recognizing the Human Dynamics of Dominance, Justice and Identity

The Aid Triangle focuses on the human dynamics of international aid and illustrates how the aid system incorporates power relationships, and therefore relationships of dominance. Using the concept of a triangle of dominance, justice and identity, this timely work explains how the experience of injustice is both a challenge and a stimulus to personal, community and national identity, and how such identities underlie the human potential that international aid should seek to enrich. This insightful new critique provides for the reader an innovative and constructive framework for producing more empowering and more effective aid.

Malcolm MacLachlan is with the Centre for Global Health and the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. He is a graduate of the universities of Cardiff, Dundee, London, Strathclyde and Dublin and is currently a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Rehabilitation Studies, Stellenbosch University. His research interests are in organisational aspects of international aid, enablement of people with disabilities, and the interplay between culture and health. He has worked with a broad range of NGOs and multi-lateral agencies and with Irish Aid. He is currently Research Advisor to Southern African Federation of the Disabled. Eilish Mc Auliffe is Director of the Centre for Global Health and Senior Lecturer in Health Policy and Management, Trinity College Dublin. Her research is on strengthening health systems in middle and low-income countries, with a particular focus on the human resource crisis and psychosocial aspects of HIV/AIDS, and she has contributed to books and published in peer reviewed journals on these issues. Previously, Eilish worked at the Centre for Social Research, University of Malawi. She has provided a wide range of consultancy support to governments, NGOs and professional healthcare bodies and has contributed to numerous strategy and policy documents in both high and low-income countries. Stuart C. Carr is Professor of Psychology in the Industrial and Organisational Psychology Program at Massey University. Professor Carr coordinates the Poverty Research Group, an international network focused on interdisciplinary approaches to reducing poverty. Stuart’s speciality is applying Industrial and Organisational Psychology to poverty reduction and his books are among the first to examine poverty reduction from this perspective, he co-edits the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology.