Henri Stiker

Charity, the founding principle of ethical and social order for centuries, endures but becomes tangled among other ideas issuing either from the struggle of the exploited classes or from economic and technical development...To the extent that the idea of charity persists, it directs a series of practices, such as the appeal to a philanthropic attitude, devotion to an almost spiritual mission, fear of opposition to government power. In the disinterested service of a form of poverty the worker at rehabilitation institutions had the dominant characteristic of being an “apostle” before being a professional, of being generous before being salaried, a kind of lay brother or sister, marked in the first hand by a sense of vocation. And this corps of social workers, in all logic, could not make claims against a government that was itself viewed in “charitable” optics (by citizens as intermediaries) and never critically seen as a manipulator of economic or ideological interests. Thus, the institutions were content with weak resources, very loose coordination, and minimal rationality.

Stiker, Henri-Jacques