ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides Marcel Mauss 's totalizing generalizations about non-market conduct and marketization with comparative-historical specificity. It traces the spread of neoliberal ethics among charitable actors. The book presents a comparative analysis of charitable histories and condensed summaries of the ethnographic findings. It shows, Bourdieu's 'double truth' approach suffers from insufficient historicization. The book demonstrates, waves of marketization, the Reformation, liberal philosophy, political economy, and ultimately industrial capitalism have converged in an attack against people's dependence on each other. 'Service' is a quite common word pious Muslims use when they speak of benevolent activities. The neoliberal sea change in charitable conduct is a symptom of the great bouleversement in religion, the last conquest of the liberal revolution.
