Short‐Term Sustainability: Neoliberal Philanthropy, Dependency, and Divine Economics in Islamic Zanzibar

Caitlyn Bolton

Economic Anthropology, 2026, vol. 13, issue 1

Abstract: As the concept of sustainability became mainstream in development discourses from its environmentalist origins, it increasingly came to resemble the unchecked capitalist logics that it was originally meant to critique: Rather than reorganizing the economy, sustainability could be achieved through the economy as philanthropy became modeled on venture capitalism. This article traces this neoliberal refashioning of sustainability by charting how one Islamic development organization's funding was cut when its project to develop a preprimary sector in Zanzibar's schools was deemed unsustainable. I term this now‐dominant model of funding short‐term sustainability for the way that it narrowly focuses on a temporal frame of only a few years, demanding that projects “sustain” themselves after initial investment through either profit generation or embeddedness in the neoliberal state. In contrast, I chart how another organization redefines sustainability as long‐term relationships of wealth redistribution and care. By modeling funding on the Islamic waqf (pious charitable endowment), they center the spiritual and material interdependence of donors and recipients, in contrast to the Euro‐American liberal valuation of independence that undergirds much contemporary sustainability discourse. Closer to its environmentalist origins, sustainability here is premised on humanity's fundamental dependency, thick webs of relationality, and a commitment to mutual flourishing.

Date: 2026
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