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Since Mauss published The Gift, anthropologists have used theories of giving to investigate the connections between exchange, social relationships, and forms of personhood. Drawing on theories of the gift and social reproduction, my research on transnational philanthropy in Mozambique will ask how health is transformed from a state responsibility to a field of philanthropic intervention. How are political subjectivities reconfigured along with new arrangements between government, market, family and philanthropy? How are diverse practices of care for women, children and families - in sites as disparate as research laboratories, public clinics, and empowerment workshops - constituted through practices of philanthropic giving? As emergent philanthropic institutions target gendered family relationships for biomedical and social intervention, what sorts of gendered publics are engaged? Finally, what are the ethics of care at the boundaries of public and private in Mozambique? Using institutional ethnography, in-depth interviews, and media analysis, I aim to map out the political actors, material stakes, gendered imaginaries and subjective hopes that are visible at the unsteady borders of the public-private distinction in contemporary Mozambique.