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Philanthropy as an Essentially Contested Concept

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Abstract

Drawing upon W.B. Gallie’s framework, which identified seven characteristics of essentially contested concepts, the paper unpacks and examines the variety of approaches to the conceptualisation of philanthropy. In this way, it explores how philanthropy is an essentially contested concept. I argue that greater scholarly attention to the essentially contested nature of the concept of philanthropy is salient to avoiding problems of conceptual ambiguity and miscommunication. What is more, recognition of the essentially contested nature of the concept of philanthropy is fundamental to ensuring that issues of conceptualisation do not hinder either progress in the theoretical development of the field or the resonance of studies of philanthropy beyond the academy.

Résumé

Se fondant sur le cadre d’étude de W.B. Gallie, qui a identifié sept caractéristiques de concepts essentiellement contestés, l’article expose et examine la variété des approches relatives à la conceptualisation de la philanthropie. Il explore ainsi comment la philanthropie est un concept essentiellement contesté. Mon argument est qu’une plus grande attention de la recherche sur la nature essentiellement contestée du concept de philanthropie s’impose afin d’éviter les problèmes d’ambiguïté conceptuelle et d’incompréhension. En outre, la reconnaissance de la nature essentiellement contestée du concept de philanthropie est fondamentale pour garantir que les questions de conceptualisation ne viennent pas compromettre le progrès du développement théorique de la discipline ou la résonance des études sur la philanthropie au-delà de l’université.

Zusammenfassung

Beruhend auf dem von W. B. Gallie formulierten Rahmenwerk, das sieben Merkmale wesentlich umstrittener Begriffe bestimmt, werden in dem Beitrag die verschiedenen Ansätze zur Konzeptualisierung der Philanthropie dargestellt und untersucht. Auf diese Weise wird erforscht, inwiefern es sich bei der Philanthropie um einen wesentlich umstrittenen Begriff handelt. Ich bin der Ansicht, dass größere wissenschaftliche Aufmerksamkeit auf den wesentlich umstrittenen Charakter des Philantropiekonzepts gelenkt werden muss, um Probleme begrifflicher Ambiguität sowie Kommunikationsprobleme zu vermeiden. Darüber hinaus ist es wichtig, den wesentlich umstrittenen Charakter des Philanthropiekonzepts zu erkennen, um so zu gewährleisten, dass die Probleme einer Konzeptualisierung nicht den Fortschritt in der theroetischen Entwicklung des Bereichs oder die Resonanz der Philantropiestudien über die Hochschulen hinaus behindern.

Resumen

Haciendo uso del marco de W.B. Gallie, que identificó siete características de conceptos esencialmente discutibles, el documento desvela y examina la variedad de enfoques ante la conceptualización de la filantropía. De este modo, explora cómo la filantropía es un concepto esencialmente discutible. Yo argumento que la mayor atención académica a la naturaleza esencialmente discutible del concepto de filantropía es significativa para evitar problemas de ambigüedad conceptual y mala comunicación. Además, el reconocimiento de la naturaleza esencialmente discutible del concepto de filantropía es fundamental para garantizar que las cuestiones de conceptualización no entorpezcan ni el progreso en el desarrollo teórico del campo ni la resonancia de los estudios de filantropía más allá de la academia.

摘要

本文以 W.B. Gallie 的理论框架为基础——本框架指出了本质上存有争议的一些概念的 7 大特点,探讨了各种各样的慈善事业概念化方法。通过这种方式,本文探究了慈善事业如何成为一个本质上存在争议的概念。我认为,学术界应当对慈善事业这一概念的争议性给予更多关注,这是防止概念模糊和表达不清的关键。此外,承认慈善事业这一概念的争议性具有极重要的意义,唯有如此,方能确保概念化问题不致阻碍该领域的理论发展,或是妨碍慈善事业研究在学术界之外产生反响。

ملخص

بالاعتماد على إطار(W.B. Gallie)، الذي حدد سبع خصائص للمفاهيم الأساسية المتنازع عليها، البحث يبين و يفحص مجموعة من مناهج مختلفة في فكر العمل الخيري. في هذه الطريقة، إنه يستكشف كيف أن مفهوم العمل الخيري متنازع عليه أساسي. أنا أناقش أن المزيد من الاهتمام العلمي لطبيعة التنافس الأساسي لمفهوم العمل الخيري هو لتجنب المشاكل البارزة من الغموض وسوء الفهم النظري. ما هو أكثر، التعرف على طبيعة التنافس أساسي لمفهوم العمل الخيري هو أساس لضمان أن مشاكل الفكر لا تعيق أي تقدم في تطوير نظرية المجال أو صدى لدراسات العمل الخيري خارج الأكاديمية.

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Notes

  1. A concept is rendered confused if the same term is used to refer to fundamentally different ideas (Collier et al. 2006, p. 219). Sartori (1984, pp. 22–28) argues that a concept is ambiguous if the meaning is confused and the referent is undenotative or vague. Ambiguity occurs when different meanings become entangled, and it is unclear in a particular context which meaning is intended.

  2. Payton refers to ‘the self interest question’, that is, whether ‘philanthropy’ can serve as ‘a means to other ends, to spin off collateral benefits?’ Debates about how it is manifested centre around fundamental (ideological) disagreement about whether philanthropy is a force for challenging or complementing government and business (1987, p. 2).

  3. A search of articles containing ‘philanthropy’ in the title was carried out using the ISI Web of Science (Web of Knowledge). The search was refined to the General Category ‘Social Sciences’; Language ‘English’ and Document Type ‘Article’. I excluded a number of subject areas in what may broadly be referred to as health care sciences. This search returned 253 results. A review of the titles, abstracts and, where the focus was still not wholly clear, the body of articles led me to exclude (a) articles on corporate philanthropy and (b) historical articles, which provide an account and analysis of ‘philanthropy’ at a particular point in time or over a particular period of time. The former raises a number of pertinent and provocative issues in relation to the meaning of philanthropy, specifically linked to the relationship between philanthropy and business, which I do not have the space to do justice to here. Similarly, although important attempts have been made to provide longitudinal analyses of the concept of philanthropy, there is much more to be done in this area (Sulek 2010a, b; Morris 2004; Ilchman et al. 1998). I also eliminated conference papers, which were returned by the search in order to keep my focus on a review of substantial, peer-reviewed articles. The search returned 76 articles of this genre. Within these parameters, the search also returned 50 articles from publications which feature one or more of opinion pieces, commentary, profiles and classify themselves as journal/magazine/newspaper. I have only cited one of these references to be of relevance within the paper (Porter and Kramer 1999). This search of the ISI Web of Knowledge was complemented by a further (if sometimes repetitious) search and review of the three main journals: Voluntas: International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organisations (48 ‘Original Papers’ returned from general search using the term ‘philanthropy’); Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (66 results returned using search term ‘philanthropy’ in the title (42 excluding book reviews; 36 results using search term ‘philanthropy’ in key words, which revealed three additional sources not returned in the first search) and Nonprofit Management and Leadership (13 results from a search of articles with ‘philanthropy’ in the title, including 4 research reports but excluding book reviews. A similar search in ‘keywords’ did not reveal any results). In each case, the parameters for the search were January 1980–May 2011. The sources reviewed were also bolstered by the perusal of references of interest referred to in articles reviewed and other sources gathered by the author in the course of her broader research in this area. Following Gerring (2001, p. 73), as the focus was on garnering insights into ‘general usage patterns’ and patterns of articulation and meaning, rather than ‘precise fluctuations’, any further coding exercise was felt to be unnecessary.

  4. Ideologies, according to Freeden, represent ‘groupings of decontested political concepts’ (p. 82). Decontestation occurs in that an ideology may achieve a particular or steady meaning in the realm of political action because of the emphasis which is placed on making firm decisions rather than on-going debate about ideology per se (Freeden 1996, pp. 76–77). Perhaps, crucial to this is the following characterisation Freeden (1996, p. 50) makes about ideologies: ‘[I]deologies treat political concepts not merely as signified but as referents. Far from engaging in abstract thought exercises, they refer also to observable facts and concrete social practices in the external world.’

  5. He views charity as the ‘prudent sister’ of philanthropy (1988, p. 32). Whilst ‘compassion’ has ‘an emotional quality’ rooted in individuals lending assistance to those in need, ‘community’ is based on ‘mutuality and sharing’ though more rationally built on ‘organisation, planning, prudence and calculation’ (ibid., p. 44).

  6. Though often perceived as a perspective which has developed out of a particularly American view of state–market–civil society nexus, the indications are that foundations in some other countries, notably in Europe, also identify with positive pluralist perspectives of their roles which are similar to their American counterparts, even though they operate in environments where the state–market–civil society relationship has developed in different ways (Anheier and Daly 2007; de Borms 2005).

  7. Harrow (2010, p. 123) refers to philanthropy as a ‘clustered concept’, that is, one which is ‘capable of being multiply defined by multiple stakeholders, so that parallel understandings of its nature and purpose coexist in research’.

  8. He refers specifically here to how this interpretation of philanthropy is evident in Salamon’s (1992) definition of philanthropy.

  9. This particular characterisation also suggests that operationalisation of the concept of philanthropy is fundamental to its identification, see Gerring (2001, pp. 43–48).

  10. See Baldwin (1997, p. 23) for similar patterns in the treatment of the concept of security. The specification of particular dimensions of philanthropy has much in common with trends in the articulation of subtypes and the ‘précising’ of definitions among scholars of democracy. In the simplest sense, précising involves the addition of defining properties and seeks to ensure that concepts can be adapted to new contexts. Classical subtypes are ‘full instances of the root definition’. This does not imply that the author’s root definition is the ‘correct’ definition of the concept but rather that, for that scholar, it is the ‘point of departure’ for defining the subtype (Collier and Levitsky 1997, pp. 435, 442–445). As a measure of the potential for conceptual confusion, scholars are not always explicit about the root concept from which the subtype is derived. This if often implicit in the articulation if subtypes.

  11. See http://www.asianphilanthropyforum.org/articles-on-asia-pacific.html on the rise of philanthropy in the Asian–Pacific region.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Irene Hardill and the three anonymous reviewers for their comments.

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    Siobhan Daly

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Daly, S. Philanthropy as an Essentially Contested Concept. Voluntas 23, 535–557 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-011-9213-5

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