Search Results

Madam C. J. Walker and African American Philanthropy in the Twenty-First Century

Tyrone McKinley Freeman

in Madam C. J. Walker's Gospel of Giving: Black Women's Philanthropy during Jim Crow

The epilogue examines the presence of Walker’s style of giving among African American donors of the twenty-first century, from Oprah Winfrey to the millions of black churchwomen, clubwomen, and ... More

The epilogue examines the presence of Walker’s style of giving among African American donors of the twenty-first century, from Oprah Winfrey to the millions of black churchwomen, clubwomen, and giving circle members today. It presents Winfrey as an exemplar of Madam Walker’s gospel of giving by exploring the evolution of her philanthropy across her career. It reviews the fundraising campaign of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, which reflected Walker’s gospel of giving by creating multiple points of entry for donors of various abilities to give. A broad base of donors of all races, but especially African Americans, responded to the campaign by donating money, artifacts, and volunteer time at extraordinary rates. The chapter presents a brief overview of the current landscape of African American philanthropy as a reflection of Walker’s gospel of giving that includes the black church, communal forms of giving, giving circles, family foundations, black-led organizations and social movements, and professional affinity networks in philanthropy.Less

‘Twenty girls in my attic’: Spatial and Spiritual Conversion in L. T. Meade’s A Princess of the Gutter

Lisa C. Robertson

in Home and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Literary London

This chapter examines L.T. Meade’s A Princess of the Gutter (1895). This novel integrates generic conventions of romance and realism in order to engage in contemporary debates about the settlement ... More

This chapter examines L.T. Meade’s A Princess of the Gutter (1895). This novel integrates generic conventions of romance and realism in order to engage in contemporary debates about the settlement movement for its juvenile audience. In its representation of the protagonist’s experience living and working in various forms of settlement housing in London’s East End, the novel explores the degree to which a commitment to religious philosophy was necessary to effect meaningful social change.Less

Female medical care: a new professional learning space, 1865–90

Tim Allender

in Learning Femininity In Colonial India, 1820-1932

The activism of female missionaries created new networks where limited forms of Western femininity and feminism could engage with Indian communities. Rather than the classroom, these networks were ... More

The activism of female missionaries created new networks where limited forms of Western femininity and feminism could engage with Indian communities. Rather than the classroom, these networks were now built around medical care. Procedural innovation regarding tropical sanitation and epidemiology that developed on the subcontinent created new terrain for missionary women to engage with Indian females. The dynamic created was so powerful that female physicians in India anticipated later developments at the metropole. As well, even with the decline of the raj in the early twentieth-century, it was the missions rather than secular medical efforts that continued to dominate the medical professional space in India.Less

Activists in Their Twenties

Rachel F. Seidman

in Speaking of Feminism: Today's Activists on the Past, Present, and Future of the U.S. Women's Movement

The six women and one trans man in this chapter were between the ages of 20 and 30 years old. Like the other activists in this book, they search for ways to balance their passion and commitment to ... More

The six women and one trans man in this chapter were between the ages of 20 and 30 years old. Like the other activists in this book, they search for ways to balance their passion and commitment to making a difference in the world with the need to earn a living, maintain their health, and craft lives that include time for friends and families. Several have been activists since they were teenagers. They discuss how the events of September 11, 2001 and the Great Recession of 2008 shaped their lives and their ideas about activism. They reveal how “intersectionality” inherently defines the way most of them think about feminism and see interconnections between issues --- whether reproductive justice, sexual assault, police brutality, Black Lives Matter, transgender experiences, housing and economic development. Several discuss the role of philanthropy in the feminist movement. These young activists’ ingenuity and their ability to tap into local and international networks, and to bring theory to practice, reflects a wealth of experience and knowledge that promises feminism remains a vital, evolving, and exciting movement.Less

Diaspora Philanthropy: The Case of Sikhs Giving Back to Punjab

Verne A. Dusenbery and Darshan S. Tatla

in Sikhism in Global Context

This chapter investigates the philanthropy of contemporary Sikh diaspora in Punjab, a practice of giving that goes back to the earliest decades of Sikh migration from Punjab. Overseas Sikhs have ... More

This chapter investigates the philanthropy of contemporary Sikh diaspora in Punjab, a practice of giving that goes back to the earliest decades of Sikh migration from Punjab. Overseas Sikhs have become connected with Punjab in economic, political, and cultural matters through patronage, financial assistance, and new social practices brought from abroad. The study of diaspora philanthropy becomes a site for analyzing the transmission of material resources, information and values. Some of the issues concerning Sikh diaspora philanthropy in Punjab are then explained. Differences about how, where, and for what purpose money is given reflect the different existing resource bases and the different social make-up of the givers as well as the historical relationship of groups in each block. While some efforts have been made to encourage female empowerment, Sikh diaspora philanthropy seems to act ‘both to challenge and to perpetuate gendered norms within Punjabi society’. The author concludes by pointing out that today’s diaspora philanthropy is less likely to be directed towards religious places.Less

Academic Activism: Social Science and Social Reform in Progressive-Era Chicago

Anya Jabour

in Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women's Activism in Modern America

Chapter 4 examines Breckinridge’s participation in social reform in the Progressive era. In conjunction with Jane Addams and other women reformers associated with Hull House, Breckinridge advocated ... More

Chapter 4 examines Breckinridge’s participation in social reform in the Progressive era. In conjunction with Jane Addams and other women reformers associated with Hull House, Breckinridge advocated for a wide range of reforms and formulated the doctrine of a national minimum standard of living that would inform her later participation in the creation of the welfare state. She also fused her participation in social reform circles with her leadership in the emerging social work profession by using social science as the basis for social reform. Through her teaching and research first at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and then at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, Breckinridge established a niche for herself in Progressive-era reform that relied upon her professional status and her scholarly expertise to legitimize political protest and advance social reform.Less

The Other Chicago School: The School of Social Service Administration

Anya Jabour

in Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women's Activism in Modern America

Chapter 5 details Breckinridge’s collaboration with Edith Abbott at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, exploring the pair’s distinctive approach to the ... More

Chapter 5 details Breckinridge’s collaboration with Edith Abbott at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, exploring the pair’s distinctive approach to the professionalization of social work and their consistent emphasis on public welfare programs. Building on their previous collaboration at the private Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, Breckinridge and Abbott worked in tandem to build the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and to make it the premier school of social work in the United States. This chapter examines the two women’s distinctive approach to social work, basing social welfare policy on social science research and emphasizing public programs rather than individual responsibility.Less

At home in the Ottoman Empire: humanitarianism and the Victorian diplomat

Michelle Tusan

in The Cultural Construction of the British World

This chapter examines the world of the Victorian diplomat through the life and work of Austen Henry Layard and his circle in Constantinople. Best known for his excavations of Assyrian artifacts at ... More

This chapter examines the world of the Victorian diplomat through the life and work of Austen Henry Layard and his circle in Constantinople. Best known for his excavations of Assyrian artifacts at Mosul (now in the British Museum), Layard parlayed his fame as an adventurer-archeologist into a position as Disraeli’s Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. At Constantinople, Layard found himself at the center of a humanitarian and diplomatic crisis. The slaughter of Bulgarian civilians by Ottoman forces on the eve of the 1878 Russo-Turkish War sparked outrage at home over the “Bulgarian Atrocities.” His life as a diplomat at the Sublime Porte placed him at the center of a network of philanthropists, consuls, and other diplomats who attempted to reconcile Britain’s humanitarian commitments with geopolitical realities.Less

‘Out of its torpid misery’: Plotting Passivity in Margaret Harkness’s A City Girl

Lisa C. Robertson

in Home and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Literary London

This chapter examines Margaret Harkness’s novel A City Girl (1887). It describes the emergence of the Model Dwellings Movement, and considers Harkness’s time living in a model dwelling in London’s ... More

This chapter examines Margaret Harkness’s novel A City Girl (1887). It describes the emergence of the Model Dwellings Movement, and considers Harkness’s time living in a model dwelling in London’s East End: Katharine Buildings. This chapter studies the fictional representation of Katharine Buildings in A City Girl to engage with questions about the social effectiveness of model dwellings movement and its program of ‘capitalist philanthropy.’Less

Jane Welsh Carlyle: Living With Genius(1)

William W. J. Knox

in Lives of Scottish Women: Women and Scottish Society 1800–1980

Explores through Eliza Wigham's life the public life of women and chronicles the origin and development of the women's movement in Scotland.

Altruism and the Monks of Thelema: Ideals and Realities

Geoffrey A. C. Ginn (ed.)

in Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform

The central concerns of Besant’s philanthropic novels of the 1880s were anticipated in 1878’s The Monks of Thelema: An Invention, his first sustained foray into social commentary. Although largely ... More

The central concerns of Besant’s philanthropic novels of the 1880s were anticipated in 1878’s The Monks of Thelema: An Invention, his first sustained foray into social commentary. Although largely neglected by scholars, the novel is an intriguing satire that is rich with contemporary insights. In addressing the dilemmas of philanthropic activism, Besant mocks the naïve idealism associated with Oxford thinkers and undergraduates while finding positive value in their reformist schemes of liberal education for the emerging mass democracy. With the French humanist François Rabelais supplying a model for progressive liberal humanism, amid the satire Besant’s fiction develops a positive ideal of association and moral perfectibility that foreshadows his later, more celebrated work in philanthropy and social reform.Less

Beyond the Kirk Session: Mixed Economies of Relief

John McCallum

in Poor Relief and the Church in Scotland, 1560-1650

While the focus in the previous two sections is on the formal relief system operated by the church in the localities, on the poor who received relief, and on the relationship between them, the final ... More

While the focus in the previous two sections is on the formal relief system operated by the church in the localities, on the poor who received relief, and on the relationship between them, the final chapter of the book turns to consider the wider context of relief. Recent European research has demonstrated the significance of mixed economies of relief, as well as developing growing attempts to trace the lives and survival strategies of the poor on their own terms, and not merely as recipients of charity. This section applies these two trends to the Scottish experience, and contextualises the church’s relief work through an examination of the relief provided by secular authorities; hospitals; and private individuals; and the informal survival strategies employed by the poor themselves. The chapter argues that the kirk session was at the centre of the mixed economy of relief, and was by far the most significant source of support for early modern Scots in need of assistance, and furthermore that the kirk session was often instrumental in supporting, working with, and developing these other forms of relief (hospitals, testamentary charity and foundations).Less

Paperwork and Philanthropy: Dickens’s Involvement in Metropolitan Improvement

Joanna Hofer-Robinson

in Dickens and Demolition: Literary Afterlives and Mid-Nineteenth Century Urban Development

This chapter analyses Dickensian afterlives in nineteenth-century philanthropic works alongside an investigation of Dickens’s personal involvement in a scheme to improve London’s provision of housing ... More

This chapter analyses Dickensian afterlives in nineteenth-century philanthropic works alongside an investigation of Dickens’s personal involvement in a scheme to improve London’s provision of housing stock for the East End poor. Dickens collaborated with a number of his social network on this project, including Angela Burdett Coutts and Dr Thomas Southwood Smith. His chief contributions were bureaucratic, and, contemporaneously with this work, he explored tensions between the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of paperwork in Bleak House. Thus, this chapter suggests that Dickens’s practical and administrative involvement in charity work informed his imaginative representation of the utility and futility of paperwork, and how he conceptualised the effectiveness of different forms of writing. Dickens famously contended for pet causes in his fiction, but the various ways in which Dickens’s works were appropriated by other people, and recontextualised to promote or to criticise philanthropic projects, reveal that his writing was not always useful in the sense that he imagined. Indeed, the instrumentality of Dickens’s fiction to effect charitable projects was often indirect. For example, philanthropists, including Mary Carpenter and Octavia Hill, curated literary afterlives to enhance the effectiveness of their arguments in published treatises, even though the novels are not always relevant to their causes.Less

The Shanghai Artist in Advertising and Mass Media

Roberta Wue

in Art Worlds: Artists, Images, and Audiences in Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai

Examines the relationships between Shanghai artists and their public and the establishment of these relationships through Shanghai’s growing mass media outlets. By exploiting the city’s burgeoning ... More

Examines the relationships between Shanghai artists and their public and the establishment of these relationships through Shanghai’s growing mass media outlets. By exploiting the city’s burgeoning newspaper and publishing industries, artists promoted themselves as public figures and marketed themselves, their products and activities; through the mass media, they were able to access audiences on local, national and even international levels. By using newspaper advertising and articles, guide books, popular periodicals and collected writings, this chapter reveals the formation of the art world’s public image, promoted for consumption by an urban audience and mass readership.Less

Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller (eds.), Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 351 pp.

Richard I. Cohen (ed.)

in Place in Modern Jewish Culture and Society

This chapter reviews the book Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History (2015), edited by Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller. Purchasing Power is a collection of essays that offers a wide ... More

This chapter reviews the book Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History (2015), edited by Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller. Purchasing Power is a collection of essays that offers a wide range of methodological and historiographical perspectives on Jewish economic life from the early to late modern period—from early modern Rome to the Soviet Jewry movement in 1960s–1980s America. The book combines studies focused on both the creation and the deployment of Jewish economic power, thus acknowledging the central role played by philanthropy in Jewish societies. The book looks at Jews as agents (in national, transnational, and global perspectives) and how they “amassed, contested and deployed power through economic means.” The authors overcome taboos in the analysis of the connection between capitalism and the Jews.Less

Who are you swimming for?

Karen Throsby

in Immersion: Marathon Swimming, Embodiment and Identity

This chapter explores the relationship between marathon swimming and charitable fundraising. The chapter argues that the act of swimming for charity is a readily intelligible and sincerely intended ... More

This chapter explores the relationship between marathon swimming and charitable fundraising. The chapter argues that the act of swimming for charity is a readily intelligible and sincerely intended means of constructing the good body/self, but that this simultaneously flattens out different forms of suffering and depoliticises social inequalities and ill-health. The celebration of the endurance sporting body and its reward through sponsorship over-emphasises individual accomplishment whilst understating the privilege that facilitates those status-bearing acts. The chapter argues that these elisions and exclusions are made possible by the inextricability of charitable swimming from the cultural logics of neoliberalism.Less

Heiress

Joan L. Richards

in Generations of Reason: A Family's Search for Meaning in Post-Newtonian England

In 1807, Frend accepted a position as actuary to the Rock Assurance Company; on January 16, 1808, he married Blackburne’s granddaughter and Hannah Lindsey’s niece, Sarah Blackburne; on November 10, ... More

In 1807, Frend accepted a position as actuary to the Rock Assurance Company; on January 16, 1808, he married Blackburne’s granddaughter and Hannah Lindsey’s niece, Sarah Blackburne; on November 10, 1808, their first child, Sophia Elizabeth Frend was born. In the first year of Sophia’s life, her father was entangled with the radical MP Francis Burdett, who was sent to the Tower for speaking up about a discussion that was to have been confidential. But for most of Sophia’s childhood, her father acted as a reliable breadwinner. Sophia’s parents taught her to reason at home. As she moved through her teen-age years, she laid the groundwork for what was to be a lifetime of philanthropic activity volunteering in Mary Lister’s Invalid Asylum for Respectable Females. At home she learned from the eclectic group of free thinkers who flocked around Frend for lively discussions and arguments.Less

Unitarian Women

Joan L. Richards

in Generations of Reason: A Family's Search for Meaning in Post-Newtonian England

In the late 1820s and 1830s, William Frend and his former pupil Lady Byron were deeply involved in efforts to improve the condition of the poorer people of England. Central to their efforts, were ... More

In the late 1820s and 1830s, William Frend and his former pupil Lady Byron were deeply involved in efforts to improve the condition of the poorer people of England. Central to their efforts, were attempts to establish and support the development of Mechanics Institutes as envisioned by Henry Brougham. As she grew into adulthood, Sophia Frend was also drawn into Lady Byron’s philanthropic orbit and became active in the Children’s Frend Society. Joined by the literalist view reason they had each learned from Frend, the two women together examined the implications of the literalist view of reason for their world of early Victorian womanhood, and aspired to understand the nature of what they called ‘Truth with a capital T.” As they did so, both were deeply affected by the ideas of Ramouhan Roy, albeit in somewhat different ways.Less

The folk industry

Trish Winter and Simon Keegan-Phipps

in Performing Englishness: Identity and politics in a contemporary folk resurgence

The first of the three chapters that make up Part I (Contemporary English Folk), this chapter explores the specific relationships between the current resurgence of the English folk arts and matters ... More

The first of the three chapters that make up Part I (Contemporary English Folk), this chapter explores the specific relationships between the current resurgence of the English folk arts and matters of professionalisation and commercialisation. It begins by charting these relationships in the recent history of the English folk arts. It then looks in more detail at the contemporary folk industry, which is broken down into intersecting areas of activity: fundraising and philanthropy; education; publicity, marketing and promotion; and engagement with broadcast media. There follows a brief discussion of a case study – the Magpie’s Nest folk club – and the chapter ends by concluding that the contemporary folk industry inculcates reconciliation of the apparently contradictory elements of philanthropic, DIY activism and professional commerce.Less

Why Give Away Your Wealth? An Analysis of the Billionaires’ View

Jana Sadeh, Mirco Tonin, and Michael Vlassopoulos

in Social Economics: Current and Emerging Avenues

We explore what motivates the philanthropic activity of extremely wealthy individuals and families. We focus on a recent large-scale philanthropic initiative by billionaires, the Giving Pledge, a ... More

We explore what motivates the philanthropic activity of extremely wealthy individuals and families. We focus on a recent large-scale philanthropic initiative by billionaires, the Giving Pledge, a commitment to donating half or more of one's wealth. We perform two pieces of analysis: first, we investigate what personal characteristics of billionaires are associated with becoming a pledger. Second, we undertake a textual analysis of the pledgers' letters describing their philanthropic outlook and classify their motivation into ten categories. We then correlate these motivational categories with various personal characteristics of the pledgers. The main insights obtained from our analysis is that pledgers are more likely to be self-made billionaires, and that their philanthropy is impact-driven.Less