This chapter argues that Gissing’s novels offer significant and philosophically sophisticated engagements with the novel of ideas. Gissing’s study of Schopenhauer’s works led him to take a keen interest in post-Kantian idealism and in fundamental questions regarding the irreconcilability of the ‘ideal’ and the ‘real’. These concerns are reflected in the novels Gissing wrote in the 1880s – these books satirize the idealist pretensions of social reformers, and they demonstrate that the philanthropic ideals of the Settlement Movement were bound to fail when confronted with the complex and harsh reality of London’s East End. Gissing’s novels are animated by a set of questions that bear directly on the history of the novel of ideas: are aspirational ideals necessarily external and alien to the literary work, or is it possible for them to be assimilated into the medium of literary form? Is it possible for these ideals to become artistically productive?

The All-Affected Principle (AAP) in democratic theory holds that everyone who is affected by a decision has a claim to participate in making that decision. Authors who invoke the principle usually restrict its scope and argue only for enfranchising affected interests within formal political decision-making procedures. In other words, the AAP would expand the demos (e.g. by including people affected by decisions taken in other countries), but need not expand the sites of formal politics to which democratic norms apply. Against these scope restrictions, we argue that the AAP applies to some extra-governmental actors and, in particular, to big philanthropists. We make this argument without endorsing an expansive reading of the AAP as applying to all kinds of decisions, public and private. Rather, we argue that the reasons we have for endorsing the AAP—for thinking that it is wrong for people to be denied influence over exercises of power that affect them—do not pick out formal political decision-making as a uniquely important site of inclusion. We also challenge, on anti-paternalist grounds, the assumption that it is primarily the risk of negative impacts that grounds claims to inclusion.

This chapter considers whether and how the All-Affected Principle (AAP) ought to be extended to large-scale, Western-based INGOs such as Oxfam and Care. These INGOs are frequently criticized for being undemocratic. Would more compliance with the AAP make them more democratic? I consider two possible ways of extending the APP to INGOs. The AAP’s “inclusive face” analogizes INGOs to governments and suggests that they should be more inclusive. It thus offers only a limited basis for critique. The AAP’s “exclusive face” points out that INGOs are unaffected, and tells us that they should therefore be excluded. The AAP’s exclusive face therefore offers a more radical basis for critiquing INGOs than its inclusive face. However, even the AAP’s exclusive face has serious limitations in the context of INGOs. This is because INGOs face the involvement/influence dilemma: they can be involved in addressing social problems or they can avoid undue influence, but it is difficult for them to do both simultaneously. I therefore turn to three organizations that directly and intentionally address this dilemma: SURJ, Thousand Currents, and the Solidaire Network. I show that these organizations reinterpret the AAP in ways that are relevant to, and generative for, other similarly-situated entities, such as INGOs.

A movement is gathering to overthrow the intellectual incumbents of economics. Started by students, advanced by academics, and funded by philanthropists, until recently it has remained largely unnoticed by governments. Now the world’s largest emerging economies are starting to take an interest. For the sake of avoiding dangerous climate change, the revolution cannot come too soon.

As soon as World War I broke out, American citizens established an important wartime relief organization that was effective in providing refuge to child war victims from France’s northern and eastern regions. The Committee Franco-American for the Protection of the Children of the Frontier (CFAPCF), the first Franco-American response aimed at ensuring the protection of France’s children, provided financial and material assistance to rescue, shelter, heal, and educate displaced, injured, ill, and orphaned children. It collaborated with groups of nuns who ran some of the colonies, with teachers in charge of schooling and with American health experts overseeing provisions of sanitary conditions and hygiene. American women traveled to France and worked in the Franco-American colonies. In addition to caring for the children, they taught them about their friendly nation whose people were helping to ensure their survival. Running a network of colonies across France required considerable human and material resources, and the CFAPCF drew on social networks of wealthy French citizens and American expatriates eager to shield France’s children from hunger, destitution, and death. Shipments of clothing, garments, books, toys, and other gifts from the United States signaled the Americans’ mobilization to save France’s orphans.

The second chapter considers the Inns of Court in their relationship to the broader city, both the people who lived, worked, or visited central London and the governing bodies responsible for regulating the capital. The chapter highlights the societies’ struggle to maintain their local autonomy while fulfilling obligations to the public good and, increasingly, to public opinion. The Inns were geographically and legally separate from the rest of the capital, but they connected with the central London populace via efforts to promote citizens’ physical, moral, and cultural well-being. At the same time, the societies clashed with newly created, centralized metropolitan bodies designed to order the metropolis in the name of public health. Disputes between the Inns and entities like the Metropolitan Board of Works represented a conflict between an ancient system of local authority and processes of urban rationalization, a tension that defined metropolitan modernity in Britain. As competing strains within liberalism pushed institutions to engage in philanthropy in ways that could undermine institutional authority, the Inns found themselves unable to fully salvage their autonomy.

This chapter explores philanthropic partnership best practices in the post-COVID-19 world and provides insights and practical tools to identify and effectively advocate for partnerships. Historically, the philanthropic sector in the Global South has been largely siloed, with only a few foundations working together and even fewer engaged in multi-sectoral collaborations. In the case of public-private partnerships, one often hears sentiments like ‘governments are bureaucratic and they will slow us down’ or ‘businesses don’t really care about social impact projects’. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed that such silos created many of the systemic issues philanthropic foundations now face. The COVID-19 crisis will have a profound impact on philanthropy through forging more active collaboration and ensuring more equitable responses. As multiple sector experts have pointed out, the scale and the urgency of the pandemic have prompted philanthropists to engage in more active collaboration, not only with businesses and government but also with each other. This chapter shares the key elements of a successful partnership from coordinated planning to clear identification of the problem that needs to be solved. It shares ideas around the collaborative definition of success, how to measure social-impact performance, and how to align interests, values, and goals. The chapter argues that there is a critical need for clear roles and responsibilities such that each stakeholder’s strengths can be leveraged, and it emphasises the importance of transparency and continuous communication.

This chapter show how throughout millennia, philanthropy has served as a catalyst for change and as a vehicle for community transformation. While COVID-19 has forced philanthropists worldwide to take immediate action and mobilise billions of dollars to save lives, African philanthropy and the culture of ‘giving’ are not new phenomena but are ingrained in the fabric of African societies. Before the arrival of colonialism, aid agencies and development partners, grassroots philanthropists and associations mobilised resources to address development issues. Within this context, the chapter focuses on the role of multi-sector partnerships in Africa and how they arose out of the crisis of the pandemic to drive the efficiency of vital collaborations between the African Union (AU), local governments, and the private sector. It shows how these partnerships helped the continent curb the pandemic and prevented the massive spread of infections. This chapter highlights the uniqueness and significance of these partnerships at the local and continental levels and identifies some of the core values underpinning them. The chapter also explores the importance and the impact of the AU’s strategic leadership and multi-sectoral partnerships in advancing the continent’s health and economic agenda while deconstructing some of the inherent challenges that were faced when trying to scale these alliances in Africa.

This chapter examines current philanthropic trends in emerging economies, exploring the extent to which philanthropists in these settings are investing in resilience and how they are doing so. Three dimensions are considered: what philanthropists invest in, how they invest, and with whom they invest. The state of emerging economy philanthropy, both pre-COVID and in the wake of the pandemic, is discussed, and frameworks and considerations for understanding resilience in philanthropy are set forth. Resilience is understood as having sufficient stability within a system to protect communities – particularly the most vulnerable – and services from deep shocks. The COVID-19 pandemic has sent deep shockwaves through global and local economies, health-care and education systems, and into personal homes and lives. While the shock was universal, the impact and its long-term implications have been felt and will linger much longer for the most vulnerable countries, communities, and individuals. In emerging economies around the world, the pandemic has set back hard-fought progress in economic development and social equity. This system encompasses not only government, but also civil society, including philanthropy. The chapter presents case studies of philanthropic organisations in Brazil, India, and Saudi Arabia whose investments reflect dimensions of resilience, and makes the case for investing in resilience in emerging economies, discussing both challenges and opportunities for doing so.

This chapter focuses on the approach of the Indonesia-based Tanoto Foundation as a Global South-originated philanthropy with a far broader Asian and even global perspective, and on how it leveraged partnerships for impact. Now into its fortieth year of operations, the Tanoto Foundation has shown how philanthropy that is originated in the Global South is able to engage in knowledge exchange via global communities of practice to help create regional platforms to inspire collaboration. The pandemic has illustrated the importance of an evidence-based approach in the Global South whose results can be measured before they are scaled up and where collaboration is critical. Indonesia is a case in point, having suffered from natural disasters in the midst of the pandemic, challenging both humanitarian relief and disaster recovery. To help meet these challenges, the Foundation partnered with local (district) and national (ministry) government bodies, international development organisations, business entities, and philanthropic organisations both local and overseas. Successes in responding to the pandemic included the harmonisation of data-collation methodologies at the national level and the sharing of newly codified knowledge from the Foundation’s work. This chapter details how Tanoto Foundation built its internal institutional capacity, and maximised its impact by leveraging multiple relationships that can amplify resources, capacity, and knowledge.

Jacques Pierre Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of the Blacks in Paris in early 1788. Although primarily operational in Paris, the society was very much an Atlantic organization. Through superficial examinations of the efforts of the Friends of the Blacks, scholars have categorized the French movement as based solely in the printed word and engagement through revolutionary assemblies. Taken in isolation from other Atlantic philanthropic activity, the movement appears diminutive, sporadic, and ineffectual. Yet, France granted rights to free people of color and abolished slavery – lasting from 1794 to 1802 – before England, the United States, and other countries deeply entangled in the Atlantic struggle over the status of peoples of African descent. The French movement was not a failure; it was part of a longer process of abolition. While late eighteenth-century efforts did not bring about the permanent end to slavery in the French Caribbean – something only achieved in 1848 – those like Brissot advocated for peoples of African descent during the French Revolution, laying the groundwork for the later success of the nineteenth-century abolitionists.

Europe was affected by a book crisis in the aftermath of the Great War. Much specialist literature had not been received in institutions across Europe since 1914 or had been destroyed during the conflict and was then rendered prohibitively expensive due to soaring exchange rates. This chapter explores the organization of book relief. The supply of literature was seen as an emergency that required humanitarian assistance to address ‘intellectual hunger’. Intellectual relief of this sort demonstrated the prominence of the belief that the spread of knowledge was essential to the reconstitution of the Republic of Letters and the ultimate stabilization of European political life. While initial responses hinged on humanitarian assistance, the ultimate resolution of the book crisis depended upon the restoration of international exchange networks – many of which had been severed by the war – and which came to fruition around the mid-1920s.

This chapter explores the reconstruction of intellectual sites in the aftermath of the war and the attempts to replace the knowledge that had been lost in warfare. It focuses on the reconstruction of the university libraries of Louvain and Belgrade and pays particular attention to not only the physical rebuilding of buildings but also the reconstruction of knowledge itself through the replacement of their collections. It also explores the reconstruction of Tokyo Imperial University in following the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923. While the latter took place beyond Europe, it aroused great public sympathy and became part of the wider process of symbolic rebuilding. The chapter argues that cultural reconstruction was not just about replacing or repairing heritage sites that had suffered war damage but also about providing of the tools for the production and dissemination of new knowledge and symbolically pushing back against the ‘collapse’ of civilization.

Tens of thousands of European ‘intellectuals’ faced starvation by 1920 and Vienna was the epicentre for international humanitarian aid. This chapter focuses on how the feeding of intellectuals was organized by a range of humanitarian organizations in this period. The most striking example of this was the phenomenon of the ‘intellectual kitchen’, a site where intellectuals were fed away from the wider populations of their towns and cities. The chapter explores the mechanics of food and clothes aid, and argues that issues of class, gender, and race shaped the status of the ‘intellectual’ for humanitarian organizations as well as aid workers.

This chapter centres on Macau’s experience from the occupation of Hong Kong in December 1941 until the end of the war in September 1945, when the enclave became the last foreign-ruled territory in China to remain unoccupied by Japan. It argues that collaboration through compliance was a way of avoiding occupation. In this period, the practice of neutrality in Macau reached a peak of ambiguity. It was marked by the interplay of different forces and important new players competing for political legitimacy, economic control and social influence. These included Chiang Kai-shek’s government, Wang Jingwei’s Reorganised National Government, Portuguese colonial authorities, Japanese military forces and local elites.

Only a portion of the anthropological literature on philanthropy, charity, and humanitarianism explicitly engages with literature on the anthropology of ethics and morality, yet all of it describes a field of practice defined by a commitment to precisely these terms – the ethical, the moral, and the good. The first section of this essay reviews works that describe the moral and practical content and effects of philanthropic giving, focussing on the diversity of giving practices, logics, and outcomes. The second section describes how anthropologists have thought about humanitarian and philanthropic practices as the grounds upon and through which people cultivate and enact forms of ethical subjectivity. The third and final section considers anthropology’s relationship to ideas of moral clarity and moral judgement as these terms are used by anthropologists writing about, and taking part in, a range of social projects.