Just Philanthropy? Towards a pragmatic and accountable integrative framework for justice philanthropy

• In Event: Justice Philanthropy during Poly-Crises

Abstract

For philanthropy to achieve positive public purposes, integrating justice is imperative. Too often, however, philanthropy and justice are considered to be at odds (Burton & Barnes, 2017). Perceived tensions relate to the two concepts’ underpinning ideas and ideals (Harding, 2023), the origins of philanthropic resources and the means by which they were accumulated (Marchal, 2017), as well as power dynamics and wider politics in, and of, philanthropy (McGoey, 2015). While the resulting debates are longstanding (Addams et al., 1892; Carnegie, 1901), they have gained renewed traction as part of wider criticisms regarding the distribution of wealth (Dalzell Jr, 2013), and the diverse set of poly-crises currently accentuating philanthropy’s roles and responsibilities: from conflict and combat, to climate change and costs-of-living challenges. As part of this, critics question philanthropy’s intentions, influences, and impacts (Callahan, 2017; Giridharadas, 2019; Reich, 2018), its responsibilities, restorations, and reparations (Marchal, 2017; Vilanueva, 2021), and its envisioning of equality, empowerment, and engagement (Fowler, 2016; Funiciello, 2021; Suarez, 2012). Touching, albeit often implicitly, on a diversity of justice theories – from classical ideas of Utilitarianism (Mill, 1863) and Rawlsian Justice (Rawls, 1999), to Entitlement Theory (Nozick, 1974), Communitarianism (Sandel, 1998), Feminist Ethics of Care (Gilligan, 1982), Indigenous Sovereignty(Alfred, 2008), and Restorative Justice (Robinson & Hudson, 2016) – this discourse on philanthropy and justice highlights the diversity and complexity of issues that warrant consideration. The result is a conceptual cornucopia: a comprehensive and actionable framework to incorporate these issues and insights into philanthropic decisions and practices remains elusive. This paper addresses this gap and proposes a way for encapsulating diverse stakeholders’ multifaceted values and priorities in philanthropy.

Using Breslin and Gatrell’s (2020) work on theorising through literature as its methodological underpinnings, the paper provides a critical review and synthesis of the articulations, potential disconnects, and tensions between philanthropy and justice, and applies Boltanski and Thevenot’s (2006) notion of pragmatic sociology as a way to scaffold these. Their theory, proposing six distinct ‘orders or worth’, offers a nuanced lens to understand the diverse moral justifications and critiques that stakeholders bring to the fore, allowing for a deeper appreciation of the inherent tensions and intersections in philanthropic contexts (Petzinger et al., 2021, 2023). What pragmatic sociology does not offer, however, is a structured way for ensuring that philanthropic decisions and practices across these orders are transparent and grounded in collectively accepted reasons. To this end, the paper draws on the extensive work on rationing within healthcare to introduce and adapt the ‘Accountability for Reasonableness Framework’, with its emphasis on transparency, relevance, revisability, and enforcement in resource allocation decisions (Daniels & Sabin, 2008). Synthesising these bodies of work, the paper proposes a new, holistic, framework that provides philanthropy with a compass for navigating its stakeholders’ complex moral universes while simultaneously fortifying philanthropic processes with stronger and more explicit mechanisms for ensuring justice, transparency, and inclusivity.

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Author

• Tobias Jung, University of St Andrews