Mi. 19.06.2019

The philanthrocapitalism

Media and public acclaim for mega-gifts from billionaires such as Zuckerberg, Gates, and Buffett suggest that we are living in a golden era of philanthropic giving, with new techniques such as “philanthrocapitalism” seen as marking a dramatic change from earlier approaches to charitable giving. This talk examines the roots and social implications of the “new” philanthrocapitalism, exploring how it diverges from earlier approaches to philanthropy during the late nineteenth century. McGoey argues that while some claims to novelty are exaggerated, other distinctive aspects – such as the for-profit turn in philanthropic giving – have received surprisingly little media attention, compounding a lack of scholarly and public attention to the unprecedented and still unknown scale of personal and corporate profiteering from charitable giving. Is philanthropy helping to alleviate global and national levels of inequality, or simply making inequality worse? {…}

Linsey McGoey is Reader in Sociology at the University of Essex, and the author of No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy (Verso, 2015) and The Unknowers (Zed, 2018). She is on the editorial board of Economy and Society. {…}