Week 4: Where did this come from?

Sep 14 & 16 · M2. Where American giving came from, the US founding ideas, and the first ethics question.

This week’s big question

Where do our ideas about giving come from, and is charity the same thing as justice? We trace giving’s religious roots and its US intellectual foundations, and we launch the ethics thread with the Addams-vs-Carnegie argument. Module 2 · builds LO4 (values: charity vs justice), LO7 (history through course concepts) · thread: ethics/global.

Readings

Reading Focus & purpose
Core (Mon) · Benjamin Soskis, “A History of Associational Life and the Nonprofit Sector in the United States”, ch. 2 of The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook (Stanford, 2020). Read pp. 23–33. 11 pp. From Winthrop’s “Modell of Christian Charity” through the religious pluralism that left Americans no established church to rely on, and gave them the habit of association instead. Watch for the argument that the associations were built first by the people politics shut out: immigrants, women, and free Black communities.
Core (Wed) · Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth” (1889, public domain) · archived copy. Read Part I only (“The Problem of the Administration of Wealth”); the archived copy is already trimmed to it. 15 pp. The rich as trustees, and the argument Addams spent her life answering. Read it fairly: he is easier to argue with once you notice he also wanted heavy inheritance taxes.
Current · National Park Service, “Jane Addams”. 1 p. The settlement house as the applied counter-argument. Addams’s side of Wednesday’s debate comes in her own words on the handout, from Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), so you argue text against text.
Optional · Tocqueville, “Of the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civil Life” (Democracy in America Vol. II, Bk. II, ch. 5, public domain) · archived copy. The habit of association described by the outsider everyone else quotes.
Optional · Fortune, “MacKenzie Scott Gave Away $7.2 Billion in Just One Year” · archived copy. A living Gilded Age echo.
Optional · Shariq Siddiqui, “Sector Theorists Should Be Inclusive of Muslim and Non-Western Perspectives”, ch. 9 of Reimagining Nonprofits (2024). Extra depth on the zakat station, not preparation for it: the primary texts are all on Monday’s handout, and your station is assigned in the room.
Optional · Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (1902, public domain), ch. 2 “Charitable Effort”. The whole of her answer to Carnegie.

Session 1 · Mon Sep 14: Where American giving came from

Soskis first: giving came before organizations (Winthrop wanted a bond of love, not a charitable society), and the organizations arrived once no church was established and anyone could incorporate. Then a seated jigsaw on the four traditions behind the sector’s vocabulary: tzedakah, zakat and sadaqa, Christian charity, and the Good Samaritan. You count off 1 to 4 along your row and get one tradition’s short primary text on the handout (Deuteronomy and Maimonides’ ladder, the Quran, Winthrop and Matthew, Luke). You read it alone, compare notes with the same number in the next row, then teach it to the three neighbours holding the other three, and together fill a shared “moral grammar” grid: obligation or compassion, anonymous or seen, charity or justice, who counts as a neighbour. Last question, on the sheet you hand in: where do you still see these ideas in the Monroe County orgs we mapped in Week 2, and in one organization from home?

Session 2 · Wed Sep 16: US foundations (ethics launched)

Tocqueville’s claim about associations, then Carnegie’s argument in the order he makes it, then Addams’s answer. A seated debate: the room is split by side, not by belief (one half argues Carnegie, the other Addams), you build the best case from the text in cross-aisle trios, and the two sides trade their strongest lines. Then you write where you land, and why, on the sheet you hand in. Studio bridge: plank 1 of the startup plan needs evidence about a real place, so we close with where local indicators live and what to bring on Monday.

What’s due / prep

Looking ahead

  • A2 Visit evidence is due Sun Oct 4, the weekend the window closes. Start scheduling your visit now; the report that builds on it comes in November.