I.  Theoretical Horizons:

Moral Citizenship of Care, Identification, and Voluntary Assistance

We situate the argument within three theoretical horizons:  (1) care as moral citizenship, (2) identification as the motive for care, and (3) formal philanthropic giving and volunteering as being but one species of activity within the more catholic genre of willing acts of assistance.  

Moral Citizenship of Care

We propose the notion of moral citizenship as a more adequate theoretical grounding than the notion of political or civil citizenship for formulating the practical social relations of assistance summarized by the terms “philanthropic giving and volunteering.” Moral citizenship shares with political or civil citizenship a basis in the proposition of equivalence among individuals.  But this equivalence is not primarily before or under the law, but before and under the sentiment of self-recognition in and self-identification with the needs of other people.  If the instrumental trajectory of political civil citizenship revolves around the rights and duties of nation- and society-building, the instrumental trajectory of moral citizenship revolves around the inclinations and obligations of care.[i]  

The rights and duties of political citizenship may be congruent with the objective of advancing the social relations of assistance, and may contribute to their improvement and operation.  In fact, popular as well as scholarly renderings of political citizenship often subsume under the purview of political citizenship sentiments and practices of care not required by constitutional or legal mandate, for example the duties to be politically informed and to vote.  However, the actual rights and duties of political citizenship are not profound enough to adequately identify, inspire, and nurture the social relations of assistance.  As enticing and constant a concept as political citizenship may be, it has failed to produce the benefits of a moral community.  Throughout its history, the comparative advantage of sociology as a mode of analysis has been to expose the fetishism of appearances in economy and society.  As such, Marx and Durkheim both wrote with incisiveness and precision about how concentrating on legal and organizational formalities obscures the fuller story about the actual conditions and outcomes of agency.  For neither of these authors is it ever adequate to simply chart appearances in place of exploring the actual forces guiding ideas and activities.  It is, therefore, particularly ironic that if in studying philanthropy we remain wedded to theoretical and conceptual frameworks that are inadequate for measuring the empirical array and motivational dynamics of voluntary assistance.  As we will discuss, the fundamental meaning and practice of care is not known unless we also study the array of informal relations of care that mark everyday life.

This oversight has occurred traditionally for at least two reasons.  First, the reason why political citizenship is not a substantial enough basis to secure or understand the social relations of assistance is because the rights and duties of citizenship are, by constitutional mandate, limited in their reach.  It is true that the rights and duties of citizenship derive from and imply an array of more fundamental desires and obligations.  Yet, the duties of citizenship are delineated, for many good reasons, by external or behavioral criteria.  The noble dispositions of citizenship, while always encouraged, are never mandated or required.  Just as Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments insisted that economic markets do not, nor should they be expected to, produce beneficence; sociologists should be equally clear-headed about the inability of political or civil citizenship to produce beneficence--nor would this necessarily be advisable.  For Smith, the economic citizenship of the free market provides a framework and a floor for rudimentary order within society but not for beneficence:  “Society may subsist among different men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its utility, without any mutual love or affection; and though no man in it should owe any obligation, or be bound in gratitude to any other, it may still be upheld by a mercenary exchange of good offices according to an agreed valuation. . . Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence.”  For beneficence to occur, additional and voluntary moral sentiments are constitutive:  “All the members of human society stand in need of each other’s assistance, and are likewise exposed to mutual injuries.  Where necessary assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship, and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy.  All the different members of it are bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn to one common centre of mutual good offices” (Heilbroner 96).

The second and related reason why political citizenship is inadequate, is that it focuses foremost on access to and participation in a process of determination rather than on the content of that determination.  There are, of course, public contents framed by judicial, executive, and legislative decisions.  However, these contents respond to needs as they are enunciated and recognized by electoral mechanisms rather than directly by the needs of people themselves.  Moral citizenship, in contrast to political citizenship, looks for and responds to people’s needs even when such needs are enunciated without being expressed in dollars, as is the case in economic relations, or without votes or contributions, as is the case in political relations.  Economic relations and political relations respond to effective demand--needs and desires expressed through a medium that materially coerces their responsiveness.  Moral relations of care respond to affective demand--needs and desires expressed in morally evocative and symbolic ways, for example as presented by the media when covering natural disasters or personal tragedies.  Philosopher Jules Toner defines care as assisting others in their true needs.  Care is the “implemental” aspect of love, with love defined as the recognition of others as ends in themselves.  As such, care is a response to others precisely as they are in need (75).

Within this framework, giving or volunteering is any act of assistance in which there is no social or legal compulsion to attend to the needs of others.  Once we turn the focus to moral citizenship and the social relations of care we are alerted to rethink our definitions of philanthropy and citizenship to consider within a general unified theory both (1) formal and informal assistance and (2) the social relations of assistance occurring in settings not conventionally circumscribed by political citizenship either within a society (such as friends and family) or outside a society (such as international relief).  

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[i]  For a summary history of the term civil society globally see Edwards and Foley “Civil Society and Social Capital”; Powell and Guerin Civil and Social Policy;  Walzer “The Concept of a Civil Society”; and for a general discussion of civil society in the US see Brian O’Connell’s Civil Society:  The Underpinnings of American Democracy.