Philanthropic Networks Research Articles

Researching the absence of professional organisation in Victorian England

Professionalisation is a major research focus of accounting historians, with particular attention paid to circumstances attending the formation and spread of accounting associations. This paper adds a new dimension to such research by examining the failure of public accountants to create a professional body in circumstances that appear conducive to organisational formation whether viewed from a functionalist or critical perspective. It is argued that strategies adopted by Bristol's leading public accountants enabled them to achieve economic and social advance in the absence of organisational formation. Of importance was how they positioned themselves in Bristol society through geographical location, the political, philanthropic and religious networks that connected them to the governing élite, and devices employed for publicising their services. Also relevant was their association with key venues where professionals and businessmen met to discuss commercial affairs. No inconsistency is revealed between the failure of Bristol's leading accountants to form a professional association in the 1870s and their enthusiastic embrace of chartered status following formation of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in 1880.

The Poetry of Prose: Readings in Russian Literature. (Slavica Bergensia, 8) by Jostein Børtnes

MLR, 104.2, 2009 617 where civil societywas more developed. The Riga society provided quite successful work-relief schemes, drawing on family networks in themerchant milieu of some of itsmembers. Finally, Rosslyn turns to the Ladies' Committees of the Society for the Care of Prisons in St Petersburg and Orel, a component of a mixed-sex society. These women's activities were modelled on Elizabeth Fry's prison reforms in London's Newgate Prison. Their correspondence with Frymade them part of an international philanthropic network. Rosslyn's study is meticulously researched and draws on awide variety of sources. Itbrims with information, presenting the readerwith excerpts from reports and de tailed statistics of the various societies' incomes and expenditures. Where primary sources were scarce, Rosslyn has included alternative sources and drawn intelligent conclusions. University of Bern Ursula Stohler The Poetry ofProse: Readings inRussian Literature. By Jostein Bortnes. (Slavica Bergensia, 8) Bergen: Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen. 2007. 211pp. ?14. ISBN 978-82-90249-34-7. The Poetry ofProse gathers together essays written by JosteinBortnes over twenty fiveyears into a readable and interesting collection which shows effectively the development ofmajor aspects of the authors ideas on religion and the nineteenth centuryRussian novel. Bortnes defines the poetry of prose' as the function of poetic modes of similarity in difference, inboth formal features such as metre and rhyme and elements of content such as allegory and metaphor, which transform the prose text from sequential, causal narrative into 'symbolic parallelism' (p. 10). Bortnes relates this transformation to the projection into art of theOrthodox conception of the self as emulating the life and suffering of Christ. The first chapter, on medieval Russian literature,although largely informative rather than argumentative, establishes thisOrthodox anthropology within hagiographic texts and provides the basis for themore detailed examination of the development of this feature in the Russian novel. The influence ofRousseau's natural man', and of theRomantic cult of genius, which gained its strongest expression in theworship ofNapoleon, provided a challenge to theOrthodox idea of the self, and inChapter 2 Bortnes shows how these differentworld-views are combined in the nineteenth-century novel, as the movement from transgression and separation through a liminal state to regeneration and reintegration, apparent inworks as varied asGogol"s Dead Souls and Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, becomes fundamental toDostoevski's experimentation with the possibility of a christocentric anthropology in themodern world' (p. 79). Chapter 3 discusses how a dialogue with hagiography in thedepiction ofAlesha in The Brothers KaramazoVy and with biblical references in Crime and Punishment, through the presentation of theRaising of Lazarus scene, moves these novels towards 'symbolic parallelism', while the idea of polyphony in relation to the 'dissimilar similarity' (p. 101) of both models and their imitations, and the thematic repetitions which form the plots of Dostoevski's novels, form the basis of Chapter 4. Traditional 6i8 Reviews interpretations of the iurodivyi (holy fool) as either religious ormad are challenged by the conception of'God's secret servant' (p. 113), a figureboth outside the religious establishment and quite sane?as in the case ofAlesha afterhe leaves themonastery and Zosima before he becomes a monk?to show in Chapter 5 that iurodstvo is related in Dostoevskii to belief in Christ as the foundation of human freedom. Chapter 6 covers some of the same ground in itsquestioning of Prince Myshkin's Christ-like status in The Idiot, showing how differentmodels are projected on this character, while Chapters 7 and 8 expand on Girard's analysis of triangular desire inDostoevskii. In Chapter 9 Bortnes moves away from Dostoevskii to focus on the relationship between character and setting, self and nature, and inner reflection and narration in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, in a fine close reading. Finally Chapter 10 discusses Bakhtinian genre theory, and in a departure from the other essays, shows how a dialogue between genres underpins the depiction of Sebastian Flyte in EvelynWaugh's Brideshead Revisited. Although the hagiographic element of the analysis here ties inwith other essays, the oddness of this switch tomid twentieth-century English literature unbalances the collection slightly.Two other minor problems might have been avoided through greater revision of the original essays. There is a tendency to...

Philanthropic Networks for Children at Risk in Nineteenth‐century Europe1

In the first half of nineteenth‐century Europe, the founding fathers of the philanthropic network developed a specific network for the care of children at risk. This network eventually resulted in institutionalized solutions for the care of these children. In this article, three topics are looked at: the meaning of the general concept of networks for this specific network; the building up of the network; and, finally, the working of the network at close quarters. It is concluded that the members of this network worked on the basis of reciprocal activities, were organized in an informal and horizontal way, knew each other very well and were regular philanthropic tourists across the frontiers of their respective countries. 1 The first sketch of this paper was presented at the workshop on “Europe of Networks”, European University Institute, Florence, November 2001, a second version at the ISCHE ISWG on Cross‐cultural Influences in Geneva, July 2004. I thank the organizers, respectively Peter Becker and Raffaele Romanelli (EUI), and Klaus‐Peter Horn and Christoph Lüth (ISCHE) as well as the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

The Romance of the slum: Gender and Cross-Class Communication of Religious Belief, 1880–1920

Despite relatively low working-class church attendance over the nineteenth century, evidence of religious practice in working-class households and a more diffuse religious mentality have been identified by historians, even until the mid or late twentieth century. Yet little analysis has been undertaken into how such a mentality was created. While Cox noted of late nineteenth- century Lambeth that the most successful churches were those which contained vast philanthropic networks, elsewhere he claimed that ‘philanthropy … did little to promote definite Christian belief. Indeed, both he and Williams regarded schools as the primary agency for conveying religious teaching: Cox claiming that Board schools were more effective than Sunday schools, Williams, that Sunday schools provided not only a means of instilling religious belief in children but a form of ‘religion by deputy’ for their parents.

The Governance of Homelessness in Greece: Discourse and Power in the Study of Philanthropic Networks

This article argues that the study of homelessness in the European South can be advanced by employing concepts and methods of critical discourse analysis, which integrate different conceptualizations of homelessness into wider changes in the direction of the ‘pluralistic’ and ‘decentralized’ treatment of poverty and social exclusion. To illustrate the dialectical relationship between power, discourse, and practice in the treatment of homelessness in Greece the analysis of documents and interviews amongst key stakeholders is contrasted with information from my participation in local projects. Findings suggest that powerful actors resort to a mix of philanthropic and managerial discourses to promote their own charitable work and to select deserving from undeserving clients.

Serving the Urban Poor in Turn-of-the-Century Cleveland

Background for Teachers The history of American social work is as diverse as the nation's history itself. Clergymen, politicians, business leaders, and social workers have interacted with the distressed and unfor tunate to produce a wide range of social policies. Policy makers, influenced by changing intellectual currents, have responded to industrialization, world wars, demographic shifts, and other forces of social change. This rich, complex history is essential to any survey of U.S. history. The history of Cleveland's social welfare services, particu larly in the years of the turn of the century, is illuminating. In the latter half of the nineteenth-century, Cleveland's economy boomed. The city ' s location on the Great Lakes waterways, and later its key position in the railroad network between New York and Chicago facilitated industrial expansion. Taking advantage of the mineral sources of the Great Lakes, Cleveland became a leading producer of iron and steel products in the machine tool industry and in the assembling of Great Lakes ore categories. Other industries, such as petroleum refining, chemicals, and electrical equipment spurred the economy further. Attracted by the prospects of a growing economy, immigrants and migrants poured into the city. These migrations, along with the city's natural population increase, combined to make the city the largest in Ohio in 1900. Cleveland's population mushroomed from 43,417 in 1860 to 380,176 in 1900. By 1910 the city had nearly 560,000 inhabitants. But the city's growing population was accompanied by an increasing number of poor. When both the city government and small religion-based charities failed to marshall sufficient amounts of relief, Cleveland's leaders re sponded by building new philanthropic institutions. In 1913, for instance, Clevelanders formed the Federation for Charity and Philanthropy, with large-scale fundraising methods and efforts at social work coordination that far surpassed the work of other similar organizations across the country. In order to understand social welfare history one must first examine the conditions of the unfortunate. The first part of this lesson allows students to understand the problems faced by the urban poor. The second part gives students the opportunity to assess one of the most significant turn-of-the-century social work services, the Charity Organization Society. In many United States cities, including Cleveland, the Charity Organization Society played a dominant role in the philanthropic network. An under standing of this organization helps students to understand the nature of early twentieth-century charity.