Giving Research in France | ernop.eu

"Research on philanthropy in France is both scarce and diverse. The scarcity stems from the fact that for a long time, dating back to the French Revolution, private giving was not encouraged and thus remained quite secret, as the French State was considered the sole ruler and custodian of the common good. However, for the past few years, there seems to be a new interest for giving research, which may be connected to a strong renewal and increased visibility of philanthropic practices in the country since the 1970s (Gautier, Pache and Mossel, 2015). The diversity of philanthropic research in France is remarkable. Private giving has been studied by a variety of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists and management scholars. As highlighted below, knowledge is extremely scattered across disciplines, and it is difficult to have a comprehensive picture of the whole. Besides, most of these research efforts have been made by individual scholars rather than research teams. To the best of our knowledge, the Philanthropy Chair at the ESSEC Business School[3] is the only academic research centre in academia specialised in private giving research...."