Descriptif Thèse P.Pénet

WEALTH, CULTURE AND POWER PHILANTHROPIC PRACTICES AMONG FRENCH AND AMERICAN ELITES Pierre PÉNET Abstract The following dissertation addresses the role of philanthropy for French and American elites. Since Tocqueville (1986 [1835]), the vitality of the nonprofit sector in America has fascinated a broad range of scholars. This sector is now accountable for billions of dollars of spending annually in the United States, thus playing a pivotal role in shaping entire sectors of the American economy and society. Private forms of generosity ended up playing a major role in the context of growing social inequalities and in the aftermath of State disengagement (Martel, 2006). France, by contrast, which has always been characterized by fewer forms of private donation and State intervention, has experienced a dramatic change in the past ten years with the growing development of philanthropy. Numerous economic studies have put great emphasis on tax shelters and tax exemptions in order to understand why individuals give such large amounts of money to a broad range of social causes (Schuster, 1985). But few studies of them are concerned with the prominent role played by philanthropy as it creates and reinforces the identity of elites. My thesis aims to show and explain that philanthropic practices are a crucial component of elite status in France and in the United States, thus consisting of an original form of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1979). I believe this ...