This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This cutting edge text considers how Asian philanthropists and charitable organizations break with Western philanthropic traditions and examines the key traits and trends that make social investment in Asia unique. Based on 30 case studies of excellent social delivery organizations (SDOs) and social enterprises as well as interviews with ultra-high net-worth individuals throughout Asia, this book examines which characteristics and strategies lead to successful philanthropy and social delivery organizations. Providing evidence based findings on philanthropy, social investment and social delivery organizations in Asia, this book provides invaluable resources for those wishing to deepen their understanding of the sector and what this means for political and economic development in the region.

Philanthropic foundations are experiencing a crisis of professional identity. They attract considerable hopes due to an unusually high degree of independence and freedom of manoeuvre, which theoretically places them in a privileged position to find novel solutions to societies’ most severe and intractable problems. However, the field is said to suffer from a pervasive lack of orientation as to how these aspirations can be realized. Compared to other professions, it can be said that there exists neither reliable knowledge nor established practices which might guide the strategy development and the daily practice of foundations. This void is frequently filled by changing fads which present easy to grasp recipes and often make bold promises of how foundations can change the world. Yet, none of them has ever met these expectations. Philanthropy in Practice shows how philanthropic organizations can effectively address this predicament. Drawing on the public philosophy of Pragmatism, it argues that, to be effective, they need to go for the solution of social problems of middle range. The book puts at center stage the crucial role of niches in terms of bounded, protected and stable social spaces which are rich in resources. They render possible the experiments required to develop effective interventions and facilitate the retention of novel solutions to social problems. The model builds upon, and is illustrated by four in-depth case studies from the UK, Germany and Switzerland. With its sharp analytical eye and substantial evidence, Philanthropy in Practice will reshape the way we think about the questions of what impact philanthropy can reasonably hope to achieve, and by which means.

Intended as an essential introduction to philanthropy, this book provides a balanced, analytical, interdisciplinary overview of a complex, and often controversial, topic. Using case studies to illustrate the narrative, it covers everything from the history of individual, sometimes eccentric, philanthropists, to the controversies and challenges of ‘philanthrocapitalism’. This book explores philanthropists and their motivations: who are they and why do they give their money away? It explains what philanthropy does: its history and scope, and the impacts it has in areas such as science and the arts. The governance of philanthropy is explored: how decisions are reached about donations and their accountability. The book addresses the major controversies surrounding philanthropy, and discusses the difficulties involved in giving and receiving, e.g. the importance of ensuring that these processes are transparent and accountable. Lastly, the book considers the future of philanthropy, especially its changing role in society and the disruptive impact of digital technologies. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers interested in philanthropy, innovation and entrepreneurship, the motivations for individual and corporate donations, and the business of giving in general.

"Political controversy is a lens through which the author examines corporate philanthropy. He explains why corporate philanthropy has become politicized, how corporations, respond to controversy about their donations, and what the conflicts tell us about corporate phlanthropy and corproate politics. Himmelstein argues that corporate giving sometimes becomes politicized because it is inherently a complex social and political act. Drawing on in-depth interviews with managers at fifty-five of the largest corporate giving programs in the U.S., Himmelstein shows that corporate giving often finds itself, as one manager put it, locked in a 'struggle between looking good and doing good.'"--Back cover.

Stars do have real power, but not all of them wield it wisely. This work explores how a variety of celebrities developed their brands and how celebrity can become a jumping-off point to entirely unrelated activities. Over the past century, a new breed of entertainer has arisen—one where the old division between on-camera talent and the suits behind the scenes has largely eroded. From Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin to Lady Gaga and Quentin Tarantino, entertainers have attempted to cross specialties and platforms to new arenas, from politics to philanthropy and more. An ideal resource for general readers as well as students of American popular culture and media at the undergraduate through scholar level, Star Power: The Impact of Branded Celebrity details the new ways entertainers are working in expanded environments to broaden their brands while also providing the history behind this recent trend. The two-volume set comprises four main sections: one that provides historical background, a second on entertainers moving beyond stardom, a third focused on commerce and education, and a final section on cultural missions. The work documents how earlier entertainers "set the stage" for today's stars by exploiting their celebrity to take greater artistic control of their projects and provides articles that depict each artist from a number of perspectives. Readers will understand what motivates the most important contemporary entertainers working today and better grasp the business of entertainment as a whole—how Hollywood works, and who is really in control.

Pragmatism is rooted in the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice. Pragmatism was intended, by Charles S. Peirce, its founder, as a doctrine for the rational substantiation of knowledge claims. For Peirce, what mattered was successful prediction and control. Practice was to serve as the arbiter of theory. Objective efficacy, not personal satisfaction, is what matters for fixing opinion in a community of rational inquirers.According to Nicholas Rescher, later pragmatists saw the matter differently. They envisioned subjective satisfactions, rather than objectively determinable functional effectiveness, as being the aim of the enterprise. Rescher notes that William James, in particular, had an agenda different from that of Peirce.The two pragmatisms are complete opposites, Rescher argues, in terms of claims and intentions. James's soft pragmatism abandons the classical idea of inquiry as the paramount of truth; it believes that truth is an illusion, an unrealizable figment of the imagination. By contrast, Peirce's hard pragmatism believes that the classic idea of truth remains valid. Rescher seeks to examine and explore pragmatism dialectically, with a conviction that brings pragmatism to life for specialist and generalist alike.

Pragmatics of Fiction provides systematic orientation in the emerging field of studying pragmatics with/in fictional data. It provides an authoritative and accessible overview of this versatile new field in its methodological and theoretical richness. Giving center stage to fictional language allows scholars to review key concepts in sociolinguistics such as genre, style, voice, stance, dialogue, participation structure or features of orality and literariness. The contributors explore language as one of the creative tools to craft story worlds and characters by drawing on concepts such as regional, social and ethnic language variation, as well as multilingualism. Themes such as emotion, taboo language or impoliteness in fiction receive attention just as the challenges of translation and dubbing, the creation of past and future languages, the impact of fictional language on language change or the fuzzy boundaries of narratives. Each contribution, written by a leading specialist, gives a succinct, representative and up-to-date overview of research questions, theories, methods and recent developments in the field.

Up until the mid-1980s most pragmatic analysis had been done on spoken language use, considerably less on written use, and very little at all on literary activity. This has now radically changed. ‘Pragmatics’ could be informally defined as the study of relationships between language and its users. This volume, first published in 1991, seeks to reposition literary activity at the centre of that study. The internationally renowned contributors draw together two main streams. On the one hand, there are concerns which are close to the syntax and semantics of mainstream linguistics, and on the other, there are concerns ranging towards anthropological linguistics, socio- and psycholinguistics. Literary Pragmatics represents an antidote to the fragmenting specialization so characteristic of the humanities in the twentieth century. This book will be of lasting value to students of linguistics, literature and society. Roger D. Sell discusses the reissue of Literary Pragmatics here: http://www.routledge.com/articles/roger_d._sell_discusses_the_reissue_of_literary_pragmatics/

This volume brings together distinguished scholars from all over the world to present an authoritative, thorough, and yet accessible state-of-the-art survey of current issues in pragmatics. Following an introduction by the editor, the volume is divided into five thematic parts. Chapters in Part I are concerned with schools of thought, foundations, and theories, while Part II deals with central topics in pragmatics, including implicature, presupposition, speech acts, deixis, reference, and context. In Part III, the focus is on cognitively-oriented pragmatics, covering topics such as computational, experimental, and neuropragmatics. Part IV takes a look at socially and culturally-oriented pragmatics such as politeness/impoliteness studies, cross- and intercultural, and interlanguage pragmatics. Finally, the chapters in Part V explore the interfaces of pragmatics with semantics, grammar, morphology, the lexicon, prosody, language change, and information structure. The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics will be an indispensable reference for scholars and students of pragmatics of all theoretical stripes. It will also be a valuable resource for linguists in other fields, including philosophy of language, semantics, morphosyntax, prosody, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics, and for researchers and students in the fields of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computer science, anthropology, and sociology.

Pragmatism, Postmodernism and the Future of Philosophy is a vigorous and dynamic confrontation with the task and temperament of philosophy today. In this energetic and far-reaching new book, Stuhr draws persuasively on the resources of the pragmatist tradition of James and Dewey, and critically engages the work of Continental philosophers like Adorno, Foucault, and Deleuze, to explore fundamental questions of how we might think and live differently in the future. Along the way, the book addresses important issues in public policy, university administration, spirituality, and the notion of community and its meaning in a global world of difference. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of philosophy, and the ways in which philosophical thinking can help us live better, more fulfilling lives.