Charitable purposes and the shaping effects of money

Bibliographic Data

ID12889488
AuthorsD Cowan (0000-0001-9750-8262, University of Bristol, corresponding author), Barbara Hardy (University of Bristol)
Year2022
Volume19
Issue2
Pages161-176
Publication date2022-08-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Law in Context (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1744-5523 • E-ISSN: 1744-5531
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1744552322000313
OpenAlexW4292488269
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited22

We address a curious omission from both the literature on the law of charity and socio-legal studies – the effect of apparently extraneous factors, such as politics and ideology, as well as the searching for money on the charitable purposes and identities of the public who are to benefit from the charity. This is a curious omission because even the law accepts that the idea of public benefit in charity law is a sociological concept, albeit one that has developed a technical meaning. We argue that approaching charitable purposes and public benefit as sociological concepts enables us to appreciate the tensions that those external factors produce as they re-shape those purposes and refashion the public who are to benefit. We refer to these factors under the rubric of the shaping effects of money. We use a case-study of the Canal and River Trust (CRT) to develop this argument. The trust was set up by the government as a charity to manage and control 2,000 miles of inland waterways in England and Wales. We draw on interviews with households who live on boats and ‘continuously cruise’ those boats on the canals to illustrate how their interests have been marginalised as the CRT has re-shaped itself as a well-being charity

Argument (complex analysis · Cruise · Epistemology · Government (linguistics · Ideology · Law and economics · Meaning (existential · Political science · Politics · Rubric · Set (abstract data type · Sociology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Legal and cultural studies analysis · Public Administration

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