Examining Definitions of Philanthropy: A Systematic Review of the Literature on Western Philanthropy and Suggestions for Future Research in Japan

Abstract

Despite the significant advancement of Japanese philanthropy in recent years, Japan still lacks research exploring a comprehensive understanding of what philanthropy means. The main objective of this article is to fill this gap by examining how philanthropy has been defined in Western history and offering Japanese scholars an analytical framework for the variety of existing approaches to conceptualizing philanthropy. To this end, I conduct a systematic review of philanthropic studies published primarily in the United States, where the concept of philanthropy has long been a subject of academic research. In addition to recent salient studies on meaning of philanthropy (Daly 2012, Sulek 2010a, 2010b), I identify and review more studies utilizing bibliographic databases (i.e., ABI/INFORM, EBSCO, JSTOR) and other sources, such as the Payton Philanthropic Studies Library at Indiana University and key philanthropic scholars. Following this systematic review, I report various definitions of philanthropy put forth by Western authors and discuss the complex nature of philanthropy in distinct sociopolitical and cultural contexts. The resulting typology synthesizes the two approaches―the historical and the theoretical―to the conceptualization of philanthropy. The article concludes with a discussion of how Japanese scholars can utilize this typology to advance research in Japanese philanthropy.