Negation claims: insights from elite philanthropists’ responses to moral devaluation

Abstract Recognition of one’s positive qualities is fundamental to human dignity. Research in the cultural sociology of morality, worth, and evaluation has explored how individuals respond to stigmatization and moral devaluation, emphasizing the recognition claims that they formulate. However, less attention has been given to what happens when such claims are rejected. This study addresses this gap by examining elite philanthropy: a practice that forms part of claims by economic elites to moral worth, but which is also challenged by a critical public view. Analyzing how elite philanthropists account for such challenges, we identify a sequence of evaluations and devaluations whereby philanthropy is evaluated, the critical public view is devaluated, and the focus of the moral debate is shifted to other social issues. This sequence results in a recognition claim about the moral worth of philanthropy and in what we refer to as a negation claim, whereby social actors discredit the public view. Recognition and negation claims reflect two distinct, but not necessarily incompatible, ways in which social actors wrestle with moral devaluation. This distinction, we argue, is conceptually and analytically important for analyzing the responses of social actors to moral devaluation, and has implications for the study of dominance and symbolic inequality.