MONEY AND THE MORAL ORDER IN LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN CAPITALISM

The moral use of money in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cent ury is considered by examining a sample of thirteen American entrepren eurs. Bourdieu's concepts of economic and symbolic capital, as well as Appadurai's ideas about linking desire and sacrifice through exchange are used to show how some entrepreneurs redistributed their wealth th rough philanthropy. Other men of wealth remained committed to personal accumulation. The concept of habitus is shown to be limited in explai ning the differences in the moral distribution of wealth.