E-News

December 2004

E-Newsletter

Upcoming Events/Speakers

Activities

People

Upcoming Events

Conference on Membership Based Organizations of the Poor: Theory, Experience and Policy, January 17 to 21, 2005 Ahmedabad, India

This conference is predicated on the hypothesis that membership based organizations of the poor--organizations whose governance structures respond to the needs and aspirations of the poor because they are accountable to their members--are central to achieving equitable growth and poverty reduction. The event will bring together a mix of twenty-five development practitioners, grassroots activists, academics and researchers who will present papers on membership based organizations of the poor. Participants will also take part in field trips to meet with informal sector women members of SEWA in order to understand and appreciate the realities of their working lives. For more information about WIEGO, please refer to their website here.

Call for papers for upcoming conference on Promoting Financial Stewardship in the Public Sector, hosted by Elizabeth Keating. For more information about the conference and how to submit a paper, please visit here.

Performance Measurement for Effective Management of Nonprofit Organizations Executive Education Program, June 1 to 4, 2005 Cambridge, MA

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Activities

Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards, (John Wiley & Sons, 2004) by Richard P. Chait, William P. Ryan, and Barbara E. Taylor. Governance as Leadership offers trustees and executives a new framework for governing nonprofit organizations more effectively. The authors reframe both the purpose and practice of nonprofit governance by drawing on theories that have reshaped the concept and practice of leadership. In contrast to prevalent advice that unwittingly urges trustees to think and govern like managers, the authors new approach invites boards to think and govern like leaders. The book provides ideas, tactics, and examples that enrich the work of trustees while improving the governance of their organizations. The book was developed in collaboration with BoardSource and can be ordered through their website

Mainstreaming Informal Employment and Gender in Poverty Reduction, by Martha Chen, Joann Vanek, and Marilyn Carr produced a handbook for the Commonwealth Secretariat's "Gender Mainstreaming Series on Development Issues." The publication examines the link between informal employment, gender and poverty, discusses the changing world of world, highlights promising examples that support informal enterprises and protect informal workers, and provides a strategic framework for formulating policies towards those who are informally employed. It was launched at a meeting of Finance Ministers from Commonwealth Countries in September 2004. For more information, please visit here.

Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power, by Sanjeev Khagram featured in the Kennedy School of Government's Virtual Book Tour, fall 2004.

Independent Sector (IS) has announced the formation of an eight-member Expert Advisory Group that will advise Independent Sector's Panel on the Nonprofit Sector. Marion Fremont-Smith will co-convene the Panel, which was formed at the encouragement of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee to prepare recommendations for Congress on how to improve the oversight and governance of charitable organizations. To read the full press release, please visit the Independent Sector website

On November 29th, the Hauser Center's Program on Religion and Public Life (PRPL) held the second panel discussion of the Religion, Politics and Public Life Faculty Seminar Series. The focus of the seminar was Religion and Politics: A Comparative Analysis and it featured three distinguished panelists from Harvard University: Helen Hardacre, Roy Mottahedeh, and Jocelyne Cesari. The panelists provided a comparative analysis and offered perspectives on the role that religion plays in politics and public life in Japan, Iran and France, respectively. PRPL plans to convene three more seminars in this series, bringing together scholars and practitioners for a conversation that will enhance our understanding of the changing role of religion in politics and public life internationally, from both a comparative and transnational perspective. The series is co-convened by J. Bryan Hehir and Mary Jo Bane. For additional information click here  or contact Anne Mathew

The Transnational Studies Initiative (TSI), co-led by Sanjeev Khagram and Peggy Levitt, hosted its fourth workshop, "Beyond the National and the Global: Transnational Organizations and Institutions," November 11 to 13, 2004 in Cambridge, MA. The workshop was generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. TSI, one of the Center's five Intellectual Foundations projects, aims to bring together scholars who can help identify patterns, trends, and conceptual and methodological frameworks for the emergent field of Transnational Studies. More than twenty scholars from economics, law, sociology, anthropology, political science and history attended the workshop and discussed the similarities and differences in institutional arrangements in different transnational arenas. Other workshops hosted by the TSI have included: Transnational Dynamics and the Emerging Architectures of Governance, Financial and Transnational Dynamics of Terrorism, and Rights and Responsibilities of Transnational Citizenship. Additional workshops are planned on transnational religion, arts and culture, and transnational America. A working paper based on the Initiative's activities to date is available here.

The Thirteenth Seminar on Emerging Issues in Philanthropy was held in Cambridge on December 3 under the joint sponsorship of the Urban Institute and the Hauser Center. This session was the second part of an exploration of "The Whys and Wherefores of Government Regulation of Charities." The first seminar, held in September in Washington, addressed the federal role. The subject of the December roundtable was the role of the states, federal/state cooperation or preemption, and the roles of nonprofit organizations, the media, and the professions in improving accountability. Representatives from Congress and the IRS, state charity officials, members of the academic community, attorneys and charity heads shared experiences and considered recommendations for change. As with previous seminars, a Brief, summarizing the session will be published in the New Year by the Urban Institute

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3. PEOPLE IN ACTION
 

In the interest of space, the E-News does not included titles for Hauser faculty, researchers or staff. For full titles and bios, please visit our People pages.  Information about our Doctoral Fellows is available here.

Mark Moore, Bill Ryan and Dave Brown gave a colloquy on "Emerging Frameworks in Governance, Accountability and Legitimacy" at the annual Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) in Los Angeles on November 18.

Marty Chen presented a paper entitled "Rethinking the Informal Economy: Linkages with the Formal Economy and the Formal Regulatory Environment" at the Expert Group on Development Issues (EGDI) World Institute for Development Economics Research, United Nations University (WIDER) conference on Unlocking Human Potential: Linking the Informal and Formal Sectors in Helsinki, Finland in September. Marty's paper has been accepted as part of a volume entitled "Unlocking Human Potential: Concepts and Policies for Linking the Informal and Formal Sectors," which will be published in 2005. Marty also served as a guest speaker at the School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu Natal's 50th Anniversary Event in October. She presented a paper entitled "Informality at work: Reconceptualizing the Employment Challenge" on a panel that discussed the informal economy through the world. Marty was asked by Fudan University and Ford Foundation, China to present sessions at seminars in Beijing and Shanghai on the informal economy in China in November.

Jonathan Laurence gave a presentation on Islam in Italy at a recent Brookings Institution panel on Islam in Europe in November. He also spoke at a conference on "Droits, liberts et obligations du culte musulman en France l'aube du XXIe sicle," at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) in December. An article he wrote, "A Contest between the Wind and the Sun: Headscarves and Citizenship in France," was published in the New Europe Review in November.

Jane Leu and the organization she founded and now runs as executive director, Upwardly Global, recently received the 2004 Social Entrepreneurship Award from the Manhattan Institute. Jane was the first project coordinator to work with Christine Letts in the Nonprofit Policy and Leadership Program, which was the precursor to the Hauser Center at the Kennedy School.

Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller, "Transnational Perspectives on Migration: Conceptualizing Simultaneity," International Migration Review 38(145): 595-629, Fall 2004.

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