As part of my service responsibilities to the Community and Grassroots Associations (CGA) section of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), I am also blogging here. We haven’t made an official launch yet but will do so soon. In the meantime, if you are interested in research and practice on community and grassroots associations, you can sign up to receive email notifications about posts or subscribe to the facebook fanpage. In addition, please consider joining ARNOVA and the CGA section as a member! (Unfortunately, I cannot directly link to the membership page, but click on this page and then click “join ARNOVA” in the horizontal menu.) The annual conference is a fun way of connecting with other researchers and practitioners.
To start things off, at the CGAP blog, I’ve blogged about online videos available from a recent conference that brought together leading social science scholars who each briefly presented on which hard problem social science research should pursue. Of particular interest to Burners is Ann Swidler’s call for deeper insight into “how societies both create and restore institutions,” including the nation, government, marriage, university, etc. Burners, consider how your activities with Burning Man have impacted your skills and experiences (both positive and negative) with organization. Then think about how these experiences have, in turn, affected your involvement in the workplace, other community-based organizations or voluntary associations, etc.