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What’s to be done with Oxfam?

By Mike On May 26, 2017 · Add Comment
On a bookshelf in my office sits a large red book with a plastic cover to ward off mud and blood, sweat and tears. Like all new Oxfam staff I was given a copy of the Field Director’s Handbook to guide me when I arrived in Lusaka in 1984. It’s still the best job I ever had. Conspicuously missing from the Handbook was a section on the agency itself, these being times when self-questioning was largely absent from the world of NGOs. But on a visit from headquarters my boss David Bryer told me something that really [...]
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Why it’s time to say goodbye to ‘doing good and doing well’

By Mike On May 26, 2017 · Add Comment
I hate to admit it, but it’s been a good week for the philanthrocapitalists—the movement that claims that social and environmental problems are best solved by wealthy people working through business and the market. First up was Bill Gates’ announcement of the “Breakthrough Energy Coalition” at the Paris climate conference, a venture designed to channel investment into new, low-carbon technologies. In fact the greatest need right now is the mass deployment of existing technologies like solar power, but that’s a less attractive proposition to investors who are looking for big returns from R&D. Then came Read Full Article →

Will the left ever get religion?

By Mike On May 26, 2017 · Add Comment
Why does religion drive so many people nuts? That’s the question that opens and closes our debate on religion and social change. On the surface the answer is obvious, at least for progressives—it’s because of the damage that’s been done by religion to the causes they hold dear: independence and equality for women, gay marriage and LGBTQ rights, peace and protection from zealots and fanatics, and safety in the face of sexual abuse. How come the ineffable being is always a bloke with a beard who privileges others who look the same as him? [...]
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The political emotions of Martha Nussbaum

By Mike On May 25, 2017 · Add Comment
Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She has made landmark contributions across a wide range of issues including democracy, sexuality, justice, human development and religion, but it was her book Political Emotions that caught my attention when it was published in October 2013—probably because I was launching a new section of openDemocracy at the time that seemed to build on the same philosophy. Nussbaum’s book explores how “public emotions rooted in love—in intense attachments to things outside our control—can foster commitment to shared goals [...]
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Let’s get real about the transformation of society: can you email me directions?

By Mike On May 25, 2017 · Add Comment
I fell in love with the English Lake District as a boy, and I’ve wanted to live there all my life. But since my home and family are thousands of miles away in upstate New York I’ve had to make do with contacts and connections via social media, supplemented by the occasional dose of walking in the hills. For the longest time I saw my web surfing and Facebook chatting as a poor substitute for being there in person, but I’ve come to realize that both the ‘actual’ and the ‘virtual’ are part of the [...]
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To remain in prison for the rest of my life is the greatest honor you could give me: the story of Sister Megan Rice

By Mike On May 25, 2017 · Add Comment
The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oakridge, Tennessee, is supposed to be impregnable. But on July 28th 2012, an 84 year-old nun called Sister Megan Rice broke through a series of high-security fences surrounding the plant and reached a uranium storage bunker at the center of the complex. She was accompanied by Greg Boertje-Obed (57) and Michael Walli (63). The trio daubed the walls of the bunker with biblical references like “the fruit of justice is peace,” and scattered small vials of human blood across the ground. Then they sat down for [...]
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Civil Society – the 3rd edition is out at last!

By Mike On June 3, 2014 · Add Comment
Every five years I revise the book on Civil Society I originally published with Polity Press in 2004. It’s Groundhog Day again, and the third edition of the book comes out this week. It has lots of new and updated material, including the role of social media and social enterprise, different trends in philanthropy, the Arab Spring and much else besides. I hope you’ll give it a try and recommend it to your friends and colleagues. To purchase the book in the USA click here. And in the UK click here. And in Canada click here. Here’s [...]
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When is civil society a force for social transformation?

By Mike On June 3, 2014 · Add Comment
There are more civil society organizations in the world today than at any other time in history, so why isn’t their impact growing? When you look at the numbers, the growth of civil society has been remarkable: 3.3 million charities in India and 1.5 million across the United States; NGOs like the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee that work with hundreds of millions of people; 81,000 international NGOs and networks, 90 per cent of them launched since 1975. That’s not counting all the street protests, social movements and informal community groups that are often omitted from the data. In [...]
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It’s time to put money out of its misery

By Mike On March 28, 2014 · Add Comment
Why are discussions about poverty so often held in luxurious surroundings? Perhaps it’s easier to think that way, without any poor people in the room to muddy the proceedings. Think Bellagio, for example, the Rockefeller Foundation’s villa on Lake Como, or Pocantico Hills in upstate New York (another Rockefeller bequest), or Schloss Leopoldskron, the baroque palace that houses the Salzburg Global Seminars where I found myself last week. The subject of the seminar was “value(s) for money,” a play on words that was designed to question the current fascination with ‘cost-effective impact’ [...]
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Money: in terms of social change, it’s both ‘beauty and the beast’

By Mike On February 27, 2014 · Add Comment
Is money a curse or a cure in relation to injustice and inequality? Welcome to a provocative new series on the role of money in the transformation of society. Philip Larkin’s poetry entered my consciousness during Britain’s “winter of discontent” in 1978, a grim time for those who remember it. Strikes by refuse collectors, nurses and workers in electricity plants brought the country to a halt. Things were so bad that even the gravediggers went on strike.Read more…
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