Katherine K. Chen

How Values Shape and Are Shaped by Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations The Current State of the Field

To advance understanding of the relationship between values and organizations, this review synthesizes classic and recent organizational and sociological research, including this symposium’s articles on voluntary associations. We argue that all organizations reflect, enact, and propagate values. Organizations draw on culture, which offers a tool kit of possible actions supported by institutional logics that delineate appropriate activities and goals. Through institutional work, organizations can secure acceptance for unfamiliar practices and their associated values, often under the logic of democracy. Values may be discerned in any organization’s goals, practices, and forms, including “value-free” bureaucracies and collectivist organizations with participatory practices. We offer suggestions for enhancing understanding of how collectivities advance particular values within their groups or society.

Differentiating organizational boundaries

Although extant theory has illuminated conditions under which organizations mimic each other in form and practice, little research examines how organizations seek to differentiate themselves from conventional forms. Our comparative ethnographic studies examine how the Burning Man and Open Source communities developed organizations to help coordinate the production of an annual temporary arts event and nonproprietary, freely distributed software. Both communities sought to differentiate their organizations from reference groups, but this was not a sufficient condition for sustaining organizational novelty. We found that the ability to pursue a differentiated strategy was moderated by environmental conditions. By exploring the organizing decisions that each community made at two critical boundaries: one defining individuals’ relationship with the organization; the second defining the organizations relationship with the market, we show how organizing practices were recombined from the for-profit and nonprofit sectors in unexpected, novel ways. This comparative research contributes a grounded theoretical explanation of organizational innovation that adjudicates between differentiation and environmental conditions.

THE SELECTIVE SYNTHESIS OF COMPETING LOGICS.

This research uncovers how organizations develop: first, by specifying how organizational innovation occurs and second, by showing how members balance competing logics to support organizing practic...

“Plan your Burn, Burn your Plan”: How Decentralization, Storytelling, and Communification Can Support Participatory Practices

Research has found that compared with larger groups, small ones had fewer difficulties with retaining their participatory-democratic practices and values. However, the endurance and expansion of Burning Man, from 20 friends and family in 1986 to a temporary arts community of more than 66,000 persons in 2014, suggests that collectivities can maintain and augment participatory practices over increasing scale. Using an ethnographic study of organizing activities spanning 1998 to 2001 and follow-up research through 2012, I focus on how the Burning Man organization has sustained its participatory-democratic principles over dramatic growth. Specifically, I show how the Burning Man organization promoted and sustained authentic voice and engagement by (1) decentralizing agency, (2) contextualizing norms and practices via storytelling and discussion, and (3) “communifying” labor.

Prosumption: From Parasitic to Prefigurative

During the week prior to the 2006 Labor Day weekend, explorers of Black Rock City, a temporary city in the Nevada Black Rock Desert, may have stumbled upon a handmade wooden stand. Unlike conventional vending booths, no employees minded “Mikey’s Hug Deli,” and no customers exchanged money for goods across its counter. Instead, a sign instructed passersby on how to staff and patronize the interactive art installation, where the menu of hug offerings included a “bear hug” and “the long, uncomfortable hug.” Following the directions, a woman ran behind the counter to serve a customer. Upholding the suggested two compliments for a hug, the customer gallantly recited a snippet of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to his small audience. When he finished, the counterperson and a companion sandwich-hugged the customer between them. Mock humping the customer’s legs for added comedic effect, the duo squealed, “double-dog hug!” This art installation was one of many catalysts for prosumption among the nearly 70,000 participants who attend the annual Burning Man event. At this weeklong arts community, campers practice countercultural principles that blur the division between production and consumption. In particular, the principle of participation encourages attendees to prosume, or simultaneously produce and consume, the event. In addition, the gift economy principle inspires people to give without expecting immediate reciprocity. To enact these principles, some participants conceptualize or help erect art projects that invite audience involvement; others build theme camps featuring an interactive motif, such as a roller disco skating rink or a pizza baking and delivery service. Participants also volunteer for infrastructural services; at Recycle Camp for instance, they can pedal-power barrels that crush aluminum cans collected from campers. Prior artistic training, skills, or experience are not necessary, as the event’s mission is to facilitate a community of coproduction and sharing. Some participants view such prosumption as liberating and meaningful, as it encourages them to explore untapped skills and satisfy longings for creativity and connection (Chen 2009, 2012). Although Burning Man seems unusual with its extreme setting and utopist characteristics, its prosumption has analogues in everyday, mundane settings. For example, customers at the Habana Outpost in Brooklyn can pedal a modified bike to power the restaurant’s drink blender. Their prosumption provides an alternative energy source, thereby saving fuel and burning calories in anticipation of consuming margaritas.

Laboring for the Man: Augmenting Authority in a Voluntary Association

Drawing on Bourdieus field, habitus, and capital, I show how disparate experiences and “dispositions” shaped several departments’ development in the organization behind the annual Burning Man event. Observations and interviews with organizers and members indicated that in departments with hierarchical professional norms or total institution-like conditions, members privileged their capital over others’ capital to enhance their authority and departmental solidarity. For another department, the availability of multiple practices in their field fostered disagreement, forcing members to articulate stances. These comparisons uncover conditions that exacerbate conflicts over authority and show how members use different types of capital to augment their authority.

How Values Shape and Are Shaped by Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations

To advance understanding of the relationship between values and organizations, this review synthesizes classic and recent organizational and sociological research, including this symposium’s articles on voluntary associations. We argue that all organizations reflect, enact, and propagate values. Organizations draw on culture, which offers a tool kit of possible actions supported by institutional logics that delineate appropriate activities and goals. Through institutional work, organizations can secure acceptance for unfamiliar practices and their associated values, often under the logic of democracy. Values may be discerned in any organization’s goals, practices, and forms, including “value-free” bureaucracies and collectivist organizations with participatory practices. We offer suggestions for enhancing understanding of how collectivities advance particular values within their groups or society.

Interorganizational Advocacy Among Nonprofit Organizations in Strategic Action Fields: Exogenous Shocks and Local Responses:

Under what conditions do interorganizational efforts shift from sustaining stasis to facilitating change through advocacy in strategic action fields? Using observations of nonprofit umbrella organizations’ meetings for organizations that served older adults “aging in place,” I identify how organizations collectively reacted to exogenous shocks. I show how members first focused on sensemaking rather than challenging the state about policy changes. However, when a policy change unleashed new organizations into their field, incumbent organizations started exploring defensive tactics against competitors at their umbrella organizations’ meetings. At meetings, organizations shifted to meaning-making, developing a frame that advocated people’s well-being, cost-savings, and fraud-busting. This frame supported collective action toward creating regulations that protected their clients and organizations’ positions. I argue that organizations can recognize horizontal relations with other organizations and react to threats or entertain cooperation. However, they are less likely to mobilize vertically against the state.

NASCAR, Sturgis, and the New Economy of SpectacleNASCAR, Sturgis, and the New Economy of Spectacle, by KrierDanielSwartWilliam J.Boston: Brill, 2017. 223 pp.

In NASCAR, Sturgis, and the New Economy of Spectacle, Daniel Krier and William Swart delve into how companies converted recreational motorsports into flashy but unsustainable economic engines for deindustrializing U.S. cities. Punctuated by black and white illustrations and photographs, their book offers a dizzying array of concepts. Tying these concepts together, the book’s narrative argues that corporations have irrevocably degraded homegrown activities through crass commodification and commercialism. Rather than creating jobs, this form of redevelopment promoted alienated consumption via ‘‘economies of spectacle’’ (p. ix) in Iowa, South Dakota, and elsewhere. Throughout, the authors note how different groups lose in this market: citizens are turned into consumers, and women are visible only for selling sex appeal. Meanwhile, companies, elites, and elected officials appropriate public resources for private benefit, without making any substantive contribution to the collective other than selling a dissatisfying consumer experience. The book outlines how, when building tourism-based economies, companies cultivated three markets: ‘‘spectator markets (markets for those paying to see), sponsorship markets (markets for those paying to be seen), and trophy markets (markets for evidence that valorizes spectatorship)’’ (p. ix). To articulate their concepts, the authors compare two major motorsports events: the National Association of Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. These events feature racecar competitions and mass motorcycle rides, respectively. They are large in scale: the Sturgis Rally, as of 2000, drew some 633,000 attendees to a town of about 6,000 inhabitants. While the authors conducted field observations in six states, archival research, and informal interviews, when building their claims, the book leans heavily on other researchers’ and journalists’ work, as well as excerpted documents. Portraying their analysis as a refinement of ideal types, Krier and Swart name several concepts that are applicable to other consumption-based megaspectacles. The chapters’ respective content and claims should appeal to a variety of audiences. Postmodernists will enjoy Chapter One’s historic romp through carnival and spectacles. Chapter Two critiques the economic redevelopment of cities using spectacle tourism; these instances of what the authors conceptualize as ‘‘micro-primitive accumulation’’ offer cautionary, familiar stories about how corporations and elites engineered the massive transfer of communal resources to themselves, without delivering the promised jobs and urban revitalization (p. 39). Elsewhere, in Chapter Three, the authors provide details on how, for example, NASCAR disguised sparse attendance with Potemkin trickery. The authors argue that with mass marketization, such events experience ‘‘progressive decontextualization’’ where geographically distinct markers (i.e., Confederate flags and imagery of local revelry) are 468 Reviews

36.00 paper. ISBN: 9781608468355.

For some, the Rainbow Gathering evokes images of ebullient, blissful free spirits flitting about the woods without a camping permit. Chelsea Schelly’s Crafting Collectivity: American Rainbow Gatherings and Alternative Forms of Community offers a sociological analysis of this 43-year-old annual utopist communion with nature that attracts several thousands of attendees. Adopting the perspective of a friendly guide accompanying a newcomer to the Rainbow Gathering, Schelly introduces readers to this collective’s material systems, space, and community. Her book is instructive for those wanting a colorful introduction to a well-known but not well-understood phenomenon. For researchers, the book also illustrates the challenges of analyzing and presenting unfamiliar phenomena. In anthropological parlance, Schelly is a ‘‘halfie.’’ Like a fish studying the waters in which it swims, a ‘‘halfie’’ comes from the community and later decides to research her community. As an undergraduate majoring in sociology, Schelly attended her first Rainbow Gathering, a regional Rainbow Gathering in Oklahoma. Participating in six of these events since 2002, her nearly sixweeks-long attendance of the 2012 Rainbow Gathering is the basis for this book. The book excels in its descriptions of this temporary community. While the descriptions are illuminating, the accompanying analyses evidence the difficulties of conducting, analyzing, and presenting research of a complex phenomenon. For her theoretical claims, Schelly invokes the familiar Durkheimian concept of collective effervescence. To this, she adds a less familiar concept by Marcel Mauss about the relationship between material forms and experiences. Her thesis involves three parts. First, the ‘‘material systems . . . influence the form and character of social life’’ (p. 7). Second, interactions, rather than spontaneous happenings, lead to collective effervescence. Third, the seeming contradictions reinforce rather than fracture the collective. As for the relevance of studying the Rainbow Gathering, Schelly invites readers to consider such relations in more conventional settings. When writing about rich phenomena, researchers face the dilemma of deciding how much detail to share with readers. What to foreground versus background is a delicate balance. Schelly’s book foregrounds the event’s countercultural practices, offering extensive descriptions of the Rainbow Gathering philosophy and activities. After a brief overview of the Rainbow Gathering’s history and practices, one chapter categorizes the types of Rainbow Gatherers, ranging from the oppositional ‘‘dirty kids’’ to the original hippies to those seeking respite at an ostensibly alcohol-free but drugfriendly event. Subsequent chapters delve into the material systems and community. On the material side, Schelly exhaustively describes drop-toilets, water supply, food and kitchens, health care, and the physical layout. On the community side, she documents various interactions. These include greetings of new arrivals (‘‘Welcome home!’’) and strangers (‘‘lovin’ you’’) and other routines and rituals, such as the restoration of the campgrounds following the event’s end, collection of ‘‘pocket trash,’’ a morning of meditative silence for peace followed by a mass Om, and group meals. The book does not cover the event’s famed decision-making by consensus, concentrating instead upon the other interactions that enact the event. At each substantive chapter’s end, Schelly shares a few paragraphs of analysis. While this may satiate some readers, other readers will wish for a seamless integration of description and analysis. Throughout, Schelly’s descriptions of several puzzles invoke the specter of paths not fully taken. These mentioned contradictions are the most interesting but under-theorized parts of the book. One unmined puzzle concerns exchanges between men and women. Since the expressive nature of the event encourages interaction, this can fuel male harassment of women. Schelly recounts how 346 Reviews