Organized Civic Benevolence and Nationhood

08/02/24 • 51 min

Santi Furnari (CASBS fellow, 2023-24) engages renowned political sociologist & 2015-16 fellow Elisabeth Clemens on the role of private civic volunteer organizations in co-constructing national identity and state capacity as well as serving as tools of governance, solidarity, and inclusion for much of American history. In what form does civic benevolence and philanthropy operate in the contemporary landscape? This absorbing conversation draws inspiration from the multi-award-winning book "Civic Gifts," much of which Clemens wrote during her CASBS year.
ELISABETH CLEMENS: Univ. of Chicago faculty page | Clemens wins 2023 Gordon J. Laing Award | on Wikipedia |
The book is Civic Gifts: Voluntarism and the Making of the American Nation-State (Univ. of Chicago Press), winner of the Barrington Moore Book Award, Comparative and Historical Sociology section, American Sociological Association; the University of Chicago Press Gordon J. Laing Award; the Outstanding Published Book Award, ASA Section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity; and the Peter Dobkin Hall History of Philanthropy Prize, Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA).
SANTI FURNARI: CASBS page | City University of London, Bayes School of Business faculty page | on Google Scholar |

Previous Episode

Exposing Sources and Impacts of Election Disinformation Campaigns

Legendary tech journalist John Markoff (CASBS fellow, 2017-18) chats with 2023-24 CASBS fellow Young Mie Kim on her groundbreaking efforts to identify how shadowy groups use algorithms and targeted disinformation campaigns during presidential election cycles; measure their real-world distorting effects on voter mobilization or suppression; and illuminate our understanding of resulting political inequalities and their implications for American democracy.
YOUNG MIE KIM: CASBS bio | Univ. of Wisconsin faculty page | "The Disinformation Detective" (On Wisconsin magazine) |
Kim leads Project DATA (Digital Ad Tracking & Analysis) at UW. | Project DATA on X |
Kim is lead author of the article "The Stealth Media? Groups and Targets Behind Divisive Issue Campaigns on Facebook," Political Communication, v35 n4 (2018). The article won the Kaid-Sanders Award for the Best Political Communication Article of the Year by the International Communication Association.
Coverage of findings: The New York Times here and here | Wired |
Kim's testimony delivered to the Federal Election Commission |
Kim is a founding member of the International Panel on the Information Environment. Coverage of IPIE in The New York Times |

Kim among the authors of "The effects of Facebook and Instagram on the 2020 election: A deactivation experiment," Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, v121 n2 (2024) |
Kim a coauthor of several articles appearing in a special issue of Science on Social Media and Elections (2023) |
At the beginning of the episode, Kim discusses the influence of Phil Converse. Converse was a CASBS fellow in 1979-80 and later served as CASBS director (1989-94). Learn more about Converse's work.

---------
Read John Markoff's latest book, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand (Penguin Random House, 2022)

Next Episode

The Humanity of Connective Labor

Are jobs requiring high levels of human interaction worth preserving in the age of automation? Can we design machines to achieve something profound – the mutual recognition that occurs when human beings truly "see" each other? CASBS faculty fellow Mitchell Stevens explores these questions with Allison Pugh, author of the 2024 book The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World. Pugh launched work on the book as a 2016-17 CASBS fellow.
ALLISON PUGH
website | Google Scholar page | Interview with Allison Pugh on building a society of connection (CASBS in partnership with Public Books) |
Princeton University Press page for The Last Human Job

MITCHELL STEVENS
Stanford GSE faculty page | Stanford profile | CASBS page | Google Scholar page |