CARL MILOFSKY is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Bucknell University. He is a former editor of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.
"Smallville represents an important contribution to furthering
understanding of the dynamics and practices of community
organizations."--Community Development Journal
"The book is easy to read, explores in fairly rich detail its
cases, and provides nonsociological readers or students with a
peripheral introduction to a wide range of sociological literatures
by way of extensive endnotes. One key, almost self-evident, point
is clearly amplified throughout: nonprofit organizations are not
'autonomous systems' and are powerfully shaped by community
stakeholders. Taken as a whole, the cases stand out as
demonstrating the limitations of conventional 'evolutionary' models
of voluntary engagement that conceptualize a secular trend within
any given 'movement' from activist engagement toward organizational
forms that are more like 'classical bureaucracies.'"--American
Journal of Sociology
"This is a neat book. Grounded in his study of eight voluntary,
grassroots organizations in Smallville, Milofsky shows that their
participants are linked in a network of shared values, community
obligations and a shared history together from which they derive
their sense of community. In this way, they have become
'transorganizations, ' a key concept that Milofsky introduces to
make sense of their overlapping purposes and embeddedness in the
same community. This book opens our eyes to the creative strategic
possibilities that can be seen in the re-birth of local, voluntary
and grassroots associations developing all around us." --Joyce
Rothschild, Professor, School of Public & International Affairs,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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