STS Circle at Harvard [image.png] Nate Towery MIT, STS on (Not) Getting from Us to We: Expertise as a Roadblock to Change in U.S. Environmental Organizations
Monday, November 18 12:15-2:00 pm Maxwell Dworkin, 33 Oxford Street, Room 119 [image.png] Lunch is provided if you RSVP. Please RSVP to sts<mailto:[email protected]>@hks.harvard.edu<mailto:[email protected]> by 5pm Today, Wednesday, November 13. Abstract: How organizations undertake – and resist – change remains highly contested and uncertain; in this talk, I compare the struggles of two large U.S. environmental NGOs to more actively involve their members in organizational activities than they had done in the past. I specifically examine the use of community engagement organizing – where an organizer identifies, recruits, and develops volunteer leadership within a community to produce change – as a mechanism for democratizing organizational decision-making. In answer to the question why these NGOs were ultimately unable to meaningfully incorporate community organizing – even as they devoted substantial resources to its adoption – I show that existing organizations relied on a model of professional expertise for their legitimacy and historical policy successes. As such, they excluded public participants from meaningful roles and as a result, failed to sustain commitments to new structures and practices. Biography: Nate is a sixth-year PhD candidate in the Program in History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. His dissertation, “Changed Climate: Networking, Professionalization, and Grassroots Organizing in U.S Environmental Organizations," explores the efforts of established environmental organizations to change their organizational cultures and routine practices to develop grass roots activism for climate change advocacy. Prior to his PhD work, Nate received his A.B. in History and Science at Harvard. He later worked as a research associate in the areas of science and technology policy at the Science and Technology Policy Institute in Washington, DC. A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/ Follow us on Facebook: STS@Harvard<http://www.facebook.com/HarvardSTS> _______________________________________________
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