(Photo by iStock/Tom Merton)
If you’re taking time to wind down and recharge this summer, nothing is better than a good book for finding your center and reorienting on the things that keep us going. Check out these recently excerpted books in SSIR for everything from practical insights on the social sector to the deep questions about the big picture that get to why we do what we do. If you’re looking for something shorter, catch up on an in-depth article series, or if you’re ready for summer school, take a look at something essential from the SSIR eBook series.
Belonging without Othering by john a. powell & Stephen Menendian
What does it mean to belong? “Like ‘happiness’ (and to the frustration of those who study and try to define it), belonging can exist in one context and disappear in the next, only to reemerge a moment later, based upon a symbol, a message, or a social cue. It may be fleeting or enduring, but it is always powerful and often highly sought after. Drawn from years of research, Belonging without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World is our best attempt to define belonging in clear and concise terms, and to clarify the essential elements of any fulsome and meaningful expression, whether it is in a place of work, an educational setting, or a community context.”
Scaling Up Development Impact by Isabel Guerrero, Siddhant Gokhale & Jossie Fahsbender
Despite the many innovations the social sector has crafted, the developmental challenges the world still confronts are daunting. Why do so few solutions reach the scale necessary to make a global difference? While scaling up is a dynamic process of transformation—such that “best practices” don’t always apply—the authors argue that the way forward is to put the people closest to the problem at the center of work to solve it.
Big Bets!
Kevin Starr’s provocative article “Big Bet Bummer” set off a discussion of the past and future of big bet philanthropy, prompting Cecila Conrad to write “In Defense of Big Bets” and Matthew Forti and Claire McGuinness to plot out a course for big bet philanthropy to lead to even bigger social change down the road in “Big Bets for the Long Haul.”
Breaking Free by Marcie Bianco
Should equality be the strategy and endgame of the feminist movement? In Breaking Free, SSIR editor Marcie Bianco argues that how equality is rendered in white supremacist cis-heteropatriarchal systems—how it takes shape and how we feel and experience equality—is anything but true equality: “To live a considered life and to catalyze ethical social change,” she argues, “our movement—and movements—must be thoughtful actions or extensions of the self into the world.”
SSIR eBooks!
In the last two decades, SSIR has built a library of essential thinking on a variety of topics, and our series of “Essentials” volumes collect the best and most innovative thinking on subjects as diverse as design thinking, scaling, and leadership, with more to come. Stay tuned and up to date … or maybe challenge yourself with something new!
Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy by Neil Lee
The world’s great urban tech hubs—from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen—are often riven with inequality and the benefits of innovation not always shared. In four case studies of tech hubs that bring ordinary workers along for the ride: Switzerland’s diffusion, Austria’s industrial policy, Taiwan’s education system, and Sweden’s large state, we see that failure to share the benefits across society puts at risk the pro-innovation policies on which shared prosperity depends.
Sustainable Sustainability: Why ESG is Not Enough by Rajeev Peshawaria
ESG has become a dominant framework for incentivizing responsible business behavior toward the existential challenges our world faces. But has ESG spawned a culture of compliance, characterized by mere box-checking rather than a culture of innovation to salvage our planet? In Sustainable Sustainability: Why ESG is Not Enough, Rajeev Peshawaria argues that the planet needs “steward leaders,” those who value interdependence, the long-term view, an ownership mentality, and creative resilience. Most of all, steward leaders understand that the better future must be a collective one.
Building People Power!
In an in-depth series sponsored by The California Endowment, authors from across the social sector argue that creating change requires building the power of communities to organize, advocate, agitate, and influence government, markets, and society on their own behalf, and in the ways that they can best choose to wield it. Jumping off from the SSIR feature story, “Philanthropic Investment in People Power,” this series argues “that sustainable shifts in the rights, benefits, and opportunities available to low-income and racial minority communities are possible only when those communities have the power and voice to secure the changes they seek.”
Read more stories by SSIR Editors.