Organizing Locally: How the New Decentralists Improve Education, Health Care, and Trade

We love the local. From the cherries we buy, to the grocer who sells them, to the school where our child unpacks them for lunch, we express resurgent faith in decentralizing the institutions and businesses that arrange our daily lives. But the fact is that huge, bureaucratic organizations often still shape the character of our jobs, schools, the groceries where we shop, and even the hospitals we entrust with our lives. So how, exactly, can we work small, when everything around us is so big, so global and standardized? In Organizing Locally, Bruce Fuller shows us, taking stock of America’s rekindled commitment to localism across an illuminating range of sectors, unearthing the crucial values and practices of decentralized firms that work. Fuller first untangles the economic and cultural currents that have eroded the efficacy of—and our trust in—large institutions over the past half century. From there we meet intrepid leaders who have been doing things differently. Traveling from a charter school in San Francisco to a veterans service network in Iowa, from a Pennsylvania health-care firm to the Manhattan branch of a Swedish bank, he explores how creative managers have turned local staff loose to craft inventive practices, untethered from central rules and plain-vanilla routines. By holding their successes and failures up to the same analytical light, he vividly reveals the key cornerstones of social organization on which motivating and effective decentralization depends. Ultimately, he brings order and evidence to the often strident debates about who has the power—and on what scale—to structure how we work and live locally. Written for managers, policy makers, and reform activists, Organizing Locally details the profound decentering of work and life inside firms, unfolding across postindustrial societies. Its fresh theoretical framework explains resurging faith in decentralized organizations and the ingredients that deliver vibrant meaning and efficacy for residents inside. Ultimately, it is a synthesizing study, a courageous and radical new way of conceiving of American vitality, creativity, and ambition.

Business & Money

Fuller, Bruce

Management & Leadership

University of Chicago Press

We love the local. From the cherries we buy, to the grocer who sells them, to the school where our child unpacks them for lunch, we express resurgent faith in decentralizing the institutions and businesses that arrange our daily lives. But the fact is that huge, bureaucratic organizations often still shape the character of our jobs, schools, the groceries where we shop, and even the hospitals we entrust with our lives. So how, exactly, can we work small, when everything around us is so big, so global and standardized? In Organizing Locally, Bruce Fuller shows us, taking stock of America’s rekindled commitment to localism across an illuminating range of sectors, unearthing the crucial values and practices of decentralized firms that work. Fuller first untangles the economic and cultural currents that have eroded the efficacy of—and our trust in—large institutions over the past half century. From there we meet intrepid leaders who have been doing things differently. Traveling from a charter school in San Francisco to a veterans service network in Iowa, from a Pennsylvania health-care firm to the Manhattan branch of a Swedish bank, he explores how creative managers have turned local staff loose to craft inventive practices, untethered from central rules and plain-vanilla routines. By holding their successes and failures up to the same analytical light, he vividly reveals the key cornerstones of social organization on which motivating and effective decentralization depends. Ultimately, he brings order and evidence to the often strident debates about who has the power—and on what scale—to structure how we work and live locally. Written for managers, policy makers, and reform activists, Organizing Locally details the profound decentering of work and life inside firms, unfolding across postindustrial societies. Its fresh theoretical framework explains resurging faith in decentralized organizations and the ingredients that deliver vibrant meaning and efficacy for residents inside. Ultimately, it is a synthesizing study, a courageous and radical new way of conceiving of American vitality, creativity, and ambition.

The modern state – First and Third Worlds alike – pushes tirelessly to expand mass education and to deepen the schools’ effect upon children. First published in 1991, Growing-Up Modern explores why, how, and with what actual effects state actors so vehemently pursue this dual political agenda. Bruce Fuller first delves into the motivations held by politicians, education bureaucrats and civic elites as they earnestly seek to spread schooling to younger children, older adults and previously disenfranchised groups. Fuller argues that the school provides an institutional stage on which political actors signal their ideals and the coming of greater modernity; broadening membership in the polity, promising mass opportunity in the wage sector, intensifying modern (bureaucratic) forms of school management, and deepening a presumed commitment to the child’s individual development.  Fuller advances a theory of the ‘fragile state’ where Western political expectations and organisations are placed within pluralistic Third World settings, using southern Africa as an example of the dilemmas faced by the central state.

Growing-Up Modern: The Western State Builds Third-World Schools

Reference

Routledge

Western governments have a deep and unquestioning faith in the miraculous power of mass schooling to change society. In First and Third Worlds alike, the modern state pushes tirelessly to expand mass education and to strengthen the school's effect upon children. This book explores why, how and with what actual effects, politicians, bureaucrats and civic elite groups attempt to spread schooling to younger children, older adults and previously disenfranchised groups. The author argues that the school provides an institutional stage on which political actors signal various, sometimes contradictory, ideals, for example, a broadening membership in the polity, promises of mass opportunity in the wage sector and a deepening of a presumed commitment to the child's individual development. He advances a theory of the "fragile state" where Western political expectations and organizations are placed within pluralistic Third World settings. Using South Africa as an example, the author details the dilemmas faced by the central state, how it tries to influence local schools and what the results are within the classroom. This book is intended to be of interest to educational researchers and those concerned with sociology, politics and policy and development studies.

Growing Up Modern: The Western State Builds Third World Schools (Critical Social Thought)

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Through My Own Eyes: Single Mothers and the Cultures of Poverty

Shirl is a single mother who urges her son's baby-sitter to swat him when he misbehaves. Helena went back to work to get off welfare, then quit to be with her small daughter. Kathy was making good money but got into cocaine and had to give up her two-year-old son during her rehabilitation. Pundits, politicians, and social critics have plenty to say about such women and their behavior. But in this book, for the first time, we hear what these women have to say for themselves. An eye-opening--and heart-rending--account from the front lines of poverty, Through My Own Eyes offers a firsthand look at how single mothers with the slimmest of resources manage from day to day. We witness their struggles to balance work and motherhood and watch as they negotiate a bewildering maze of child-care and social agencies. 
 For three years the authors followed the lives of fourteen women from poor Boston neighborhoods, all of whom had young children and had been receiving welfare intermittently. We learn how these women keep their families on firm footing and try--frequently in vain--to gain ground. We hear how they find child-care and what they expect from it, as well as what the childcare providers have to say about serving low-income families. Holloway and Fuller view these lives in the context of family policy issues touching on the disintegration of inner cities, welfare reform, early childhood and "pro-choice" poverty programs.

History

Eggers-Piérola, Costanza

Holloway, Susan

Rambaud, Marylee F.

Americas

Harvard University Press

Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle over Early Education

A array of childcare and preschool options blossomed in the 1970s as the feminist movement spurred mothers into careers and community organizations nurtured new programs. Now a small circle of activists aims to bring more order to childhood, seeking to create a more standard, state-run preschool system. For young children already facing the rigors of play dates and harried parents juggling the strains of work and family, government is moving in to standardize childhood. Sociologist Bruce Fuller traveled the country to understand the ideologies of childhood and the raw political forces at play. He details how progressives earnestly seek to extend the rigors of public schooling down into the lives of very young children. Fuller then illuminates the stiff resistance from those who hold less trust in government solutions and more faith in nonprofits and local groups in contributing to the upbringing of young children. The call for universal preschool is a new front in the culture wars, raising sharp questions about American families, cultural diversity, and the appropriate role of the state in the lives of our young children. Standardized Childhood shows why the universal preschool movement is attracting such robust support―and strident opposition―nationwide.

Education & Reference

Stanford University Press

Controversial claims are being debated about school choice and the application of market dynamics to education. But the polemics have far out-paced hard evidence regarding who participates in school choice experiments and what effects are felt by parents, children and schools. This work reports the latest empirical results on choice programs nationwide. Who benefits and who loses under these programs? Do innovative forms of schooling flourish? Does student achievement improve? These are the questions addressed by contributors to this book.

Who Chooses? Who Loses?: Culture, Institutions, and the Unequal Effects of School Choice (Sociology of Education Series)

Orfield, Gary

Elmore, Richard F.

Teachers' College Press

Government Confronts Culture: The Struggle for Local Democracy in Southern Africa (States and Societies)

Transitional societies―struggling to build democratic institutions and new political traditions―are faced with a painful dilemma. How can Government become strong and effective, building a common good that unites disparate ethnic and class groups, while simultaneously nurturing democratic social rules at the grassroots? Professor Fuller brings this issue to light in the contentious, multicultural setting of Southern Africa. Post-apartheid states, like South Africa and Namibia, are pushing hard to raise school quality, reduce family poverty, and equalize gender relations inside villages and townships. But will democratic participation blossom at the grassroots as long as strong central states―so necessary for defining the common good―push universal policies onto diverse local communities? This book builds from a decade of family surveys and qualitative village studies led by Professor Fuller at Harvard University and African colleagues inside Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa.

Africa

Raising school quality in developing countries: What investments boost learning? (World Bank discussion papers)

World Bank

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fuller, Bruce. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Fuller, Bruce

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fuller, Bruce. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Organizing Locally: How the New Decentralists Improve Education, Health Care, and Trade

Organizing Locally: How the New Decentralists Improve Education, Health Care, and Trade

Growing-Up Modern: The Western State Builds Third-World Schools

Growing Up Modern: The Western State Builds Third World Schools (Critical Social Thought)

Through My Own Eyes: Single Mothers and the Cultures of Poverty

Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle over Early Education

Who Chooses? Who Loses?: Culture, Institutions, and the Unequal Effects of School Choice (Sociology of Education Series)

Who Chooses? Who Loses?: Culture, Institutions, and the Unequal Effects of School Choice (Sociology of Education Series)

Government Confronts Culture: The Struggle for Local Democracy in Southern Africa (States and Societies)

Raising school quality in developing countries: What investments boost learning? (World Bank discussion papers)