April 19, 2002
Beyond the confines of the "state" and the "market" lies a set of social institutions that has long been overlooked in social and economic studies. Called the "nonprofit", "voluntary", "charitable", or the "third" sector, this set of institutions turns out to constitute a much larger presence in societies throughout the world than has long been thought. Through the work of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, teams of researchers in some 40 countries have been charting this lost continent on the social landscape of our planet. The speaker will outline some of the salient findings of this work and the implications they have for our understanding of modern social realities.
Lester M. Salamon received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and is currently a Professor at The Johns Hopkins University and Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. An expert on public management and the nonprofit sector, Dr. Salamon previously served as the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, as the director of the Center for Governance and Management Research at The Urban Institute in Washington, DC and as Deputy Associate Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. His recent books include: The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance; Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector; Defining the Nonprofit Sector, Partners in Public Service; and Beyond Privatization: The Tools of Public Action.