The essays in this book reflect pioneering efforts to study the global movement of ideas and institutions. They deal with topics of significant contemporary importance: initiatives to address the AIDS epidemic in East Africa; to protect the peoples and ecosystems of the Amazon; to advance the "truth and reconciliation" process in South Africa and in other areas of great conflict; to promote "civil society" in Eastern Europe and Central Asia; to advocate for environmental protection in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan; and to spread Rotary Clubs and encourage "social entrepreneurship" throughout the world. These essays highlight a wide range of research, paying close attention to the realities of particular situations and to current thinking about general processes.
David C. Hammack is Hiram C. Haydn Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University. He is editor of Making the Nonprofit Sector in the United States: A Reader (IUP, 1998).
Steven Heydemann is Vice President of the Grants and Fellowship Program at the U.S. Institute for Peace, and Adjunct and Research Associate Professor in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He is author of Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict, 1946–1970.