Author Archives: Erica Bornstein

About Erica Bornstein

Erica Bornstein is professor of Anthropology at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has authored two ethnographic monographs: Disquieting Gifts: Humanitarianism in New Delhi (Stanford 2012), which won the 2013 ARNOVA award for outstanding book on nonprofit and voluntary action research, and The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe (Stanford, 2005). She is the co-editor of Forces of Compassion: Humanitarianism between Ethics and Politics (School for Advanced Research Press, 2011), and is currently writing a book on the regulation of nonprofits, philanthropy, and civil society in India.

The Report: A Strategy and Nonprofit Public Good

Abstract: In the context of increasingly stringent state regulations governing civil society, some groups in India have turned to report writing as a form of advocacy for civil society itself. Involving collaboration between NGOs and civil servants, reports make demands upon the state and seek to hold the government accountable for promises of welfare entitlements. Once written, reports are mobile technologies used to negotiate with governmental bodies, to galvanize and constitute the nonprofit sector as a coherent entity, to justify the value of NGO work, Continue reading → Continue reading →