Democracy in America

In my undergraduate coursework I took an interdisciplinary course on civic engagement which included a practicum component, that for me, included a stint at the Claremont Chamber of Commerce working on their "Leadership Claremont" program. This is where I really became friends with Alexis de Tocqueville and where I picked up an interest in social capital--something I had long understood without knowing the name for it.

Now that this interest has developed into a particular focus on leadership, social enterprise, and the developing world I find myself returning again to his observations on what makes this country tick. I find it so interesting that a concept like social enterprise has taken root and spread all over the world--when at its core the premise is also so American (in the sense that Tocqueville observed)--the entreprenuerally spirit and the desire to create formal associations. In large part, it is probably a much greater reflection of globalization and the spread of free markets. But it is also what has made the research regarding the subject proliferate here.

In “What Hath God Wrought,” Daniel Walker Howe's history of 19th-century America, he quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as telling a meeting of the Mercantile Library Association in 1844 that “America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations.” I think grounding the discipline in both this spirit and other historical antecedents, philosophical and programmatic (some of William James' writing on pragmatism, John Rawls on justice) could add a rich texture to the resulting strategies, prescriptions, and theories that will dominate the next layer of research on social enterprise.

It is important as this discussion unfolds to both tap into these underlying philosophies but to also be open to shifting course and adopting strategies that maybe aren't as culturally "natural" in the United States. One of the observations of social entreprenuers is their tendency to be stand-out leaders with strong visions. Is there a role for leaderless leadership in some organizations or some communities? It will be helpful to ask--what are some other ways of being in the world? It is a wide universe we are all seeking to learn about, how do we push on through repetitive ideas in an often saturated market so that our energies are spent effectively?