Summer Research Fellowship
New Directions Community-Based Research Institute, Inc.
Andrew Collver, Research Director
68 Aspen Lane, Stony Brook NY 11790
ACollver@Optonline.net Tel. 631-751-5320
Summer Research Fellowship for a study of “Local business and the Community.”
Amount of grant: $5,000.
Period of grant : June-August, 2008.
Written report and oral presentation: September 29, 2008
Eligibility: Applicants must be actively enrolled in a graduate program at Stony Brook University and expecting to continue in the fall of 2008. Preference will be given to advanced doctoral students in the social sciences, but others will be competitively considered.
Purpose: The aim of the grant is to initiate studies of alternative and innovative approaches to the support and revitalization of local business in Long Island's numerous village and school district communities. The Farmingdale school district community and Hempstead Village are current locations of New Directions' work. Topics of interest include…
Contributions of local business to the local economy, in comparison with the impacts of externally owned and controlled businesses.
Contributions of local business to community organization, civic organizations and volunteer activities.
Whether taxation and governmental supports for business, such as tax abatements, subsidies, infrastructure improvements etc. favor local or externally owned businesses.
Comparative review of different approaches to improvement of the local business climate.
Downtown and Main Street revitalization programs in theory and in practice.
Alternate financial arrangements: local currency, time banks, local stock exchange.
Use of the community land trust to reduce costs for local business.
Application due date: Thursday, May 15. (Award to be announced May 22)
Application should include the following:
1. A letter telling how the proposed work would fit in with the applicant's specialty and career plans.
2. A brief summary proposal of the research to be done, including a statement of the central research question, the methods of inquiry and the results to be expected by the end of the summer.
3. Applicant's resume and two faculty references.
4. One or two recent research papers by the applicant.
Address applications to:
Department of Sociology
Attention: Wanda Vega
Social and Behavioral Sciences S-401
Stony Brook University, NY 11794-4356
Continued---
New Directions Community-Based Research Institute
Summer Research Fellowship for a study of “Local business and the Community,” page 2.
Where to look for ideas:
E.F. Schumacher Society, Great Barrington MA. www.smallisbeautiful.org This organization has a library of related literature and holds an annual lecture series, with prints of lectures available free online. (Click on Publications and see especially Michael H. Shuman's 2002 lecture, “Going Local: New Opportunities for Community Economies.”) “Building Sustainable Local Economies” is the topic for a conference they will host May 21-25. 2008. This organization started the community land trust movement in America and is now in the second year of a demonstration of a local currency, called “Berkshares,” which is by all reports highly successful.
The New Rules Project is a project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, at Minneapolis. Their motto is “Designing Rules as if Community Matters.” Just one recent example of their work is a report, “Broadening Wind Energy Ownership by Changing Federal Incentives.” This April 2008 policy brief shows how current federal law discriminates against people owning their own power plants and highlights how the removal of two barriers at the federal level could dramatically enhance local ownership and investment in renewable energy projects. See this and many other reports at www.newrules.org/
Two books by Michael H. Shuman provide good introductions to the topic.
Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age, New York: Routledge, 2000.
The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses are Beating the Global Competititon, San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler, 2006.
About New Directions
New Directions' mission is to learn about and then in turn teach how to build local community assets that can be locally controlled and managed for the benefit of all the community. Our repertory of tools for local self-reliance includes a study and learning program called Discover Your Community, in which citizens find out as much as they can about the place where they live, its population, geography and resources, history, problems and possibilities, etc. Drawing on the knowledge from this study, they convene in study circles to find common ground and arrive at agreement on some improvements that they want to see in the community. To increase the resources available for problem-solving, we have introduced the idea of a partnership between each municipality and a council of civic leaders drawn from many segments of the population. The community land trust offers a way to establish permanently affordable housing.
A prosperous local economy is seen as an essential basis for a thriving civic life, and because of this, promotion of local business is yet another potential way to enhance the quality of life in a place.
http://www.newdirectionscbr.org