Self-Organization: The Power and Limits of Ukraine's Informal Civil Society
Date and Time
Location
Book launch and discussion of Self-Organization: The Power and Limits of Ukraine's Informal Civil Society with author Svitlana Krasynska
In conversation with Oleh Kotsyuba, Director of Print and Digital Publications at HURI. Books are available for pre-order on the HURI Books website.
This event is organized by HURI Books, the publications program at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.
About the Book
Using Ukraine as a case-in-point, Svitlana Krasynska engages diverse bodies of literature and rich empirical data to reveal the vital role and unique potential of below-the-radar civic engagement in contexts where informal practices abound—a phenomenon largely neglected by scholars of civil society who traditionally focus on formal civic organizations.
Civil society in Eastern Europe has long been labeled weak based on a general lack of citizen participation in formal civil society organizations—a key criterion for assessing civic engagement in comparative studies. However, such an assessment of civil society fails to recognize the role and impact of informal civic engagement in contexts where informality permeates economic, political, and social spheres. Ukraine offers a valuable counterargument of the importance of informal civil society in Eastern Europe.
Krasynska convincingly shows that informality constitutes an essential component of civil society, shaping popular approaches to addressing social, economic, and political issues. The trailblazing findings in Self-Organization will be of interest to scholars of civil society, democratization, informality, and area studies, and they will aid development practitioners and policy makers in determining a more effective approach to supporting democracy-building around the world.
About the Author
Svitlana Krasynska is an interdisciplinary scholar studying civil society developments in contemporary Ukraine with nearly two decades of executive, consulting, and research experience in the nonprofit sector. She is the coeditor of The Nonprofit Sector in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia: Civil Society Advances and Challenges and the editor of Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History by Yuri Kostenko. Since fall 2022, Krasynska has been managing the MIT-Ukraine program.