What Religion Affords Grassroots NGOs: Frames, Networks, Modes of Action

Abstract

The international relief and development sector has swelled in the last two decades thanks to American grassroots NGOs: groups that rely on volunteer labor and individual contributions, often on budgets of less than $25,000 a year. Most of these organizations reject the label of "faith-based organization," yet they find the symbolic and material resources of religion indispensable. Religion affords these NGOs three kinds of resources to meet their distinct organizational needs. First, it provides frames, or ways of thinking and speaking about relief and development work that imbue it with legitimacy. Next, religion offers networks that provide money, volunteers, and entrée into aid-receiving communities. Finally, religion affords familiar modes of action that link the NGO, supporters, and local aid recipients. I support these claims with LDA topic modeling (a computerized method of text analysis), content analysis of websites, and in-depth interviews with 43 informants.

The Gift Economy of Direct Transnational Civic Action: How Reciprocity and Inequality Are Managed in Religious “Partnerships”

“…The relationships of direct transnational gift giving achieve shared action, but they are “loose” in a way that makes them vulnerable to cessation (Silber ). Gift exchange economies, with their iterative interactions and group basis, are a useful relationship structure under these conditions, but ensuing transnational civic action may not be long lasting or clearly assist the poor (Schnable ). An important line of future research about direct transnational gift giving is to uncover how partnerships result in negative outcomes, unintended or otherwise.…”

“…This research helps to broaden understanding of the ways American religion acts beyond U.S. borders. The global reach of religious discourse and religious networks, coupled with the financial power of U.S. religious groups, suggests that scholars will continue to uncover ways that religion is part of direct transnational gift giving more generally (Schnable ; Wuthnow ). The identification of a common STM travel pattern shared across religious traditions reconfirms an important finding about how religious action moves between poles of individuality and community (Madsen ), with the latter pole clearly extending across national boundaries.…”

“…The STM travel flow is such a formation, with large potential impact on foreign communities as well as the attitudes and activities of religious American participants (Beyerlein, Adler, and Trinitapoli ; Wuthnow and Lewis ). Our research here shows how multiple aspects of religion, including discursive resources, shared identity, organizational resources, and emergent meaning‐making contribute to producing this transnational civic activity (Schnable ). While we analyze religious groups, our insights are useful for understanding common problems and processes within other examples of direct transnational gift giving.…”

“…First, what motivates new transnational civic relationships between religious groups? Case studies provide examples of the initiating factors for new transnational engagement by religious organizations in the Global North, including sponsorship by parachurch organizations, publicity of major disasters, and the influence of immigrants with transnational connections (Adler and Ruiz ; Bakker ; Hefferan ; Schnable ). We show that the meaning of these factors is embedded in a theology of partnership repertoire (Boltanksi and Thevenot [1991]; Swidler ), which provides the language, ideals, and symbols to imagine, motivate, and enact pragmatic forms of transnational civic action (such as STM travel).…”

Humanistic interpretation and machine learning

“…Topic realism and topic instrumentalism form a continuum of attitudes towards topic modeling, not a contrast between considered philosophical positions. For instance, Mohr and Bogdanov (2013, p. 547) seem to assume the topic realist attitude in suggesting that there exists an actual number of topics in a text corpus and a corresponding 20 For other examples of measuring frames with topic models, see Fligstein et al (2017) and Schnable (2018). For measurement of other concepts than frames, see for instance, the study of issue homophily by Schmidt-Petri et al (2018), word polysemy in DiMaggio et al 2013, and literary themes in Jockers and Mimno (2013).…”