FOCUS ON FACULTY
Faculty Feature: Pranab Chatterjee, Grace Longwell Coyle Professor of Social Work
Q: You were recently appointed to the Grace Longwell Coyle Professor of Social Work. What career path has led you to Case and this position specifically?
A: I started out in India doing community development and social development work with a mission-driven model. Then, after my MSSW from the University of Tennessee with a group work major, I went to work in a near west side settlement in Chicago. That was community-based work, and required going out into the community and building relationships. It was then that I formed the roots in community-based, mission-driven work.
While working in the near west side of Chicago, I also began attending The University of Chicago. This was a great intellectual experience. Among my teachers there were more than 50 percent of Who's Who in American Sociology. They included such people as Peter Blau, Morris Janowitz, Everett Hughes, Peter Rossi, Talcott Parsons, and others.
Herman Stein, dean of SASS during the mid-60s, offered me a job here. His convictions were, and still are, that social work and work with nonprofit agencies should be community-based, mission-driven work. I found him very compatible with my values, and accepted his offer for a job here.
During my first five or so years here, I engaged in research on leadership development in the black communities of Cleveland. That effort culminated in a 1975 monograph, Local Leadership in Black Communities.
Between the mid-70s and 1990s, I became interested in the formation and sustainability of the modern welfare state. This led to extensive new learning, and culminated in two books: Approaches to the Welfare State (1996) and Repackaging the Welfare State (1999). Also from this teaching and learning experience about the modern welfare state, several journal articles were published. Perhaps the most prominent of them is "Two Tails of Justice," in Families in Society (2002).
All during this time, my interest in community-based work had not waned. I published several research papers on how human development was a function of community membership. Darlyne Bailey, Nina Aronoff, and Angela Curl, were my co-authors. Nina and Angela were doctoral students at the time, and Darlyne was dean of MSASS between 1994 and 2001.
It is this combination of community-based work, interest in community and social development, and work with nonprofit organizations that led to the appointment as Grace Longwell Coyle chair in 2005.
Q: What is your favorite part about teaching at the Mandel Center and MSASS?
A: My favorite part of the work I do is at the Faculty Council for the Mandel Center. I also enjoy the course that I teach in organizational and management theory at the Mandel Center.
Q: Please tell us a little about your work that's currently under preparation.
A: Under preparation is a book, Hostage to the Vigilantes, on modernization efforts in Eastern India. It is a massive and very ambitious undertaking, and I hope to finish it about this time next year. The work on the professionalization of the nonprofit sector has just begun, with the collaboration with Lauren Stevenson. Lauren is a doctoral student here at MSASS.
Q: You have conducted a myriad of research in the human behavior and social policy fields. What has been some of your favorite research and why?
A: Of all of my work, cross-cultural comparisons have been my most favorite. I always learn something new as I engage in them.
Q: What other organizations, hobbies, interests, etc are you currently involved in?
A: I belong to Lakeside Yacht Club and Bengali Cultural Society. I am the founding president of the latter organization. My hobbies include: boating, fishing, cooking, raising orchids, writing poetry, and carpenter's work. I learned carpenter's work from a Polish immigrant in Chicago, who had only three English words in his vocabulary: "this yeh," "this no," and "this no-no."
Q: Anything else you'd like to share with us about yourself...
A: My wife, Marian, is a Yankee girl, who speaks Bengali and sings without an accent. My son, Manu lives in San Francisco. He has worked for Motorola for seven years, and is just starting a company of his own. He wants to be an entrepreneur in the old style. My 13-year-old daughter is starting high school this fall. She has just discovered that I do not know anything, but her mother assures me that at 18 she will be surprised to see how much a father can learn in five years.
You can contact Pranab Chatterjee at pranab.chatterjee@case.edu.
