The Values of Volunteering

Volunteering is one of those phenomena which, despite the limited number of people actually involved in it, is seen as highly important for the proper functioning of society. In fact, volunteering and active participation in voluntary associations are considered to be key components of civil society; it is felt that they generate social cohesion and societal self-regulation as well as strengthening political democracy by developing individual citizenship and organizing countervailing powers. Issues such as these have gained momentum in recent years, especially since Putnam's publications in the 1990s on civic community and democracy in Italy and on the decline of social capital in the United States. However, interest in these issues in fact dates back to the time of the Civic Culture project carried out in the 1950s and 1960s by Almond and Verba, and even much earlier to Tocqueville's famous study Democracy in America in the 1830s. All of these studies, and many more, stress the importance of voluntary civic engagement for the development and maintenance of civilized societal cohesion and political democracy. This research tradition addresses volunteering as just one form of voluntary social and political involvement that might well be linked with other forms, such as passive and active membership of voluntary associations, incidental political activism, or individual involvement in public discourse. However, most studies on volunteering are written in another tradition that is more specifically directed toward direct helping behavior, service delivery, and unpaid work.

From the reviews:

This book examines volunteering in detail from a civil society perspective, using empirical data garnered from various sources for countries all over the globe. The contributions deal with a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from the diversity, social and cultural determinants and organizational settings of volunteering, to its possible individual, social, and political effects.

"The values of this relatively unique work lies in the many comparisons and analyses based on cross-cultural data." (Social and Behavioral Sciences, 41: 10)

"In summary, this volume is all the more impressive given the difficulty of the subject matter with which it deals. It should be required reading for any scholar interested in the nonprofit sector, volunteering, and the comparative study of civil society more generally." (John Wilson; American Journal of Sociology, 109: 6)

"The Values of Volunteering, presents chapters that ??? advance a vision of volunteering as involving more than a way of providing service to persons in need. ??? A second goal of the work is to ???contribute to the recognition of volunteering as an interesting topic for further social research. To these ends, the chapters are rich and rewarding and have been well crafted to provide a coherent advance of the book??'s argument." (Jon Van Til, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Vol. 34 (2), June, 2005)

From the reviews:

This book examines volunteering in detail from a civil society perspective, using empirical data garnered from various sources for countries all over the globe. The contributions deal with a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from the diversity, social and cultural determinants and organizational settings of volunteering, to its possible individual, social, and political effects.

"The values of this relatively unique work lies in the many comparisons and analyses based on cross-cultural data." (Social and Behavioral Sciences, 41: 10)

"In summary, this volume is all the more impressive given the difficulty of the subject matter with which it deals. It should be required reading for any scholar interested in the nonprofit sector, volunteering, and the comparative study of civil society more generally." (John Wilson; American Journal of Sociology, 109: 6)

"The Values of Volunteering, presents chapters that a ] advance a vision of volunteering as involving more than a way of providing service to persons in need. a ] A second goal of the work is to a ~contribute to the recognition of volunteering as an interesting topic for further social research. To these ends, the chapters are rich and rewarding and have been well crafted to provide a coherent advance of the booka (TM)s argument." (Jon Van Til, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Vol. 34 (2), June, 2005)