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Author: Nina Eliasoph
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745669565
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
Many of us may have participated in grassroots groups, changing the world in small and big ways, from building playgrounds and feeding the homeless, to protesting wars and ending legal segregation. Beyond the obvious fruits of these activities, what are the broader consequences of volunteering for the participants, recipients of aid, and society as a whole? In this engaging new book, Nina Eliasoph encourages readers to reflect on their own experiences in civic associations as an entry point into bigger sociological, political, and philosophical issues, such as class inequality, how organizations work, differences in political systems around the globe, and the sources of moral selfhood. Claims about volunteering tend to be astronomical: it will create democracy, make you a better person, eliminate poverty, protect local cultures, and even prevent illness. Eliasoph cuts through these assertions by drawing on empirical studies, key data, real-life case studies, and a range of theoretical analyses. In doing so, the book provides students of sociology, political science, and communications studies with a framework for evaluating the role of civic associations in social and political life, as well as in their own lives as active citizens.
Author: Nina Eliasoph
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745669565
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Get Book Here
Book Description
Many of us may have participated in grassroots groups, changing the world in small and big ways, from building playgrounds and feeding the homeless, to protesting wars and ending legal segregation. Beyond the obvious fruits of these activities, what are the broader consequences of volunteering for the participants, recipients of aid, and society as a whole? In this engaging new book, Nina Eliasoph encourages readers to reflect on their own experiences in civic associations as an entry point into bigger sociological, political, and philosophical issues, such as class inequality, how organizations work, differences in political systems around the globe, and the sources of moral selfhood. Claims about volunteering tend to be astronomical: it will create democracy, make you a better person, eliminate poverty, protect local cultures, and even prevent illness. Eliasoph cuts through these assertions by drawing on empirical studies, key data, real-life case studies, and a range of theoretical analyses. In doing so, the book provides students of sociology, political science, and communications studies with a framework for evaluating the role of civic associations in social and political life, as well as in their own lives as active citizens.
Author: Ruth Prince
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1847011403
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Examines the increasing significance of the volunteer and volunteerism in African societies, and their societal impact within precarious economies in a period of massive unemployment and faltering trajectories of social mobility.
Author: Jim Butcher
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317750349
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 162
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Book Description
Just a generation ago the notion that holidays should be invested with ethical and political significance would have sounded odd. Today it is part of the lifestyle political landscape. Volunteer tourism is indicative of the growth of lifestyle strategies intended to exhibit care and responsibility towards others less fortunate, strategies aligned closely with developing one’s ethical identity and sense of global responsibility. It sits alongside telethons, pay-per-click, Fair Trade and ethical consumption generally as a way to “make a difference”. Volunteer tourism involves a personal mission to address the political question of development. It draws upon the private virtues of care and responsibility and disavows political narratives beyond this. Critics argue that this leaves the volunteers as unwitting carriers of damaging neoliberal or postcolonial assumptions, whilst advocates see it as offering creative and practical ways to build a new ethical politics. By contrast, this volume analyses volunteer tourism as indicative of a retreat from public politics into the realm of private experience, and as an expression of diminished political and moral agency. This thought provoking book draws on development, political and sociological theory and is essential reading for students, researchers and academics interested in the phenomenon of volunteer tourism and the politics of lifestyle that it represents.
Author: Mary Alice Haddad
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
This book explains volunteer participation around the world and investigates civic participation in Japanese society.
Author: John M. Bridgeland
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442220627
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Heart of the Nation traces America’s volunteer tradition—the golden thread of American democracy—and how Presidents from Washington to Obama have called on citizens to serve neighbor and nation. From the bunker below the White House on 9/11 to villages in Africa, John Bridgeland shares his own experiences inside and outside of government to spark more Americans to volunteer to meet urgent needs. He compellingly argues that such service is fundamental to our own happiness and to what the Founding Fathers envisioned when they talked about the “pursuit of Happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. Bridgeland helps the reader discover their own volunteer service mission and issues a rallying cry to the nation to heal our partisan divisions by joining together across party lines to address our toughest challenges.
Author: Judith N. Lasker
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501703846
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
Overseas volunteering has exploded in numbers and interest in the last couple of decades. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people travel from wealthier to poorer countries to participate in short-term volunteer programs focused on health services. Churches, universities, nonprofit service organizations, profit-making "voluntourism" companies, hospitals, and large corporations all sponsor brief missions. Hoping to Help is the first book to offer a comprehensive assessment of global health volunteering, based on research into how it currently operates, its benefits and drawbacks, and how it might be organized to contribute most effectively. Given the enormous human and economic investment in these activities, it is essential to know more about them and to understand the advantages and disadvantages for host communities. Most people assume that poor communities benefit from the goodwill and skills of the volunteers. Volunteer trips are widely advertised as a means to "give back" and "make a difference." In contrast, some claim that health volunteering is a new form of colonialism, designed to benefit the volunteers more than the host communities. Others focus on unethical practices and potential harm to the presumed "beneficiaries." Judith N. Lasker evaluates these opposing positions and relies on extensive research—interviews with host country staff members, sponsor organization leaders, and volunteers, a national survey of sponsors, and participant observation—to identify best and worst practices. She adds to the debate a focus on the benefits to the sponsoring organizations, benefits that can contribute to practices that are inconsistent with what host country staff identify as most likely to be useful for them and even with what may enhance the experience for volunteers. Hoping to Help illuminates the activities and goals of sponsoring organizations and compares dominant practices to the preferences of host country staff and to nine principles for most effective volunteer trips.
Author: Nina Eliasoph
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400838827
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
An inside look at how community service organizations really work Volunteering improves inner character, builds community, cures poverty, and prevents crime. We've all heard this kind of empowerment talk from nonprofit and government-sponsored civic programs. But what do these programs really accomplish? In Making Volunteers, Nina Eliasoph offers an in-depth, humorous, wrenching, and at times uplifting look inside youth and adult civic programs. She reveals an urgent need for policy reforms in order to improve these organizations and shows that while volunteers learn important lessons, they are not always the lessons that empowerment programs aim to teach. With short-term funding and a dizzy mix of mandates from multiple sponsors, community programs develop a complex web of intimacy, governance, and civic life. Eliasoph describes the at-risk youth served by such programs, the college-bound volunteers who hope to feel selfless inspiration and plump up their resumés, and what happens when the two groups are expected to bond instantly through short-term projects. She looks at adult "plug-in" volunteers who, working in after-school programs and limited by time, hope to become like beloved aunties to youth. Eliasoph indicates that adult volunteers can provide grassroots support but they can also undermine the family-like warmth created by paid organizers. Exploring contradictions between the democratic rhetoric of empowerment programs and the bureaucratic hurdles that volunteers learn to navigate, the book demonstrates that empowerment projects work best with less precarious funding, more careful planning, and mandatory training, reflection, and long-term commitments from volunteers. Based on participant research inside civic and community organizations, Making Volunteers illustrates what these programs can and cannot achieve, and how to make them more effective.
Author: Stephen Wearing
Publisher: CABI
ISBN: 9780851997650
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Volunteer tourism describes a field of tourism, in which travelers visit a destination and take part in projects in the local community. Projects are commonly nature-based, people-based or involve restoration of buildings and artifacts (e.g. restoration of a Buddhist temple inMongolia).
Author: Nina Eliasoph
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521587594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
Nina Eliasoph's vivid portrait of American civic life reveals an intriguing culture of political avoidance. Despite the importance for democracy of open-ended political conversation among ordinary citizens, many Americans try hard to avoid appearing to care about politics. To discover how, where and why Americans create this culture of avoidance, the author accompanied suburban volunteers, activists, and recreation club members for over two years, listening to them talk - and avoid talking - about the wider world, together and in encounters with government, media, and corporate authorities. She shows how citizens create and express ideas in everyday life, contrasting their privately expressed convictions with their lack of public political engagement. Her book challenges received ideas about culture, power and democracy, while exposing the hard work of producing apathy.
Author: Ashley Hinck
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807171255
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
Politics for the Love of Fandom examines what Ashley Hinck calls “fan-based citizenship”: civic action that blends with and arises from participation in fandom and commitment to a fan-object. Examining cases like Harry Potter fans fighting for fair trade, YouTube fans donating money to charity, and football fans volunteering to mentor local youth, Hinck argues that fan-based citizenship has created new civic practices wherein popular culture may play as large a role in generating social action as traditional political institutions such as the Democratic Party or the Catholic Church. In an increasingly digital world, individuals can easily move among many institutions and groups. They can choose from more people and organizations than ever to inspire their civic actions—even the fandom for children's book series Harry Potter can become a foundation for involvement in political life and social activism. Hinck explores this new kind of engagement and its implications for politics and citizenships, through case studies that encompass fandoms for sports, YouTube channels, movies, and even toys. She considers the ways in which fan-based social engagement arises organically, from fan communities seeking to change their world as a group, as well as the methods creators use to leverage their fans to take social action. The modern shift to networked, fluid communities, Hinck argues, opens up opportunities for public participation that occurs outside of political parties, houses of worship, and organizations for social action. Fan-based citizenship performances help us understand the future possibilities of public engagement, as fans and creators alike tie the ethical frameworks of fan-objects to desired social goal, such as volunteering for political candidates, mentoring at-risk youth, and promoting environmentally friendly policy. Politics for the Love of Fandom examines the communication at the center of these civic actions, exploring how fans, nonprofits, and media companies manage to connect internet-based fandom with public issues.
