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Voluntary Associations (voluntary + association)
Selected AbstractsTHE UNPAID LEADERS OF FRENCH VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONSANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2010Lionel Prouteau ABSTRACT,:,This paper focuses on the voluntary workers who take on responsibilities in French voluntary associations. First, drawing on a national association survey, we contrast the characteristics of leadership volunteers, especially chairpersons, with those of the French population as a whole. We show that leaders are very different from the overall population even if these differences seem to diminish for organizations created more recently. Second, from a national household survey, we compare board members with other members of associations. Among other results, we find that the former are more rooted in their local environment and they participate more frequently in several associations. They are driven by more activist motives than are the other members. They give more time to their associations and they use more skills in their voluntary tasks than do the other volunteers. [source] Voluntary Association in Public Goods Experiments: Reciprocity, Mimicry and Efficiency,THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 506 2005Talbot Page We find that a process of voluntary association where individuals express a preference about whom they want to be associated with can create strong incentives to increase efficiency and contributions in provision of a public good. This process of endogenous group formation perfectly sorted contributions by the order of group formation. Comparison of middle and last period behaviour suggests that a majority of the subject population are conditional cooperators, with a minority of monetary payoff maximisers. The experiment illustrates that under favourable conditions, where the opportunities of entry and exit are symmetrically balanced, a process of voluntary association can mitigate the free-rider problem. [source] Lawyers' Roles in Voluntary Associations: Declining Social Capital?LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 3 2001John P. Heinz The extent and nature of lawyers'participation in civic life probably has important effects on the character of the community's activity and its out-comes. Where and how lawyers participate in voluntary associations may influence the ability of those organizations to function within the larger structure of American institutions. This paper compares findings from two surveys of Chicago lawyers, the first conducted in 1975 and the second in 1994-95. Contrary to some expectations, the available evidence does not suggest that community activities of lawyers decreased. Moreover, lawyers'energies in 1995 appear to have been devoted more often to socially concerned organizations, those with a reformist agenda, than had been the case in 1975. The types of organizations with the greatest increase in activity were religious and civic associations. A smaller percentage of the respondents held leadership positions in 1995 than in 1975, but, because of a doubling in the number of lawyers, the best estimate is that the bar's absolute level of contribution to community leadership did not change greatly. In both 1975 and 1995, a hierarchy of social prestige appears to have influenced the pattern of lawyers'community activities. Lawyers who had higher incomes, were middle-aged, were Protestants, and who had attended elite law schools were more likely to be active or leaders in most kinds of organizations. In ethnic and fraternal organizations, however, the elites of the profession had relatively low rates of participation, while government lawyers, solo practitioners, and graduates of less prestigious law schools predominated. Status hierarchies within the broader community,as well as social differences in taste, preference, or "culture",clearly penetrate the bar. [source] Private Prayer and Civic InvolvementJOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 1 2005MATTHEW T. LOVELAND We analyze the relationship between private prayer and participation in voluntary association. We argue that prayer fosters a cognitive connection to the needs of others, and thus promotes membership in associations that emphasize personal relationships. Private prayer is not related to membership in political groups. The effect of prayer is strengthened by membership in religious groups, suggesting the relevance of both organizational and devotional aspects of religion for civil society participation. [source] Voluntary Association in Public Goods Experiments: Reciprocity, Mimicry and Efficiency,THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 506 2005Talbot Page We find that a process of voluntary association where individuals express a preference about whom they want to be associated with can create strong incentives to increase efficiency and contributions in provision of a public good. This process of endogenous group formation perfectly sorted contributions by the order of group formation. Comparison of middle and last period behaviour suggests that a majority of the subject population are conditional cooperators, with a minority of monetary payoff maximisers. The experiment illustrates that under favourable conditions, where the opportunities of entry and exit are symmetrically balanced, a process of voluntary association can mitigate the free-rider problem. [source] Class and the Construction of the 19th Century German Male BodyJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2002Berit Elisabeth Dencker Between 1848 and 1871, the German male identity created by the popular German gymnastics movement became a civilized bourgeois identity, distinguished from an aristocratic identity and one associated with manual labor. Bourgeois gymnasts initiated this process but the rest of the mainly petty bourgeois gymnasts eventually adopted the civilized identity embodied through gymnastics. Complementing studies that show that the bourgeoisie's increasing social dominance was reflected in the class-based restriction of access to voluntary associations, this article shows that it also involved the adoption of practices that expressed a restrictive bourgeois identity. The article challenges previous explanations of changing gymnastics practices and Pierre Bourdieu's emphasis on the role of class distinction in explaining changes in sports practices. [source] Lawyers' Roles in Voluntary Associations: Declining Social Capital?LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 3 2001John P. Heinz The extent and nature of lawyers'participation in civic life probably has important effects on the character of the community's activity and its out-comes. Where and how lawyers participate in voluntary associations may influence the ability of those organizations to function within the larger structure of American institutions. This paper compares findings from two surveys of Chicago lawyers, the first conducted in 1975 and the second in 1994-95. Contrary to some expectations, the available evidence does not suggest that community activities of lawyers decreased. Moreover, lawyers'energies in 1995 appear to have been devoted more often to socially concerned organizations, those with a reformist agenda, than had been the case in 1975. The types of organizations with the greatest increase in activity were religious and civic associations. A smaller percentage of the respondents held leadership positions in 1995 than in 1975, but, because of a doubling in the number of lawyers, the best estimate is that the bar's absolute level of contribution to community leadership did not change greatly. In both 1975 and 1995, a hierarchy of social prestige appears to have influenced the pattern of lawyers'community activities. Lawyers who had higher incomes, were middle-aged, were Protestants, and who had attended elite law schools were more likely to be active or leaders in most kinds of organizations. In ethnic and fraternal organizations, however, the elites of the profession had relatively low rates of participation, while government lawyers, solo practitioners, and graduates of less prestigious law schools predominated. Status hierarchies within the broader community,as well as social differences in taste, preference, or "culture",clearly penetrate the bar. [source] Auctioning Patronage in Northeast Brazil: The Political Value of Money in a Ritual MarketAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2010Aaron Ansell ABSTRACT, Fundraising auctions help people in a small rural town in Northeast Brazil reckon with the effects that currency stabilization and democratization have had on municipal politics. These simultaneous processes have made politics confusing for the people of Passerinho by creating multiple modalities of electoral reciprocity. In this article, I argue that the ritual procedures of the auctions commensurate these modalities of reciprocity through a semiotic procedure in which money signifies both exchange value and more personal forms of value. I consider the auction's impact on municipal politics by looking at its effect on the narrative of democratic progress and on the prestige of grassroots politicians, traditional elites, and voluntary associations. [source] A Cross-National Comparison of the Internal Effects of Participation in Voluntary OrganizationsPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2008Marc Morjé Howard This article draws on two recent and largely untapped sources of data to test empirically the Tocquevillian argument about the impact of involvement in civic organizations on individual attitudes and behaviors. Our analysis is based on two related studies , the European Social Survey (ESS) and the US ,Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy' (CID) survey , that incorporate innovative and detailed measures about respondents' involvement in voluntary associations in nineteen European countries and in the United States. These surveys provide us not only with rich individual-level data within a cross-national comparison, but they also allow us to develop and test a new measure of civic involvement that distinguishes between different levels of participation. After employing our ,civic involvement index' in pooled and individual country analyses, we find general support for the Tocquevillian argument. On average, those persons with greater levels of involvement in voluntary organizations also engage in more political acts, have higher life satisfaction and are by and large more trusting of others than those who do not. These findings highlight the general importance of actual involvement as opposed to nominal membership. [source] ORGANIZATIONAL INVOLVEMENT AND BLACK PARTICIPATION: CONTINUITY AND CHANGEPOLITICS & POLICY, Issue 4 2000Darryl L. McMiller Empirical investigations of black political activity either do not include measures for associational affiliation among blacks or take into consideration differences among black organizations in their capacity to promote political activity among their members. In this investigation, a model of black political behavior was presented that included not only the standard predictors of political activity, but also incorporated measures for membership in different types of voluntary associations. Two important conclusions emerge from this study. First, this investigation demonstrated that since the 1960s, there has been an important transformation in the organizational infrastructure of the black community: blacks changed their voluntary memberships from political to nonpartisan organizations. Second, these findings showed that the decline in group-based political mobilization since the 1960s is partly the result of this shift from partisan to nonpolitical affiliations. [source] Interpersonal trust and voluntary associations: examining three approachesTHE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2002Helmut Anheier ABSTRACT The relationship between interpersonal trust and membership in voluntary associations is a persistent research finding in sociology. What is more, the notion of trust has become a central issue in current social science theorizing covering such diverse approaches as transaction costs economics or cognitive sociology. In different ways and for different purposes, these approaches address the role of voluntary organizations, although, as this paper argues, much of this thinking remains sketchy and underdeveloped. Against an empirical portrait of this relationship, the purpose of this paper is to assess such theorizing. We first set out to explicate major approaches to trust in economics, sociology and political science, using the non-profit or voluntary organization as a focal point. We then examine the various approaches in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, and, finally, identify key areas for theoretical development. In particular, we point to the social movement literature, the social psychology of trust, and recent thinking about civil society. [source] THE UNPAID LEADERS OF FRENCH VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONSANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2010Lionel Prouteau ABSTRACT,:,This paper focuses on the voluntary workers who take on responsibilities in French voluntary associations. First, drawing on a national association survey, we contrast the characteristics of leadership volunteers, especially chairpersons, with those of the French population as a whole. We show that leaders are very different from the overall population even if these differences seem to diminish for organizations created more recently. Second, from a national household survey, we compare board members with other members of associations. Among other results, we find that the former are more rooted in their local environment and they participate more frequently in several associations. They are driven by more activist motives than are the other members. They give more time to their associations and they use more skills in their voluntary tasks than do the other volunteers. [source] Unravelling the dynamics and trends of social capital: Case of South KoreaASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2008Jaechul Lee Analyzing the World Values Surveys, the present study reveals how Korean people trust their fellow citizens and participate in associations in the process of democratization. It has been argued that trust and participation in voluntary associations go hand in hand. Although results revealed a remarkable growth of participation in voluntary associations since democratization, the level of trust has not increased. Instead, it declined sharply during the same period. A further analysis found no obvious connection between levels of civic activism and interpersonal trust, as suggested in the theoretical literature. Contrary to what has been argued in the literature, face-to-face interactions within voluntary associations have not occasioned these civic activists in Korea to greater trust in one another. [source] French-English relations in business-interest associations, 1965,2002CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 4 2002William D. Colentan The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism carried out an extensive investigation of language practices in the private sector and in voluntary associations. Using the royal commission's work on associations representing the general interests of business, this article examines language practices of these associations three decades after the royal commission's studies were published. The authors argue that the cordiality found between French and English in general business associations in the late 1960s continues to be the rule in these types of associations today. This cordiality, however, is rooted in a change in linguistic relations. Federal-level associations tend to have accommodated institutional bilingualism but retain English as their language of work. Quebec-based associations have moved to conform to official unilingualism. Moreover, the number of non-francophones in positions of authority in the Quebec groups has diminished, with executive structures now being dominated by francophones. Sommaire: Si nous avons une assez bonne connaissance de I'impact du bilinguisme officiel A I'échelle fedérale et de I'unilinguisme officiel au Québec sur la pratique lan-gagiére du gouvemement, nous ne savons pas trb bien si ces modifications des poli-tiques linguistiques ont entraîné des changements dans la pratique IangagèPre des organismes de la société civile. La Commission royale d'enquête sur le bilinguisme ct Ie biculturalisme a entrepris une recherche extensive sur les pratiques langagières dans le secteur privé et les associations bbnévoles. Grdce au travail de la Commission royale sur les associations representant les intérêts généraux des entreprises, cette ètude examine les pratiques langagières de ces associations, trois décennies après la publication des études de la Commission royale d'enquête. Les auteurs font remarquer que la cordialité observée entre le français et l'anglais au sein des associations cornmerciales vers la fin des années 1960 continue a être la règle dans ces types d'associations aujourd'hui. Cependant, cette cordialité est enracinée dans une modification des relations linpistiques. Les associations A 1,échelle féd érale ont tendance a satisfaire les exigences du bilinguisme institutionnel, mais conservent I'anglais cornme langue de travail. Les associations établies au Québec ont pris des rnesures pour se conformer à I'unilinguisme officiel. En outre, les non francophones sont moins nombreux à occuper des positions d'autorité dans les groupes au Québec, les structures de direction étant maintenant dominées par des francophones. [source] | |||||||||||||