Description
Book SynopsisPresenting an account of why people volunteer and the factors that motivate them, this study describes how volunteer programs, such as the Partnership generate ethical development in and among participants. It also suggests that the American ethic is essential for sustaining community life and to the future well-being of a democratic society.
Trade ReviewOgilvie (city and regional planning, Univ. of California, Berkeley) attempts to place a case study of volunteers at two New York City church—based homeless shelters into a larger, sociological, theoretical framework. He is more successful in presenting a vivid portrait of the volunteers than he is at theorizing. The study of the centers is careful and insightful, but his treatment of the community literature is superficial and selective. The author draws on the concept of moral communities (Seymour Mandelbaum, Open Moral Communities, CH, Oct'00, 38—1013) as well as the literature of communities of practice (Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice, 1998). A final chapter that is both practical and prescriptive discusses the process of building community organizations that create community, rather than those designed to serve the community. Students and faculty interested in this issue of homelessness will find the book instructive, but those interested in larger issues in community sociology will likely be disappointed. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper—division undergraduates and above.
-- A. A. Hickey * Choice *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Voluntarism and the American Ethic
1. The Partnership for the Homeless: The Tradition of Churches Helping the Homeless in New York
2. In the Church Shelters
3. Why People Volunteer in Church Shelters and Why They Keep at It
4. The Mediating Role of the Church Shelters
5. The Moral Effects of the Volunteer Experience
6. The Church Shelters as Community-Generating Institutions
7. Social Architecture: The Art of Building Community-Generating Institutions
Conclusion
Appendix: Research Methods
Notes
Bibliography
Index
