Volunteers A Social Profile [Hardcover]

Who tends to volunteer and why? What causes attract certain types of volunteers? What motivates people to volunteer? How can volunteers be persuaded to continue their service? Making use of a broad range of survey information to offer a detailed portrait of the volunteer in America, Volunteers provides an important resource for everyone who works with volunteers or is interested in their role in contemporary society.

Mark A. Musick and John Wilson address issues of volunteer motivation by focusing on individuals' subjective states, their available resources, and the influence of gender and race. In a section on social context, they reveal how volunteer work is influenced by family relationships and obligations through the impact of schools, churches, and communities. They consider cross-national differences in volunteering and historical trends, and close with consideration of the research on the organization of volunteer work and the consequences of volunteering for the volunteer.

The opening chapters of the volume are enticing and lucid. The authors ground the sociological understanding of volunteerism in sociologys foundational concern with altruism. They note that recent interest in volunteerism has been sparked not only by a political milieu in which government programs encourage civic involvement in the public sphere but also by theoretical shifts in the understanding of work and social movements, as well as by interest in care work, paid and unpaid, advanced by feminist scholars. . .Vol. 38.3

Preface
Acknowledgments

Part 1. An Introduction to Volunteering
1. The Importance of Studying Volunteering
2. What Is Volunteering?

Part 2. Subjective Dispositions
3. Personality
4. Motives
5. Values, Norms, and Attitudes

Part 3. Individual Resources
6. Socio-Economic Resources
7. Time and Health
8. Gender
9. Race

Part 4. The Social Context of Volunteering
10. The Life Course: The Early Stages
11.lӑ