Civic Service Worldwide Impacts And Inquiry

This comprehensive collection of the latest research and policy developments in civic service worldwide provides an informed assessment of what works and what doesn't work in the field. With contributions from some of the discipline's best-known global leaders, it presents a conceptualization and operational definition of civic service that allows for variations across nations and cultures. "Civic Service Worldwide" offers a perspective on the history and potential for civic service from its roots in military service. It summarizes the effects of national service in diverse countries, and identifies important developments in service, including service across the lifespan and transnational service. The editors and contributors also address key questions and promising theoretical and methodological approaches for advancing knowledge in the field.

Written by over 200 leading experts from over seventy countries, this handbook provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of the latest theory and research on volunteering, civic participation and nonprofit membership associations. The first handbook on the subject to be truly multinational and interdisciplinary in its authorship, it represents a major milestone for the discipline. Each chapter follows a rigorous theoretical structure examining definitions, historical background, key analytical issues, usable knowledge, and future trends and required research. The nine parts of the handbook cover the historical and conceptual background of the discipline; special types of volunteering; the major activity areas of volunteering and associations; influences on volunteering and association participation; the internal structures of associations; the internal processes of associations; the external environments of associations; the scope and impacts of volunteering and associations; and conclusions and future prospects. This handbook provides an essential reference work for third-sector research and practice, including a valuable glossary of terms defining over eighty key concepts. Sponsored by the International Council of Voluntarism, Civil Society, and Social Economy Researcher Associations (ICSERA; www.icsera.org), it will appeal to scholars, policymakers and practitioners, and helps to define the emergent academic discipline of voluntaristics.

This volume brings together the most up to date analyses of civil society in Africa from the best scholars and researchers working on the subject. Being the first of its kind, it casts a panoramic look at the African continent, drawing out persisting, if often under-communicated, variations in regional discourses. In a majority of notionally ‘global’ studies, Africa has received marginal attention, a marginality often highlighted by the usual token chapter. Filling a critical hiatus, theHandbook of Civil Society in Africa takes Africa, African developments, and African perspectives very seriously and worthy of academic interrogation in their own right. It offers a critical, clear-sighted perspective on civil society in Africa, and positions African discourses within the framework of important regional and global debates. It promises to be an invaluable reference work for researchers and practitioners working in the fields of civil society, nonprofit studies, development studies, volunteerism, civic service, and African studies. Endorsements: "This volume signposts a critical turning point in the renewed engagement with the theory and practice of civil society in Africa. Moving from traditional concerns with disquisitions on the appropriateness and possibility of the existence and vibrancy of the idea of civil society on the continent, the volume approaches the forms, contents, and features of the actually existing civil society in Africa from thematic, regional, and national angles. It demonstrates clearly the extent to which core intellectual work on civil society in Africa has largely moved from concerns with cultural reductionism to a nuanced examination of the complexities of (formal, non-formal, organizational, non-organizational, traditional, newer, usual, unusual) engagements, detailing the extent to which, over time, civil society as a concept has been indigenized, appropriated and adapted in the terrains of politics, society, economy, culture and new technologies on the continent. In all this, the book accomplishes the near-impossible. Without sacrificing the vigour, rigor and freshness of the often unpredictable fruits of up-to-date research into regional and national differences that crop up in the documentation of Africa's multiple realities and discourses, the volume weaves together a rich tapestry of the historical, theoretical and practical dimensions of an expanding civil society sector, and accompanying growth in popular discourse, advocacy, and academic literature, in such a diverse continent as Africa, into a meaningful whole of insightful themes. Written and edited by a very distinguished cross-continental and multi-disciplinary collection of researchers, research students, practitioners and activists, the volume provides cutting-edge evidence and makes a definitive case for a new lease of life for civil society research in Africa." -Adigun Agbaje, Professor of Political Science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. "Throughout Africa, forms of civic engagement and political participation have seen dynamic change in recent decades, yet conceptions of civil society have rarely accounted for this evolution. This volume is an essential source of new thinking about political association and collective action in Africa. The authors offer a wealth of analysis on changing organizations and social movements, new forms of interaction and communication, emerging strategies and issues, diverse social foundations, and the theoretical implications of a shifting associational landscape. The contributors provide an invaluable addition to the comparative literature on political change, democratic development, and social movements in Africa." Peter Lewis, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced international Studies

"Reviewed here is global research on how 13 types of Voluntary Membership Associations (MAs) have significantly or substantially had global impacts on human history, societies, and life. Such outcomes have occurred especially in the past 200+ years since the Industrial Revolution circa 1800 CE, and its accompanying Organizational Revolution. Emphasized are longer-term, historical, and societal or multinational impacts of MAs, rather than more micro-level (individual) or meso-level (organizational) outcomes. MAs are distinctively structured, with power coming from the membership, not top-down. The author has characterized MAs as the dark matter of the nonprofit/third sector, using an astrophysical metaphor. Astrophysicists have shown that most physical matter in the universe is dark in the sense of being unseen, not stars or planets."--Page 4 of cover

The author focuses on the history, current relevance, and impact of domestic national service. She argues that only by examining programs over time can we understand national service's successes and limitations, both in terms of its political support and its civic lessons. Through extensive archival and documentary research, supplemented with interviews, this is the first detailed policy history of VISTA and AmeriCorps and of America's main national service programs taken together as a whole. It furthers our understanding of twentieth-century American political development by comparing programs founded during three distinct political eras -- the New Deal, the Great Society, and the early Clinton years -- and tracing them over time. To a remarkable extent, the CCC, VISTA, and AmeriCorps reflect the policymaking ethos and political controversies of their times, illuminating principles that hold well beyond the field of national service and here, the author expertly evaluates the civic effects of national service policy in the context of political development in the United States. At the same time, by emphasizing the programs' effects on citizenship and civic engagement, this volume deepens our understanding of how programs can act as public policy for democracy.

International service learning (ISL) programs are growing more popular with students looking to advance their skills and knowledge to become global citizens. While the benefits of these programs among students are well documented, little is known about the implications they have on host communities themselves. This volume explores the impact of ISL programs on members of host communities (e.g. host families and local partner NGOs) who are increasingly influenced by the presence of international students in their lives. Drawing upon post-colonial, feminist and other critical and decolonizing theories, it examines the complicated power relations between North American ISL students and host communities in East and West Africa, the Caribbean and Central America. It stresses the importance of developing trusting relations between ISL students, faculty and individuals in the host communities to create mutually engaging learning experiences.