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4 Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Q. 1 (1975)

handle is hein.journals/npvolsq4 and id is 1 raw text is: JOURNAL OF VOLUNTARY ACTION RESEARCH Volume 4, Numbers 1-2, Winter-Spring Issues, January-April, 1975 ABSTRACTS OF ARTICLES APPEARING IN THIS ISSUE: Organizational Change, Citizen Participation, and Voluntary Action, by J. Malcolm Walker. pp. 4-22. Citizen participation is viewed here as a set of mechanisms for system change. Some relationships between citizen participation and organized voluntary action are explored from a system change perspective. The central argument is that citizen participation and voluntary action are con- ceptually quite different modes of organized effort, and are in important respects antithetical. This is most evident in the different approaches to system change inherent in citizen participation and voluntary action. Further, citizen participation and voluntary action embody different decision- making structures and processes as well as associated member attitudes and behaviors; they are associated with different theories of society; and they imply different roles for the state. The central argument rests on a particular view of system change, and on a narrow view of citizen participation. Given the associated assumptions, citizen participation and voluntary action are seen here as compatible - at the conceptual, and perhaps at the practical level - only under quite limited conditions. Voluntary action is broadly compatible only with weakened forms of citizen participation, or, more properly, with pseudo-participation. This broad compatibility also depends upon the adoption of weaker system change orientations. The Economic Role and Value of Volunteer Work in the United States: An Exploratory Study, by Harold Wolozin. pp. 23-42. The economic value of volunteer service activities in the United States has received little attention from economists. This paper represents a first attempt at filling this gap, defining volunteer work in economic terms and estimating the total volunteer product of the nation for each year 1929-1966, based on data from two national sample surveys of individuals and a small sample of data from major national volunteer organizations. These estimates are given separately for orga- nized volunteer activity and for combined organized and informal activity. Suggestions are made for a variety of much-needed additional research in this area. Voluntary Organizations in a British City: The Political and Organizational Characteristics of 4,264 Voluntary Associations in Birmingham,'' by Kenneth Newton. pp. 43-62. In spite of the enormous amount of theorizing by both sociologists and political scientists about the importance of voluntary organizations for the political health of modern society, relatively little empirical work has been done on systematic samples of a broad range and variety of such organizations. This exploratory study is based upon a list of four thousand two hundred and fifty formally organized voluntary associations which were found to exist in one large English city. About thirty per cent had been politically active (broadly defined) in local politics in a prior twelve month period. The data are consistent with the suggestion that membership size is an important determinant of organizational income, which,in turn, determines the ability of organizations to employ full-time, paid, administrative staff. A fourth organizational variable of importance is the degree to which organizations are well established as legitimate spokesmen for community interests, and these four organizational characteristics tend to cluster together in the same set of organiza- tions which, in general, tend also to be the most active in the political affairs of the city. The International Committee of the Red Cross and its Practice of Self-Restraint, by Morris Davis. pp. 63-68. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) looks upon its humanitarian endeavors as uniquely counter-cyclical. Positive ICRC characteristics like impartiality and due proportion are, it holds, also universally recognized. Spokesmen for other international relief agencies, however, have sharply criticized the ICRC, viewing it as politically encumbered, excessively cautious, and uncooperative. The key to this interpretive disparity lies in the existential ambiguities implicit in self-restraint. Through response to weakness, non-partisanship, the eschewing of sentimentality, and avoidance of self-gratifying and self-enhancing behavior, the ICRC virtually expunges egotism. At the same time, the ICRC's persistent devotion to its principles may seem like a particularly cloying version of self-assertiveness to those in adjacent organizations. Indeed, the more the ICRC practices self-restraint the more it proclaims the self it prefers, a problem that must be recog- nized if coping strategies are to be developed. 1/ JVAR

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