May 15, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Volunteers: A Social Profile
by Marc A. Musick and John Wilson
The study of volunteerism is a rather new development, “in part because the volunteer role has only recently become fully institutionalized and in part because of a tendency to marginalize volunteer work as a leisure-time pursuit,” write Marc A. Musick, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and John Wilson, a sociology professor at Duke University.
“Although volunteers are widely admired because they give their time freely to help others, their work is devalued precisely because it is given away,” they add in the first chapter of this book, which explores who volunteers, why and how individuals contribute their time and labor, and what the experience means to the individual and to the wider society.
After the introduction, two sections discuss how a person’s temperament, race, financial resources, health, religious affiliation, values and other characteristics affect the likelihood of volunteering.
The fourth section focuses on the social context of volunteering, including schools and congregations, differences between countries, and recruitment of volunteers. The authors write that people “who are asked are four times as likely to volunteer as those who are not,” and that “part of the explanation why lower-class people and members of minority groups volunteer at lower rates is that they have not been asked.”
The final two sections examine how volunteer work is organized and how volunteering leads people to get engaged in politics, develop strong social and professional networks, and stay in good health.
Publisher: Indiana University Press, 601 North Morton Street, Bloomington, Ind. 47404; (800) 842-6796; fax (812) 855-7931; iuporder@indiana.edu; http://iupress.indiana.edu; 663 pages; $39.95; ISBN 978-0-253-34929-3.
