Review and Assessment of China's Nonprofit Sector after Mao PDF Download

Author: David Horton Smith
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004326626
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 79

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Book Description
Published research in English is reviewed on the Nonprofit Sector (NPS) in mainland China since Mao’s death in 1976. A large, diverse, and rapidly growing NPS exists, but openly political Nonprofit Organizations (NPOs) outside the Communist Party and its control are prohibited. China has civil society in the narrower sense: a substantial civil society sector or NPS exists. However, the party-state in China continues to play a dominating role in regard to the NPS, especially for registered NPOs. Freedom of association is still limited in China, especially for national associations, which are nearly all Government Organized Nongovernmental Organizations (GONGOs), not genuine NGOs/NPOs. The broader scope definition of civil society focuses on functioning civil liberties, and the ability of NPOs in general to influence significantly the government on various policy issues. In these terms, China has a weak but slowly emerging civil society with far more associational freedom than under Mao.

Author: Aya Okada
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900435946X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
Despite a long history, the organized field of research on voluntaristics in Japan has emerged only in the past two decades. This article presents a comprehensive review of voluntaristics research in Japan through an overview of past studies and recent hot topics. Nonprofit sector and voluntary action research, now termed voluntaristics (Smith, 2016), is reviewed here using four approaches: organizational, economic, employment, and charitable giving. Discussion of recent changes in the political-legal environment for nonprofit agencies and associations as well as of collaboration among nonprofits, governments, and businesses are presented. The article also covers some of the key topics in recent years, including rising social movements and advocacy, social impact bonds, social capital, and information and communication technologies (ICT) and social media. In discussing the emergence, expansion, and diversification of nonprofit research in Japan, the article makes two main arguments. First, we argue that studies of voluntaristics are rather recent in Japan, still in pursuit of their own originality. Second, we argue that nonprofit research in Japan is constantly looking for an ideal relationship with practice. Research appears to have not fully caught up with the changing landscape of nonprofits in action, and research has not been able to guide practice into the best next steps. The article highlights characteristics of nonprofit sector research in Japan as well as suggesting key questions for future research.

Author: David Horton Smith
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137263172
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1505

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Book Description
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.

Author: Laura Nirello
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004383077
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 93

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Book Description
This article deals with the literature on the French nonprofit sector (NPS). A preliminary part is devoted to presenting and discussing the characteristics that shape the approaches to this sector in France. We stress the strong influence of legal categories on the sector’s definition and, in this context, the importance of the status inherited from the 1901 Act on contracts of association. This raises a problem for a more analytical approach to the sector, because the diversity of the nonprofit organizations (NPOs) regulated under this Act risks being overshadowed. In this first part, we also underline the primacy accorded in France to the concept of the social economy, which has today become the social and solidarity economy (SSE), over that of the nonprofit sector. In the second part, the article outlines some landmarks in the history of the French NPS. French NPOs were for many years objects of suspicion, arbitrariness and repression on the part of the public authorities and this persisted until the 1901 legislation on contracts of association was enacted. However, this hostile context did not prevent the sector from having a richer existence than is sometimes admitted. This literature review also focuses on empirical studies of the sector, placing a particular emphasis on the more recent ones. These French studies basically adopt two types of approach. The first is concerned essentially with the NPOs and focuses its attention on their economic importance, whether measured in terms of financial resources, employment, or, less frequently, added value. The second approach investigates the kinds of individual participation the sector engenders by examining the various forms it takes, such as membership of NPOs or voluntary work. This review ends with the analysis of the challenges that NPS faces in a context characterized by the increasing constraints on public funding, changes in the nature of such funding with a substitution of contracts for subsidies, an increased competition among NPOs as well as between NPOs and for-profit enterprises. The article concludes that, despite the advances in research on the French NPS, some aspects—like formal volunteering and the role of voluntary associations—are still understudied, while others—like informal groups and informal volunteering—are almost totally ignored.

Author: David Horton Smith
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004380620
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
The Nonprofit Sector in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (EERCA), edited by David Horton Smith, Alisa V. Moldavanova, and Svitlana Krasynska, uniquely provides a research overview of the nonprofit sector and nonprofit organizations in eleven former Soviet republics, with each central chapter written by local experts. Such chapters, with our editorial introductions, present up-to-date versions of works previously published in EERCA native languages. With a Foreword by Susan Rose-Ackerman (Yale University), introductory and concluding chapters also explain the editors’ theoretical approach, setting the whole volume in several, relevant, larger intellectual contexts, and summarize briefly the gist of the book. The many post-Soviet countries show much variety in their current situation, ranging from democratic to totalitarian regimes.

Author: Euiyoung Kim
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498598951
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
In Social Economy in Asia: Realities and Perspectives, thirteen scholars from various academic disciplines analyze the reality and different understandings of the social economy in Asia. By providing detailed case studies, engaging in comparative and global discussions, and examining theoretical and policy-relevant implications, the contributors to this collection argue that the Asian social economy has uniquely benefited as a modern economic system with a human-centric approach.

Author: Virginie Arantes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000645703
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Despite contrasting approaches, democratic and authoritarian governments all underline the fact that environmental protection is crucial and inevitable—and China’s enthusiasm in stepping up its efforts to protect the environment has not gone unnoticed. This book highlights how the consensual orchestration of sustainability in China’s biggest city, Shanghai, affects non-state actors’ ways of perceiving, acting, and organizing around environmental issues. China’s Green Consensus examines grassroots realities as they intersect with events of everyday life, offering insights into areas that far transcend debates over coercive forms of environmentalism and exploring the “soft” and “green” facets of President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian approach to governance. The importance of environmental protection in people’s lives serves as a lens to analyze and understand authoritarian adaptations to environmental global phenomena. Arantes highlights how, through mobilization and (de)politicization, a “green” consensus leads to the displacement of state responsibilities and the cultivation of civil society in its own image. In so doing, she opens up new ways of thinking about the complexities of environmental governance, consensus politics, subject making, and citizenship in authoritarian contexts. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Chinese society and politics, environmental politics, political ecology, international relations, and urbanization in Asia, as well as all others interested in the rising appeal of authoritarianism around the globe.

Author: David Horton Smith
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004446486
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
Reviews historical impacts of some Deviant Voluntary Associations (DVAs) as moral dark energy. Dissenting DVAs, like the American Anti-Slavery Society (mid-1800s) and National Woman’s Party (early 1900s), worked effectively fostering U.S. socio-cultural progress and ethical evolution in global rights revolution.

Author: Taru Salmenkari
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317373863
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
The concept of 'civil society' has often been used as a devise for differentiating China from other cultures. Though sometimes portrayed as a growing phenomenon, Chinese civil society is frequently said to be non-existent. Definitional deficiencies have, therefore, led to both a simplification and a narrow appreciation of societal developments in China. By examining various forms of activity, such as NGOs, residential movements, and alternative spaces, this book, however, reassesses the idea of Chinese civil society. Through questioning current methodological, theoretical and structural assumptions, it uses an empirical approach to criticize and expand upon existing understandings of civil society as it is applied in the field of Chinese Studies. Based upon ethnographic research undertaken among activists in both mainland China and Taiwan, it examines issues such as inequality, the mobilizing skills needed for civil society activities, and the technologies which exist to maintain the boundary between state and society. Offering an analysis of Chinese civil society in the context of modernization, social and economic liberalization, and international civil society promotion, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Chinese Studies and Taiwan Studies, as well as development studies and civil society studies.

Author: Jacob Mwathi Mati
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004339949
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
Despite the availability of a wide range of literature on what is can be construed to be philanthropic behaviour in Africa, there is limited conceptual discussion on what constitutes philanthropy in African context(s). Yet, philanthropic behaviour is culturally rooted phenomena manifesting in diverse forms, expressions, and models. This review contributes to a growing body of literature on conceptions and manifestations of African philanthropy. The review illustrates a complex plurality of actions that fall under cultures and practices of giving in Africa. These include the giving of money, time, knowledge, influence and visibility in support of a cause, valuable goods, and body parts/organs from living and dead. While some of these actions conform to dominant Western notions of philanthropy, others do not. From an analysis of these practices, this paper proposes that African philanthropy can be conceptually structured on the basis of spheres of philanthropic practice, and the underlying bases and motivations for philanthropy. On spheres of philanthropic practice, at least three forms of philanthropy exist: institutional (formal); non-institutional (non-formal/informal/direct); and a hybrid form that blends practices from the formal and informal spheres. On motivations for giving, the predominant forms are based on mutuality, solidarity and counter-obligation inherent in collectivist and humanistic African philosophies of life. Further, motivations are drawn from religious obligations, institutional requirements on corporate bodies, and institutional arrangements in the development process. There are, nonetheless, significant overlaps between spheres of practice and motivations in contemporary philanthropic practices in Africa. For instance, philanthropic culture in Africa manifests as religious giving, donations to individuals or institutions, mutual aid, reciprocal, self-help revolving fund organisations, corporate social responsibility activities, and individual/family donations to public benefit organisations. These practices highlight a rich tapestry of spheres of practice and motivations for giving practices, where the wealthy and the poor are equally involved. The review, concentrates (by choice) on giving of money and time (volunteering, especially informal volunteering) due to dearth of academic literature on other forms of giving as philanthropy in Africa