Voluntarism, Community Life, and the American Ethic

Robert S. Ogilvie is assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches classes in community development and urban studies. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. He is the former director of volunteers at the Partnership for the Homeless in New York City.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Voluntarism and the American Ethic1. The Partnership for the Homeless: The Tradition of Churches Helping the Homeless in New York2. In the Church Shelters3. Why People Volunteer in Church Shelters and Why They Keep at It4. The Mediating Role of the Church Shelters5. The Moral Effects of the Volunteer Experience6. The Church Shelters as Community-Generating Institutions7. Social Architecture: The Art of Building Community-Generating InstitutionsConclusionAppendix: Research MethodsNotesBibliographyIndex

"Ogilvie (city and regional planning, Univ. of California, Berkeley) attempts to place a case study of volunteers at two New York City church—based homeless shelters into a larger, sociological, theoretical framework. He is more successful in presenting a vivid portrait of the volunteers than he is at theorizing. The study of the centers is careful and insightful, but his treatment of the community literature is superficial and selective. The author draws on the concept of moral communities (Seymour Mandelbaum, Open Moral Communities, CH, Oct'00, 38—1013) as well as the literature of communities of practice (Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice, 1998). A final chapter that is both practical and prescriptive discusses the process of building community organizations that create community, rather than those designed to serve the community. Students and faculty interested in this issue of homelessness will find the book instructive, but those interested in larger issues in community sociology will likely be disappointed. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper—division undergraduates and above."—A. A. Hickey, Western Carolina University , Choice, March 2005