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  • 26 - The Good, the Bland, and the Ugly

  • from IV - Civil Society: The Roots and Processes of Political Action
  • Edited by Thomas Janoski, University of Kentucky, Cedric de Leon, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Isaac William Martin, University of California, San Diego
  • Book:
    The New Handbook of Political Sociology
    Published online:
    22 February 2020
    Print publication:
    05 March 2020, pp 681-714

  • Summary

    The value of volunteering and associational groups for social political life has long interested scholars studying modern democratic societies. Since Alexis de Tocqueville published his seminal work on Democracy in America in the 1830s (2001), much focus has been on the good that volunteering in civic associations does for fostering pro-social behavior and for building public participatory processes in democratic governments. A more recent and critical view asserts that the work of civic associations can also be socially corrosive, paternalistic, intolerant of outsiders, geared toward corporate self-interest, and actively antidemocratic. In addition, much volunteering in civic groups is shallow, menial, apolitical social activity that holds little, if any, transformative social potential.