Tea and Sympathy or Teetering on Social Work? An Investigation of the Blurring of the Boundaries Between Voluntary and Professional Care

As the voluntary sector, particularly the use of volunteers, has been promoted and given greater importance and responsibility by the government, and statutory personal social services have been attacked, the boundaries between voluntary and professional care have become blurred. This article investigates this phenomenon using data from a study of a Home-Start scheme, which employs two part-time professional workers to organize a pool of volunteers. It looks at the reality of the provision of voluntary care from the perspective of the volunteers, the organizers of the scheme, and those for whom they provide a service. The gender perspective is considered as a crucial aspect in the “blurring of the boundaries”. It is argued that the new rhetoric of the flexibility and adaptability of welfare provided by the voluntary sector hides the increasing use of women volunteers, to offer sophisticated and intensive care. This creates a dilemma. In some cases, the women volunteers and their organizers feel that the essential nature of the care and the responsibility they are expected to take on are inappropriate and should be fulfilled by professional workers. On the other hand, the clients feel that its voluntary nature is an essential part of this care and that it could not be provided by paid statutory workers.     

Students’ Vocational Choices and Voluntary Action: A 12-Nation Study

Previous research on student involvement suggested that business and engineering students manifest lowest rates of voluntary action. Similarly, it was thought that social science students are the most involved in voluntary action, with students of natural sciences and humanities in the middle. However, there were very few studies that empirically compared these assertions. Furthermore, these assertions were not investigated from cross-cultural perspectives. Based on a study of students in 12 countries (N = 6,570), we found that even when controlling for background variables, social science students are actually less engaged in voluntary action than other students. Engineering students are higher than expected on voluntary action while students of humanities are the most involved in voluntary action. When studying these differences in the 12 selected countries, local cultures and norms form different sets of findings that suggest that there is no universal trend in choice of academic field and voluntary action.     

WHEN 'VIRTUAL' MEETS VALUES: INSIGHTS FROM THE VOLUNTARY SECTOR

Electronic networking can support strategic re-positioning within organizations seeking to respond effectively to deep shifts in the social, economic and political regimes in which they operate today. Evidence, though, from our large-scale survey of core UK voluntary organizations suggests that voluntary organizations do not always seek to exploit this capability. Instead, our survey indicates that voluntary organizations are exploiting information and communication technologies (ICTs) in conventional ways to enhance administrative and operational efficiency and effectiveness. There is little evidence of more strategic applications supporting reconfiguration of the organization internally, redefinition of relationships across organizational networks or the extension of business scope. Further research based upon in-depth case studies demonstrated that social conditions are active in shaping the uptake and application of information and communication technologies within voluntary organizations. Within volunteer-intensive settings in particular,founding philosophies and the deeply rooted values that accompany these can have a profound effect. Ultimately,the technologically supported transformations, which occur within the organizations that we examine here, emerge from the inter-play between historically institutionalized values, strategic objectives and technological capability.     

The Governance of Voluntary Work in the Public Sector: Institutional Differences and Invariant Traits

In response to fiscal constraint and the introduction of quasi-market mechanisms into the public sector, in public policy there appears to be the acceptance of the increased use of voluntary labour in the delivery of public services. Traditional forms of governance have tended to ignore the use of voluntary labour in the public sector. The paper builds on an earlier (Hellshorm and Collins, 1999) model of concurrence between voluntary and municipal labour, by focusing onthe demand side of voluntary work. Our exploratory study uses this model to analyse two municipal organisations' mix of voluntary and municipal labour, one Italian and the other a Swedish context.The research method used to collect empirical data was semi-structured interviews of local government employees within the two sites. Thisis linked with an analysis of the institutional context of the two municipalities to inform and test the proposed model of demand for volunteer labour in local government. Resource scarcity, presence of agency for voluntary work, type of production and state rules and norm are used to analyse the institutional invariant traits. The study concludes that traditional institutional theory has ignored voluntary activities. Our case studies of actual practice indicate that different state norms and ruleson citizen rights and equal opportunities are stronger influential factors than the resources situation, in determining the demand for voluntary activities in municipalities.     

聚众斗殴罪疑难问题研究

在刑事司法和审判实践中 ,聚众斗殴罪是颇具争议的热点问题之一。对聚众斗殴罪的犯罪主体 ,应视情况不同区别对待 ,应区分其作用大小 ,按责论罪。对犯罪嫌疑人供述、司法机关尚未掌握的由聚众斗殴行为转化而来的故意伤害或故意杀人罪行可否认定自首 ,关键在于明确“同种罪行”的确切内涵。在定罪量刑上 ,要切实把握立法本旨。区分聚众斗殴罪与寻衅滋事罪、故意伤害罪 ;不容忽视斗殴行为的对偶性 ;共同犯罪构成理论在犯罪转化形态下有其适用性     

重新审视简化字

汉字简化的方向不能改变。改革开放以来，中国社会发生了很大的变化，国家的语文政策做了调整，因此，我们要重新审视简化字，汉字有繁体和简体两种体式，简繁转换和繁简转换要经常进行，可是转换常常遇到困难。困难的产生主要是因为简化字与繁体字并不都是一个与一个的整齐对应。这就逼迫我们换一条思路，在改进简繁对应关系上想办法。《汉字简化方案》采用了个体简化和类推简化两种经方法。类推简化字遇到了两个矛盾：一个是个体简化与类推简化的矛盾；另一个是有限制的类推和无限制的类推的矛盾。取消类推简化字，只保留个体简化字，使简化字的字数控制在五百多个左右。从学术上说，这不失为一种选择。     

"So Many Tiers, So Many Agendas, So Many Pots of Money": The Challenge of English Regionalization for Voluntary and Community Organizations

This paper looks at the challenges facing voluntary and community organizations (VCOs) within the new policy context of English “regionalism”, drawing primarily on an empirical study in one of the emerging Regions. Barriers to voluntary and community sector (VCS) engagement with the new regional governmental organizations and the new regional policy agenda are identified. The role of VCS “infrastructure” organizations in facilitating relationships with regional levels of government is also considered. The concepts of exchange, ownership, trust and legitimacy are then employed to analyse and explain the implications for English VCOs of working with a new tier of government at regional level. The paper concludes by reconsidering the nature of the relationship between VCOs and “government” in the light of the new policy context presented by English regionalism combined with central government interest in building the capacity and infrastructure of the voluntary sector.     

青年信仰危机与志愿精神的弘扬

伴随着中国经济的高速增长，社会结构由深刻变革的阶段走向一个逐渐趋于稳定、逐渐定型化的过渡时期．新旧信仰体系交替时期出现了真空期，随之也出现了青年信仰危机与信仰缺失的现象。“奉献、友爱、互助、进步”的志愿者精神，是促进社会和谐的精神力量，是贯彻科学发展观的生动体现．更是促进社会良性运行和协调发展的重要方面。志愿精神既传承了中华民族助人为乐、扶贫济困的传统美德．又体现了社会主义道德的基本要求，具有鲜明的时代特征。青年在参与志愿服务的过程中。不仅为社会和他人提供了帮助，自身也得到了锻炼和提高，思想境界得以升华与发展。志愿精神的培育是帮助青年走出信仰危机、提升自我切实可行的路径。     

民国时期知识女性对节育的认识和避孕方法

1922年4月桑格夫人访华之后在生育节制和母性自决的呼声中,知识女性逐渐形成生育自主观念,对传统妇女的社会性别角色直接提出了挑战。民国时期知识女性所采用的避孕方法,主要有周期避孕法、阴道置药法以及应用阴茎套、子宫帽、棉花子宫塞等机械避孕法。民国时期市场上所售的避孕药品的种类甚多,如史斑通、制育良友,她的友、金鸡纳霜等。这些都是国外进口的,其价钱较贵,不过中国国内制造的起泡药粉等避孕药物也相当流行。同时随着妇产科医术的发展,40年代接受结扎输卵管手术的妇女也逐渐增多。不过,民国时期传统打胎方药仍在民间广泛销售,并且不少妇女仍请旧式产婆或江湖郎中私下偷偷做堕胎。结果,围绕着生育空间的医疗支配与权威的建立,中西、新旧势力之间展开一场权力较量和争夺。     

Immigration, ethnicity and voluntary association membership in Canada: Individual and contextual effects

Using multilevel models fitted to data collected by Statistics Canada and the Canadian Census, this paper assesses the individual and contextual influences of immigration and ethnicity on voluntary association membership. Our analysis is unique in two ways: (1) we explore the effects of both immigrant status and ethnicity at the individual level, and (2) we assess the role of both the immigrant population and the visible minority population at the community level. Our results demonstrate that the probability of holding an association membership increases as the time since immigration passes. We also find ethnic differences in the probability of membership, though these differences have little to do with visible minority group status. On the other hand, the contextual effects of immigration and visible minorities stand in contrast to these individual-level effects. More specifically, the probability of membership tends to be largest in communities with many immigrants but smallest in communities with many visible minorities. Consistent with Putnam's constrict thesis, these contextual effects operate in a similar manner for immigrants and native born citizens. We conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings.