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Volunteering and voluntary organizations have become increasingly important in British social and political life but at a cost. Greater prominence has led to a narrow and distorted view of what voluntary action involves and how it is undertaken. This book reasserts the case for a broader view of voluntarism as a unique set of autonomous activities.

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1. Introduction: Why The Theory and Practice of Voluntary Action Need Rethinking PART I: THE CONTEXT 2. Revisiting the Roots of Voluntary Action 3. The Invention of the Voluntary Sector and its Consequences 4. The Invention of Voluntary Work and its Consequences PART II: PRESSURES AND INFLUENCES 5. A Perilous Partnership? Voluntary Action and the State 6. Selling Out? Voluntary Action and the Market 7. The Hegemony of the Bureaucratic Model 8. The Pressure from Within PART III: ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES 9. Ownership and Control 10. What Are Voluntary Organisations For? 11. The Fallacies of Managerialism 12. Towards a ´Round Earth´ Map of Volunteering 13. Dissenting Voices: The Case of the National Coalition for Independent Action PART IV: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 14. The Paradox of Sectorisation 15. Towards An Alternative Paradigm 16. The Implications of Rethinking Voluntary Action

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Colin Rochester is Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. He has previously co-authored Volunteering and Society in the 21st Century.

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