Using a life history approach, looks at what influences citizens to participate in the voluntary associations that comprise and promote civil society.

There is a clear relation between the way children are raised and the way the world is heading. Famous philosophers and educationists such as Kant, Dewey, Montessori and Freire, exposed clearly the direct link between the social and political abuses of their time and the way in which children were brought up. From their analysis they each conceived the ambition of making the world a better place through educational reform. For various reasons it is not fashionable these days to make any kind of direct connection between child upbringing and ‘the state of the world’. The project of child-rearing gradually became focussed on individual development. In this book, Dutch child-psychologist Micha de Winter argues that there should be much more to child-raising, education and youth policy – for example, to learn to understand and practice democratic citizenship, humanity and freedom. What does it mean to live in a democratic society, how do you resist the seductions of ‘them-versus-us’ thinking which both offers the feelings of security and of belonging to a group and at the same time invites the risk of dehumanizing and excluding the other? Socialization from this perspective is a common responsibility that requires an educative civil society.

Social capital - networks of civic engagements, norms of reciprocity, and attitudes of trust - is widely seen as playing a key role for the health of democracy. While many authors have examined the consequences of social capital, there is a pressing need to explore its sources. This collection brings together leading American and European scholars in the first comparative analysis of how social trust and other civic attitudes are generated. The contributors to this volume examine the generation of social capital from two directions: society-based approaches that emphasize voluntary associations, and institutional approaches that emphasize policy.

This volume examines and contributes to debates surrounding social capital, social movements and the role of civil society in emerging forms of governance. The authors adopt a broad range of research approaches, from testing hypotheses drawn from rationale choice theory against available statistics on associations, to ethnographic study of emerging attempts at participant / deliberative democracy. Divided into three clear sections, focusing on the following core aspects of civil society: • the position of civic organizations between state and society in emerging forms of governance • the geographical scales of social movement mobilizations and actions from the local to the global • the patterns of public trust and civic engagement that falls under the rubric of social capital. The book draws on case studies from a wide range of countries, including: Russia, Ukraine, Britain, Greece, Spain, Germany, Argentina and new Asian democracies. Presenting current research on the key dimensions of civil society, Civil Societies and Social Movements will appeal to those researching and studying in the fields of political science, sociology and social policy.

This volume--an outgrowth of the annual meeting of the Claremont Symposium on Applied Social Psychology--focuses on examples of social change and community action, and the processes at work in creating change. The presenters engaged each other and the audience in thinking about how best to create and sustain social change. This volume represents a product of their cumulative insight, research results, and perspectives, including chapters from each of the symposium presenters, as well as a few selected chapters from other noted scholars. Taken as a whole, the volume is highly accessible and presents findings from provocative and programmatic research that offer illuminating lessons for anyone interested in attempts at community change, civic participation, and social action. Processes of Community Change and Social Action provides cutting-edge and complementary approaches to understanding the causes and effects of broad civic participation. The contributors to this volume are all distinguished researchers and theorists, well known for their work on different aspects of processes of community change and social action. They address topics related to service learning, social movements, political socialization, civil society, and especially volunteerism. This unique interdisciplinary collection appeals to social, personality, community, and developmental psychologists, sociologists, and public health researchers. It also should be of considerable interest to practitioners of social action and individuals working to create social change.

Following on from his earlier volume, Globalization and the Human Factor, Senyo Adjibolosoo focuses attention on the prospects for establishing civil society through the development of a positive human factor. As civil society can neither be brought into existence by factors such as stringent legislation, economic development, political manoeuvring and violent civil disobedience, nor by chance, these orthodox procedures have proved to be nothing more than unproductive quick-fix solutions. This study examines how previous social engineering programmes failed because of the preoccupation with the symptoms of severe human factor decay (HFD). The necessary conditions for a successful evolution of a principle–centred civil society is the availability of a positive human factor, without which no group of people can achieve and sustain civil liberties, human rights or the rule of law. Provocative and challenging, this book illustrates how positive human factor is essential to not only developing but also industrialized countries.