This book presents a positivistic political science study on volunteerism in Japan. Haddad tries to solve key research questions: Why do some communities have more volunteers in organizations that have close, embedded relationships with the government and fewer volunteers in organizations with more distant relationships with the government (and vise versa)? Why do some communities have higher rates of volunteer participation than others? (p. 7) In order to solve these puzzles, the author generates two hypotheses, examines her hypotheses by primarily employing quantitative data in three local cities in Japan, develops a model, and tests the model in four countries – the United States, Japan, Finland, and Turkey.
The major contribution of this book is what Haddad calls the Community Volunteerism Model. The author maintains that the model predicts and explains at multiple levels (at community and national levels, according to the author) why people of different communities volunteer for different types of organizations at different rates, capturing the dynamic interaction between ideas of civic responsibility and practices of governmental and societal institutions. The model embodies two dimensions on the study of volunteerism (p. 108): First, citizen ideas of state responsibility and individual responsibility for caring for society determine the types of civic organizations in which they will choose to volunteer. Second, the rate of volunteer participation is determined by the level of institutional support that the community offers volunteer organizations through the practices of their governmental and social institutions: legitimizing, organizing, and funding volunteer organizations.
The argument is simple and clearly outlined. For example, a country like Japan, with strong ideas of governmental responsibility and weak ideas of individual responsibility, has many embedded organizations – neighborhood associations, volunteer firefighters, and PTAs – that have close ties with the government. People volunteer in those types of organizations. Meanwhile, a country like the United States, with strong ideas of individual responsibility and weak ideas of governmental responsibility, has few embedded organization and instead has comparatively more non-embedded organizations that are distant from the government. In this case, it is expected that people will choose to volunteer in those non-embedded organizations.
This angle in Haddad's research allows us to revisit the role of embedded organizations in Japanese society, and tries to bring active participants in those organizations back into the civil society scholarship. The author argues that the existing research, such as the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project led by Lester Salamon at Johns Hopkins, overlooks and obscures the importance of embedded organizations. In the research, most embedded organizations in Japan are difficult to classify under the American definition of nonprofit fields such as advocacy, philanthropy, and religious congregations, and thus participation in Japanese embedded organizations has been underrepresented in current surveys (p. 40). Haddad argues, based on her detailed investigation of embedded organizations, civil society in Japan is in fact vibrant and thriving (p. 164).
Although Haddad's book provided an interesting analysis to the scholarship on volunteerism, there were a few points on which I have reservations.
First, Haddad's argument starts with the point that volunteer participation in a community is a function of that community's norms of civic responsibility (p. 11). However, I understand that participation in Japanese embedded organizations is a type of civic duty, rather than a responsibility. Even though there are quantitative data on Japan showing a high participation in its variety of embedded organizations, such participation is not necessarily based on a spontaneous will, which I believe is a key element in volunteerism. Citing a personal case in my hometown (a suburban area in central Japan), participation in the neighborhood association is almost compulsory; one could become an outcast in the society by not participating. All men from 25 to 40 are strongly expected (virtually required; exempted only by some significant circumstance) by neighborhood peers to join a local firefighter group.
Considering this backdrop, I cannot help but feel that in her analysis the author is comparing entirely different groups of subjects by intentionally labeling people working at embedded organizations ‘volunteers’. (The author defines volunteers as people who work for free at groups where participation is not required. p. 27). Should free-willed American volunteers be compared to ‘coerced’ volunteers in Japan? I strongly believe that the qualitative meaning of participating in neighborhood associations, faith-based social services, or advocacy NGO activities is very different. Such participations should be argued in each social, political, and historical context, even if the author claims a definition of volunteerism should be independent of motivational factors and without cultural bias (p. 27). I also believe that this is a major reason why the existing projects on civil society and volunteerism exclude participants in Japanese embedded organizations from their data sources.
In addition, I feel the predictability of the Community Volunteerism Model is not entirely convincing. Haddad presents the city of Sanda in Hyogo Prefecture as the weakest case in terms of the ideas of civic responsibility and its governmental and societal practices supporting volunteers (Chapters 4 and 5). Actually, I conducted fieldwork on the Japanese third sector and volunteerism in Tokyo from 2001 through 2003 – practically the same period Haddad did research for this book project. Since then I also have been observing a volunteer group in Sanda for comparative purposes. The volunteer group worked in planning and operating a public museum since 1990s. In the process of constructing collaborative relationships with museum (or government) officials, the group was re-incorporated as an NPO under the 1998 NPO Law. The group gained nationwide attention in the world of museum volunteering as a successful case because both volunteers and officials jointly developed active, unique, and creative activities for the public good – the museum content. I have accumulated an opposite set of ethnographic data on volunteerism practiced in Sanda.
Lastly, I had an impression that the book's subtitle – A Global Perspective – was misleading. Haddad spent only about a dozen pages for the analysis of Finland and Turkey in her 173-page main argument. It does not reflect the reality of book content well. Instead, I understand this book discusses a type of Japanese ‘volunteerism’ from an American lens.
