Book Description

Our country is changing its collective attitude toward poverty. Government support is out; volunteerism, workfare, and private charity are in--with a vengeance. Sociologist Janet Poppendieck studies this watershed through the lens of emergency food programs. Traveling the country to work in soup kitchens and "gleaning" centers, the author puts faces on these volunteers and the recipients of their good works. Sweet Charity? reports from the front line: from the "clients," who endure endless humiliations for meals too small to feed their families, and the well-meaning volunteers, whose enthusiasm cannot overcome the underlying causes of all the misery they witness, to the directors who find their homegrown programs becoming more and more "successful" while wondering if they are not in some way contributing to the very problem they're working so hard to solve.Timely and provocative, Sweet Charity? is the most persuasive argument in recent years that America cannot win a war on poverty with stopgap measures and empty rhetoric. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Balanced Diet, Food for Thought.
This book treats the emergency food system with fairness and offeres a balanced view of the strengths and weaknesses of the national shift toward in-kind food relief. The author does a wonderful job of exposing the problems with institutionalizing "emergency" food programs, while governmental agencies weaken the safety net for the poor. In addition to excellent ethnographic work, the author adds a number of nuggets of historical data to build context and meaning. A must read for those hungry for explainations as to why government had abandoned the needy and ignored the structural problems that produce what the author terms "food insecurity."

Offers much for thinkers, carers and activists alike
Ever felt that you want to help out in the world? Ever felt that you didn't know how? Ever felt you did know how, but it still didn't feel right? Anyone who has experienced these dilemmas should read Poppendieck's stream of thoughts and conversations, collected together in 'Sweet Charity.' Subtitled 'Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement,' it takes us through the practicalities and realities, and the rights and the wrongs of the movement to feed hungry people in the United States. A country of abundance and plenty, the apparent paradox of hunger is not lost on most of us. Poppendieck takes us into this contradiction and pushes hard to understand it. Take the introduction. The Good King Wenceslas carol is used to present a movement, a movement to feed the poor and hungry of America. But soon enough we find ourselves faced with a question: do these food banks and food pantries, these rescue operations, these places known collectively as 'the emergency food system,' make our society kinder but less just? Does the kindness of Wenceslas betray those who believe in a long-term vision of economic justice? Poppendieck, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College in New York, has worked in charitable organizations herself, helping those who have problems accessing food. This is not an anti-charity book. Rather, it is a book that questions what charity should be, what we should do, and, most of all, what the government must understand. "Charity for all" opens the book with a picture of charity as recreation, down in New Jersey, the Boy Scouts of America sorting through food. It's early Thursday morning in chapter two, this time in Yorkville, NYC, where the newly unemployed jam into a food pantry. Then it's onto Cleveland, Ohio, in chapter three, where unemployment has transformed steel into rust. Then later, to Maine and California, Texas and Illinois, Pennsylvania and Kansas, all images of helping the hungry. So it goes. Poppendieck has been around in her attempts to unravel the 'second tier' of food distribution in the USA. And this is what her travels told. That emergency food has seven deadly 'ins': insufficiency, inappropriateness, nutritional inadequacy, instability, inaccessibility, inefficiency and indignity. This septet is used as a framework to clarify the problems of the emergency food system. At the core is the belief that hunger should not exist in America and that dealing with it through ad hoc private sector schemes, however well-meaning, is simply not good enough. But through this comes the author's sometimes disorienting perception that those who work with emergency food are as much confused as the rest of us. And that, in the main, these people are good people. Janet Poppendieck's great strength is to place the individual in a moral dilemma while at the same time pushing us into a community, a society, wherein the solution lies: "a powerful movement for justice and equality." And she allows us to reflect upon what many might have thought but never said: that "emergency food actually contributes to the problem it tries to solve." Readable and sympathetic, 'Sweet charity' allows us all the freedom to reflect on society, justice, and the politics of hunger. This book offers much for thinkers, carers and activists alike.

A must-read for anyone concerned with social justice issues.
Janet Poppendieck's thoroughly researched book, Sweet Charity: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement, deserves its reputation as the "hot" book among those who work in hunger advocacy. Janet pricks our conscience; she helps us see that direct food relief, alone, is not the answer. It may make us feel better to hand a bag of food to a hungry person on Sunday, but what will happen on Monday? The private sector has institutionalized emergency relief; not only has this not adequately helped those who live at the edge of hunger because they lack the money for sufficient food, but it has allowed us to believe we have solved the hunger problem. By gleaning fruit, participating in food drives and serving in soup kitchens, we have allowed ourselves to be taken "off the hook," and we haven't assumed responsibility for the larger issue of advocacy for systemic social change and the role government must play. Ending hunger in this country will take a multi-pronged approach. Ms. Poppendieck's book pushes us to go beyond the simple solutions and become advocates for those whose voice has not been heard.

This book should be read by anyone in emergency feeding work
In "Sweet Charity" Janet provides us with a critical look at emergency feeding systems in the United States. This is not to say she disagrees with its existence, but through a comprehensive analysis, states that the proliferation of food banks, pantries and soup kitchens points to a real problem with hunger in what is a very wealthy nation by world standards. She further challenges that for hunger to end government MUST get and stay involved in a significant way. While food banking in this country has exploded and the incredible network of primarily volunteer driven emergency feeding programs on the front line have done and continue to do a great job, it simply is not enough. As the director of a food bank myself, it is not hard to initiallly be frustrated by Janet's review but after further reflection and reading you come to realize that she is not against emergency feeding, she is simply saying the immense growth of this industry points to a larger concern and the continued proliferation seems to support futher abdication of the government's role and responsibility. Janet also provides insight into volunteerism and the ways in which we "feed" our own "moral hunger" to serve those who are less fortunate. You will be challenged I think by her review here as well. Janet's research is based upon actual one on one interviews with all the various people involved in emergency feeding. She got her "hands dirty" to see what is really going on and gained insight into what people "on the front lines" are thinking. This book will make you think and think some more about hunger in our country.

This book is a coverup of the "hunger" industry scandal .
Sweet Charity is a thinly veiled cover-up for the many middle and upper class people benefitting from the "hunger" scandal wherein billions of dollars that could and should be spent on poor people are instead wasted on staff, buildings, refrigerators and trucks -- the whole food bank and soup kitchen nine yards. When added to for-profit agribusiness interests whose garbage is dumped into this system for tax deductions and at taxpayers' expense, the "food" element of the larger poverty industry makes sense. This book won't tell you that the food banks and soup kitchens often receive legal "kickbacks" via tax-deducted charitable "grants" from the likes of Procter and Gambol and other giant corporations. If you want the real scoop on another of agribusiness' dirty secrets, read something else. If you don't mind getting hoodwinked, go shopping. ... Read more

Book Description

The U.S. economy has passed through one of the longest and most impressive booms in its history. We are enjoying our highest standard of living ever, buoyed by low crime and an improving environment. Still, we worry that, in other important ways, we're losing ground as a society. In particular, social commentators are bemoaning the state of our communities. Is our civic engagement declining even amidst material well-being? Do we no longer join together, care about each other, and trust one another as we once did?

Everett Carll Ladd, a political scientist who directs the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, uses a vast array of data to offer a definitive report on the state of America's civic life. He shows that, far from withering, civic life is thriving.

Participation in community affairs has dramatically increased. You might be surprised, considering most media portrayals, to learn that:

Book Description

Many search and rescue workers voluntarily interrupt their lives when they are called upon to help strangers. They awake in the middle of the night to cover miles of terrain in search of lost hikers or leave work to search potential avalanche zones for missing skiers, snowboarders, and snowmobilers in blizzard conditions. They often put their own lives in danger to rescue stranded, hypothermic kayakers and rafters from rivers.

Drawing on six years of participant observation and in-depth interviews, Jennifer Lois examines the emotional subculture of "Peak," a volunteer mountain-environment search and rescue team. Rescuers were not only confronted by physical dangers, but also by emotional challenges, including both keeping their own emotions in check during crisis situations, and managing the emotions of others, such as those they were rescuing. Lois examines how rescuers constructed meaning in their lives and defined themselves through their heroic work.

Heroic Efforts serves as an easy to understand sociological introduction to the ways emotions develop and connect us to our surroundings, as well as to the links between the concept of heroism and other sociological theories such as those on gender stereotypes and edgework. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great book!
This book is great!The stories are very exciting to read and Lois writes really well - I couldn't put the book down!I've done search and rescue for years and am currenlty a professional fire fighter, and I connected to this book through many of my experiences.I also learned a lot in thinking about this stuff!She does a fantastic job talking about the interaction between rescuers and victims and families.SAR work is very emotional and it's about time someone pointed that out.Heroes can be very affected by the things they experience and they need to realize it for their own emotional health.I thought the stuff about gender was going to be male-bashing, but it wasn't.It did point out the sexism in these risk taking fields, but I thought it was a fair and balanced portrayal of our world.Two thumbs up!A must-read for any EMS worker, but entertaining and informative regardless! ... Read more

Book Description

Tracing the deep roots of women's activism in America, Anne Boylan explores the flourishing of women's volunteer associations in the decades following the Revolution. She examines the entire spectrum of early nineteenth-century women's groups--Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish; African American and white; middle and working class--to illuminate the ways in which race, religion, and class could bring women together in pursuit of common goals or drive them apart.

Boylan interweaves analyses of more than seventy organizations in New York and Boston with the stories of the women who founded and led them. In so doing, she provides a new understanding of how these groups actually worked and how women's associations, especially those with evangelical Protestant leanings, helped define the gender system of the new republic. She also demonstrates as never before how women in leadership positions combined volunteer work with their family responsibilities, how they raised and invested the money their organizations needed, and how they gained and used political influence in an era when women's citizenship rights were tightly circumscribed. ... Read more

Book Description

Today's growing fascination with flows of people, commodities, technology, capital, images and ideas across national and other boundaries poses fresh theoretical and methodological challenges to anthropology. Commodities offer a particularly useful window on globalization because they, unlike electronically conveyed capital, transport cultural messages. These ideological or symbolic transfers are of particular interest to economic anthropology. This collection considers how conceptions and roles of commodities may change in response to widening spheres of economic interaction and exchange. The essays in this volume are ordered under two themes. Those included in the first section, "Commodities in a Globalizing Marketplace," address historically and culturally defined variations in meanings and practices associated with commodities in globalizing markets. In Part Two, "The Circulation and Revaluation of Commodities", contributors analyze how commodity producers' experiences are informed by colonial and post-colonial history, state directives in the marketplace, and locations in dependent or marginalized regions. The chapters all focus on the production process as it responds to, is distorted by and increasingly is controlled by the determination of the value of those commodities outside a "locality". ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Get Inspired -- Do Some Good
Coplin's "How You Can Help" is an inspiration to both aspiring and life-long do-gooders alike. His easy-to-follow tips and guidelines for being a successful volunteer, donor and/or professional do-gooder make this book a must-read. "How You Can Help" crosses all boundaries, as it applies to anyone from parents looking to develop a neighborhood tutoring program to business-owners looking to make their companies more socially responsible. Coplin's tales of success provide inspiration for all. This book sets the standard for do-gooding and motivates each reader to do his or her part to make the world a better place.

A book to revive the spirit of service and responsiblity
As a college student I found "How you can Help" an enlightening manual on how the youth and everyone in todays socieity can help to revive the ideals of "doing good" and helping others. The book serves as a step by step manual on how the individual can someway help others. Something I throughly enjoyed and highly recommend. ... Read more

Book Description

Philanthropy and voluntarism are among the most familiar and least understood of American institutions. The oldest American nonprofit corporation -- Harvard College -- dates from 1636, but most of the million or so nonprofits currently in existence were established after 1960. In "Inventing the Nonprofit Sector" and Other Essays on Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Nonprofit Organizations, cultural historian Peter Dobkin Hall describes and analyzes the development of America's fastest growing institutional sector. ... Read more

Book Description

The Values of Volunteering examines volunteering in detail from a civil society perspective, using empirical data garnered from various sources for countries all over the globe. The contributions in this title deal with a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from the diversity, social and cultural determinants and organizational settings of volunteering, to its possible individual, social, and political effects. The Values of Volunteering explains not only the differences and similarities in volunteering between countries and the conditions that may be conducive to or hinder volunteering, it also discusses:-Why people volunteer; -How volunteers relate to each other and to the people they want to help; -The ideals volunteers wish to promote; -The diversity of and developments in volunteering; -Future trends; -The relationships between volunteers and between volunteers and clients and organizations; -And more.This useful new resource places volunteering in a broader theoretical and empirical framework of value shifts and political democracy. ... Read more

Book Description

This book brings together an international collection of essays that describes the state of community participation among the world's youth. Authors from around the globe use fresh empirical data to present portraits of contemporary youths constructing their civic identities through such means as community service and political activism. The image of "Generation X" as socially disconnected and apathetic is contradicted by young people's efforts to comprehend the complexities of society and to work toward the realization of social-moral ideals.The findings in this volume contribute to a theory of political socialization that bases youth's understanding of political aspects of society and citizenship on participation in community and civic activities, rather than on the intake of abstract pieces of formal information. To this end, youth seek to resolve ideological tensions, such as in Northern Ireland and the Middle East; to overcome corrupting political practices, such as in Italy and Taiwan; to deal with disillusionment, such as in the emerging Eastern European nations; and to bridge barriers against youth's meaningful participation in the working of society, such as in Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.Researchers in a wide array of fields, including psychology, sociology, political science, and education will find this book to be a valuable resource. ... Read more

Book Description

Too few Americans volunteer annually. This inspirational book speaks to all members of the community, from grade-school students to senior citizens, and everyone in between. It identifies five primary motivations for volunteering, and will:

· Encourage people who already volunteer to keep up the good work.

· Entice those who have been postponing their volunteer adventures to start today.

· Present workable solutions to practical issues that get in the way of good intentions.

· Advocate implementing a volunteerism component to the public school curriculum.

· Provide an extensive list of resources that will help volunteers find opportunities that are ideally suited to their personal interests and lifestyles.

Filled with pearls of wisdom on the topic from historical figures, philosophers, celebrities and literary greats, the book also features inspirational quotes from volunteers who participated in a nationwide survey.

Reviews (1)

Great resource
If you enjoyed and found this book interesting and useful, you might like "The Healing Journey Through Retirement" by Phil Rich, Dorothy Sampson, and Dale Fetherling. It deals with similar issues of life style, relationships, and meaning after retirement and uses a journal writing approach to the subject. ... Read more