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Why do different communities volunteer for different types of organizations? Why do some communities have much higher rates of volunteer participation than other, similarly situated communities? The author develops a new conceptualization of civil society that classifies civic organizations continually rather than categorically. This conceptualization serves as the basis of the Community Volunteerism Model, which utilizes a state-in-society approach to explain the types and rates of volunteering found in communities. Citizen images of state and individual responsibility for caring for society determine the type of organizations (community-based or issue-based) prevalent in that community. The practices of state and social institutions (how well they legitimize, organize, and fund volunteers and their organizations) determine the rate of participation in that community. The model is tested using the cases of the United States and Japan, and the paper concludes with some implications of this model for the study of comparative civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital theory, particularly the work of Robert Putnam, has received a great deal of scholarly and popular attention. We argue that Putnam's formulation ignores the ways in which race is fundamental and constitutive to the structure and function of social capital in the United States. We suggest an alternative framework, one that: (1) treats race as more than an independent variable; (2) addresses the structural factors underlying social capital development; and (3) includes the role of gatekeepers in the process. Such a framework would allow us to have a more accurate, and more nuanced, understanding of how social capital operates in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]