This book examines volunteering in detail from a civil society perspective, using empirical data garnered from various sources for countries all over the globe. The contributions 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.

Religion is back again in Europe after never having been gone. It is manifest in the revival of religious institutions and traditions in former communist countries, in political controversies about the relationship between the church(es) and the state and about the freedom of religion and the freedom to criticize religion, and in public unease about religious minorities. This book is about religion and civil society in Europe. It moves from general theoretical and normative approaches of this relationship, via the examination of national patterns of religion-state relations, to in-depth analyses of the impact of religion and secularization on the values, pro-social attitudes and civic engagement of individuals. It covers Europe from the Lutheran North to the Catholic South, and from the secularized West to the Orthodox East and Islamic South-East with comparative analyses and country studies, concluding with an overall Europe-USA comparison.

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Religion is back again in Europe after never having been gone. It is manifest in the revival of religious institutions and traditions in former communist countries, in political controversies about the relationship between the church(es) and the state and about the freedom of religion and the freedom to criticize religion, and in public unease about religious minorities. This book is about religion and civil society in Europe. It moves from general theoretical and normative approaches of this relationship, via the examination of national patterns of religion-state relations, to in-depth analyses of the impact of religion and secularization on the values, pro-social attitudes and civic engagement of individuals. It covers Europe from the Lutheran North to the Catholic South, and from the secularized West to the Orthodox East and Islamic South-East with comparative analyses and country studies, concluding with an overall Europe-USA comparison.

This book examines volunteering in detail from a civil society perspective, using empirical data garnered from various sources for countries all over the globe. The contributions 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.

Since the time of Adam Smith, scholars have tried to understand the role moral sentiments play in modern life, an issue that became especially urgent during and after the 2008 global financial crisis. Previous explanations have ranged from the idea that modern society is built on moral values to the notion that modernisation results in moral decay. The essays in this interdisciplinary volume use the example of Dutch society and a wealth of empirical data to propose a novel theory about the ambivalent relation between contemporary life and human nature. In the process, the contributors argue for the need to reject simplistic explanations and reinvent civil society.