Promising practices : : women volunteers in contemporary Japanese religious civil society / / by Paola Cavaliere.

• Superior document: Social Sciences in Asia, Volume 39
• VerfasserIn: Cavaliere, Paola,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, The Netherlands : : Koninklijke Brill,, 2015.; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Social sciences in Asia ; Volume 39.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (300 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Based upon a survey of five faith-based volunteer groups, Promising Practices offers valuable insights and fresh perspectives into the ways women’s participation in religious civic organizations may work as a gateway toward participatory democracy. By approaching women’s faith-based volunteering as a social practice, the book engages with three of the most important dimensions of civil society: gender, religion, and democracy. Cavaliere teases out the complexity of interactions among these three dimensions of civic life through stories of individual women who volunteer for three different religious organizations. The volume examines how faith-based volunteering is experienced by women in contemporary Japan and how it becomes a site of empowering and disempowering practices through which women balance the benefits and the costs of personal shifts, socio-economic changes and democratic transformation.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- 1 Understanding Women in Faith-Based Volunteering: Gender, Religion and Civil Society Factors -- 2 Profiles of Targeted Organizations and Volunteer Groups: Shinnyoen, Risshō Kōseikai and the Roman Catholic Church -- 3 Women Volunteers in Faith-Based Groups: A Profile -- 4 Visions of Self and Society: Women’s Voices -- 5 Volunteering in a Faith-Based Group: The Elusive Role of Religiosity -- 6 Exploring Women’s Trajectories of Self in Faith-Based Volunteer Groups -- Conclusion -- Appendix -- Bibliography -- Index.