Springer Mexican Solidarity: Citizen Participation and Volunteering

During the nearly 20 years of its existence, the Centro Mexicano para la Filantropía, A.C. (Cemefi, acronym in Spanish for the Mexican Center for Philanthropy) has promoted a varied agenda of research about civil society in Mexico. Cemefi has produced and published information on the characteristics of the social organizations that make up the Mexican nonprofit sector, as well as infor- tion about the type of legal, fiscal, and economic factors that promote or hinder organized citizen participation based on the principles of solidarity, social resp- sibility, and philanthropy. Once again, with the aim of bringing together information regarding the imp- tance of practices of solidarity in the country, Cemefi has decided to contribute to understanding, making known, and ultimately promoting volunteer action and acts of solidarity undertaken by citizens in this country. The end result of this effort is portrayed in this book, Mexican Solidarity: Citizen Participation and Volunteerism, edited and coordinated by Doctor Jacqueline Butcher. It is the product of a joint effort on the part of different people and insti- tions with a common goal: finding out about the characteristics of volunteerism and, in general, citizen participation in acts of solidarity in Mexico. Review "The authors don’t just apply ready-made concepts and research instruments imported from other contexts, but rather investigate, in a bottom-up fashion, the real conceptions of what volunteering is in the eyes of Mexicans....the reader is presented with statistics of volunteering, but also with a deeper understanding of how and why Mexicans volunteer and what it means to volunteer, in their own words. ..Scholars of volunteering have much to learn from the way Butcher and her colleagues conducted their study, and from the original qualitative analyses they applied. ...Those who are interested in understanding Latin American and particularly Mexican civil society will earn interesting insights into different aspects of these societies, including the roles of religion, community, gender and more. ..Those who are interested in philanthropy and civil society in general will enjoy the detailed accounts and the glimpse offered by the authors into the real lives of volunteers and the life histories that brought them to volunteer." (review for the Spanish edition in Voluntas 19:4) "This book offers its readers a valuable insight into solidarity in Mexico....It could turn out to be the greatest challenge for a society such as ours: to learn how to get organized in order to make citizen participation and volunteer work the best way to achieve the common good." (Margarita Zavala, First Lady of Mexico, President of the Consulting Citizens Council of the National DIF System) "This study combines quantitative and qualitative analyses to provide an unprecedented window on the ways in which Mexican citizens engage in voluntary action." (L. David Brown, Senior Research Fellow for International Programs at The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University) "Scholars of volunteering have much to learn from the way Butcher and her colleagues conducted their study, and from the original qualitative analyses they applied." (Hagai Katz, Lecturer, Program for Nonprofit Management, Gilford Glazer School of Business and Management, Chief Research Officer, Israeli Center for Third-Sector Research (ICTR), Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel) "This book is the first to offer a reliable panorama of what Mexican solidarity looks like with firm and trustworthy outlines. Rather than drawing conclusions, it encourages and opens opportunities for more research. It is a book well worth reading and studying." (Jorge Alonso, Professor/ Researcher and Editor of the Desacatos Journal of the Research Center and Superior Studies in Social Anthropology, CIESAS-Occidente, Mexico) "This pioneering study is an important contribution that leads to a great