page_title: Volunteering
section_title: Moral resources, political capital and civil society
hierarchical_section_title: Volunteering / Moral resources, political capital and civil society
caption_attribution_description: English: some help files for people in an volunteers station in Shenzhen,China
context_page_description: Volunteering is a voluntary act of an individual or group freely giving time and labour for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve on an as-needed basis, such as in response to a natural disaster.
context_section_description: Based on a case study in China, Xu and Ngai (2011) revealed that the developing grassroots volunteerism can be an enclave among various organizations and may be able to work toward the development of civil society in the developing countries. The researchers developed a "Moral Resources and Political Capital" approach to examine the contributions of volunteerism in promoting the civil society. Moral resource means the available morals could be chosen by NGOs. Political capital means the capital that will improve or enhance the NGOs’ status, possession or access in the existing political system.
  Moreover, Xu and Ngai (2011) distinguished two types of Moral Resources: Moral Resource-I and Moral Resource-II (ibid).
  Moral Resource I: Inspired by Immanuel Kant’s (1998 [1787]) argument of "What ought I to do," Moral Resource-I will encourage the NGOs’ confidence and then have the courage to act and conquer difficulties by way of answering and confirming the question of "What ought I to do."
  Moral Resource II: given that Adorno (2000) recognizes that moral or immoral tropes are socially determined, Moral Resource-II refers to the morals that are well accepted by the given society.
  Thanks to the intellectual heritage of Blau and Duncan (1967), two types of political capital were identified:
  Political Capital-I refers to the political capital mainly ascribed to the status that the NGO inherited throughout history (e.g., the CYL).
  Political Capital-II refers to the Political Capital that the NGOs earned through their hard efforts.
  Obviously, "Moral resource-I itself contains the self-determination that gives participants confidence in the ethical beliefs they have chosen", almost any organizations may have Moral Resource-I, while not all of them have the societal recognized Moral Resource-II. However, the voluntary service organizations predominantly occupy Moral Resource-II because a sense of moral superiority makes it possible that for parties with different values, goals and cultures to work together in promoting the promotion of volunteering. Thus the voluntary service organizations are likely to win the trust and support of the masses as well as the government more easily than will the organizations whose morals are not accepted by mainstream society. In other words, Moral Resource II helps the grassroots organizations with little Political Capital I to win Political Capital-II, which is a crucial factor for their survival and growth in developing countries such as China. Therefore, the voluntary service realm could be an enclave of the development of civil society in the developing nations.
caption: Some files for helping people in a volunteers station in Shenzhen, People's Republic of China
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