Le identità del volontariato italiano. Orientamenti valoriali e stili di intervento a confronto

[Autom. eng. transl.] Organized volunteering is the best known among the social phenomena that can be inscribed in the third sector, both because of the long tradition that prosocial activities have in our country, and because of the incidence of the action carried out in the field of serious marginalization, including old and new poverty. The present volume aims to identify theoretically and empirically which are the values and cultural orientations implemented by the members of the voluntary organizations, which is the company mission that they pursue through the services they realize, of what material, organizational and symbolic dispose and put into play, which rules orientate both the actions of the subjects within the organizations and towards the outside. This identification of "cultures" and "practices" finds an adequate contextualization within the volume through an analytical report of the diversity of the company and intervention profiles that characterize the Italian volunteers and their organizations. It also emerges that the link between organized solidaristic action and the individual's altruistic motivation is very relevant: if it is true that the former cannot exist for a long time without the latter, it is equally true that in this connection individual motivation finds a modality expressive visible also at a social level that strengthens and legitimizes it. In short, volunteering, within the third sector, is endowed with a specific social subjectivity expressed by a plurality of social and cultural itineraries that connote its diffusion, presence and social impact within the national territory.