| This dissertation analyzes the motivations, organization, and significance of college student volunteering in Japan. Since the 1970s, the "volunteer" has been a growing social category in Japan. The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995, in which over one million Japanese participated in volunteer activities, many of them college students volunteering for the first time, has considerably magnified this trend. Following the earthquake, many nonprofit leaders, civil society proponents, and media commentators hoped that this "First Year of Volunteerism in Japan" would help establish a new form of community solidarity and citizen activism. Ethnographic research in Osaka, Kobe, and Nishinomiya, conducted during the 2002--2003 school year, shows that in the case of college student volunteers, such goals have been only unevenly realized. To explain just why this is so, this study examines the structure of the Japanese nonprofit sector, the diverse and conflicting meanings of volunteering, the organization of college volunteer groups, and Japanese student's motives in volunteering.; The study first places college student volunteering within the larger context of the Japanese nonprofit sector and state/society relations. The ideological framework that identifies the central bureaucracy with the public good and the legacy of bureaucratic dominance of the nonprofit sector in Japan both shape the opportunities and experiences of college student volunteers, as does the political, educational, and economic contexts in which these students have been socialized. Interviews and participant observation with student volunteers reveal that motivations are more often personal than public or altruistic. Cultural models of human relations that emphasize bonds of empathy and concern, however, lead student volunteers to conceive of their actions in relational as well as purely individualistic terms. The study concludes that volunteer organizations serve an important function in bridging the divide between college students and marginalized groups such as the handicapped and elderly. The organizations are potentially a new form of social capital based not merely on shared residence and long-term face-to-face interactions but on shared interests and communities of choice. |
