Abstract
The complex webs of linkage between voluntary organizations and government belie the myth of voluntary sector independence. Detailing numerous examples, Rathgeb-Smith (2001) for instance, simultaneously reveals the reactive nature of much nonprofit behavior in the face of shifting US public policy. These examples also serve as a useful critique of three classes of theory which dominate US discourse on nonprofit—government relations: economic theories, voluntary sector failure explanations, and mediating structures approaches. Such theoretical lenses distort as much as (or more than) they serve to clarify the structure of relationships between the two sectors. What might be termed “institutionalist” theory, in contrast, has been forwarded as an alternative theoretical lens. (For variants on this institutionalist approach, see Kramer, 1981; Rathgeb-Smith & Lipsky, 1993; Salamon, 1995; Wolch, 1990.) Institutionalist theory rejects the voluntary independence implied by the three conventional explanations, instead characterizing voluntary groups as resulting from the structure, norms, and practices of existing institutions; incentives provided by such institutions for the establishment and operation of nonprofit organizations; and community-specific histories and geographies.
I am grateful to Michael Dear for his comments.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aglietta, M. (1979). A theory of capitalist regulation: The U.S. experience. Translated by D. Fernbach. London: New Left Books.
Alvez, M. (1985). State and opposition in military Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Anheier, H., & Priller, E. (1991). The non-profit sector in East Germany: Before and after unification. Voluntas, 2, 78–94.
Anheier, H., & Seibel, W. (Eds.). (1990). The third sector: Nonprofit organizations in comparative and international perspectives. Berlin and New York: DeGruyter
Augé, M. (1995). Nonplaces: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. Translated by John Howe. London: Verso.
Benko, G., & Stromayer, U. (Eds.). (1997). Space and social theory: Interpreting modernity and postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bielefeld, W. (2000). Metropolitan nonprofit sectors: findings from NCCS data. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 29, 297–314.
Bielefeld, W., Murdoch, J. C., & Waddell, P. (1997). The influence of demographics and distance on nonprofit location. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 26, 207–225.
Boyd, T. (1996). A small introduction to the “G” funk era: Gangsta rap and black masculinity in contemporary Los Angeles. In M. Dear, E. Schockman, and G. Hise (Eds.), Rethinking Los Angeles (pp. 127–147). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Brown, M. (1997). RePlacing citizenship (p. 5). New York: Guilford Press.
Carey, E. S. (1997). The fate of place. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cooke, P. (Ed.). (1989). Localities. London: Unwin Hyman.
Cooke, P. (1990). Back to the future: Modernity, postmodernity, and locality. London: Unwin Hyman.
Cosgrove, D., & Daniels, S. (Eds.). (1988). The iconography of landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davis, M. (1990). City of quartz. London: Verso.
Dear, M. (2000). The postmodern urban condition. London: Blackwell.
Dear, M., & Clark, G. L. (1984). State apparatus: The structures and language of legitimacy. Boston: Allen Unwin.
Dear, M., & Moos, A. (1986). Structuration theory in urban analysis: 2. Empirical application. Environment & Planning A, 18, 351–73.
Dicken, P. (1992). Global shift: The internationalization of economic activity. New York: Guilford Press.
Drucker, P. (1997). The global economy and the nation state. Foreign Affairs, 76, 159–171.
Esping-Anderson, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Evers, A. (1995). Part of the welfare mix: The third sector as an intermediate area between market economy, state and community. Voluntas, 6, 159–182.
Ferguson, R., Gever, M., Minh-ha, T. T., & West, C. (Eds.). (1990). Out there: Marginalization and contemporary culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fraser, N. (1993). Clintonism, welfare and the antisocial wage: The emergence of a neoliberal political imaginary. In Rethinking Marxism, 6, 9–23.
Friedland, R., & Palmer, D. (1994). Space, corporation, and class: Toward a grounded theory. In R. Friedland and D. Boden (Eds.), Space, time, and modernity (pp. 287–334). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gallagher, W. (1995). The power of place. New York: Poseidon.
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1996). The end of capitalism (as we knew it). London: Blackwell.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, J. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gregory, D. (1994). Geographical imaginations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Grindeim, J. E., & Selle, P. (1990). The role of voluntary social welfare organizations in Norway: A democratic alternative to a bureacratic welfare state? Voluntas, 1, 62–76.
Grosz, E. (1995). Space, time, and perversion. New York: Routledge.
Hanson, S., & Pratt, G. (1995). Gender, work, and space. New York: Routledge.
Hayden, D. (1995). The power of place: Urban landscapes as public history. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hyndman, J. (1997). Business and bludgeon at the border: Transnationalism across the Thai-Burma border. Paper presented at the Inaugural International Conference in Critical Geography, Vancouver, British Columbia, August 8–13.
Ingram, G. B., Bouthillette, A., & Retter, Y. (Eds.). (1997). Queers in space: Communities, public places, sites of resistance. Seattle: Bay Press.
Jackson, J. B. (1994). A sense of place, a sense of time. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Jackson, P. (1992). Maps of meaning. London: Routledge.
Jameson, F. (1984). Post-modernism, or the cutlural logic of late capitalism. New Left Review, 146, 53–92.
Jenkins, R. M. (1995). Politics and the development of the hungarian non-profit sector. Voluntas, 6, 183–201.
Jessop, B. (1990). The State as political strategy. In State theory: Putting capitalist states in their place (pp. 248–272). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Jessop, B. (1994). The transition to post-Fordism and the Schumpeterian Workfare State. In R. Burrows and B. Loader (Eds.), Toward a post-Fordist Welfare State? London: Routledge.
Koss, M. (1996). Gangster Nation. In LA Weekly Dec. 6–12, pp. 22–28; 30–33.
Kramer, R. (1981). Voluntary agencies in the Welfare State. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kunstler, J. H. (1993). The geography of nowhere. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Kuti, E. (1990). The possible role of the nonprofit sector in Hungary. Voluntas, 1, 26–41.
Lash, S., & Urry, J. (1994). Economies of signs and space. London: Sage.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith; Oxford: Blackwell.
Ley, D. (1997). The new middle class and the remaking of the central city. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ley, D., & Duncan, J. (Eds.). (1993). Place/Culture/Representation. New York: Routledge.
Lipietz, A. (1986). New tendencies in the international division of labor: Regimes of accumulation and modes of regulation. In M. Storper and A. J. Scott (Eds.), Production, work, territory (pp. 16–40). Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986.
Marston, S. A., & Staeheli, L. (1994). Citizenship, struggle, and political and economic restructuring. Guest editorial to special issue on citizenship. Environment & Planning A, 26, 840–848.
Massey, D. (1984). Spatial divisions of labor: Social structures and the geography of production. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Massey, D. (1994). Space, place, and gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Moos, A. & Dear, M. (1986). Structuration theory in urban analysis: 1. Theoretical exegesis. Environment & Planning A, 18, 231–252.
Morley, D., & Robins, K. (1995). Spaces of identity. London: Routledge.
Mouffe, C. (1993). The return of the political. London: Verso.
Mouffe, C. (1995). Post-Marxism: democracy and Identity. Environment & Planning D: Society & Space, 259–265.
Painter, J. (1995). Politics, geography and “political geography”: A critical perspective. London: Edward Arnold.
Painter, J., & Philo, C. (1995). Spaces of citizenship: An introduction. Political Geography, 107–120.
Pile, S., & Keith, M. (Eds.). (1997). Geographies of resistance. London: Routlege.
Pile, S., & Thrift, N. (1995). Mapping the subject. London: Routledge.
Przybylski, M., Littlepage, L., & Rosentraub, M. S. (1996). Philanthropy, nonprofits and the fiscal health of cities. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 25, 14–39.
Pulido, L. (1997). Community, place, and identity. In J. P. Jones III, H. Nast, and S. Roberts (Eds.). Thresholds in feminist geography: Difference, methodology, and prepresentation (pp. 11–28). Rowman Littlefield.
Ranci, R. (1994). The Third Sector in welfare policies in Italy: The contradictions of a protected market. Voluntas, 5, 247–272.
Rathgeb-Smith, S. (2001). Nonprofit-Government Relations. In H. Anheier and Aben-Ner (Eds.), Economic theories of nonprofit organizations. Kluwer/Plenum.
Rathgeb-Smith, S., & Lipsky, M. (1993). Nonprofits for hire: The Welfare State in the age of contracting. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Salamon, L. M. (1995) Partners in public service: Government nonprofit relations in the modern Welfare State. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Sandoval, C. (1991). U.S. third world feminism: The theory and methodology of oppositional consciousness in the postmodern world. Gender, 10, 1–24.
Scott, A. J. (1988). Metropolis: From the division of labor to urban form. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Scott, A. J., & Soja, E. W. (1996). The city. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Seibel, W. (1990). Government/Third Sector relationship in a comparative perspective: The cases of France and West Germany. Voluntas, 1, 42–61 (1990).
Snavely, K., & Desai, U. (1995). Bulgaria’s nonprofit sector: The search for form, purpose, and legitimacy. Voluntas, 6, 23–38.
Soja, E. W. (1980). The Socio-spatial dialectic. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 70, 207–225.
Soja, E. W. (1989). Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space into critical social theory. London: Verso.
Thrift, N. (1983). On the determination of social action in space and time. Environment & Planning D: Society & Space, 1, 23–57.
Waters, M. (1995). Globalization. London: Routledge.
Watson, S., & Gibson, K. (Eds.). (1995). Postmodern cities and spaces. Oxford: Blackwell.
Webber, M. (2000). Globalization: local agency, the global economy, and Australia’s industrial policy. Environment & Planning A, 32, 1163–1176.
Williams, F. (1989). Social policy: A critical introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Wilson, D. (Ed.), (1997). Globalization and the changing US city. (Special Issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Science Science). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Wolch, J. (1990). The shadow state: Government and nonprofit sector in transition. New York: The Foundation Center.
Wolch, J. R., & Geiger, R. K. (1983). The distribution of urban voluntary resources: An exploratory analysis. Environment & Planning A, 15, 1067–1082.
Wolch, J., & Dear, M. (1993). Malign neglect: Homelessness in an American city. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Wolpert, J. (1988). The geography of generosity: Metropolitan disparities in donations and support for amenities. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 78, 665–679.
Wolpert, J. (1989). Prudence and parsimony: A regional perspective. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 18, 223–235.
Wolpert, J. (1993). Decentralization and equity in public and nonprofit sectors. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 22, 281–296.
Wolpert, J., & Reiner, T. A. (1985). The not-for-profit sector in stable and growing regions. Urban Affairs Quarterly, 20, 487–510.
Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Zukin, S. (1991). Landscapes of power. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wolch, J. (2003). State, Subject, Space. In: Anheier, H.K., Ben-Ner, A. (eds) The Study of the Nonprofit Enterprise. Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0131-2_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0131-2_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-306-47855-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-0131-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive