From Vicarious Religion to Vicarious Social Capital? Information and Passive Participation in Voluntary Associations

Abstract

This chapter proposes a theory of passive involvement in voluntary associations admitting passive and active members. The theory draws on key principles of Davie's (2008) concept of vicarious religion, which accounts for contrasting behaviors of the active (in that case, those who believe in God and belong to a church) and the passive (who may believe yet do not belong). It is suggested that, through understanding and approving of active members' participation, passive members share in and possibly also experience the benefits of stocks of social capital generated/embedded within the association. Despite a tendency on the part of theorists to trivialize association newsletters, the Vicarious Social Capital Model ascribes a pivotal role to information in the social process: By compensating for an absence of activity, information is predicted to be the mechanism through which passive members are empowered to contribute to an extent greater than researchers have hitherto recognized. Keywords:active members; Davie; passive members; passive participation; vicarious religion; vicarious social capital; voluntary associations