This is a fascinating book which is ideal for anyone interested in the rise and rise of the third sector as a growing feature of welfare services against what the editors call the apparent waning of nation-states in an ever-increasing globalised world. In over 16 chapters, it draws on new research conducted in the UK, US, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. As the name on the cover suggests Landscapes of Voluntarism: New Spaces of Health, Welfare and Governance, explores the social terrain the voluntary and community sector inhabit from the perspective of human geographers. Although it is written with a view to addressing the fact that human geography discourses have frequently ignored this sector, I would suggest that social and political scientists will also find this book of interest. Primarily, but not exclusively, because its opening chapter explores the spaces left by neo-liberal policies and also seeks to address those perennial questions of undergraduate social policy courses: Has the forward march of social democracy halted? Are the vanguard and/or efficient service providers of our civil societies being increasingly co-opted into offering what Macmillan and Townsend call an ‘institutional fix’ for the changing welfare arrangements of the hollowed out state? Preferring to define the terrain as the ‘shadow state’, the book certainly provides us with many fascinating insights into examples of innovative, socially creative strategies developed by voluntary and community groups to tackle exclusion and need. See in particular the examples of the Club Marconi football club and the Wat Phrayortkeo temple; but also look at the clearly explained narratives on competition, adaptation and resistance in Owen and Kearns chapter on health organisations in the third sector in New Zealand.

I was particularly interested in reading about the complexity generated by faith groups in one chapter on Jewish care homes in the UK and in another chapter on faith-based organisations delivering welfare services in Northern Ireland and North America. The latter should remind policy analysts of the communal and spiritual basis to faith group organisations and the tensions this creates, particularly in spaces with two communities, reminding us that the loose and baggy monster is revealed in new and ever hybridised forms of local politics where state and fragmented members of civil society overlap. Of course this complexity in understanding is not really helped by the fact that each chapter uses a different term to describe the same phenomenon: VCS, NGO, non-profits, organised civil society, social economy and the third sector, which can be off putting, but it reminds us of the complexity in theory and dynamism in practice that make up our analysis of this growing phenomenon. This book also addresses other essential themes, such as the growth in professionalism and managerial rationality accompanying state contracts. Liz Parson's fascinating chapter on the charity retail sector explores the impact and growth of corporatism, commercialism and the professionalisation of charity shop staff through focus group discussions with (presumably, although not stated) volunteer charity workers. The chapter poses the question: workplace or domestic space? It then documents succinctly the rise of corporate imaging, branding and standardised shop floor layouts, which sensitises the reader to how commercial, rational, management processes are interpreted and re-invented in the space that is the local charity shop and we discover that the answer to her question is both!

Another key theme explored in this book is the extent to which evolving state-voluntary sector arrangements can often mute innovation, advocacy and activism. Creese's, heart-rendering article on resettlement services in Vancouver reveals the inordinate pressure placed on agencies to deliver more for less funding. It reminds us of the torture of the never-ending treadmill of funding proposals; the dehumanising (as one of the many startling quotations in this chapter puts it) contractual arrangements under which third sector workers deliver; the relentless impact of quantitative, output-driven targets and the consequences of transferring accountability functions from the state to the shadow state. The chapter documents an example of how partnerships can continue to promote advocacy and yet retain a position that means they continue to deliver services. Also, in Lalich's chapter on voluntary community spaces carved out by immigrants in Sydney we read again about the significance of autonomous, individual, action in kick-starting voluntary and community groups to respond to and work with the subsequent provision of public support to create communal spaces that have now become central to the vibrancy of cosmopolitan Sydney.

In Skinner and Rosenberg's chapter on informal and voluntary care in Canada we are posed with a dilemma which inevitably confronts a book of this scope. Ignoring their cheeky downplay of (Francophone) Quebec discourses on the lower levels of informal and formal voluntary activity in their province, it draws on national datasets to conclude that, regardless of the theories, future research on volunteering and health will be increasingly required to look at place specific particularities of local communities. This might be good news for human geographers but it raises the issue of complexity and place which is becoming increasingly important in searches for conceptualisations and appropriate data collection techniques around analyses of the shadow state. Given that these authors have chosen to focus on developments in what they refer to as advanced, capitalist, welfare states, where the voluntary sector has been increasingly seen as a panacea for the problems of escalating demand in a globalised world, I felt that what this otherwise excellent and stimulating book lacked was insight and discussion around what they mean by globalisation. Given the intense dissection of the spaces of health, welfare and governance offered by its authors, it was a little surprising that this remained an unquestioned ‘exogenous economic constraint’ in practically every single chapter.