Definition
Alternative civilian service is service to a government made as a civilian, particularly such service as an option for conscripted persons who are conscientious objectors and object to military service.
Civilian service is usually performed in the service of non-profit governmental bodies or other institutions. For example, in Germany (before conscription was abolished), those in civilian service worked extensively in healthcare facilities and retirement homes, while other countries have a wider variety of possible placements.
Common synonyms for the term are alternative service, civilian service, non-military service and substitute service.
Read more about this topic: Alternative Service
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“According to our social pyramid, all men who feel displaced racially, culturally, and/or because of economic hardships will turn on those whom they feel they can order and humiliate, usually women, children, and animals—just as they have been ordered and humiliated by those privileged few who are in power. However, this definition does not explain why there are privileged men who behave this way toward women.”
—Ana Castillo (b. 1953)
“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The physicians say, they are not materialists; but they are:MSpirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin!—But the definition of spiritual should be, that which is its own evidence. What notions do they attach to love! what to religion! One would not willingly pronounce these words in their hearing, and give them the occasion to profane them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)