Performing the common good

Volunteering and ethics in non-state crime prevention in South Africa

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2103249
AutoresThomas G Kirsch (0000-0002-6521-4128, autor de correspondencia)
Año2017
Volumen87
Número3
Páginas496-512
Fecha de publicación2017-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972017000080
OpenAlexW2736649513
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas33

Using fieldwork data from South Africa's Eastern Cape Province, this article highlights ambiguities of volunteering as idea and practice by exploring discursive strategies used by volunteers in the field of civic crime prevention when the ethical honesty and selflessness of their commitment to volunteering is questioned by others. These ambiguities relate to asymmetries in the relationship between donors and recipients of volunteering, as well as, most importantly, the challenge to determine what constitutes the 'common good'. This article demonstrates that these strategies entail the accommodation of contentions about: (1) the social identity of the volunteer by stressing the volunteer's commitment to abstract causes and objectives; (2) powerful asymmetries between donors and recipients of volunteering by invoking an encompassing sociality; and/or (3) the (alleged) self-interest of volunteers by defining the personal benefits achieved by volunteering not as an end in themselves but as 'private means' to 'public ends'. All three strategies have in common that volunteers as 'ethical subjects' can here be shown to be co-produced with South African 'communities of ethics' on different social scales

Accommodation · Criminology · Harm · Honesty · Identity (music · Political science · Public relations · Sociality · Sociology · State (computer science · Nonprofit Sector and Volunteering · Psychology · Religion, Society, and Development · Social Psychology · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development