Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and boxes
- List of abbreviations
- Notes on the authors
- Acknowledgements
- one Fixing Britain's ‘broken’ society: from the Third Way to Big Society
- two Theoretical underpinnings of voluntary work and voluntary organisations: work, care or enterprise?
- three Understanding the journeys of individual volunteers: demanding community concern, or demonstrating job readiness?
- four A professional paradox? ‘Managing’ volunteers in voluntary and community sector organisations
- five Voluntary and community sector organisations as enterprising care providers: keeping organisational values distinctive
- six Volunteering: an articulation of caring communities
- seven Volunteering: caring for people like me
- eight The big issue of the Big Society: mobilising communities alongside fiscal austerity
- Bibliography
- Index
two - Theoretical underpinnings of voluntary work and voluntary organisations: work, care or enterprise?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and boxes
- List of abbreviations
- Notes on the authors
- Acknowledgements
- one Fixing Britain's ‘broken’ society: from the Third Way to Big Society
- two Theoretical underpinnings of voluntary work and voluntary organisations: work, care or enterprise?
- three Understanding the journeys of individual volunteers: demanding community concern, or demonstrating job readiness?
- four A professional paradox? ‘Managing’ volunteers in voluntary and community sector organisations
- five Voluntary and community sector organisations as enterprising care providers: keeping organisational values distinctive
- six Volunteering: an articulation of caring communities
- seven Volunteering: caring for people like me
- eight The big issue of the Big Society: mobilising communities alongside fiscal austerity
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The voluntary sector … should not simply be celebrated. Yet, what is also obvious from the experiences of experts and practitioners … is that however different the situations, state support and big bureaucracies of any kind only work because the voluntary sector, and especially women, stitch people into the bigger structures of society. This is often done in chaotic ways, as responses to pressures which can destroy what is valuable in a society, which appear messy and are full of contradictions. Much, however, is creative and it is this creativity which progressive politicians and policy-makers should facilitate and political and social philosophers contemplate. (Showstack Sassoon, 1996, p 184)
Introduction
Volunteering is far from new, but over the past decade and a half, it has moved from the ‘shadows into the policy spotlight’ (Kendall, 2010, p 1). The weight of expectation about the contribution that volunteering, of all kinds, can make to the wellbeing of individuals and communities has never been greater (Rochester et al, 2010). The involvement of governments in volunteering has expanded since the mid-1990s, as we noted in Chapter One. Under the coalition government, in the UK, this seems set to continue, with the flagship Big Society agenda intended to encourage more volunteering and local action, to empower communities and to encourage social enterprises to deliver welfare services tailored to individual needs at low cost. Volunteering is multifaceted and by no means is all volunteering concerned with caring for others, as the refreshing reassessment by Rochester et al (2010) reminds us. Most care is unpaid and usually performed in domestic settings, but increasingly also through VCSOs, where it may be paid, unpaid or a hybrid of both (Daly, 2002). Care has become more fragmented between different institutional settings (public, private, voluntary and household) since Showstack Sassoon (1996, p 185) wrote so evocatively of the ‘patched together needs, resources and institutions’ that enabled the economy to function. The decline of the state as a direct provider of welfare services is associated with the rise of social enterprise and the push for the VCS to become more enterprising (Amin, 2005; Bull, 2008). That is why volunteering, care and enterprise are at the heart of this book.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Enterprising Care?Unpaid Voluntary Action in the 21st Century, pp. 21 - 32Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2011