This article problematizes the dominant assumption in the literature on volunteer work that it is undertaken primarily as a matter of individual choice. Using findings from a qualitative study of volunteers at the not-for-profit organization, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, it is shown that volunteering exists within a dense web of social relations, especially familial and communal relations, so that volunteering is recursively constituted by structure and agency. The concept of ‘thick volunteering’ is developed to denote how in some cases these social relations, especially when the work involved is dangerous, may make volunteering especially significant.
Although cultural control and resistance in organizations have been widely researched, this has invariably been within the context of paid work. This paper examines how they operate within voluntary work, using the case of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).Here, volunteers undertake the dangerous work of sea rescues, working for local lifeboat stations. Whilst the RNLI deploys standard techniques of cultural control, the combination of volunteering, localism and dangerous work creates the possibility of complex and ambiguous forms of resistance to cultural control, thereby extending our understanding of these phenomena. 2
This paper explores the symbiotic relationship between place and identity. On one hand, it asks what role place plays in the formation of identity. On the other hand, it asks how place itself is invested with meaning by actors. This theoretical concept of “place-identity” is analyzed through the case of volunteer lifeboaters in the Republic of Ireland, to illustrate how place itself is socially constructed so as to acquire a range of social meanings which interact in a recursive relationship with identity over time. The particularity of dangerous maritime places is shown to shape identity, while those places are shown to be bound up with a mosaic of other factors (such as history, family, and community) which make them meaningful. The paper theorizes a more social, temporal, and dynamic relationship between place and identity than is offered by extant literature and offers refinements to the concept of place-identity.
This article presents the powerful account of Hannah, a woman working in a UK university who identifies as bisexual and queer. Hannah’s voice reflects a younger generation of workers who have come of age with the emergence of queer theory and activism supporting greater LGBT rights. Her narrative illustrates the tensions around developing an inclusive stance towards diverse sexual identities at work. Hannah’s account resonates with critical views of diversity management and inclusion practices, where non-normative minority identities are reduced to corporate categories and initiatives for management by majorities. More specifically, the account presented also covers the complexities and challenges of discussing and disclosing gendered sexualities at work, namely bisexuality, which serves as an illustration of ‘queering’ – a resistance towards understanding identities as fixed, manageable and binary. The article provides insight into how and why sexual identity matters for issues of power and conflict at work.
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