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
six - Volunteering: an articulation of caring communities
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
Each day, in communities across the country, people act out their vision of Britain – rejecting selfishness and embracing community. (Blair, 1999)
Big Society is all about empowering people to become actively involved in their neighbourhoods and communities to bring about the changes they know are needed. (Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society; source: Brewis et al 2010, p 4)
Introduction
As we noted in Chapter Five, (formal) voluntary organisations are often established to serve the needs of neighbourhoods and communities (of place as well as interest). The spatially targeted nature of their activities has recently been the focus of attention by geographers and sociologists (such as Milligan and Fyfe, 2004, 2005; Sampson et al, 2005). This is because the community/neighbourhood has re-emerged in both policy and academic circles as an important setting for many of the processes that supposedly shape social identity and life chances, including local social relations, social cohesion and social capital (Forrest and Kearns, 2001; Galster, 2001). But ‘community’ – in common with volunteering – is not a simple descriptive word but one with a shifting and disputed meaning (Byrne, 1999; Galster, 2001; Sprigings and Allen, 2005). Subjectively, areas, neighbourhood and community mean different things to different people at different times; each individual's activities, networks and travel patterns shape their concept of neighbourhood and community (Massey, 1994).
Since the 1990s, policy measures in the UK (as elsewhere) have sought to address the contextual effects of neighbourhood; principally, the social consequences of an increasing concentration of disadvantaged people (Amin, 2005; Bauld et al, 2005) and ‘the part that place and space play in exclusion’ (Lee, 1999, p 483). Voluntary work is seen as contributing to community/neighbourhood regeneration through developing social capital (Putnam, 2000; Forrest and Kearns, 2001). In this chapter, we explore the role that volunteering plays as an articulation of caring communities – looking at the work of volunteers and voluntary organisations by presenting a case study of volunteering in a place-based community – Brightville. The case study community of Brightville has been beset by economic deprivation, but has retained a strong sense of community. After this brief introduction, the chapter is divided into four further sections.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Enterprising Care?Unpaid Voluntary Action in the 21st Century, pp. 111 - 130Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2011