Abstract
Nina Eliasoph’s (1998) monograph Avoiding Politics brilliantly illuminated the everyday processes of political engagement and avoidance in one American community. In Making Volunteers: Civic Life after Welfare’s End she engages with the more explicitly policy-relevant theme of volunteering in civic associations. Based on several years of participant observation in a range of homework clubs, civic engagement projects, and day camps for young people in an American city, the book begins and ends with ‘opening out’ chapters which make links between micro-level research and broader questions of voluntarism in society. These introduce and summarize eleven chapters of thickly detailed discussion of Eliasoph’s experiences in a range of organizations under three themes: ‘cultivating open civic equality’, ‘cultivating intimate comfort and safety’ and ‘celebrating our diverse, multicultural community’. Holding this wealth of description together are her concepts of ‘Empowerment Projects’ and ‘Empowerment Talk’.
Despite Eliasoph’s focus on a specific set of projects in one US city, her book resonates with the policies and politics of the ‘Big Society’ in the UK. Reflections on the complicated purposes of voluntarism – ‘volunteers who want to do something beyond making themselves feel good need time and training’ (p. 254) – should be prescribed reading for those designing or critiquing current pilots of ‘National Citizen Service’. In an era where voluntarism is presented as an alternative to state provision, we would do well to learn from experience in a system where ‘non-political’ civic associations have long been major service providers.
Eliasoph is a committed ethnographer and her research access, particularly to the ‘backstage’ environments where staff, volunteers and participants share frustrations and fears, adds invaluable depth to the account. Despite the attention paid to civic associations since Putnam’s call to arms, we know surprisingly little about what goes on within them on a day-to-day basis. However, this book illustrates how organizers and participants learn to ‘tick off’ externally defined goals like ‘engagement’ and ‘cohesion’ while also attempting to meet the needs they identify on the ground on a daily basis.
There are, however, mild frustrations for the academic reader. References to wider academic literature are occasional and confined to endnotes. Whilst enhancing the popular readability of the text, a greater integration with existing approaches would also be valuable. For example, is ‘Empowerment Talk’ something that people write about or speak in organizations, or is it something more akin to a discourse or narrative? If so, how might it relate to existing accounts, such as Sharma’s (2008) logics of empowerment? Whilst an ethnographic approach adds invaluable richness, at times the lack of interview data seems contrary, such as when the author guesses at young people’s perspectives: ‘I could not peer directly into teens’ psyches’ (p. 122). Where Eliasoph strays into the realms of interviewing (a method about which she has previously expressed well-founded concerns) her tone is somewhat odd: ‘Knowing that Siobhan was a top student … I thought she might relish a small debate’ (p. 94). Eleven chapters of findings about the actions of a relatively small group of people would be enhanced by the inclusion of her participants’ own views on her analysis.
Finally, reading the text from a critical perspective renders the ‘Practical Suggestions’ offered in the conclusion somewhat limited given the emphasis on improving youth projects. Eliasoph wants ‘Empowerment Projects’ to have more money, less fear of bureaucracy, less faith in an ill-defined notion of community, fewer short-term, naïve middle class volunteers and to be more frank about controversial or distressing socio-economic realities. Given the impressive richness of her observations, there seems scope for a bolder assessment of the future contribution of youth ‘Empowerment Projects’ to the mixed economy of welfare, and to the governmentalization of everyday life (see for example Cruikshank, 1999).
Despite these limitations, Making Volunteers is to be commended as a valuable and much-needed account of a realm of civic activity that, despite – or because of – its prominence on the policy agenda, is only minimally understood. Eliasoph’s commitment to richly detailed ethnographic research produces insights which unsettle conventional views of social and political life.