Joanna Puckering - Gifts, Virtues and Obligations of University Volunteering

This book takes a critical, grounded and ethnographic approach to elicit a deeper understanding of university volunteering. Anthropological theories of reciprocal gift exchange are used to re-visit some of the value-laden and at times conflicting ways of understanding volunteering as freely undertaken or coerced, altruistic or self-interested. It also explores how some of the changing uses and expectations of volunteering are related to the exercise of power and to the effect of social norms or structural constraints on agency. This book contains a detailed case study of a UK university, focusing on its relationships with local communities and voluntary organisations to illustrate the complex and culturally situated nature of volunteering and the gift. Joanna Puckering also draws on examples from countries such as the United States and Australia to address wider questions of why people do what they do, and why volunteering motives and outcomes attract differing interpretations. This volume will be relevant to scholars from anthropology, sociology and geography as well as those involved in the higher education and voluntary, corporate and social enterprise sectors.

Joanna Puckering is a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology of Durham University. She co-edited From the Lighthouse: Interdisciplinary Reflections on Light (2018, Routledge, with Veronica Strang and Tim Edensor).

First published 2022

by Routledge

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2022 Joanna Puckering

The right of Joanna Puckering to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 9780367859541 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781032126159 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781003015970 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003015970

Typeset in Sabon

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003015970-1