Description
Book SynopsisExamines the increasing significance of the volunteer and volunteerism in African societies, and their societal impact within precarious economies in a period of massive unemployment and faltering trajectories of social mobility. Across Africa today, as development activities animate novel forms of governance, new social actors are emerging, among them the volunteer. Yet, where work and resources are limited, volunteer practices have repercussions that raise contentious ethical issues. What has been the real impact of volunteers economically, politically and in society? The interdisciplinary experts in this collection examine the practices of volunteers - both international and local - and ideologies of volunteerism. They show the significance of volunteerism to processes of social and economic transformation, and political projects of national development and citizenship, as well as to individual aspirations in African societies. These case studies - from South Africa, Lesotho, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Malawi - examine everyday experiences of volunteerism and trajectories of voluntary work, trace its broaderhistorical, political and economic implications, and situate African experiences of voluntary labour within global exchanges and networks of resources, ideas and political technologies. Offering insights into changing configurations of work, citizenship, development and social mobility, the authors offer new perspectives on the relations between labour, identity and social value in Africa. Ruth Prince is Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology at the University of Oslo; with her co-author Wenzel Geissler, she won the 2010 Amaury Talbot Prize for their book The Land is Dying: Contingency, Creativity and Conflict in Western Kenya. Hannah Brown is a lecturer in Anthropology at Durham University.
Trade ReviewVolunteer Economies is [.] an informative, recommended read that will serve an eclectic academic, practitioner and policy audience. * LUCAS *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The politics and ethics of voluntary labour in Africa - Ruth Prince and Hannah Brown Part 1: Citizenship & Civic Participation The many uses of moral magnetism: Volunteer caregiving and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa - Christopher James Colvin The civics of urban malaria vector control: Grassroots and breeding places in Dar es Salaam - Ann H. Kelly The civics of urban malaria vector control: Grassroots and breeding places in Dar es Salaam - Prosper Chaki PART 2: Unequal Economies The purchase of volunteerism: Uses and meanings of money in Lesotho's development sector - Ståle Wig Positions and possibilities in volunteering for transnational medical research in Lusaka - Birgitte Bruun PART 3: Hosts and Guests Doing good while they can: International volunteers, development and politics in early independence Tanzania - Michael Jennings Hosting gazes: Clinical volunteer tourism and hospital hospitality in Tanzania - Noelle Sullivan Beneath the spin: Moral complexity and rhetorical simplicity in "global health" volunteering - Claire L. Wendland Beneath the spin: Moral complexity and rhetorical simplicity in "global health" volunteering - Susan L. Erikson Beneath the spin: Moral complexity and rhetorical simplicity in "global health" volunteering - Noelle Sullivan PART 4: Moral Journeys A third mode of engagement with the excluded other: Student volunteers from an elite boarding school in Kenya - Bjørn Hallstein Holte Undoing apartheid legacies?: Volunteering as repentance and politics by other means - Thomas G. Kirsch Epilogue: Ebola and the vulnerable volunteer
