Opening Up the "Black Box" of "Volunteering": On Hybridization and Purification in Volunteering Research and Promotion. Issue 3 (3rd July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Shachar, Itamar Y.; von Essen, Johan; Hustinx, Lesley
• Is Part Of: Administrative theory & praxis. Volume 41:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 245
• Page End: 265
• Publication Date: 2019-07-03
• Subjects: Public administration -- Periodicals; Electronic journals; 350
• DOI: 10.1080/10841806.2019.1621660
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1084-1806

Abstract

Abstract : The scholarly exploration of "volunteering" has mainly focused on identifying its antecedents or consequences, in order to facilitate the management and promotion of volunteering. In this dominant stream of research, the phenomenon of volunteering thus remains a "black box"—a taken-for-granted and fixed reality. The article sets out to open the black box of "volunteering" by not accepting it as a fixed, unproblematic object, but by exploring volunteering as a constructed phenomenon whose boundaries are managed and utilized by a variety of actors. To deconstruct volunteering, the article utilizes the Latourian notions of "hybridization" and "purification" as simultaneous and entangled mechanisms. We critically review the literature on "volunteering" and problematize the fundamental properties of the "pure" perception of "volunteering, " their hybridization and eventual purification. The article concludes by highlighting how the constant tension between hybridization and purification mechanisms is in fact what makes volunteering proliferate as a phenomenon that has an increasing public significance in contemporary society.