Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables, figures, maps and plates
- Notes on contributors
- Foreword: Beyond the shadow state?
- one Contemporary landscapes of welfare: the ‘voluntary turn’?
- two A ‘new institutional fix’? The ‘community turn’ and the changing role of the voluntary sector
- three Renewal or relocation? Social welfare, voluntarism and the city
- four Voluntarism and new forms of governance in rural communities
- five New times, new relationships: mental health, primary care and public health in New Zealand
- six Informal and voluntary care in Canada: caught in the Act?
- seven Competition, adaptation and resistance: (re)forming health organisations in New Zealand’s third sector
- eight The difference of voluntarism: the place of voluntary sector care homes for older Jewish people in the United Kingdom
- nine Values, practices and strategic divestment: Christian social service organisations in New Zealand
- ten Faith-based organisations and welfare provision in Northern Ireland and North America: whose agenda?
- eleven Government restructuring and settlement agencies in Vancouver: bringing advocacy back in
- twelve Developing voluntary community spaces and Ethnicity in Sydney, Australia
- thirteen The voluntary spaces of charity shops: workplaces or domestic spaces?
- fourteen The changing landscape of voluntary sector counselling in Scotland
- fifteen Volunteering, geography and welfare: a multilevel investigation of geographical variations in voluntary action
- sixteen Reflections on landscapes of voluntarism
- Index
thirteen - The voluntary spaces of charity shops: workplaces or domestic spaces?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables, figures, maps and plates
- Notes on contributors
- Foreword: Beyond the shadow state?
- one Contemporary landscapes of welfare: the ‘voluntary turn’?
- two A ‘new institutional fix’? The ‘community turn’ and the changing role of the voluntary sector
- three Renewal or relocation? Social welfare, voluntarism and the city
- four Voluntarism and new forms of governance in rural communities
- five New times, new relationships: mental health, primary care and public health in New Zealand
- six Informal and voluntary care in Canada: caught in the Act?
- seven Competition, adaptation and resistance: (re)forming health organisations in New Zealand’s third sector
- eight The difference of voluntarism: the place of voluntary sector care homes for older Jewish people in the United Kingdom
- nine Values, practices and strategic divestment: Christian social service organisations in New Zealand
- ten Faith-based organisations and welfare provision in Northern Ireland and North America: whose agenda?
- eleven Government restructuring and settlement agencies in Vancouver: bringing advocacy back in
- twelve Developing voluntary community spaces and Ethnicity in Sydney, Australia
- thirteen The voluntary spaces of charity shops: workplaces or domestic spaces?
- fourteen The changing landscape of voluntary sector counselling in Scotland
- fifteen Volunteering, geography and welfare: a multilevel investigation of geographical variations in voluntary action
- sixteen Reflections on landscapes of voluntarism
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The UK government has recently turned attention towards the voluntary sector and volunteering is now high on the social policy agenda. The value of volunteers has been recognised primarily as a means of providing services in the emerging mixed economy of welfare, but also in less concrete terms as contributing to an active and participatory society (Davis Smith, 1998). A number of authors have discussed the links between volunteering and active citizenship (Kearns, 1995; Turner, 2001), but some have recently argued that while the government is encouraging and supporting volunteering, changes in policy and regulatory procedures could actually be discouraging it (for example, Milligan and Fyfe, 2005). Authors have argued strongly that the voluntary sector is being transformed by the increasing encroachment of new managerial concepts and tools (Bondi, 2005; Fyfe, 2005), for example, the Labour government voluntary sector compacts launched in 1998, which require new standards, guidelines and reporting mechanisms for voluntary organisations (Home Office, 1998). The attendant push towards increasing professionalism and bureaucratisation faced by these organisations is placing pressures on their relationships with both volunteers and the wider community. This chapter explores these changing relationships in the context of charity shops in contemporary Britain.
This chapter also aims to contribute to a wider project of exploring the spatial dimensions of voluntarism. It takes on a perspective that acknowledges that spaces are brought into being, negotiated and interpreted through social practices and discourses. An exploration of the organisational spaces of charity shops on these terms views them as key sites where government policy, public discourse and volunteer experiences come together and are transformed. As such the chapter begins with a consideration of recent volunteer-focused government policies. It then examines recent changes within the charity retail sector, focusing in particular on the (re)formation of the spaces of charity shops themselves. There has been a tendency for what were once relatively informal (domestic) sites of voluntary activity to be recast as professional, work-inflected sites. The chapter then focuses on the volunteers’ experiences and interpretations of volunteering in these evolving environments. The core of volunteers tends to value the informal ‘domestic’ character of these spaces and prioritise the social benefits of volunteering. Such experiences suggest that government discourses around volunteering as a form of active citizenship may be problematic.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Landscapes of VoluntarismNew Spaces of Health, Welfare and Governance, pp. 231 - 246Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2006