Fechter Excess of Goodness Accepted Version1.pdf (319.3 kB)
An excess of goodness? Volunteering among Aid professionals in Cambodia
This paper explores the meaning of volunteering among professional aid workers. While they experience disenchantment in their daytime work, volunteering provides them with benefits lacking in their paid jobs. At the same time, a compensatory model does not capture the complex dimensions of this relationship. One motive behind their professional work – bringing about positive change for others - is also the driving force behind their voluntary practices. Such excess of doing good may be indicative of their overall commitment. If aid workers make sense of their actions within a framework of alienated labour, rendering their waged aid work as a commodity, volunteering emerges as a remedial response. At the same time, their paid and unpaid work is animated by the impulse of giving. Such co-existence implies that gifts and commodities are not mutually exclusive; or indeed that both can be understood, following Parry (1986), as emerging from a highly developed capitalist system.
Funding
ESRC
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
South East Asia ResearchISSN
0967-828XPublisher
SAGE PublicationsExternal DOI
Issue
3Volume
25Page range
268-283Department affiliated with
- Anthropology Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2017-04-21First Open Access (FOA) Date
2017-04-21First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2017-04-21Usage metrics
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