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Fechter Excess of Goodness Accepted Version1.pdf (319.3 kB)

An excess of goodness? Volunteering among Aid professionals in Cambodia

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posted on 2023-06-09, 05:51 authored by Anne-Meike FechterAnne-Meike Fechter
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 Research

ISSN

0967-828X

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

3

Volume

25

Page range

268-283

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2017-04-21

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2017-04-21

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2017-04-21

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