This seminar was the third in a series of seminars focusing on volunteering in a fair society organised by IVR in partnership with the ESRC and Northumbria University. This event explored how individuals and communities can most effectively make their voices heard. In this presentation Dr. Fabian Frenzel from the School of Management, University of Leicester discusses topics related to volunteerism including volunteers and activists, volunteering as unwaged labour and more. Past presentations from the Institute of Volunteering Research website can be found at the following location - http://www.ivr.org.uk/ivr-events/ivr-past-events

1. Give up volunteering?
The political economy of unwaged
labour
ESRC Lecture Series 3 July 2012
Newcastle
Dr FabianFrenzel
School of Management
University of Leicester

2. Outline
• Volunteers and activists: What’s the
difference?
• Volunteering as unwaged labour
• Example: Stokes Croft Regeneration
• Discussion

3. What’s the
difference ?

4. • ‘To name an activity volunteering rather than
activism makes a big difference. Volunteering is
associated with helping and caring, service provision,
leisure-time activity, and associations that sustain
democracy, while activism is associated with change-
oriented collective actions like demonstrations and
maybe even riots that challenge the smooth running
of society’ (Musick& Wilson 2008:18)

5. • ‘While volunteering is a
concept devoid of power,
there is an explicit or implicit
orientation toward power
and social change in
activism.’ (Henriksen&
Svedberg 2010:95)

6. Subjectivities -
Identities
• ‘Volunteerism is one
form of civic
involvement, and it
can, in fact, serve as a
first step toward
political activism, but
it can also occur
without a connection
to a political agenda’
(Hirsch 1993:36)
• Many students feel that service
and advocacy have nothing to do
with political activism. (Hirsch
1993:35)
• 48% consider themselves to be
activists
• But 37% don’t want to be
associated with activism.
(Hefferman 1992)

7. • (1) informal volunteering that
consists of helping those who
need it and recruiting friends
as volunteers
• (2) formal volunteering that
consists of unpaid participation
in the group work of voluntary
associations
• (3) social and political activism
that is unpaid participation (i.e.
volunteering) in social
movements and political
organizations.
Civic Volunteering
(Janoski 2010)

8. Contextual approaches of Civic
volunteering (Janoski 2010)
Beyond subjective motivation
The role of social networks,
family, belonging to
certain categories of
people (gender, race, etc.)
and the role of opinion
leaders.
Outcomes:
1) civil maintenance
2) civil repair
3) civil degradation

9. Policy Feedback
• ‘One might
hypothesize, then,
that by providing an
array of incentives for
people to support and
engage in direct
service aimed at the
distressed individual,
as opposed to
collective action
aimed at government
and market failures,
the state reinforces
the perception that
problems adhere to
the individual, not to
the collective.’ (Goss
2010:134)

10. Civic volunteering as unwaged labour
• Labour : human activity that produces value.
• Wage labour is valued in money. Money is a
measure of value.
• How is unwaged labour measured and
valued?

11. Value and Values
‘But it is probably nocoincidence that
it’s precisely here where one hears
about “values” in the plural sense:
family values,religious virtues, the
aesthetic values of art, and so on.
Where there is no single system of
value, one is left with a whole
series of heterogeneous, disparate
ones.' (Graeber 2001: 56)
‘Even in our own market-
ridden society there are all
sorts of domains—ranging
from housework to hobbies,
political action, personal
projects of any sort—where is
no such homogenizing
apparatus [the money based
measure of value].'

12. Value Struggle
Q: How does this help us
understand the difference
between volunteering and
political action?
Values accumulate to
‘common-wealth’, the
shared wealth and
resources of mankind.
Value accumulates
to capital:
private wealth
There is conflict between these domains

13. Stokes Croft, Bristol
• Regeneration as unwaged labour
• Generating community
• Gentrification as value struggle
• Volunteering and activism part of it

14. Question:
• Why do we differentiate volunteering from a
broad range of voluntary, unwaged labour?

15. Discussion
• Volunteering (as compared to activism) is not
(just) apolitical, overlooking structural
constrains.
• Singling out certain activities as ‘volunteering’
is an element in the value struggle.
• Certain forms of unwaged labour can be co-
opted as an exception that confirms what
really matters: the regime of wage-labour and
capital.

16. References
• Goss, K.A. (2010): Civil Society and Civic Engagement: Towards a Multi-
Level Theory of Policy Feedbacks, Journal of Civil Society, 6:2, 119-143
• Graeber, D.(2001) Toward an anthropological theory of value : the false
coin of our own dreams, Palgrave New York
• Hefferman 1992 (as quoted in Hirsch 1993)
• Henriksen, L. S. & Svedberg, L. (2010) Volunteering and Social Activism:
Moving beyond the Traditional Divide, Journal of Civil Society, 6:2, 95-98
• Hirsch, D. T. (1993) Politics through Action: Student Service and Activism in
the 1990s. Change 25:5: 32-36
• Janoski, T. (2010) The Dynamic Processes of Volunteering in Civil Society: A
Group and Multi-Level Approach, Journal of Civil Society, 6:2, 99-118
• Musick, M. M. & Wilson, J. (2008) Volunteers. A Social Profile
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press).