Journal ArticleDOI
Technology of Self, Technology of Power. Volunteering as Encounter in Guangzhou, China
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In this paper, the authors explore the growing popularity of volunteering in China and delineate several factors that play into the phenomenon, including students' desire to break out of strict routines, to engage in meaningful activities, to meet people, and to contribute to China's development.Abstract:
In this article, I explore the growing popularity of volunteering in China. I delineate several factors that play into the phenomenon, including students' desire to break out of strict routines, to engage in meaningful activities, to meet people, and to contribute to China's development. Linking these issues to the socio-political, economic, and ideological transformations in China, I show that we cannot meaningfully distinguish between altruistic and self-interested motivations to volunteer. For the students volunteering is a means to transform themselves into modern, entrepreneurial, and responsible selves, necessary to meet the challenges of urban life in China today. Yet, volunteering, encouraged and framed by the government, is also a ‘technology of power’, a means to nurture self-reliant and socially responsible individuals. I show that volunteerism is not simply the reflection of a new ‘governmentality’ but an encounter in which the very relationship between state and society is constantly negotiated.read more
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Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore theories, discourses, and experiences of globalization, drawing on perspectives from history, anthropology, cultural and literary studies, geography, political economy, and sociology.
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Public Opinion and Political Change in China
TL;DR: Tang et al. as discussed by the authors explored the nature and origins of mass opinion in urban China through survey research conducted between 1987 and 2000, and examined a wide range of theories and explanations, such as regime legitimacy, the influence of the media on opinion, social capital theory, political participation, and the role of intellectuals.
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Crafting the Volunteer: Voluntary Associations and the Reformation of Sociality
TL;DR: The authors proposes an alternate perspective that considers new and older forms of public sociality in relation to their cultural formation, where the flourishing of solidarity initiatives in contemporary crisis-ridden Greece is not considered a paradox, but rather the expression of the reconfiguration of the social and its potent political content.
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Opening up the 'black box' of 'volunteering' : on hybridization and purification in volunteering research and promotion
TL;DR: To deconstruct volunteering, the article utilizes the Latourian notions of “hybridization” and “purification” as simultaneous and entangled mechanisms, and critically review the literature on “volunteering” to problematize the fundamental properties of the “pure” perception of ‘Volunteering,’ their hybridization and eventual purification.
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Ethics of the heart: Moral breakdown and the aporia of chinese volunteers
Rundong Ning,David A. Palmer +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the angst of deeply committed volunteers in China, engaging with anthropological debates on ethics under conditions of moral breakdown, is explored, under market socialism, sacrificial v...
References
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Book
Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault
TL;DR: Martin et al. as mentioned in this paper present a transcript of a faculty seminar on "Technologies of the self," originally presented at the University of Vermont in the fall of 1982, where Foucault's project on the self was the logical conclusion to his historical inquiry over twenty-five years into insanity, deviancy, criminality and sexuality.
Journal ArticleDOI
Volunteer work and well-being.
Peggy A. Thoits,Lyndi N. Hewitt +1 more
TL;DR: Using two waves of panel data from Americans' Changing Lives (House 1995), the relationships between volunteer work in the community and six aspects of personal well-being are examined: happiness, life satisfaction, self-esteem, sense of control over life, physical health, and depression.
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Who cares? Toward an integrated theory of volunteer work
John Wilson,Marc A. Musick +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors construct an integrated theory of formal and informal volunteer work based on the premises that volunteer work is productive work that requires human capital, collective behavior that requires social capital, and ethically guided work that require cultural capital.
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The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift'
TL;DR: In this article, a critique critique of " l'Essai sur le Don " de M. Mauss, a lumiere of l'ideologie de l'echange maori et hindouiste
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Negotiating the State: The Development of Social Organizations in China
TL;DR: A notable feature of the reform programme sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been the expansion of social organizations as discussed by the authors, which has created an increased organizational sphere and social space in which to operate and to represent social interests, and to convey those interests into the policy-making process.