Journal ArticleDOI
Technology of Self, Technology of Power. Volunteering as Encounter in Guangzhou, China
TLDR
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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Journal ArticleDOI
Chinese youth and alternative narratives of volunteering
TL;DR: The authors conducted interviews with 60 young volunteers in southern China, mostly university students and recent graduates, and compared their experiences in off-campus, youth-led voluntary associations with the officially approved student organizations of normal university life, arguing that the instrumental organization of volunteers characterizes the party-state's efforts to funnel youthful enthusiasm and compassion into particular political projects and officially prescribed goals.
Book ChapterDOI
‘Only Volunteers’? Personal Motivations and Political Ambiguities Within the Refugees Welcome to Malmö Civil Initiative
TL;DR: In this article, the volunteers' motivations, experiences and ambiguities of their work with Refugees Welcome to Malmo were analyzed based on in-depth interviews, against the background of a specific historical, organizational and local context in which this grassroots initiative emerged.
Journal ArticleDOI
Conceptualizing volunteering in tourism in China
TL;DR: The authors explored the local understanding of tourism-related issues in China so as to give critical tourism by engaging local epistemology, and found that the highlight of voluntary spirit, serving others by giving time/skills/knowledge and mutual help are three dimensions of conceptualization.
Journal Article
Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National Identity under Reform
TL;DR: Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National Identity Under Reform, by Yingjie Guo as mentioned in this paper analyzes the nationalist ideas and intellectual currents prevalent in elite circles in China during the last twenty years or so, and particularly in the 1990s.
Journal ArticleDOI
Philanthropy on the move: Mobile communication and neoliberal citizenship in China:
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the phenomenon of embodied philanthropy on the move, with a focus on the WeRun (weixin yundong, an add-on to Weixin) for charity initiative.
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
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
Journal ArticleDOI
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.