Place, Belonging and Local Voluntary Association Leadership

• In Event: Impact of Volunteering, Leadership and Empowerment

Abstract

Discussion about the nature, extent and trajectory of volunteering as an indicator of the health of numerous social worlds (variously described as neighbourhoods, localities, communities or civil societies) is prolific. Social commentary and public discourse has attempted to assess the impact on associational activity of major social changes including postmodernism and globalisation. The powerful arguments put forward by commentators such as Putnam (1995) describe the decline of ‘serious volunteering’ and warn of grave consequences. Yet data shows that traditional volunteering involving long term commitment to communal organisational development in the UK, remains steady. With such evidence, contemporary debates have shifted towards a focus on changes in the nature of volunteering rather than the extent. It is argued that because of the social and cultural changes brought about by de-industrialisation and modernity, volunteering is changing towards more individualistic, episodic or goal-orientated activities. While a number of studies have observed such changing personal and collective rationales for volunteering, there has been limited study of the effect of any such changes on local associational life.
In this paper we discuss findings from a three-year study of two contrasting locations in North East Wales to investigate how volunteering and participation in local associational life is changing in response to modernity, and ask whether structural factors embedded in localities, with environmental, historical and social meaning are variables that remain important in such accounts.
Focusing on small, ‘grassroots’ associations, we used biographical narrative methods of investigation to gain a deeper understanding of the trajectories and motivations of the volunteers leading local groups. While there is some evidence of change towards more individualistic volunteering, we find that that situational variables including a sense of belonging, strong identification and local interaction remain important determinants of participation. However, we also find that the relationship between people and their localities can have distinct meanings in different places which in turn, impact on the stability of local structures. We found that in one locality, people mostly participated as volunteers because they had a strong sense of belonging, while in the other, they often volunteered because they wanted to belong.
Our study highlights the important role of under-the-radar volunteering in maintaining supportive local micro-structures that in turn form a bridge between ordinary people in ‘places’ and wider civil society. However, in our study areas we observe that increasing individualism is a threat to the unique sense of belonging that underpins local association in different places and therefore conclude that developing resilience requires solutions that take account of the local context.

Authors

• David J Dallimore, Bangor University

• Howard Davis, Bangor University

• Robin Mann, Bangor University

• Marta Eichsteller, Bangor University