Extending Conceptual Boundaries: Work, Voluntary Work and Employment

Abstract

Traditional social theory has conceptualized work in terms of a dichotomy of public paid employment and private unpaid labour that oversimplifies the complexity of traditional and contemporary work practices and excludes voluntary work from sociological understandings of work. This article explores the lives of five workers from two voluntary sector organizations, whose experiences highlight the weaknesses of concepts such as 'career' and suggest that work's conceptual boundaries be extended. A framework based on the 'total social organization of labour' is developed that distinguishes between paid and unpaid work within the setting of institutional, community and family relations. This provides a basis for mapping individuals' labour and exploring both the interconnections between their work positions and the boundaries of their work identity. At the structural level it highlights how health care and community work constitute labour markets or 'fields'; hierarchical structures governed by rules that shape how positions are accessed.

More Than a ‘Little Act of Kindness’? Towards a Typology of Volunteering as Unpaid Work

“…It is difficult to disentangle personal and collective rationales for volunteering despite claims by volunteers that they do volunteering work out of altruism, to better themselves, to get paid employment, to change society or because they have no other choice. Our typology raises interesting questions about how volunteering work intersects with individualist and collectivist rationales and motivations, changing and migrating over time (see Figure 1) and how such rationales condition and are conditioned by the wider relations and neo-liberal norms in which volunteering work is located (Taylor, 2004;O'Toole and Grey, 2016). Militant practices of volunteering embrace ideas of self-organisation at a collective level, being directed towards social purposes; as such they borrow from the ethos of the new social movements (Buechler, 1995), being often seen as collective or individual responses to local or social crises (Steffen and Fothergill, 2009;Rosol, 2012) which inspire individuals to get engaged in a cause.…”

“…Moreover, motivations for volunteering often intersect with those for paid-employment and domestic work, and the benefits gained from volunteering can often be wider and are perceived in more positive terms than those coming from paid employment or domestic care (Nichols and Ralston, 2011;Lyon and Glucksmann, 2008;Parsons, 2006). Taylor (2004) argues for the need to extend the conceptual boundaries of work to account for volunteering as a form of work which although unpaid is, just like paid work, embedded in and defined by the social relations within which it is located (O'Toole and Grey, 2016).…”

Constant, serial and trigger volunteers: volunteering across the lifecourse and into older age

“…While paid employment is the dominant mode in modern industrial societies, work is also conducted in a multiplicity of ways, many of which are on an unpaid basis in the household, community and public formal sphere." TSOL seeks to explore the ways in which different forms of work activities are allocated to individuals, within families, organisations and communities (Glucksmann, 2000;Taylor, 2004). This widening of the conceptual boundaries of what constitutes work is necessary if we are to understand the complexity of individuals' lives, and of the relationships between volunteering and the different forms of work they do (Taylor, 2004;Parry et al, 2005).…”

“…Volunteering, Taylor (2004) attests, challenges such dichotomies, in that it is taking place in the public sphere, often alongside paid workers, yet is unpaid. The reconceptualisation of volunteering that Taylor (2004: 31) proposes asserts that there is not a straightforward correspondence between pay and work and, rather, that work is 'embedded in and defined by the social relations within which it is located'.…”

“…A lifecourse approach is used alongside a Total Social Organisation of Labour (TSOL) framework (Glucksmann, 2000;Taylor, 2004) to explore how volunteer engagement is facilitated and constrained by other work roles. Then, it outlines the qualitative methodology for the narrative interviews.…”