Convenors: Irene Hardill and Sue Baines 

Arguments for mainstreaming the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) in public services typically rest upon claims for its distinctiveness from public or private sector alternatives. Much of this distinctiveness is associated with the workforce. Volunteering is sometimes called the lifeblood of the VCS, although it is also an increasingly significant employer of paid staff. Seminar 4 explored implications for work and volunteering when organisations adapt to (or reject) new funding regimes and powerful imperatives to become service providers. Presenters shared their conceptual and empirical research to position these dilemmas within overlapping, changing and contested domains of paid and unpaid, formal and informal, work and non-work

The morning session focused upon conceptualising paid and unpaid work. Both speakers drew upon the feminist tradition that established unpaid work as a subject of academic study, and continues to ask questions about the interconnected nature of different forms of work within and beyond the market economy. Professor Miriam  Glucksmann introduced the ‘total social organisation of labour’ and deployed this concept to explain national differences in ways of undertaking elder care. Dr. Rebecca Taylor explored the diversity of ‘careers’ within the VCS. In the afternoon Professor Colin  Williams turned to community engagement in the context of English affluent and deprived urban and rural localities. The final speaker John Ramsey highlighted costs as well as opportunities associated with volunteering that has become formalised, regulated, and sometimes very like employment.

Presenters and contributors were:

Reporteurs Professor Sophie Bowlby (University of Reading) and Professor Solange Montagné-Villette (University of Paris) responded to the presentations and led lively debates. For more details download the Seminar 4 report (pdf file, opens in a new window).