Mothering and 'helping out': volunteering practices and state intervention through local and expert knowledge

Abstract

In this article I examine the work of home visiting volunteers as an expression of state intervention. I draw on my experience as an ethnographer based at an NGO office in South Manchester. I show how the state is made manifest in the mundane and quotidian practices of volunteering, parenting and 'helping out'. I argue that volunteering operates as a governing technology promoting values such as self-regulation, self-help, independence and decision-making as elements key to the right kind of citizen. The state conceals itself and its modes of operation through volunteering, but in the process it is also diluted. In this case, it relies on ideas of self-development and self-improvement, but people go further in exploiting governing technologies for their own purposes. It not only concerns (self-)discipline but also maternal and gendered practices, social policy and different kinds of knowledges. The distinction between 'indigenous' or local knowledge and 'expert' or professional knowledge is key. Volunteering becomes a visible form of indigenous or local knowledge promoting the self-regulation of women's capacities and in doing so acts as a concealed expression of the state.