Examines the increasing significance of the volunteer and volunteerism in African societies, and their societal impact within precarious economies in a period of massive unemployment and faltering trajectories of social mobility.

Examines the increasing significance of the volunteer and volunteerism in African societies, and their societal impact within precarious economies in a period of massive unemployment and faltering trajectories of social mobility.



Across Africa today, as development activities animate novel forms of governance, new social actors are emerging, among them the volunteer. Yet, where work and resources are limited, volunteer practices have repercussions that raise contentious ethical issues. What has been the real impact of volunteers economically, politically and in society? The interdisciplinary experts in this collection examine the practices of volunteers - both international and local - and ideologies of volunteerism. They show the significance of volunteerism to processes of social and economic transformation, and political projects of national development and citizenship, as well as to individual aspirations in African societies.
These case studies - from South Africa, Lesotho, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Malawi - examine everyday experiences of volunteerism and trajectories of voluntary work, trace its broaderhistorical, political and economic implications, and situate African experiences of voluntary labour within global exchanges and networks of resources, ideas and political technologies. Offering insights into changing configurations of work, citizenship, development and social mobility, the authors offer new perspectives on the relations between labour, identity and social value in Africa.

Ruth Prince is Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology at the University of Oslo; with her co-author Wenzel Geissler, she won the 2010 Amaury Talbot Prize for their bookThe Land is Dying: Contingency, Creativity and Conflict in Western Kenya. Hannah Brown is a lecturer in Anthropology at Durham University.

Introduction: The politics and ethics of voluntary labour in Africa by Ruth Prince and Hannah Brown - PART 1: Citizenship and Civic Participation?
The civics of urban malaria vector control: Grassroots and breeding places in Dar es Salaam by Ann Kelly and Prosper Chaki
The many uses of moral magnetism: Volunteer caregiving and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa by Christopher J. Colvin - PART 2: Unequal Economies
The purchase of volunteerism: Uses and meanings of money in Lesotho's development sector by Ståle Wig
Volunteering in transnational medical research in Lusaka by Birgitte Bruun - PART 3: Hosts and Guests
Doing good while they can: International volunteers, development and politics in early independence Tanzania by Michael Jennings
Beneath the spin: Moral complexity and rhetorical simplicity in "global health" volunteering by Claire Wendland, Susan L. Erikson and Noelle Sullivan
Hosting gazes: Clinical volunteer tourism and hospital hospitality in Tanzania by Noelle Sullivan - PART 4: Moral Journeys
A third mode of engagement with the excluded other: Student volunteers from an elite boarding school in Kenya by Bjørn Hallstein Holte
Volunteering as repentance by Thomas G. Kirsch
Epilogue: Ebola and the Vulnerable Volunteer by Peter Redfield