Crafting the Volunteer: Voluntary Associations and the Reformation of Sociality

Narratives of volunteerism and civil society that emerged in Greece in the beginning of the twenty-first century echoed the modernization and Europeanization visions of Greek society that were proliferating in that era. Public discourses as well as state and EU policies endorsed a model of sociality that included volunteerism and was associated with the production of the new European and Greek citizen. Forms of public sociality, such as voluntary associations, thus constituted laboratories that produced subjects. The reformation of sociality and the invention of volunteerism were embedded in various civilizing projects. At the same time, a certain “lack of volunteerism” was broadly attributed to a general understanding of Greek particularity. This article proposes an alternate perspective that considers new and older forms of public sociality in relation to their cultural formation, where the flourishing of solidarity initiatives in contemporary crisis-ridden Greece is not considered a paradox, but rather the expression of the reconfiguration of the social and its potent political content.