Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

SAGETRACK

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by HOLDEN, D.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

"ON EQUAL GROUND"

Sustaining Virtue among Volunteers in a Homeless Shelter

DAPHNE HOLDEN

How can volunteers affirm virtue through volunteering when working conditions make it hard for them to feel good about the help they are giving? A participant-observation study of well-intentioned volunteers in a homeless shelter—who found themselves cast as rule enforcers—shows how people can maintain a positive moral identity under conditions that threaten it. The volunteers used the status differences between themselves and shelter "guests" as resources for fashioning the moral identity "egalitarian." Volunteers did this by acting like friends to guests, distancing themselves from pejorative cultural images of volunteers, and taking pride in discretionary rule enforcement. When compelled to enforce infantilizing rules, some volunteers sought to protect their identities as egalitarians by altercasting guests as children in need of rules—and thus not deserving of equal treatment. The analysis shows how identity work can both draw on and reproduce inequality.

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 26, No. 2, 117-145 (1997)
DOI: 10.1177/089124197026002001
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Journal of Contemporary EthnographyHome page
S. R. Harris
Studying Equality/Inequality: Naturalist and Constructionist Approaches to Equality in Marriage
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, April 1, 2003; 32(2): 200 - 232.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Qualitative InquiryHome page
D. L. Miller, J. W. Creswell, and L. S. Olander
Writing and Retelling Multiple Ethnographic Tales of a Soup Kitchen for the Homeless
Qualitative Inquiry, December 1, 1998; 4(4): 469 - 491.
[Abstract] [PDF]