Selfish Giving? Volunteering Motivations and the Morality of Giving

Why do people volunteer? What makes people give their time for others? Is volunteering really for those who are in need or volunteers themselves? While the idea of the gift and gift exchange is often used by practitioners of volunteering, it is also one of the research areas to which anthropology has largely contributed over decades. Gift exchange is a significant social phenomenon which reflects the way society is constructed. It is a “total social phenomenon” which reflects economic, religious, juridical, moral and aesthetic rules of society at once (Malinowski 1922). Gift exchange theories see giving as an expression of solidarity, power and hierarchy (Bataille 1988; Bourdieu 1990; Mauss 1990; Sahlins 1972). The nature of gift is double-edged that gives us pleasure and poison at the same time. Mauss (1990) sees all gifts as being constrained and interested however unconstraining and disinterested they appear. Generosity in his view is a political strategy. The gift in our society is also much about “emotional management” (Hochschild 1979). That is why accepting and refusing a gift is often taken as accepting and refusing the giver. SELFISH GIVING? VOLUNTEERING MOTIVATIONS AND THE MORALITY OF GIVING