Making Sense of Volunteering: Perspectives, principles and definitions

Abstract

This chapter and the one that immediately follows it represent an attempt to make sense of volunteering by capturing the full extent of the phenomenon and the rich variety of the forms it can take. We start from the premise that the general perception of volunteering is based on what David Horton Smith (2000) has called, in a different context, a ‘flat-earth map’. In other words, the picture most people have of voluntary action is incomplete; while some of its features are clearly defined, many more of them are ‘dark matter’ (ibid.) which remains relatively unknown and largely unexplored.