Tensions in fields of engagement. A comparison between church communities, sports clubs, environmental initiatives and welfare organizations

Project description

The research project is based on a finding from international volunteering research, according to which the motivation of volunteers develops through a process: Once volunteering has begun, volunteers continue to develop their motivation in continuous interaction with the context of their volunteering. The context refers in particular to the activity itself, potential fellow volunteers, the organization and the interaction with potential clients. Our research project asks whether there are engagement field-specific dynamics of engagement development.

In an earlier research project, we investigated termination processes of civic engagement in the welfare sector. The results from this project are the reason why we formulated our research question in this way. We found that drop-outs in welfare state involvement are essentially characterized by a tension: On the one hand, committed individuals have special experiences in the context of their caring activities or with other committed individuals that bind them to the commitment. On the other hand, they develop contradictions to practices that they observe in the field. These two tension-generating types of experience are in turn largely caused by the field of welfare work: On the one hand, care and assistance enable special interpersonal relationships. On the other hand, welfare is characterized by economization, which is fundamental to the contradiction and rejection by those involved.
For the research project, this raises the question of what tensions characterize civic engagement in other fields: What specific activities enable experiences that bind to engagement? Which aspects of the field lead to contradiction? How can the contradiction be articulated in each case? Are there also cross-field phenomena of tension?

In the research project, the fields of engagement church, environmental initiatives and sports clubs are compared with each other as well as with the previous results from the welfare sector. We have chosen these fields because, firstly, they involve very different activities and, secondly, they have different forms of organization (from small, self-organized associations to large, more hierarchical organizations). In this respect, we expect sufficiently contrasting data material. Specifically, we collect narrative interviews with people who have completed an engagement in one of the fields, as these can provide an overview of the entire engagement process. We also conduct group discussions with people who are currently involved. Both forms of data collection allow us to reconstruct and contrast the knowledge of the respective actors within the field of engagement.