SNSF AGORA project

Behind the Scenes: The History of Volunteering in Switzerland

Management: Matthias Ruoss and Regula Ludi
Project partner: Lina Gafner, Gosteli Archive, Worblaufen
Research assistant: Anja Grob

Content and aim of the project

While the social sciences conceptualise voluntarism as a resource or social capital, historians understand it as a gratuitous social commitment that regulates relationships between people and orders society. Seen in this light, voluntarism is a form of socialisation that corresponds closely with processes of social differentiation and at the same time has a meaningful effect. This is particularly true for the establishment of a political culture since the early 19th century, which assigned different tasks to women and men by means of state institutions and gendered discourses on rights and duties.

This view fails to recognise the subversive power and self-empowerment that can emanate from voluntarism. This is where the planned mediation project on the gender history of voluntarism comes in. It places transformative aspects of volunteering at the centre. We thus understand volunteering as a social practice that creates new fields of action autonomously determined by the actors and challenges prevailing ideas of order. The project thus tells a different story, one that deals with the diversity of voluntary activities that often go against social expectations and not infrequently against existing legal norms.

The project is aimed at a professionally and politically interested public and aims to scrutinise ingrained notions of voluntarism.