The Political Importance of Voluntary Work

This paper aims to develop a complex articulation of the civic meaningfulness of voluntary work that clarifies its political importance as a countervailing narrative pointing beyond dominant neoliberal and consumptive articulations of a good life. To start with, it sketches a hermeneutic perspective on civic meaningfulness based on the work of Paul Ricoeur. Subsequently, it introduces the ideas of ‘ethical complexity’, ‘epistemological complexity’ and ‘diapoiesis’, building on insights from critical complexity thinking and relational biology. It argues that these notions can provide a bridge between hermeneutic perspectives on meaning and values, on the one hand, and questions of meaning and values on the level of scientific and technological developments and within professional organizations, on the other. Thus a broader, more complex picture emerges of the civic meaningfulness of voluntary work in our times.