Visions of Charity: Volunteer Workers and Moral Community. - book review

Visions of Charity: Volunteer Workers and Moral Community, by REBECCA AWE ALLAHYARL Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000, 285 pp. $17.95 (paper).

In the past decade, researchers from a variety of disciplines have investigated the American propensity to volunteer their time, work, and money in associations established to better the common good. In line with this tradition, Rebecca Anne Allahyari has explored two Sacramento religious organizations, the Catholic-Worker-inspired Loaves and Fishes and the Salvation Army Shelter Service Center, in their efforts to provide meals for the homeless and indigent of the city. Drawing from three years of participant observation as a volunteer at both agencies, in-depth interviews with the staff and other volunteers, and a content analysis of the newsletters and other publications of each organization, Allahyari provides a valuable and nuanced analysis of the way each group's "vision of charity" informs both the type of meal services offered to their guests/clients and also the way the staff and volunteers view their own activities. For the two organizations are very different: Loaves and Fishes operates out of the Catholic Worker ethic of "personalist hospitality" in which each "guest," no matter how apparently unappealing, ungrateful, and unworthy, is in fact an Ambassador of God to be welcomed as an equal and as a soul of incalculable value. The Salvation Army, on the other hand, works for the salvation of the "sinking classes" by strongly emphasizing the duty of each individual client to take the responsibility for bettering him/herself.

Allahyari first introduces the concept of "moral selving: the work of creating oneself as a more virtuous, and often more spiritual person" (p. 4). For the workers at Loaves and Fishes -- largely white, female, and middle class -- this involves developing an inner attitude of gratitude for one's own prosperity, a commitment to helping the poorest and most helpless of society, and a dedication to making the larger society a more just and equitable one. The most difficult aspect of this inner work, for the Loaves and Fishes volunteers, was overcoming their own tendency to judge the poor as inferior and to withdraw from them. The staff, understanding the depth of this difficulty, compromised the Catholic Worker ideology by providing volunteer opportunities that allowed for less personal interaction between the volunteers and the guests.

In contrast, the majority of the workers at the Salvation Army were "drafted volunteers," who were performing mandated community service under California's Alternative Sentencing Program, or who were residents of the Center's "In-house" shelter. Unlike the Loaves and Fishes volunteers, the majority of these "drafted volunteers" were working-class males, often non-white. For them, "moral selving" involved developing self-discipline through work, attaining and maintaining sobriety, and experiencing salvation through redemption. A significant percentage of the staff had themselves once been clients at the Center, and these men served as role models for the drafted volunteers. Paradoxically, therefore, the staff and volunteers at the Salvation Army, whose ideological stance stressed hierarchy and the moral boundary between the clients and those who cared for them, were actually closer to the poor they served than the middle-class Loaves and Fishes volunteers were to their guests.

Overall, Allahyari has written a fine book, one which expands our knowledge of the many ways organizational cultures influence both those who work in them and those who use their services -- often in ways not entirely congruent with the stated ideology of the organization. As religious and nonprofit organizations become increasingly involved in government-funded and sponsored welfare provision, it will be important to keep such differences in mind. For me, the book was also a good introduction to the sociology of emotions, an area about which I knew little.

No book is perfect, of course. For example, I would have preferred a slightly more extended treatment of the gender aspects of Allahyari's research: surely one of the distancing factors operative at Loaves and Fishes was the fact that the majority of the volunteers were women relating to male guests. Her passing mention that Loaves and Fishes' method of operation was considered by the Salvation Army staff to be suitable for women, the elderly, and children, but not for adult men, was a provocative insight that I would have liked to see expanded. The implication of the Salvation Army Center's participation in government-funded programs was another topic that could have been treated in more depth. Both the gendered aspects of the two organizations, and their relation to the "shadow state" of government welfare, were topics largely postponed until the final chapter.

But perhaps this would have overly diffused the focus of the book. Visions of Charity is an excellent analysis of front-line workers in two very different religious organizations. It would be a valuable addition to the personal libraries of sociologists of religion as well as of denominational officials and research staff.

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