International volunteering, faith and subjectivity: Negotiating cosmopolitanism, citizenship and development

Baillie Smith, Matt, Laurie, Nina, Hopkins, Peter and Olsen, Elizabeth (2013) International volunteering, faith and subjectivity: Negotiating cosmopolitanism, citizenship and development. Geoforum, 45. pp. 126-135. ISSN 0016-7185

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Abstract

In this paper, we analyse the short term mission experiences of young UK Christians volunteering in Latin America to explore the relationships between international volunteering, faith and subjectivity. We draw on understandings of global citizenship and cosmopolitanism as processes rather than end points to reveal the contingent and multilayered ways subjectivities evolve and are performed through international volunteering. We particularly explore how faith based and secular imaginaries come together to shape a cosmopolitanism that smoothes over inequality and injustice. We highlight the need to acknowledge the multiple ways global subjectivities are expressed by analysing research diaries kept by the young volunteers. These reveal how volunteers’ negotiation of their faith, public imaginaries of development and everyday encounters with inequality, produce instabilities that have significance for thinking about cosmopolitan sensibilities and global citizenship.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	international volunteering, global citizenship, cosmopolitanism, development, faith, mission
Subjects:	L300 Sociology
Department:	Faculties > Arts, Design and Social Sciences > Social Sciences
Depositing User:	Ellen Cole
Date Deposited:	27 Mar 2013 09:24
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2019 19:31
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/11708

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