Voluntary Participation and Self-Governance: A Study of Community Health Volunteering in Kolkata, India

Abstract

Participatory strategies have generated a critical body of work examining the meaning of empowerment and urban policy-making in societies undergoing a shift from government to governance. Discussions on the institutionalized limits of participatory policies and genealogies of participatory discourses have often shed inadequate light on the perspective of the economically marginalized. My study draws from ethnographic fieldwork in an urban slum in India and engages with the personal and collective assessments of a group of 18 women volunteering for health improvement in their communities. I look at select instances of self-governance and demonstrate how volunteers seek to transform their social statuses and convince themselves to continue to take responsibility for their community’s health improvement. At the same time, community volunteers are not automatons. Against existing material and social challenges, they develop an ambivalent relationship with their volunteering roles and demand a ‘salary’ equivalent to their ‘work’.