Questing for meaningfulness through narrative identity work: The helpers, the heroes and the hurt

Sarah-Louise Weller,Andrew D Brown,Caroline A Clarke

doi:10.1177/00187267211043072

Abstract

What identity narratives do those engaged in dangerous volunteering fabricate and how do they help satisfy their quest for meaningful lives? Based on a three-year ethnographic study of QuakeRescue, a UK-based voluntary, search and rescue charity, we show that volunteers worked on identity narratives as helpers, heroes and hurt. The primary contribution we make is to analyse how meaningfulness (the sense of personal purpose and fulfilment) that people attribute to their lives is both developed through and a resource for individuals’ narrative identity work. We show how organizationally-based actors attribute significance to their lives through authorship of desired identities that are sanctioned and supplied by societal (master) narratives embedded in and constitutive of local communities. In our case, the helper and hero identities dangerous volunteering offered members were seductive. However, their pursuit had ambiguous and sometimes, arguably, negative consequences for volunteers who had seen action overseas, and our study adds to understanding of how organizational members’ quest for meaningful identities may falter and sometimes fail.

Highlights

Why do people engage in dangerous volunteering? In this article, we show that people become search and rescue volunteers in a quest for meaningfulness (Florian et al, 2019; Frankl, 1959)
Predicated on an understanding that identities need to be studied ‘in depth’ (Alvesson and Gjerde, 2020: 42), and that ‘Narrative practice lies at the heart of self construction’ (Holstein and Gubrium, 2000: 103 [emphasis in original]), our arguments are based on a three-year ethnographic study of QuakeRescue
We show how volunteers in QuakeRescue drew on three distinctive sets of narrative resources associated with the ‘helper’, the ‘hero’ and the ‘hurt’

Summary

Introduction

Why do people engage in dangerous volunteering? In this article, we show that people become search and rescue volunteers in a quest for meaningfulness (i.e. a sense that their lives are purposeful and worthwhile) (Florian et al, 2019; Frankl, 1959). We draw in particular on the literature concerned with narrative identity work (Ezzy, 1997; Ibarra and Barbulescu, 2010; Watson, 2009) to analyse how volunteers engage in a project of the self (Giddens, 1991) in which they seek meaningfulness by authoring identity narratives as helpers and heroes. Those who experience overseas rescue missions, may author identities as hurt, suggesting that the pursuit of meaningfulness through dangerous volunteering has for some unexpected, arguably negative consequences. Extant research has most often focused on employees whose work is mundane and repetitive, dirty or just uninspiring (Braverman, 1974; Heinsler et al, 1990) and less attention has been paid to volunteers (Florian et al, 2019)

Methods

Conclusion