Unlikely allies: Bureaucracy as a cultural trope in a grassroots volunteer organization

Abstract

This article investigates the role of bureaucratic organizing in a grassroots volunteer organization, which emerged during the so-called refugee crisis in an emergency refugee shelter in Germany. Most research agrees that this type of organization is by definition counter-bureaucratic. In the organization I studied, however, volunteers adopted, accepted and acclaimed bureaucratic organizing as the only, natural and self-evident way of making the grassroots work. Drawing on ethnographic research, my analysis unravels how bureaucracy became a common frame of reference that allowed the volunteers to self-organize despite their different motivations, attitudes and social backgrounds. To theorize these findings, the paper draws on the concept of a cultural trope. In so doing, it offers a more nuanced understanding of bureaucracy in grassroots volunteer organizations that might stimulate scholars to rethink its role in other fluid, dynamic and value-driven organizations.