Affective closeness to home undermines volunteers’ political competence and imagination.

Evidence

Ron wanted to display his knowledge and scare her, but when standing on ceremony, addressing a researcher, he wanted to avoid appearing worried about something he could not change, so he roped his knowledge in, with a happy summary. Here was another setting ^ in addition to volunteer group meetings ^ in which a volunteer could let his or her competence roam in one speech context but not another. In volunteer group meetings,close to home'' cheered volunteers up, but made them less able publicly to formulate a moral ideal (of what ought to be”) and less able publicly to imagine a better world (of what could be''); less able to learn about the wider world together: in short, rendered them less politically competent than they might have been in some other context where hope was less crucial, where displaying and acquiring knowledge would not risk undermining hope. Cultivating these in¢- nite, acutely context-sensitive varieties of apparent incompetence” took great skill. — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”, 155

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that context-sensitivity of competence is skilful, not merely deficient, is worth unpacking — what does Elias or Goffman-style competence theory say here?
• corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”: The work of avoiding…, 155
• XREF: connects to: Volunteering correlates with political engagement, not alienation — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 432; Massive socialization at home arrests consciousness and blocks autonomy’s hidden roots — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 851

Broader Connections

• Volunteering correlates with political engagement, not alienation #contradicts (0.80) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 432
• Massive socialization at home arrests consciousness and blocks autonomy’s hidden roots #corroborates (0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 851