Volunteering is the hegemonic cultural model of good citizenship in America
Evidence
In American community life, volunteer groups are to good citizenship as apples are to fruit; they are the very model — what linguist George Lakoff (1987) calls the ”Idealized Cognitive Model” — of good, productive citizen involvement. Volunteering is the hegemonic image of good citizenship (Gramsci 1957, 1971). A great deal is at stake in the definition of the volunteer, and in the definitions of compassion, altruism, optimism, and everything else that goes along with volunteering. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 202
Categorization
- DEFINE: Concepts volunteering as the ‘Idealized Cognitive Model’ and hegemonic image of good citizenship — a frame that structures the whole ethnography.
- XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s hegemony and Lakoff’s idealized cognitive models, both anchored in the reader’s prior reading on how discourse shapes common sense. — connects to: Elite volunteer action substitutes for mass popular participation in national history