Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how humanitarian imaginations generate grassroots networks and are materialised in various forms in Southeast China where there is a tremendous growth in self-organised rescue and relief volunteerism, predominantly organised and run by middle-aged male volunteers.

Paper long abstract:

In Southeast China, there is a tremendous growth in self-organised rescue and relief volunteerism, predominantly organised and run by middle-aged male volunteers. These volunteers mainly go on trips searching for missing persons in the wilderness in addition to participating in collaborative disaster relief in Typhoon seasons. Drawing upon 18 months' ethnographic fieldwork in a county of Southeast China, this paper explores how humanitarian imaginations generate grassroots networks and are materialised in various forms among the volunteers. By examining the volunteers' interactions among themselves and with needy others, it shows that the image of strangers missing and the image of a soldier serving the people comprise the major sources of imaginations about the needy others and about the masculine self respectively. Such imaginations about the other and the self are also materialised in the volunteer uniforms, flags, car plates, emblems, as well as the office-like space the volunteers gather and wait for incidents to happen and orders to follow. Inspired by Liisa Malkki's notion of "imaginative politics" (2015:105), this paper contends that the volunteer's imaginative practices are powerful in fulfilling their need for social recognition.