Paper short abstract:

What practices are made possible by the imaginative spaces of solidarity? What happens when ideals are translated into action? This paper examines the moral subjects elicited by voluntary welfare in terms of the everyday demands of administering it.

Paper long abstract:

Amidst a contentious history of state distributions, traditional forms of welfare have been interrupted in post-debt crisis Greece. In this space, as people struggle to re-negotiate rights and access to welfare, the meaning of citizenship is being rewritten through voluntary action. Drawing upon fieldwork in a grassroots solidarity group in Athens, this paper examines what happens as the state relinquishes welfare provision to volunteers, and the kind of moral subjects formed under solidarity. Specifically, it considers what kind of practices the imaginative spaces of solidarity make possible as ideals are translated into action. Attending to the collection, storage, allocation and distribution of assistance, it explores how the impetus to address poverty was transformed through the process of administering it. More than simple apparatus, administration implicitly delineated value and set boundaries to care, as it determined who was entitled to help and who was not. Framing their work as technical, volunteers glossed over the ethically ambiguous aspects of their work and, more broadly, the power which accrued to them as arbitrators of welfare. Pursuing a radical agenda in which all were equally entitled to solidarity, in fact, produced an apolitical space in which rights were refashioned according to liberal values. In this tension between the 'mere' and the political, the relationship between agency and forms of allocation comes into focus, framing a broader discussion on manners of giving, moral classes of person and power in the contemporary neoliberal moment.