Gramsci 'makes a difference' : volunteering, neoliberal 'common sense', and the sustainable development goals

In this paper we subject volunteering within the neoliberal paradigm to a Gramscian analysis. We argue that the rendering of volunteering as a civic good forms part of the modern neoliberal state's fashioning of consent for capitalist rule. Gramsci's concept of the 'integral state' incorporates antagonisms within civil society as it attempts to demonstrate moral and intellectual guidance to construct ongoing consent for capitalist rule. A Gramscian analysis of volunteering reveals that, under neoliberalism, two different and competing historical trajectories of volunteering have been conf lated into one model of low-cost or unpaid labour that supplements the efforts of state and market, but which does not seek to disrupt either. In doing so, the radical tradition of volunteering, with its potential for social transformation, has been negated as a new common sense understanding of volunteering has emerged that is essentially apolitical, and which does not question fundamental structural aspects of global inequality. This trend is especially evident in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, where the language of community empowerment, usually found in the radical volunteering tradition, has been harnessed to assist the state and private sectors to restructure and reform, but still continue, capitalism.