Calling and Volunteering in Modern Society:

Abstract

The aim of the article is to show how the concept of 'calling' may help shed light on volunteering as a modern, social phenomenon as 'calling' is laid out in Max Weber's essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and with a side view to philosophical notions of the "good life". Research on volunteering has demonstrated that a shift in the nature of volunteering seems to take place. The shift involves a tendency away from "traditional volunteering" to an emerging "new" form of volunteering. Both forms are studied and characterised. The change more generally means a shift from normative connectedness to a collectivity to a connectedness based on utilitarian rationality. Characteristics of the two forms of volunteering are compared with different versions of the calling in Protestant ethic, as Weber has analysed them. The comparison shows that each of the two forms of volunteering may be associated with one particular version of the Protestant ethic in their more or less secular representations. Similarly, by introducing the notion of the good life, it becomes clear that there is an affinity between how the good life is constructed on the basis of the two forms of volunteering and in the two main versions of the Protestant ethic.