Beyond choice: ‘Thick’ volunteering and the case of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution
研究质疑志愿服务主要基于个人选择的假设，通过对皇家国家救生艇协会志愿者的定性研究，发现志愿服务嵌入家庭和社区关系网中，提出“厚”志愿服务概念，强调危险工作下社会关系的重要性。
This article problematizes the dominant assumption in the literature on volunteer work that it is undertaken primarily as a matter of individual choice. Using findings from a qualitative study of volunteers at the not-for-profit organization, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, it is shown that volunteering exists within a dense web of social relations, especially familial and communal relations, so that volunteering is recursively constituted by structure and agency. The concept of ‘thick volunteering’ is developed to denote how in some cases these social relations, especially when the work involved is dangerous, may make volunteering especially significant.