Serving the Street: Volunteering as Charity, Racial Justice, and Poverty Tourism

Volunteering is typically thought of as an act of altruism, yet there are power dynamics embedded in volunteer-service recipient relationships, especially when volunteers operate from privileged positions. Following six grassroots homeless service organizations in St. Louis, Missouri, Matthew Schneider unpacks the tensions between race, class, urban space, and volunteerism. Volunteers are well intentioned and provide vital, life-saving services. However, Serving the Street explores how many of these same volunteer groups helped to reproduce racialized stigma and stereotypes about poverty, homelessness, and marginal urban space through volunteer practices that bordered on ＂poverty tourism.＂ If our goal is to make communities more inclusive and equitable, this book suggests a need for greater self-reflection, even among well-intentioned, social-justice-oriented volunteers.

MATTHEW JEROME SCHNEIDER is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, a collaborating professor with the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center, and the codirector of the Sustainability, Equity, and Action Laboratory. Situated in the areas of race and racism, environmental sociology, urban sociology, and community and civic engagement, his work has appeared in numerous outlets including Qualitative Sociology, Sociological Forum, Radical Teacher, Environmental Justice, and Inside Higher Ed.