Volunteering at the stock camp: Negotiating social positions

Abstract

The Stock Camp is a regular attraction at the National Folk Festival (NFF), a premier annual tourist event in Canberra, Australia. It relies heavily on the “authenticity” of its Australian food, bush entertainment, and “authentically Australian” volunteers for ongoing popularity. Using an auto-ethnographic approach (Saukko, 2002), this paper explores the extent to which new Stock Camp volunteers are prepared to accept the social positioning (Harré & van Langenhove, 1991, 1999) imposed on them by established Stock Camp volunteers. Findings from this study suggest that the social positioning of new Stock Camp volunteers imposes a strictly prescribed “authentic” Australian collective social identity, a gendered division of roles, and hierarchical power structures that make it difficult for new volunteers to accept the social positions imposed by established volun; teers. Inflexible positioning may be a barrier to further volunteering commitment. Auto-ethnography is shown to be a valuable research methodology, especially in socio-cultural leisure research as it enables the researcher to identify the processes through which better sense can be made of familiar and unfamiliar experiences within specific socio-cultural contexts.

Keywords:

• events volunteering
• positioning theory
• auto-ethnography
• gendered volunteering
• “authentic” tourist attractions