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We praise those people who do things for others. But the symbolic power of giving means individuals can take advantage of the glow of 'goodness' that charity provides. This book analyses the reality of how charity operates in the social world; how the personal benefits of giving and volunteering are vital for getting charitable acts to happen; how the altruism associated with gifts isn't always what it seems; how charity misbehaviour or bad management gets overlooked; and how charity symbols are weaponised against those who don't participate. Drawing on original data and a novel application of the sociology of Bourdieu, this book examines a wide range of examples from culture, politics and society to provide an entertaining critique of how contemporary charity works.

"Reflexivity is vital in social research projects, but there remains relatively little advice on how to execute it in practice. This book provides social science researchers with both a strong rationale for the importance of thinking reflexively and a practical guide to doing reflexivity within their research. The first book on the subject to build primarily on the theoretical and empirical contributions of Pierre Bourdieu's reflexive work, it combines academic analysis with practical examples and case studies, drawing both on recent reflexive research projects and original empirical data from new projects conducted by the author. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the book will be of interest to researchers from all career stages and disciplinary backgrounds, but especially early-career researchers and students who are struggling with subjectivity, positionality, and the realities of being reflexive."

Reflexivity is vital in social research projects, but there remains relatively little advice on how to execute it in practice. This book provides social science researchers with both a strong rationale for the importance of thinking reflexively and a practical guide to doing reflexivity within their research. The first book on the subject to build primarily on the theoretical and empirical contributions of Pierre Bourdieu's reflexive work, it combines academic analysis with practical examples and case studies, drawing both on recent reflexive research projects and original empirical data from new projects conducted by the author. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the book will be of interest to researchers from all career stages and disciplinary backgrounds, but especially early-career researchers and students who are struggling with subjectivity, positionality, and the realities of being reflexive

In life, Jimmy Savile was revered as Britain's greatest charity fundraiser. In death, he is remembered as Britain's most notorious pedophile. Raising over £40 million for good causes throughout his media career, a year after his death several investigations revealed a history of abuse of hundreds of children, mostly young girls, across the institutions he worked or volunteered at. Using the framework of the symbolic power of charity, this article documents how these crimes were either missed or covered up. Savile used his fundraising prowess and the "good glow" of his reputation to enable his abuse and shield him from discovery. Institutions prioritized their reputation or fundraising income over bad publicity and proper safeguarding. Drawing on a growing critical literature, this is the first article to explore the role of Savile's charity in his crimes and highlights the increased concern over charity's role as a tool of reputation laundering for elites.

This article argues that informal volunteering (the unstructured giving of one's time to help friends, neighbors, or community) has been ignored or understudied within research and policy. With data frequently showing higher rates of informal volunteering among women, people of color, working-class communities, and other often discriminated against groups and qualitative research demonstrating the value of informal volunteering within poorer communities, such positioning serves to reproduce dominant narratives around volunteering, reinforcing social inequalities. Using Bourdieusian critical theory from largely U.K.-based working-class feminist scholars, this article contributes to the nonprofit literature by showing how such a formulation adds to the legitimacy of middle-class cultures and delegitimizes working-class ones, especially at the current neoliberal conjuncture where volunteering experiences are encouraged to be used as a tool of distinction and employability. However, the article cautions against conceptualizing informal volunteering within existing formal volunteering frameworks, as doing so may further hollow out community life.

This article argues that while great strides have been made in understanding the socially constructed nature of much empirical (qualitative) data, the challenge this presents to notions of "objective" social science, and therefore the requirement for all researchers to undertake reflexive work, there are limits to such undertakings. Against a vital social requirement for individuals to act reflexively in analysing their own positioning and privilege, I want to caution against placing too much emphasis on the emancipatory possibilities for researchers of being reflexive in data collection and analysis in the study of social inequalities. Using reflections from Matthew Desmond's work on evictions in the US, the article argues that while personally and socially imperative, reflexivity's central role must remain as a methodological guard against errors emerging from positioning and difference.

Recent reports have cautioned that charities are behind the curve in taking advantage of the potential benefits of digital technologies and social media, a problem that particularly affects their engagement with young people. This article assesses the data from a series of focus groups, including a participatory digital element, with students and recent graduates (aged 18–25), examining participants' current engagement with charity online. The focus groups show that while the right celebrity or organisational backing helps charity messages cut through, overall it is those causes and requests for donations that come through family and friends that are still the main drivers of young people's engagement with charity on social media. Supporting findings from similar studies, this shows that, despite the global connectivity digital offers, we should think carefully about what can be expected from the charity–digital relationship, and the continued importance of existing offline relationships for students and new graduates.

This article utilizes Pierre Bourdieu's theories of habitus and cultural capital to offer some explanation as to why there is a lack of class diversity in formal volunteering in the United Kingdom. Recent studies have shown that participation in volunteering is heavily dependent on social class revolving around a highly committed middle-class "civic core" of volunteers. This article draws on original qualitative research to argue that the delivery of recent youth volunteering policies has unintentionally reinforced participation within this group, rather than widening access to diverse populations including working-class young people. Drawing on interviews with volunteer recruiters, it is shown that the pressure to meet targets forces workers to recruit middle-class young people whose habitus allows them to fit instantly into volunteering projects. Furthermore, workers perceive working-class young people as recalcitrant to volunteering, thereby reinforcing any inhabited resistance, and impeding access to the benefits of volunteering.