One Good Turn: Tackling Poverty through the Circulation of Goods in Kirklees

The proposed research adopts an ethnographic research methodology to examine the launch, the development and the sustainability of the local charity One Good Turn. In particular, the study seeks to understand: (1) How the... [ view full abstract ]

The proposed research adopts an ethnographic research methodology to examine the launch, the development and the sustainability of the local charity One Good Turn. In particular, the study seeks to understand: (1) How the charity sees itself in relation to the Coalition Government’s notion of the Big Society and to investigate what this relationship means in practice in a local context; (2) How the charity has succeeded in securing ‘gifts’ in the form of mainly unwanted items, but also time and monetary donations in a climate where charitable giving is purportedly in decline; and (3) How notions of ‘community’ underpin the activities of the charity, and the practices of both giving and receiving charitable donations of consumer durables (e.g. furniture, white goods, clothes, etc). The study seeks to contribute to the literature on charitable giving by bringing insights derived from the donation of objects into a literature which focuses primarily, although by no means exclusively, on financial gifts and on the recruitment of donors rather than on retaining and developing donors over time.