Bureaucratized Morality: Professionalization, Institutional Cynicism, and Social Commitment in the Peace Corps

Kallman, Meghan

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Year:: 2016
Contributor:: Kallman, Meghan (creator); Suchman, Mark (Director); Chorev, Nitsan (Director); Heller, Patrick (Reader); Pacewicz, Josh (Reader); Frickel, Scott (Reader); Brown University. Sociology (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: organizations; Peace Corps; international development; Associations, institutions, etc.; Peace Corps (U.S.); Economic development--International cooperation; Political sociology; Social change; Social movements; Public administration
Extent:: ix, 218 p.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0DB807D

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Abstract:: When asked to picture a Peace Corps volunteer, most of us summon to mind earnest young people—inexperienced, perhaps, but passionate and energetic. We imagine them as deeply socially committed, and wanting to make the world a better place, and organizational sociology would expect them to feel fulfilled by their work abroad. However, the sociological literature does not have a well-resolved idea about what happens to Peace Corps volunteers after they return home, or the political consequences of their service over the long term. There is a substantial body of somewhat older organizational literature suggesting that volunteers and should feel more powerful and well located in their worlds, as well as in their democracies, as a result of their experiences, and organizational sociology would expect them to be sustained by intrinsic motivation throughout their careers. However, I find something new: by the time they come out of the Peace Corps and move into the rest of their lives, many volunteers, though they do seek out work in public service and nonprofits, have become what I call “institutionally cynical”. While they overwhelmingly value many aspects of their experience, Peace Corps volunteers also exhibit surprising shifts in their political and professional consciousness. My data shows that they are politically liberal in some areas but not in others; they experience burnout; they are consummate organizationalists, both blaming organizations when things go wrong and seeing power as uniquely situated within the professional organizational context; they have little to no critique of large-scale social dynamics, and instead focus on individual or organizational behavior when talking about social change or human development, and international development feels problematic, if not downright wrong. They have lost their social commitment, replacing it with this particular breed of institutional cynicism—a cynicism that goes beyond “typical” burnout in the way that it alters people’s politics. This project asks why such an outcome occurs: what is responsible for institutional cynicism among returned Peace Corps volunteers? I find that that high levels of professionalization within the Peace Corps bureaucracy itself foment this dynamic. In making my argument, I necessarily answer a second question: given that the Peace Corps is a volunteer organization, why has so much professionalization occurred within the agency in the first place? I find that organization adopted a professional orientation in order to enhance its legitimacy in American and international politics, as well as in the emergent field of international development. The norms of professionalization spread through the field of international development, in part aided by the experiences of former Peace Corps volunteers. I then show how professionalization creates institutional cynicism among volunteers; specifically, I identify the organizational processes that, by neglecting volunteers’ social commitment and emotions, have triggered it. Such cynicism has lasting effects on their politics going forward. My project develops a sociological theory of the effects for “on-the-ground” workers in ideologically motivated fields that, instead of emphasizing the psychological elements of burnout, as is prevalent in the literature, locates the social process within the structure of a bureaucratic organization.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2016)

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Rights: In Copyright
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Kallman, Meghan, "Bureaucratized Morality: Professionalization, Institutional Cynicism, and Social Commitment in the Peace Corps" (2016). Sociology Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0DB807D

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Sociology Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the Sociology department.
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