Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15378/1848-9540.2025.48.02
“We’re Just Putting Out Fires”. An Ethnography of Volunteering in the Context of Researching Homelessness and Poverty in Zagreb
Melanija Belaj
orcid.org/0000-0003-3892-8907
; Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb
Ana-Marija Vukušić
orcid.org/0000-0003-2579-6052
; Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb
Abstract
In this article, we present the work of a humanitarian initiative that (primarily) operates in the city of Zagreb, providing assistance to people experiencing homelessness as well as to other citizens facing existential insecurity. We view the volunteers gathered around the initiative as a heterogeneous community and consider the dynamic between emotional and rational roles in their volunteer engagement (Pozniak 2020, 2021) to be a key factor in their overall activity. We understand this activity as a form of vernacular humanitarianism (Brković 2017, 2023) and seek to approach it through the concept of fragility, starting from the assumption that fragility is not an inherent property of things and bodies, but a condition emerging from their relations (Domínguez Rubio 2023).
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
342175
URI
Publication date:
23.12.2025.
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