Beyond volunteering, relationality: How is mutual aid organized on the margins? (2023-2027).
Directed by Consuelo Vásquez (UQAM). Co-researchers: Nicolas Bencherki (TÉLUQ), Frédérik Matte (UOttawa) et Mathieu Chaput (TÉLUQ). Collaborators: Sophie Del Fa (U Louvain) and Samuel Lamoureux (TÉLUQ). Project funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Mutual aid, often considered a generous act, can also offer alternatives to market exchange, challenging its transactional logic. This ethnographic research focuses on “marginal” self-help communities, studying non-institutionalized forms of self-help and developing a conceptual framework based on communication. It adopts a participatory methodology that avoids reproducing institutional expectations of self-help, while benefiting organizations and practitioners involved in similar initiatives by offering practical guidelines for resisting market logics.
