ON EQUAL GROUND - SUSTAINING VIRTUE AMONG VOLUNTEERS IN A HOMELESS SHELTER

How can volunteers affirm virtue through volunteering when working con ditions make it hard for them to feel good about the help they are giv ing? A participant-observation study of well-intentioned volunteers in a homeless shelter-who found themselves cast as rule enforcers-shows how people can maintain a positive moral identity under conditions tha t threaten it. The volunteers used the status differences between them selves and shelter ''guests'' as resources for fashioning the moral id entity ''egalitarian.'' Volunteers did this by acting like friends to guests, distancing themselves from pejorative cultural images of volun teers, and taking pride in discretionary rule enforcement. When compel led to enforce infantilizing rules, some volunteers sought to protect their identities as egalitarians by altercasting guests as children in need of rules-and thus not deserving of equal treatment. The analysis shows how identity work can both draw on and reproduce inequality.