Allahyari, Rebecca Anne 1963-

(Rebecca A. Allahyari)

PERSONAL: Born 1963. Education: University of California, Davis, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office— School for Advanced Research, P.O. Box 2188, Santa Fe, NM 87504-2188. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Writer, educator, and qualitative sociologist. School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, NM, staff scholar. University of California, Santa Barbara, visiting professor of sociology and religious studies, 2002. Has taught women’s studies and American studies at the University of Maryland and has also taught at Georgetown University.

AWARDS, HONORS: Spencer Foundation research grant.

WRITINGS

Visions of Charity: Volunteer Workers and Moral Community, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2000.

Contributor to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Rebecca Anne Allahyari is a qualitative sociologist whose research focuses on “understandings of the sacred” and how these understandings are applied in “everyday practice and politics,” commented a biographer on the School for Advanced Research Web site. This interest in the commingling of the sacred and the practical needs of everyday life is reflected in her book, Visions of Charity: Volunteer Workers and Moral Community. This book “makes an important contribution to understanding how faith-based organizations function,” commented a reviewer in the Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare.“More importantly,” the reviewer continued, “her analysis of their different approaches to the problem of homelessness provides helpful insights into the potential of faith based organizations to address social needs.”

In the book, Allahyari closely analyzes volunteer activity at two distinct charitable organizations based in Sacramento, California: the Salvation Army and the Catholic-based Loaves and Fishes. Both of these charities are involved in providing assistance and food for the poor and homeless, but each approaches its mission with a different philosophical, practical, and moral concept. Allahyari focuses her analysis on the volunteers who are directly involved in the day-to-day assistance activities and on what this type of volunteerism means for those who participate. She notes how volunteers for Loaves and Fishes were predominantly white, middle-class females, whereas Salvation Army workers were largely working-class minority males from other Salvation Army shelters or from Alternative Sentencing programs. She explores how Loaves and Fishes functions more from a core belief in compassion, altruism, and simple giving, whereas the Salvation Army stresses rehabilitation, recovery, and acquisition of independence through discipline and work. Allahyari also considers issues of race, class, community, and gender as they exist within the context of social services. Much of her analysis is concerned with the “moral selving” of the volunteers, the process whereby volunteers work to advance themselves as more spiritual individuals. “The sophistication of Allahyari’s examination of the social foundations of moral community shines in her attention to how practical problems faced by charity staff members affected organizational practices of visions of charity,” commented Cheryl Carpenter in Social Forces.A reviewer in the Journal of Community Health called Allahyari’s book a “very well-crafted and stimulating volume that will be of great interest” to persons involved in charitable activities with the homeless, the impoverished, and the needy. Carpenter named it “a significant contribution to the sociology of charity, social welfare, and volunteerism.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Journal of Community Health, February, 2002, review of Visions of Charity: Volunteer Workers and Moral Community, p. 76.

Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, December, 2001, review of Visions of Charity, p. 230.

Sacramento News and Review, December 6, 2001, Matt Raymond, review of Visions of Charity.

Social Forces, December, 2001, Cheryl Carpenter, review of Visions of Charity, p. 743; March, 2002, Cheryl Carpenter, review of Visions of Charity, p. 1125.

Sojourners, May, 2001, Jim Wallis, review of Visions of Charity, p. 55.

ONLINE

School for Advanced Research Web site, http://www.sarweb.org/ (January 22, 2007), biography of Rebecca Anne Allahyari.

University of California, Santa Barbara Web site, http://www.ucsb.edu/ (March 26, 2002), “Emotions and Morality of Charity to Be Compared at UCSB Affiliates Spirituality, Culture Discussion.”