The power of receiving: Finding moral meaning in care-receiving episodes.

摘要

This dissertation examines what the relationship between giver and receiver looks like through the eyes of recipients. While recent policy discussions have focused on faith-based versus other service organizations, and I include such comparisons, I argue that meaning-making activities are actually more important, and have been neglected in the policy discussions. Further, although the act of giving is the focus of most studies on care, particularly social services and charitable organizations, I focus on the act of receiving. My findings are based on in-depth interviews with over three hundred givers and recipients of care from a number of different organizations, including faith-based, government, and non-sectarian organizations. In these interviews, recipients talk about how they interpret the care they receive from others, how they attach meaning to what they receive, and the way they see their relationships with givers. The interviews dig deeper into the answers recipients would give to the questions policymakers often ask: how do recipients feel when they receive from a religious organization versus the government? Do they feel there are strings attached? Do they feel that some organizations are more effective than others? The findings that emerge from this dissertation address the larger issue of how recipients interpret caregiving as a whole, rather than dwelling on the differences between specific organizations. In fact, what emerges from this research is not an argument about government organizations being more or less helpful than faith-based ones, but rather the importance of the cultural context of care, no matter the organization, and the crucial nature of recipients' interpretations of themselves as worthy of that care.