The Spirit of Service: The Neoliberal Promotion of Community Volunteering and the Performativity of the Commons in Austerity Britain
New Formations - Print ISSN 0950-2378 - Online ISSN 1741-0789
Volume 2025 Number 115
The Spirit of Service: The Neoliberal Promotion of Community Volunteering and the Performativity of the Commons in Austerity Britain
Julia Boll pages 32‑49
DOI: 10.3898/NEWF:115.02.2025
Abstract
The coronation liturgy of King Charles III and Queen Camilla (6 May 2023), themed ‘Called to Serve’, linked royal, political and ecclesiastical authority through a shared emphasis on ‘service to others’ as a defining aspect of ‘Britishness’.1 In his address, then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promoted a nationwide volunteering initiative scheduled for the coronation weekend, positioning ‘acts of kindness’ as a tribute to a ‘spirit of service’ associated with the new era.2 This convergence of religious and political discourse underscores communal affect as a precursor to democracy, tying national identity to the performance of ‘serving the community’.
This article examines how contemporary invocations of the commons and practices of commoning are mobilised within state-sponsored narratives of civic participation in Britain. It argues that the commons is increasingly staged as a performative mode of shared responsibility and belonging. The commons, understood here as inherently performative, emerges through collective practices and produces an affective basis of shared identity and belonging that recalls Victor Turner’s communitas3, while remaining open to appropriation within neoliberal cultural and political logics. Amid economic strain, appeals to voluntary work and social solidarity, which entail privatising and moralising public services, resonate with neoliberal modes of governance. Reduced social services and infrastructures are reinterpreted through narratives of community spirit and nostalgic mythologising thereof, which both legitimise austerity and soften its effects.
While often associated with progressive or oppositional politics, the commons is shown here to be analytically plastic and readily appropriated within centre-right discourse, where it becomes a resource for reframing austerity and civic withdrawal as expressions of community spirit and moral obligation. In this context, appeals to collective service create an affective sense of solidarity that echoes notions of communitas, while shifting public provision into privatised and moralised forms of participation. Finally, the article considers whether it remains possible to conceptualise forms of commoning that resist neoliberal enclosure.
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To cite this article
Julia Boll (2025) The Spirit of Service: The Neoliberal Promotion of Community Volunteering and the Performativity of the Commons in Austerity Britain, New Formations, 2025(115), 32-49 . https://doi.org/10.3898/NEWF:115.02.2025