Disaster Volunteers as Practitioners of “Care” : A Case Study of Volunteer Activities at Local Community Hubs in the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake

ケア　ノ　ニナイテ　ト　シテ　ノ　サイガイ　ボランティア　レイワ　6ネン　ノトハントウジシン　デノ　チイキ　キョテン　ニ　オケル　ボランティア　カツドウ　ヲ　ジレイ　ニ

ヨリマサ, リョウタ

Yorimasa, Ryota

ボランティアによるケア

「能動態／受動態」

「能動態／中動態」

disaster volunteers

volunteer care

"active voice/passive voice"

“active voice/middle voice”

This paper explores the potential role of ordinary disaster volunteers as agents of care, drawing on practices observed at local support hubs following the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake. In this context, volunteers were typically categorized into “specialist volunteers,” who provided expert forms of assistance（For example, volunteers operating heavy machinery, volunteers supporting the operation of evacuation centers, and volunteers providing medical care.）, and “ordinary volunteers,” who were not conventionally recognized as care-givers. The paper distinguishes between two conceptualizations of care: “care” framed within the active/passive voice, and “＜care＞” situated within the active/middle voice. The active voice/middle voice is, for example, in volunteering to help others, one finds oneself being supported and energized in return. The latter arises through a relational process in which those offering support endeavor to respond to the subtle and often ambiguous signals of those receiving it. Yet disaster volunteers are frequently constrained by the normative question, “What can I do as a volunteer?”, a perspective that reinforces an active/passive dichotomy and obscures the ways in which ordinary volunteers are already engaged in ＜care＞. Through analysis of practices such as relief supply distribution and footbath services, this study demonstrates that ordinary volunteers do, in fact, perform ＜care＞. Moreover, it argues that encounters with survivors and the cultivation of sustained relationships enable the fixed structure of active/passive roles to be readily inverted into an active/middle dynamic. This inversion becomes operative when volunteers confront and engage with the survivors’ inner struggles, thereby generating ＜care＞ as a co-produced, situated, and transformative practice.