Voluntarism, health and place: bringing an emerging field into focus

Abstract

Featuring a review of health geography contributions to the recent 'voluntary turn' in the health and social sciences, this paper introduces a theme section comprising five other papers that explore the links among voluntarism, health and place. The introductory paper elucidates the emergence of health voluntarism as a field of study within geography and highlights the crucial difference 'place' makes to understanding voluntary activity in the context of health, care and wellbeing. Questions are raised about theoretical, methodological and policy contributions and potential avenues for fulfilling a more inclusive 'health geographies of voluntarism' are discussed.