标题：Emotions and Belonging: Constructing Individual Experience and Organizational Functioning in the Context of an Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) Program
摘要：The analytical approach of this article is inspired by C. Wright Mills’ (1959) notion of “the sociological imagination.”Individual experience is viewed through the lens of the wider social context, particularly that ofthe organization. The socio-organizational context is then viewed through the lens of individual experience.The aim of this bi-directional gaze is to explore the relationship between individual experience and widersociety. And in doing so, to identify and reveal the shared motifs—the significant, recurrent themes andpatterns—that link and construct personal experience and social world.The aims, findings, and research processes of the original study are rooted in the instrumental epistemologyof program evaluation. Specifically, a mixed-method implementation-evaluation of a local non-governmentalorganization’s Orphans and Vulnerable Children program. The aim of this article is to take the analysesand findings of that evaluation beyond its epistemic roots. Qualitative data were disentangled from theconfines of thematic analysis and freed into their original narrative form. This allowed for a deeply reflexive“second reading,” which brings whole narratives into a dialogue with original findings, contextual factors,and sociological discourse.Key conceptual anchors are located in Vanessa May’s ideas on the self and belonging, and in MargaretWetherell’s writings on affect and emotion. These are important aspects of working with children, particularlyorphans and vulnerable children in South Africa, where many fall through the cracks of government’ssocial services. A second, deeper, qualitative reading of the narratives of children, their parents/caregivers, andthe organization’s staff, explores three key pathways of individual and group experience that are inextricablylinked to emotions and belonging, and which co-construct the social functioning of the organization itself.
关键词：Emotions; Belonging; Identity; Organizational Functioning; Orphans and Vulnerable Children;(OVC); Sociological Imagination; Social Constructivism
