Corporate sponsored activism on campus: 5 Days for the Homeless – GoAuto at University of Alberta School of Business. A challenge in the cold. Worthy of some reflection on effectiveness and the skein of relationships being drawn around a topic of concern but what we might call a persistent “social margin”, which seems both tenacious, ineffectively addressed and interlocked with a set of institutional responses that create a numbing effect in political discourse, public awareness and response to social issues downloaded or spun out to the voluntary sector as a new margin by the neoliberal state, at the same time as routinizing charity and, yes, building awareness. Compare the progress of Habitat for Humanity and Homeward Trust.
-Rob Shields (University of Alberta)