ABSTRACT
Mentoring programs (Patenschaften) have gained increasing popularity as a mode of civic involvement in Germany over the last 15 years. These programs connected to social work are institutionalized forms of relationship-building between volunteers and different target groups with the aim of supporting the latter. This chapter portrays mentoring in two programs in Munich: one for children who live with parents who have a mental illness and one for refugees. Based on ethnographic research, the chapter offers an interpretation of the ethical ambition of relationship-building and its intersection with fears and hopes regarding the social fabric of Munich and society in general. From the perspective of an anthropology of ethics, I understand mentoring as a care practice in the context of problematizations of a society drifting apart and urban anonymity. Aiming at counteracting these developments, volunteers try to embody the ideal of a relational subject that creates close ties with strangers and, thereby, overcomes socioeconomic and cultural differences in a-hierarchical relationships. I show that mentoring builds on ideals of ‘good’ urbanity in terms of heterogeneity and tolerance, as well as on negative connotations of urban social isolation and anonymity. Even though mentoring as a sociocultural practice seems to be a rather privatized, depoliticized way of support, mentors use it to participate in and connect to wider sociopolitical processes.
