THE POLITICS OF AESTHETICS IN VOLUNTEER TOURISM
Section snippets
INTRODUCTION
One of the fastest growing niche tourism markets in the world, volunteer tourism is a type of tourism where people pay to participate in conservation or development projects (Lyons et al., 2012, Mintel, 2008). Drawing on recent scholarship in critical tourism studies as well as 16 months of ethnographic research in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I address the “politics of aesthetics” in development oriented volunteer tourism in the Global South. By “aesthetics,” I mean two things. First, I draw on
POVERTY AESTHETICS
Poverty is a core aspect of development oriented volunteer tourism where experiences are based on a common goal of overcoming economic and social marginalization. Yet, when volunteer tourists confront poverty, they often become uncomfortable and seek ways to negotiate personal anxieties regarding the inequality of the encounter by aestheticizing the host community members’ poverty as authentic and cultural. This strategy, I observed, facilitates opportunities for volunteer tourists to continue
AFFECTIVE ENCOUNTERS WITH POVERTY
In addition to aestheticizing poverty, volunteer tourists’ encounter with poverty tends to evoke an affective response. Affect refers to the impulsive aspects of human proclivities that are beyond empirical identification and are increasingly seen as integral to the tourism experience (Picard, 2012, Robinson, 2012). Often used as a synonym for emotion, affect refers to what are perceived as prediscursive embodied feelings, movements and human drives. The prediscursive emotionality of affective
POLITICIZING AESTHETICS IN VOLUNTEER TOURISM
Within volunteer tourism, the relationship between givers and receivers are naturalized. This binary implies a priori uneven power relationship on which the experience is based. Yet, this relationship is “naturalized” within the “helping discourse” (Dove, 1994) that is widely perpetuated throughout the industry. This process leads to the depoliticization of volunteer tourism. As Zizek describes Ranciere’s theoretical perspective, “the basic aim of antidemocratic politics always—and by
VOLUNTEER TOURISM AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
As Margaret Swain observes, “Tourism is an industry built on distinctions between strangers and friends, with inherent potentials for both oppression and empowerment” (Swain, 2009, p. 505). Volunteer tourism is particularly well positioned to facilitate opportunities for both outcomes because of the intimacy of the encounter. Indeed, the capacity for volunteer tourism operators to contribute to broader social justice agendas has been questioned (Guttentag, 2009, Lyons et al., 2012, Raymond and
CONCLUSION
In this article, I reflected on the politics of aesthetics in volunteer tourism in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Drawing on Ranciere’s notion of aesthetics as the structured way human sense is organized as well as recent work in critical tourism studies on the role of aesthetics in tourism encounters, I argued that volunteer tourism provides an aesthetic structure that depoliticizes and dehistoricizes the framing of global economic inequality. This aesthetic structure is perpetuated by the
Acknowledgements
This article is based on research supported by the Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad and Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowships. I kindly acknowledge Chiang Mai University and Payap University in Chiang Mai which acted as local institutional sponsors. The National Research Council Thailand provided me with research clearance. I am grateful to the NGOs who facilitated the opportunity for me to conduct my research at their organizations as well as the host community members and
Mary Mostafanezhad (Lecturer in the Department of Tourism at the University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, Otago 9054, New Zealand. Email: <[email protected]>). Her main research interests lie at the intersection of the cultural politics and political economy of tourism development in Southeast Asia. This paper is based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She has published on volunteer, cultural and ecotourism.
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2021, Annals of Tourism ResearchCitation Excerpt :Recently, however, they have come under critical scrutiny, with voluntourism becoming a practice of particular concern (M. Mostafanezhad, 2014a, 2014b; Richey, 2016; H.L. Sin, 2009, 2010). Indeed, Mostafanezhad (2013c, p. 150) even suggests that ‘volunteer tourism perpetuates an aesthetic structure that systematically depoliticises the global economic inequality on which the experience is based’. Voluntourism has thus been criticised for becoming a cultural practice that contributes to the aestheticisation, rather than problematisation, of poverty.
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2020, Annals of Tourism ResearchCitation Excerpt :First, Fig. 1 illustrates how volunteers and host project managers understand schools to be valuable for assisting impoverished children who they see as eager and in need of aid. Scholars have noted how perceiving and experiencing this poverty alleviation is of particular importance to the volunteer tourist (Frazer & Waitt, 2016; Mostafanezhad, 2013; Sin, 2009). Therefore, this accentuates the objectified cultural capital of the school, as schools are perceived as locations central to poverty alleviation of impoverished children.
Mary Mostafanezhad (Lecturer in the Department of Tourism at the University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, Otago 9054, New Zealand. Email: <[email protected]>). Her main research interests lie at the intersection of the cultural politics and political economy of tourism development in Southeast Asia. This paper is based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She has published on volunteer, cultural and ecotourism.