Save the World in a Week: Volunteer Tourism, Development and Difference
Barbara Vodopivec and Rivke Jaffe
aIndependent Researcher.
bLeiden University, Leiden.
Abstract
Alternative forms of tourism such as eco-tourism feature prominently in development policy
and literature. This article focuses on international volunteer tourism, a specific form of
tourism that is closely linked to a range of development projects in low-income countries.
This form of ‘tourism with a development agenda’ has become increasingly popular among
young people from developed countries. We argue that volunteer tourism both reflects and
contributes to a new logic of development. This form of travel can be understood as a
particular, neoliberal form of development practice, in which development is not only
privatized but can be packaged as a marketable commodity. We focus critically on the process
of volunteering and the interactions that take place within this form of tourism, with a focus
on the concurrent commercialization of development and cultural difference.
Keywords: volunteering; tourism; anthropology of development; Guatemala; neoliberalism;
mobilities
Introduction
Following increasing academic and policy critiques of mass tourism, various forms of
‘alternative’ tourism have come to feature prominently in development policy and literature.
In Latin America in particular, pro-poor, community-based and eco-tourism have been the
focus of much attention, as these initiatives came to be viewed as improved options for
pursuing development and combating global inequalities. Development oriented volunteer
tourism is one of these new forms that has been especially popular, appealing to the desire of
many young people in the developed world to effect a positive change abroad. However, this
form of travel is indicative not only of changes in the tourism industry, but of shifts in
development ideology and practice as well. While the phenomenon of volunteer tourism has
emerged as a new research topic over the past decade (for example, Wearing, 2001; Simpson,
2004; McIntosh and Zahra, 2007; Lyons and Wearing, 2008), the ways in which it both
reflects and contributes to a new logic of development have not been fully analyzed.
This article focuses on international volunteer tourism. Following Wearing’s (2001,
p. 1) popular definition, we understand volunteer tourism as involving ‘those tourists who, for
various reasons, volunteer in an organised way to undertake holidays that might involve
aiding or alleviating the material poverty of some groups in society, the restoration of certain
environments or research into aspects of society or environment’.1Our particular focus is,
however, on volunteer tourism that takes place within development projects in low-income
countries.
1
It might be argued that definitions of volunteers are inherently problematic in their implication that volunteers
represent a given, bounded and homogenous social group. This article is an attempt for more attention to the
dynamic process in which volunteers construct their social identities. Definitions of volunteers and volunteer
tourism do, however, point to ideal types which can influence volunteers themselves. Although their volunteer
identities are constructed in and through the volunteer encounter – as prior to involvement in volunteer work, the
volunteer may be a tourist, a backpacker or a Spanish-language student – these ideas have an important influence
on the process of their identity formation.
1
We argue that volunteer tourism can be understood as a particular, neoliberal form of
development practice, in which development is not only privatized but can be packaged as a
marketable commodity. In order to understand the complex relations between volunteer work,
tourism and development, this article asks how ideas of development and cultural difference
are commodified, consumed, challenged and reproduced within what we call the ‘volunteer
encounter’, following Cohen’s (1984) concept of the tourist encounter. Through an
examination of volunteering in the Guatemalan town of Antigua, the article explores the
expectations and experiences of the development practitioners – the volunteers – and, to a
lesser extent, the hosts. We discuss the feelings of disappointment and confusion that many
volunteers expressed, relating these to broader constructions of development and difference
and their mediation through the marketing of development volunteer work by volunteer
sending agencies (VSAs). These sending agencies can be understood as any ‘organisation
which develops and organizes a volunteer tourism program and can range from a locally
based non-profit organisation, to a multinational commercially run organisation’ (Raymond,
2008, p. 49). These agencies operate at the intersection of a tourism industry shifting towards
alternative niche markets and a development industry that promotes private initiative.
What Kind of Development?
Development ideas within volunteer tourism cannot be analyzed outside of the broader
context of contemporary development discourse and practice. While the popularity of
volunteer tourism speaks to the ability of the tourism industry to find new niche markets, it
also reflects new ways in which the market has become central to development. The pervasive
influence of neoliberal ideologies is evident in, first, the outsourcing and privatization of
development practice, and, second, in the commodification and marketing of development
activities. Both tendencies are exemplified in volunteer tourism in development projects.
Development practice has undergone a process of privatization, as the actors
responsible for development are increasingly located in civil society (Mohan and Stokke,
2000, p. 247). In contrast to previous top-down, state-led economic development models,
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and local communities are now promoted as the
appropriate actors and spaces for development. Although this might be a promising tendency
within development discourse and practice, it should not be accepted uncritically.
First, this privatization reflects a new seemingly depoliticized form of neoliberal
hegemony, in which governability is more important than empowerment (Manji and
O’Coill, 2002; Townsend et al, 2002; Miraftab, 2004). Rather than promoting democracy and
efficiency, the outsourcing of development may undermine the capabilities of the local state.
The financial dependence of private sector development actors on foreign donors can trigger
both internal competition and external cooptation. In addition, these private actors in
development may well suffer similar issues to the state in terms of efficiency, transparency
and accountability.
Second, this new localism in development echoes volunteer tourism discourse
(described in more detail below) as it tends to essentialize the local as a disconnected,
apolitical place that hosts relatively homogeneous communities (Mohan and Stokke, 2000). It
implies a natural association of a place, culture and people, neglecting differences within a
locality and obscuring sameness between different localities. Places are constituted by
economic, social, cultural and political relations and flows of commodities, information and
people that extend far beyond a given locality and it is precisely through these flows that a
place becomes most local and specific (Tsing, 2005, p. 126).
In addition to this outsourcing of development practice, volunteer tourism indicates a
new way in which development activities become commodities within a tourism niche
market. As Hutnyk (1996, p. x) notes, ‘Rather than working towards social transformation,
2
alternative travel and charity work seems often to tinker at the edges of capitalist expansion
into new market niches’. Specifically, this process of commodification finds ways to
capitalize on altruism while drawing on the notion of difference embedded in development.
The clear-cut boundaries between various categorizations – us/them, local/global,
developed/developing, problem-causers/problem-solvers – that are central to volunteer
identities are also essential to the packaging and selling of volunteer tourism.
The sending and receiving organizations play a significant part in constructing these
categorizations as distinct; by translating complex and heterogeneous relations into
homogenous units of beneficiaries and volunteers, organizations emphasize boundaries
between these groups, mapping and marketing zones of inclusion and exclusion. The end
result is the joint commodification of development and difference.
The packaging, marketing and selling of development-focused ‘altruism’ also reflects
the rise of political consumerism as a global force. Again reflecting the neoliberal turn,
consumer choices are increasingly flaunted as an effective, easy-access form of marketbased
politics, with a global reach. As the market becomes highlighted as an important site of
politics, collective action and ethics, its politicization goes accompanied by the privatization
of politics. This shift towards the market may restrict access to the realm of politics to those
with money, while ‘political’ consumer choices may turn out to be temporary trends that are
replaced by a newer fad or abandoned when consumers’ income levels slump (Micheletti,
2004).
Tourism Transformations, Volunteering and Development
The political nature of consumer choices in tourism has gained increasing recognition
over the past two decades. Various authors (Smith and Eadington, 1992; Brohman, 1996;
Ashley et al, 2001; Mowforth and Munt, 2008; Telfer and Sharpley, 2008) note the broad
transformations in tourism that have taken place, as alternative forms of travel gained
prominence.
While mass tourism was a popular development strategy during the 1960s and 1970s, its
social and environmental impacts soon led to major critiques. Rather than the driving force of
development it was made out to be by various national governments and multilateral lending
agencies, tourism came to be viewed as one of the key players in the unequal and uneven
distribution of wealth (Pattullo, 1996, p. 5; Scheyvens, 2007). Moreover, the detrimental
ecological effects of large-scale tourism activities in often fragile environments became
increasingly visible. Cultural change among so-called traditional, mainly indigenous groups,
felt to result from large numbers of foreign visitors, also emerged as a source of concern
(Mowforth et al, 2007; Mowforth and Munt, 2008; Wilson, 2008).
In a context of national and international criticism as well as more individualized postFordist tourist desires, a set of so-called new tourisms emerged. Aiming to satisfy both
visitors and hosts while respecting natural, social and cultural values in host country and
communities, sustainable tourism became an important focus within broader discussions of
sustainable development. Sustainable development-oriented forms of tourism such as ecotourism, pro-poor, community-based, participatory and volunteer tourism became increasingly
popular, if at times only in rhetoric. In Latin America, sustainable tourism initiatives often
focus on indigenous communities and nature conservation. The shift towards sustainable
tourism coincided with an increased demand for active and interactive forms of tourism that
involve a variety of experiences or adventures, rather than the passive consumption many
critical travelers associate with traditional mass tourism. Rather than replacing mainstream
tourism, however, this range of sustainable and active new tourisms should be seen as
coexisting with traditional practices, as the differences have become blurred (Smith and
Eadington, 1992; Stronza, 2001; Mowforth and Munt, 2008).
3
Volunteer tourism is often touted as one of the most promising forms of sustainable
tourism, a ‘new “poster-child” for alternative tourism’ (Lyons and Wearing, 2008, p. 6).
Wearing (2001, p. 12) argues that volunteer tourism ‘can be viewed as a development strategy
leading to sustainable development and centring the convergence of natural resource qualities,
locals and the visitor that all benefit from tourism activity’. Cross-cultural contact and mutual
collaboration in local development projects have become its most prominent features.
Volunteer tourism is seen as redefining tourist destinations as mutually beneficial, interactive
sites for both tourists and host communities. It is generally presented as attempting to move
beyond superficial social interactions, allowing volunteers to gain self-developmental
experiences and local communities to achieve sustainable community development (McIntosh
and Zahra, 2007; Lyons and Wearing, 2008).
For young people in particular, volunteering is becoming an extremely popular way to
travel, especially to so-called developing countries.2This relates not only to the active
promotion of volunteering as an important form of sustainable travel, but also to the
emergence of the gap year phenomenon in the United States, Europe, Australia and New
Zealand in the past decade or so. This gap year has become a recognized and institutionalized
phenomenon and refers to the year young people from high-income countries take off before
pursuing further studies or work (Simpson, 2004). Travelling to developing countries to help
the poor has become a popular way to spend such a year and is encouraged by schools,
universities, churches and even governments. While this is indeed an opportunity to learn
more about the world, we argue for exploring the commodification of volunteer tourism, the
privatization of development, and the extent to which volunteer experiences serve to bolster
rather than challenge pre-existing notions about development and people living in developing
countries.
Case Study and Methods
We use the case study of volunteering in the Guatemalan town of Antigua to analyze
these intersections of volunteering, tourism and development. This article draws on fieldwork
in and around Antigua, conducted by the first author during three months in 2008. Methods
included participation as a volunteer in three organizations, which offered a possibility to
observe the volunteer encounter and to participate in it, facilitating access to the people
working on the projects and the observation of on-site interactions. In addition to participant
observation, a total of 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Spanish and English
with volunteers, project staff beneficiaries and Spanish language schools, and included
volunteers from other projects in the area of Antigua and Guatemala City. Interviews were
complemented by 19 on-site surveys with volunteers, five email surveys with volunteers after
they had returned home, and numerous informal conversations with all involved in volunteer
encounters. Interview and survey topics included information on motivations, expectations,
impacts and consequences, time and place of interactions and personal background
information. An additional method involved visual and discourse analysis of online
promotional material of VSAs.
The research focused on three different volunteer projects. The first project, referred to
here as Nuestros niños3 was a small project with approximately 40 children affiliated with it.
The project, situated in a village outside of Antigua, was aimed mainly at children, centering
on educational support within a broader range of efforts including child health programs and
2
We use the distinction between developing and developed countries with some caution, as it is exactly the
centrality and construction of this dichotomy within volunteer projects (and beyond) that we wish to scrutinize.
3
All names of organizations, volunteers and beneficiaries used here are pseudonyms. The work of the three
organizations is, to varying degrees, informed by Christian beliefs.
4
psychological help for the whole family. This small Guatemalan NGO was run by a director
from another Central American country who had been living in Guatemala for over 10 years.
During three months of observation, approximately 10 volunteers came and left. Some
stopped just for a day, some for a week, only two stayed for two months. The second project,
called Luz de Jesus here, was facilitated by a Spanish language school and involved a
volunteer placement in a Catholic hospital in Antigua that received almost 700 volunteers per
year. This was a very large hospital accommodating mentally and physically handicapped
people of all ages. The flow of volunteers working in the hospital was constant; many came
for a day or two, some individually and some in larger groups. A relatively small number
stayed for a month or more. The third project, referred to here as Hijos de Dios, was part of an
international organization that ran a site near Antigua. Situated on the outskirts of Antigua,
this large project worked with hundreds of families living in the surrounding areas. Its
activities ranged from educational support to the provision of food, medical care and housing.
The project was run by an American organization that ran projects in the United States and
Africa as well. The organization received hundreds of volunteers per year.
These projects were selected in the field as pre-fieldwork access proved challenging
and accessing them as a volunteer through a VSA was prohibitively expensive. Ten VSAs
declined to facilitate research within their programs; some stating they did not ‘offer free
trips’, others declaring that they ‘have great relations with the local communities’ although
nothing to the contrary had been implied. The bias this selection of projects entailed was
mitigated by extensive off-site interaction with volunteers from other projects throughout
Antigua. The first author spent a period of one to three months on each project, enabling her
to experience different volunteer timeframes and to reflect on how timeframes influence
volunteers’ and her own perceptions and engagement in a project. Participating as a volunteer
rather than as a beneficiary or as staff within an organization influenced the author’s role as a
researcher and affected what she was told, how she was treated and the way she gathered and
interpreted her information. It was easier for the author to relate to and identify with the
volunteers’ perspective than with any other perspectives, as she did all the things a volunteer
does: taking Spanish lessons in the morning, doing volunteer work during the day, going out
in the evenings with other volunteers, talking about the projects and reflecting on the
volunteer experience. The researcher was therefore not a neutral participant or observer and
can speak only from a certain position or perspective.4
Volunteers and Tourism in Antigua
While contemporary Guatemala remains a popular destination for mass tourism and package
holidays, it also attracts large numbers of independent travelers, development workers,
missionaries, backpackers and volunteers. This reflects the broader transformations in tourism
sketched above in which tourists become ‘travelers’ and the interactive tourist experience
replaces the passive tourist gaze. The Guatemalan government is actively involved in
promoting sustainable tourism, as witnessed for instance in the National Policy for
Development of Sustainable Tourism of Guatemala 2004–2014.5 This shift is also driven by
foreign demand, and a growing number of national and international agencies specialize in
4
Participant observation is not so much about speaking from an insider/outsider perspective as about reflecting
on the participation in the construction of the field. Through the field a researcher forms part of the social
relations he or she describes (Atkinson, 1992, p. 9). It is crucial for any researcher to understand and reflect on
the way research was conducted and what her role was. According to Mand (2004, p. 37), awareness of the ‘self
’ in fieldwork can be a significant analytical tool in understanding interlocutors’ ideas, notions or perceptions; in
addition, ‘the “self ” as informant and as a mediator between one and another cultural context moves away from
the fantasy of an objective neutral fieldworker’.
5
Polἱtica Nacional para el Desarrollo Turἱstico Sostenible de Guatemala 2004–2014.
5
selling ecotourism, adventure tourism, responsible tourism and volunteer tourism in
Guatemala.
Short-term volunteers can be found throughout the country, working with sea turtles
on the Pacific Coast or on archaeological sites in El Pete´n, building houses in the highlands
of Central Guatemala or helping out in women’s shelters in Guatemala City. Volunteers are
omnipresent in and around the city of Antigua, especially during the main tourism seasons,
and there are dozens of organizations offering volunteer placements in the area. The city and
its surroundings house a large number of volunteers working with children. Recognized as a
UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979, Antigua is one of Guatemala’s most popular tourist
destinations. As the former capital of colonial Guatemala, it is recognized for its Spanish
colonial architecture and spectacular volcano ringed natural setting. Antigua is a bustling
town, with a wide range of small cafes, bars and restaurants and dozens of Spanish language
schools catering to international language students.
Little (2004, p. 64) describes Antigua as a town of contradictions: ‘To tourists,
Antigua is both inauthentic, corrupted by tourism and tourists themselves, and authentic, a
place where “Indians”, colonial architecture and Western conveniences blend together’. This
is reflected in the opinions of many volunteers, for whom Antigua provides a great
combination of moving between what they perceive as authentic poor villages in the
surrounding areas (where many of them work) and a town that can provide them with more or
less everything they are used to back home. These attractive features filter through in the way
that many VSAs promote Antigua.
The volunteers represented in this study were mainly students or recent graduates,
between 20 and 30 years of age. For some of them, this was their gap year, a year off from
work and study, while others had been travelling for a couple of months and decided that they
‘want to do more than just travel’.6 Stoddart and Rogerson (2004, p. 315), who also identify
those in their early twenties as one of the main age groups in volunteer tourism, characterize
the volunteers they encountered in a South African project as ‘people who secure a sense of
physical, emotional and spiritual fulfillment from actual participation in a project’. In our
research, volunteers expressed similar motivations for engaging in volunteer work. The main
two reasons they articulated were a desire to do something good for someone else, and getting
to know Guatemalan culture better. The emphasis, however, was on doing good. They also
felt that by doing volunteer work and helping others, they could learn more about those who
they saw as dissimilar to them. Therese and Jim, a Swiss couple, expressed their desire to
learn more ‘about their way of doing things, doing projects and not coming and saying you
should do this and this and this’.7 Volunteering, then, is also perceived as a learning
experience, where, by learning about others, volunteers also learn about themselves.
Many volunteers chose to volunteer in Guatemala because they wanted to travel to a
developing country. While most lacked specific knowledge of the country’s history and
politics or of the social problems Guatemalans face, volunteers were well aware of global
inequalities and all of them viewed volunteering as way to contribute to reducing this
inequity. Numerous volunteers expressed their dissatisfaction with the ‘comfortable life back
home where everything is handed to everyone and people still complain’, as Ann
Marie, a Canadian volunteer, put it.8 They sought to avoid the comfortable materialism of the
West and escape into the real, hard life of the so-called Third World where they could make a
difference. This move beyond comfort was also connected to a certain cosmopolitan outlook.
According to Raymond, a Swedish volunteer, volunteering is for people whose world is
bigger than their neighborhood, city, or country: ‘I don’t agree with this type of living that
6
Interview, 19/02/2008.
Interview, 19/02/2008.
8
Interview, 19/02/2008.
7
6
people just y they start family and have work and all that. It depends on how big your world
is. If your world is as big as Sweden or Stockholm then it’s okay. But if your world is bigger
than that you demand more’.9
In addition to highlighting the cognitive and moral aspects of volunteering, volunteers
also understood their work as an affective experience. Although they were often concerned
about the extent to which their activities were useful, most volunteers in Antigua developed
an emotional connection to their project, mediated through the relations they developed with
the beneficiaries and the organization staff. As Raymond stated frankly: ‘I got to know the
children, I got to love the children, so it’s kind of hard to leave them’. The emotional
component of specific volunteer work and the broader volunteer experience was also related
to the volunteers’ constant negotiation between their expectations and their actual
experiences, particularly since most of the time they did not really get what VSAs and other
organizations had promised them. The unique and individual experience the volunteers
coming to Antigua had anticipated soon turned out to be a mass experience and a rather
unexceptional way of travelling. Therese, the Swiss volunteer introduced above, was quite
shocked by the number of volunteers present: ‘I didn’t expect so many volunteers. It’s
unbelievable, it’s like a factory’. As there were frequent mismatches between a project’s
actual need for workers and the number of volunteers present, volunteers often felt cheated by
the VSAs that organized their placements. As successful marketing brought more volunteers
to the area, it further detracted from volunteers’ sense of a unique volunteer work experience.
Most of the volunteers, particularly those volunteering for the first time, had become
involved in projects through VSAs, often international ones. The VSAs organize volunteer
holidays by selling volunteer packages that include Spanish-language lessons,
accommodation with a host family, food and volunteer work. They range from nonprofit to
commercial and for-profit organizations and are mostly based in the United States, United
Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. On average, VSAs organizing volunteer trips to
Guatemala charge US$1500–2000 for four weeks of volunteer work, accommodation, food
and two weeks of Spanish classes. Some charge over $3000. A number of agencies in
Guatemala have their own projects (for example, Global Vision International), but many
collaborate with Spanish-language schools that have contacts with volunteer projects. The
term volunteer package is used broadly by volunteer agencies despite a general association of
the word package with mass tourism holidays. Buying a package means purchasing a whole
range of things assembled by someone else and it suggests a specific way that volunteering
and Guatemala are supposed to be experienced. Volunteer work, host family, Spanish
language and salsa lessons together form the real Guatemalan experience.
A few cases of individual volunteers provide illustrations of the motivations,
experiences and emotions that characterize volunteering. Alan and his friend Rick, young men
from Ireland in their early twenties, were both volunteers at the Nuestros niños project. They
had just finished college and wanted to do something that involved travelling. ‘And it’s a
good way to travel, if you volunteer’, Alan explained. Travelling and volunteering are
expensive and they had both worked for six months to save enough to leave Ireland. Alan had
previous volunteer experience, having spent 10 weeks in South Africa, while Rick was a
newcomer. Like most volunteers, though, Rick had been contemplating it for quite some
time.10 The majority of volunteers had not made the decision to travel and volunteer
overnight; rather, this involved planning, saving up money and working hard to be able to
afford a holiday with a purpose.
9
Interview, 22/01/2008.
Interview, 24/01/2008.
10
7
Raymond was a 24-year-old volunteer who had been thinking of volunteering since he
was 16 when, witnessing children living in poverty and squalor in Cuba, he decided that he
would one day work with children somewhere in Latin America. Hosting three refugee Cuban
families in his mother’s house in Sweden encouraged him to start looking for volunteer
possibilities in Central America. After a few years of exploring options and saving money,
Raymond and his friend Yorgos, a 24-year-old Swedish Greek, found an opportunity in
Guatemala ‘that felt just right’. Both Yorgos and Raymond were tired of Sweden, and Yorgos
admitted that he had been suffering from minor depression and ‘just wanted to get out’. He
explained: ‘So I was, like, we can get out of the country and do something good for someone
else, because we are very fortunate to be living where we are, where we have, like,
everything’. For Raymond and Yorgos, going to volunteer in Central America was their
project, a way for them to make a difference in the world. They spent time volunteering on
various projects in and around Antigua, including five weeks working with children in a small
village nearby. According to Raymond, this project was something in between a school and a
day-care center for socially deprived children. Their work revolved around education,
teaching them with ‘what we know and what we have, like English, geography, Spanish, paint
and the situation there is very poor, it’s not an established organization, it’s just this woman
who established an organization and a couple of volunteers’.11
Therese and Jim, a volunteer couple in their mid-twenties from Switzerland, decided
to volunteer because they wanted ‘to do more than just travel, to get to know Guatemalan
culture better’. Therese had just finished nursing school and felt her background would be a
good starting point for doing volunteer work. An important motivation for Jim was
encouragement from friends with volunteer experience. The couple had come to Guatemala
through a Swiss VSA. Jim, an electrical engineer, felt that his contribution to the project
where he was working was beneficial. Therese, however, had not found placement in any of
the local hospitals and ended up working in a local school where she felt that the only thing
she did was ‘cutting paper’. Her experience diverged from her expectations: ‘Maybe I was a
bit…well, not disappointed but…Maybe I need to change my idea, my point of view on
volunteer work. It’s not what I expected at all before coming down here. But I wouldn’t say I
am disappointed, it’s good to see the difference’.12
Making a Difference: Development as Leisure
Volunteers are committed to making a difference through their stay, specifically
through being part of the practices of development. The volunteer encounter, then, is a microspace where ideas on development are tested and reformulated. Volunteering is rarely
portrayed as an interaction between individuals and it is usually promoted by VSAs and
projects as help to the local community, to the Guatemalan people or to Guatemala as a
country. Hijos de Dios, for example, expressed its gratitude to volunteers for their help to the
‘poor families and children in Antigua’. Study Global, an organization promoting language
courses and volunteer opportunities around the world, claims that volunteers ‘will help
Guatemalan people’. Volunteers themselves refer to Guatemala as a ‘country that needs help’.
The language used by VSAs, however, rarely makes direct references to the word
‘development’. It is wrapped in slogans such as ‘making a difference’ or ‘helping’
(cf. Simpson, 2004, p. 683): ‘Make a difference! Live and work abroad helping children,
adults, animals and entire communities in less advantaged countries’.13 To portray the
importance of doing volunteer work the key concept used is that of ‘need’: ‘Explore the
11
Interview, 22/01/2008.
Interview, 19/02/2008.
13
http://www.travellersworldwide.com/, visited on 15/06/2008.
12
8
beauty of Guatemala while volunteering with those who need your help’.14These needs are
rarely identified and how well they can be met by largely short-term unskilled volunteers is
left unspecified (Simpson, 2004, p. 686). Narration of need and help constructs volunteers as
the help-givers while presenting beneficiaries as the needy. The need is further strengthened
by describing Guatemala as an ‘undermined society’.15
Making a difference is advertised as something that can be done by anyone with good
intentions who is willing to work hard. Although VSAs require volunteers to fill out
application forms or submit a CV, specific qualifications are almost never required. The
VSA Travellers announces: ‘No qualifications required: only a spirit of adventure and a sense
of humour! And you don’t need to be able to speak the local language either’.16 Skills can be
substituted by appropriate levels of ‘passion and desire’17 even for responsible positions such
as teaching. These organizations perpetuate a simplistic ideal of development that legitimizes
young unskilled international labor as a development ‘solution’ (Simpson, 2004, p. 682). That
volunteers will make an impact is not questioned but stated as a fact: ‘Whether you volunteer
for one week or six months, you will make difference to communities abroad’.18 By selling
one-week volunteer packages, VSAs promote the idea that doing something is better than
nothing, without reflecting on what is being done and how. It is assumed that sending
volunteers abroad will automatically benefit beneficiaries (Raymond, 2008, p. 49).19
Catherine, a an American volunteer in her early twenties, who worked with children from the
local garbage dump for four months, agreed with this, stating: ‘Even those people that come
for a short period of time or only give donations, I guess it’s better than nothing. And even if
they are stupid and ignorant they still make an effort to come, they still do something or they
want to do something’.20 In contrast, as noted above, many other volunteers evaluated the
benefits more ambivalently.
The popularity of volunteering has gone accompanied by a proliferation of projects
and increased competition between volunteer organizations. Marketing has become an
extremely important strategy in persuading volunteers to choose one organization over
another. Through marketing, organizations can effectively manage their images in order to
fund-raise for donations and recruit volunteers. They ensure volunteers that they can make a
change while also having fun; they offer an ‘exciting and personally inspiring experience and
you’ll develop memories that will be with you forever’.21
The perceptions of development that circulate within the volunteer encounter, then, are
based on the assumption that development – making a difference – can be ‘done’ in a
pleasurable way in one’s free time, as part of one’s holiday or leisure time. Jose´, the director
of an NGO in Guatemala City, saw this as a dangerous assumption because there is a large
difference between ‘giving your time to help and giving your time when you have nothing
14
http://www.volunteerabroad.com/listingsp3.cfm/listing/28073, visited on 13/02/2009.
http://www.mentorabroad.org/volunteer-abroad/volunteer-guatemala/volunteer-abroad-guatemalageneralinformation.asp, visited on 13/02/2009.
16
http://www.travellersworldwide.com/, visited on 13/02/2009.
17
http://www.ifrevolunteers.org/internship/teaching_internship.php, visited on 13/02/2009.
18
http://www.i-to-i.com/make-a-difference.html, visited on 13/02/2009.
19
The learning experience is also taken for granted. Very few organizations provide space for volunteers to
reflect on their experience, their work and the place visited. Pre-volunteer preparation, mid-term evaluations and
post-volunteer seminars are even rarer. When there is space for preparations, these mainly rely on models of
culture shock and development models of cultural sensitivity, preparing volunteers for integration into a
culturally and developmentally completely different society. The construction of cultural and development
difference between the developed and developing world remains unquestioned, while similarities between people
with diverse cultural, social and religious backgrounds go unmentioned.
20
Interview, 11/03/2008.
21
http://www.crossculturalsolutions.org/volunteering-abroad/when/volunteer-vacation.aspx,
visited on 13/02/2009.
15
9
else to do’.22 If helping others is someone’s leisure activity, what happens when that
individual has no more free time to give? This perception also implies that engaging with the
world’s problems and inequalities can be a time-out, and that the volunteers’ experience is
disconnected from their own lifestyles and behavior, in the field and at home.
In this light it is important to understand how VSA promotional material influences
volunteers’ expectations and experiences (cf. Coghlan, 2007). VSAs sometimes glamorize
projects, leading volunteers to develop unrealistic expectations of the projects (Callanan and
Thomas, 2005, p. 193). While driven by a desire to change the world and make a difference,
none of the volunteers felt they actually lived up to this idea. The advertisements depict a
situation that will be fun, but also based on hard work that will make a difference and change
peoples’ lives. While it is often fun, the nature of the volunteer work is usually not as
challenging and difficult as promised.
Yorgos, the Swedish Greek volunteer introduced above, explained that his
expectations ‘did not meet with the reality of being a volunteer. I thought I am going to be
like eight or nine hours a day, really working hard. But...it’s more like coming here and
keeping kids company’.23 Many volunteers had similar experiences, describing their volunteer
experience more like a break or a holiday. The anticipated hard work became a vacation,
hardships became playtime. The discrepancy between the expectations and experience of
work left many feeling rather unnecessary and useless. Anneli, a 20-year-old Swedish
volunteer, left her project at Luz de Jesus for another because she felt that she had nothing to
do there: ‘You don’t feel like they have any place for you and you feel a bit unnecessary
being there’.24
Many volunteers ended up questioning the impact of their work. Those who ended up
working in construction felt more satisfied with the result because the difference they made
was visible and they had a feeling of actually doing something meaningful. Many volunteers
expressed disappointment with the impact they were able to make with their volunteer work,
as experience proved that the practice of development is harder than implied in promotional
materials. According to Alan, the Irish volunteer working at Nuestros Niños, the situation
would have been the same had he not come to volunteer: ‘The school would still be running
and they would still be struggling with their lessons. I guess what we give them is someone to
focus their messing on for a few minutes every day. So I don’t think we have much actual
impact in what we do’.25
Volunteers tended to blame their limited impact on a lack of language skills, time or
on the organizations, rather than interrogating the broader concept of volunteer tourism itself.
In order to feel involved in ‘real’ volunteer work, volunteers need to be present at the ‘really’
poor projects serving the most marginalized where they feel they can truly make a difference.
If the project is not poor enough volunteers will search for it; if the work is not hard enough or
the impact minimal, they assert that they will come back and volunteer again, for a longer
time with more knowledge of Spanish or another skill. Many volunteers wanted to return in
order to give help they were not able to give. Rick, the Irish volunteer introduced earlier, said
he might volunteer again but if so he ‘would have to bring a skill, something that I could teach
the people that would benefit their lives’.26
The sense of disappointment and frustration many volunteers experienced and
expressed can also be understood as an effect of the individualized social responsibility that
neoliberalism engenders (see, for example, Rose, 1999). Previous generations may have been
22
Interview, 30/01/2008.
Interview, 22/01/2008.
24
Interview, 10/03/2008.
25
Interview, 24/01/2008.
26
Interview, 24/01/2008.
23
10
able to travel unburdened by the pressure to do good. However, many members of the current
generation of young people are caught between, on the one hand, this sense of personal
responsibility to make a change and, on the other, the structural difficulties of doing so. This
frustration is compounded by the growing awareness that corporate actors are poised to
commodify any desires, hopes and ideals they may cherish.
Making Difference: Othering and Identity within the Volunteer Encounter
While engaged in development work, much of what volunteers do is related to
‘making difference’: volunteer identities are formed mainly in relation to tourists and to local
beneficiaries, the two groups of significant Others. This process of defining the volunteer self
through othering is intimately connected to the construction of cultural boundaries and takes
place in what we call the ‘volunteer encounter’. We see this type of encounter as more than an
interaction between individuals involved in a volunteer project; the volunteer encounter is a
mutually created social space in which the actors involved can pursue their own agenda,
whether that entails achieving real contact with authentic Guatemalans, helping those in need,
or providing access to education, food or shelter. Such encounters are always context-specific,
being situated in a particular place and time and involving specific people with diverse
personal, social and cultural backgrounds.
The concept of the volunteer encounter builds on Erik Cohen’s (1984) ‘tourist
encounter’, which he describes as a transitory encounter in which actors are not oriented
towards the maintenance of a continued relationship. The volunteer encounter is both similar
and dissimilar, just as volunteers are both similar and dissimilar to tourists. Within the
volunteer encounter, a stronger emphasis is placed on establishing longer-term relationships
and achieving mutual trust; a certain continuity within relationships is necessary for
successful collaboration within a project. Yet despite the longer duration of the volunteer
encounter, it is ultimately transitory as volunteers, like tourists, leave. Both volunteers and
tourists may try to maintain good relationships for the duration of the encounter, although to
different extents and in different forms, but they do not necessarily think about the
consequences of their actions and relationships after the encounter ends.
The volunteer encounter is crucial for understanding how volunteering takes place, as
it is in and through the encounter that actors establish relations and construct both their own
identities as volunteers and the identity of the various ‘Others’. Yet even before the encounter,
volunteers have strong ideas about what volunteers should do and how they should behave.
Some volunteers contact each other through online social networks such as Facebook,
discussing preparations and expectations and exchanging advice. These preencounter online
contacts help to develop a sense of a community with a common goal. Participants refer to
themselves as a group rather than individuals, using the words ‘us’, ‘we’ and ‘our’ to
emphasize their commonality. They also differentiate themselves from the people they are
going to help. Rachel, a volunteer from New Zealand, was thrilled when she found out that
John from the United Kingdom would be going to the same project in Kenya, commenting:
‘Good to know that I won’t be completely alone on the other side of the world’.27 While
Rachel is, of course, aware that she will not be the only person on the project, she is happy to
know that she will not be the only volunteer and the only one from a developed country or the
Western world. These images are promoted by the volunteer marketing industry, which
portrays volunteers as ‘the helpers’ coming to lend a hand to those who are not just poor and
needy but also culturally and developmentally different and distant. Such advertising also
suggests that the helpers are different from tourists as well; they do more than just travel, they
27
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=34404680552&topic=5654, viewed on 18 December
2008.
11
engage in meaningful work that can change people’s lives. This reflects the process of
volunteers’ identity construction in relation to both tourists and beneficiaries.
We Are Not Tourists!
To some, being called a tourist amounts to nothing less than an insult, following the
association with mass tourism and its negative consequences. Since volunteer tourism
emerged from the opposition of sustainable tourism to mass tourism, the distinction between
volunteers and tourists is extremely important to volunteers. For this reason, we use the word
‘volunteers’ rather than ‘volunteer tourists’ in order to represent the way in which respondents
self-identified. Although volunteers combine volunteer work with tourism, distinguishing
themselves from tourists plays an important part in their identity constructions.
Volunteers constructed their difference from tourists in two ways. First, they felt they
could enter ‘authentic’ places and meet ‘authentic’ Guatemalans that were inaccessible to
tourists. Although they lived in Antigua, a tourist town, volunteers saw their travel to projects
in villages as stepping out of the non-authentic, tourist space. Travelling between Antigua and
the surrounding villages thus entailed moving between non-authentic and authentic
Guatemala, between tourist and volunteer spaces. To claim the ‘real’ volunteer experience,
volunteers need to work in villages not yet penetrated by the tourism industry, as Raymond,
the Swedish volunteer, explained: ‘I travel to Pastores, which isn’t that far, but there’s a lot of
difference from Antigua. I mean here in Antigua it’s so much easier, everyone speaks English,
you can go out, you can get all this adventure outside of volunteering, which is cool, but
depends on what you are here for’.28 To Raymond, experiencing Pastores meant experiencing
the real volunteer work and the real Guatemala and it was a means to distance himself from
tourists who rarely left Antigua.
Second, volunteers create a social distance between themselves and tourists through
work. While tourists come to Guatemala to enjoy their holiday, volunteers come to work and
make a change in a country characterized by poverty and inequality. Tourists are not only
perceived as being ignorant of these problems, but are also seen as contributing to it. Yorgos,
introduced above, was frustrated that ‘tourism nourished the poverty in some ways’. He felt
that ‘some tourists should have a license to travel before they even take a step outside of the
airport’.29 By constructing tourists as part of the problem, volunteers become part of the
solution, as helpers who travel the world and help anyone who is in need.
The distinction between tourists as problem-causers and volunteers as solutionbringers, enthusiastically promoted by the volunteer marketing industry, is somewhat
problematic as it takes volunteers’ beneficial role for granted. The volunteers in Antigua did
not necessarily behave differently from other tourists or backpackers. They went out to the
same restaurants, bars and dancing clubs, forming part of the tourism industry they viewed so
negatively. They did not always practice precisely what they ‘preached’. Nicola, a former
Guatemalan volunteer coordinator for an American VSA and an ex-bartender in a famous
volunteer ‘hangout’, spoke with some surprise of how volunteers eating in his bar would leave
half the food on their plates even as they discussed the children in their project who had no
food to eat. His story suggests that volunteering might be more about changing someone or
something out there, outside of ‘us’, and less about critical reflection on volunteers’ own
habits and lifestyles. Again, this kind of reflection is not encouraged by the organizations that
cater to volunteers.
28
29
Interview, 22/01/2008.
Interview, 22/01/2008.
12
Needing the Needy
The most significant Other in volunteer identity construction is the beneficiary, with
volunteers drawing boundaries by opposing help-givers and help-receivers. Mobility is again
a significant concept in this distinction, and VSAs and local projects figure prominently in
constructing and maintaining this boundary. Volunteers engage in volunteer work to establish
authentic relations with real Guatemalans and to give help through work. To fulfill their preset
goals, volunteers need a project to work on and they need somebody needy to help. This is
only possible through the organizations that enable their access to the project and the
beneficiaries. When volunteers enter the encounter, the project and beneficiaries are already
there and they perceive these as empirical givens. They rarely question how the project came
into being and how the beneficiaries became beneficiaries.
In analyzing the relation between development practice and policy, Mosse (2004)
gives an extensive analysis of the ways in which development projects are constructed
through negotiations, interpretations and translations of various agendas by diverse actors
involved in the project. He shows that beneficiaries are not so much a pre-existing,
homogenous social group of the poorest people that the project then targets, but rather a
diverse set of people (a constructed group) who can negotiate their identity within the field of
the relationship-maintaining system of the development project. In the volunteer encounter,
neither the group of beneficiaries nor the group of volunteers is a clear-cut, given category,
although they are generally presented as such by the organization. Both groups are
constructed through negotiation processes between various actors. The power of deciding who
becomes a volunteer or a beneficiary, however, remains in the hands of the organization.
Just as beneficiaries must be mapped as poor by an organization in order to participate
in it, volunteers’ potential contributions, interests and the duration of their helping time must
be formally registered. Many volunteers are required to submit their CV or fill out forms in
order to facilitate their strategic placement (although specific skills are rarely required). These
forms often appear to be empty bureaucratic measures, and many volunteers wondered if they
were used at all, when they ended up filling out the same form twice or started their volunteer
work before even handing in the form. Nonetheless, it is up to the organization to decide
whether volunteers are allowed to work on their projects or not. This process helps construct
the beneficiaries as poor and needy and the volunteers as those who bring help. The boundary
that organizations draw and maintain between these categories influences volunteers’
perception of their volunteer identity. They view this boundary as an objective marker
between groups, rather than a cognitive construction entailing a specific consciousness
(Cohen, 2000). By constructing the beneficiaries as needy, volunteers construct their own
identities as helpers.
Through the process of identity formation, volunteers organize differences and
similarities across social groups. Those who come to help are those who are privileged, those
living in the developed Western world. Simultaneously, beneficiaries become the
underdeveloped rest of the world. Volunteers constructed cultural sameness among
themselves while emphasizing the cultural difference of those they encountered. In particular,
volunteers tended to perceive themselves as more dynamic than their beneficiaries. Again,
these distinctions are encouraged by the marketing strategies of sending agencies and local
organizations. Volunteers come to Guatemala from the developed world, crossing national,
cultural and developmental boundaries to fulfill their purpose. In addition, while based in
Antigua they continue to travel to the projects situated in the nearby villages. This enhances
the image of the volunteers as mobile and active, while positing the beneficiaries as relatively
stationary and localized. The fact that beneficiaries sometimes travel from other villages to
reach the project is not always recognized. Villages are often seen as quite similar to one
another and travelling between them is not perceived as involving the same level of
13
movement as the volunteers’ travels between countries, towns and villages. While
beneficiaries travel between underdeveloped sameness, volunteers travel across differences.
Volunteers’ constructions of alterity are embedded in notions of cultural difference
and distance between the developed and developing world. Authentic Others are found only
when they are not contaminated by Western ideas and lifestyles: when they are rural,
underdeveloped and poor. The difference between the developing and developed world
overrides differences among developing or developed countries themselves, an idea equally
current in mainstream development policy and discourse. Volunteer tourism therefore
reinforces and is reinforced by the idea of two separate, culturally distinct worlds, each
represented as a homogenous and clearly bounded entity. The boundary between the two is
perceived as a ready-made fact, rather than a debatable construction produced in a field of
power relations (Escobar, 1995). The assumed homogeneity of the developing world implies
that the same solutions can be applied everywhere. Nicky, a one-week American volunteer,
was very excited to talk about her volunteer experience in which she ‘crossed the developing
country divide. Now I know I can volunteer anywhere because I know how to do it’.30
Authors such as Matthews (2008, p. 102) echo these dichotomies when they describe
volunteer work as the interaction between ‘localized others’ and ‘globalized travelers’. By
crossing the border between developed and developing, volunteers can claim to be part of a
‘global’ community, an idea promoted by the volunteer marketing industry. With names like
Global Vision International, Global Crossroads and Global Volunteer Network, VSAs present
their nature and work as ‘global’, and they enlist global helpers to come and help local
immobile beneficiaries.
Conclusion
Critiques of the economic development models and mass tourism of the 1970s
triggered the emergence of new forms of tourisms. With the popularization of the term
sustainability within development discourse in the beginning of the 1990s, new forms of
tourism – joined under the umbrella of sustainable tourism – began to be promoted for their
assumed participation of and benefits for the local communities. Volunteer tourism has been
presented as one of the most prominent and promising forms of these new tourisms, with
participation, social interaction and community development high on its agenda. While
volunteer tourism can have profound positive effects on the volunteers as well as the
community, this article has argued that the beneficial nature of volunteer tourism is often
taken for granted, without an analysis of the way concepts and ideologies of development
function within the volunteer encounter. This perspective has informed our study of ideas of
development and difference within volunteer tourism. We examined processes of volunteers’
identity formation and their construction of alterity within the volunteer encounter, and linked
these processes to the marketing discourse of VSAs and local organizations. We argue that
shifts within tourism can be understood in relation to the proliferation of neoliberalism within
development discourse and practice.
Volunteer tourism, a currently popular mode of youth travel and a profitable marketing
niche, perpetuates the idea that volunteering is an activity which aims to change something or
someone lying outside of us, the visiting volunteers. Development notions within sustainable
tourism, itself a major focus within development projects, should be critically examined not
just as a set of economic and technological interventions but as a ‘discourse that has
constituted an entire way of defining and shaping the reality of a great part of the globe’
(Escobar, 1991, p. 678). In this context, development remains something to be done for
Others and in an Other place. Volunteers come to help and make development happen,
30
Interview, 19/01/2008.
14
placing the Other in a relatively passive position. Despite the promotion of participatory
approaches within new development discourse, volunteer tourism is reinforced by the idea
that the development will come from outside, and is located in the hands and wallets of
enlightened, wealthy volunteer consumers.
The volunteer encounter is not merely an interaction of individuals but a space
constructed by professional and bureaucratic mechanisms before the encounter. VSAs play an
important role in this construction, by mapping the beneficiaries as poor, selecting the
volunteers, and objectifying the local situation by translating it into conceptual forms that can
be recognized by organizations and other relevant institutions (Escobar, 1991, p. 667).
The volunteer development industry focuses more on making a difference in the lives of the
Other than encouraging volunteers to think critically about broader issues surrounding
volunteer programs or to reflect on their own behavior and attitudes beyond the volunteer
encounter, either during holidays or in their everyday life (Raymond, 2008, p. 54).
These conclusions resonate with wider debates on sustainable tourism and political
consumerism that question whether behavioral change extends beyond choosing a holiday or
another purchase. The role of ‘market-embedded morality’ (Shamir, 2008) is evident in the
consumer behavior of volunteers and the marketing activities of VSAs, and reflects the
pervasive influence of neoliberal ideologies in development and beyond. Volunteer tourism is
in many ways a child of its neoliberal era: it presents a marketable product in which the
outsourcing, privatization and commodification of development are merged, enhanced
strategically through discourses of difference and altruism.
The volunteers featured in this article articulated clear desires and aspirations to make
individual contributions towards societal change. However, they need to negotiate this within
the context of the volunteer tourism industry, which has been trending towards unmitigated
consumerism, and are themselves disappointed to see their possibilities for making a
difference hijacked by corporate interests. Obviously, there is significant diversity within
volunteer tourism and the sector as a whole need not be dismissed as a Western neoliberal and
corporate development practice that is imposed on the beneficiaries and their communities. As
in other types of development projects, beneficiaries are not necessarily only passive receivers
of volunteers’ practices but may modify and transform them to meet their own agendas (cf.
Gow, 1996, p. 168). Several Guatemalans expressed their view of international volunteering
as an inspiration for Guatemalan youth. Carlos, a Guatemalan friend, thanked international
volunteers in an article for coming to Guatemala to help his people and his country. Similarly,
beneficiaries and volunteers do participate in the construction of the volunteer encounter, even
as marketing initiatives and pre-existing neoliberal development discourse and practice seek
to shape and profit from its production.
References
Ashley, C., Roe, D. and Goodwin, H. (2001) Pro-Poor Tourism Strategies: Making Tourism
Work for the Poor: A Review of Experience. London: IIED/ODI/CRT.
Atkinson, P. (1992) Understanding Ethnographic Texts. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Publications.
Brohman, J. (1996) New directions in tourism for third world development. Annals of
TourismResearch 23(1): 48–70.
Callanan, M. and Thomas, S. (2005) Volunteer tourism: Deconstructing volunteer activities
within a dynamic environment. In: M. Novelli (ed.) Niche Tourism: Contemporary Issues,
Trends and Cases. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann, pp. 183–200.
15
Coghlan, A. (2007) Towards an integrated typology of volunteer tourism organisations.
Journal of Sustainable Tourism 15(3): 267–287.
Cohen, A.P. (2000) Introduction: Discriminating relations: Identity, boundary and
authenticity. In: A.P. Cohen (ed.) Signifying Identities: Anthropological Perspectives on
Boundaries and Contested Values. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–16.
Cohen, E. (1984) The sociology of tourism: Approaches, issues, and findings. Annual Review
of Sociology 10: 373–392.
Escobar, A. (1991) Anthropology and the development encounter: The making and marketing
of development anthropology. American Ethnologist 18(4): 658–682.
Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third
World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gow, D.D. (1996) The anthropology of development: Discourse, agency, and culture.
Anthropological Quarterly 69(3): 165–173.
Hutnyk, J. (1996) The Rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity and the Poverty of
Representation. London and New Jersey: Zed Books.
Little, W.E. (2004) Mayas in the Marketplace: Tourism, Globalization, and Cultural Identity.
Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Lyons, K.D. and Wearing, S. (eds.) (2008) Journeys of Discovery in Volunteer Tourism:
International Case Study Perspectives. Wallingford, UK: CABI Publishing.
Mand, K. (2004) ‘Insider’ and ‘outsider’ ambiguities: Social capital, gender and power in the
field. In: R. Edwards (ed.) Social Capital in the Field: Researcher’s Tales. London: London
South Bank University, pp. 35–40.
Manji, F. and O’Coill, C. (2002) The missionary position: NGOs and development in Africa.
International Affairs 78(3): 567–583.
Matthews, A. (2008) Negotiated selves: Exploring the impact of local-global interactions on
young volunteer travellers. In: K.D. Lyons and S. Wearing (eds.) Journeys of Discovery in
Volunteer Tourism: International Case Study Perspectives. Wallingford, UK: CABI
Publishing, pp. 101–117.
McIntosh, A.J. and Zahra, A. (2007) A cultural encounter through volunteer tourism: Towards
the ideals of sustainable tourism? Journal of Sustainable Tourism 15(5): 541–556.
Micheletti, M. (2004) Introduction. In: M. Micheletti, A. Follesdal and D. Stolle (eds.)
Politics, Products and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present. New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, pp. ix–xxvi.
Miraftab, F. (2004) Making neo-liberal governance: The disempowering work of
empowerment. International Planning Studies 9(4): 239–259.
16
Mohan, G. and Stokke, K. (2000) Participatory development and empowerment: The dangers
of localism. Third World Quarterly 21(2): 247–268.
Mosse, D. (2004) Is good policy unimplementable? Reflections on the ethnography of aid
policy and practice. Development and Change 35(4): 639–671.
Mowforth, M., Charlton, C. and Munt, I. (2007) Tourism and Responsibility: Perspectives
from Latin America and the Caribbean. London and New York: Routledge.
Mowforth, M. and Munt, I. (2008) Tourism and Sustainability: Development, Globalisation
and New Tourism in the Third World, 3rd edn. New York and London: Routledge.
Pattullo, P. (1996) Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean. London: LAB.
Raymond, E. (2008) Make a difference! The role of sending organizations in volunteer
tourism. In: K.D. Lyons and S. Wearing (eds.) Journeys of Discovery in Volunteer Tourism:
International Case Study Perspectives. Wallingford, UK: CABI Publishing, pp. 48–60.
Rose, N.S. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Scheyvens, R. (2007) Exploring the tourism-poverty nexus. Current Issues in Tourism
10(2&3): 231–254.
Shamir, R. (2008) The age of responsibilization: On market-embedded morality. Economy
and Society 37(1): 1–19.
Simpson, K. (2004) ‘Doing development’: The gap year, volunteer-tourists and a popular
practice of development. Journal of International Development 16(5): 681–692.
Smith, V.L. and Eadington, W.R. (eds.) (1992) Tourism Alternatives: Potentials and Problems
in the Development of Tourism. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Stoddart, H. and Rogerson, C.M. (2004) Volunteer tourism: The case of habitat for humanity
South Africa. Geojournal 60: 311–318.
Stronza, A. (2001) Anthropology of tourism: Forging new ground for ecotourism and other
alternatives. Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 261–283.
Telfer, D.J. and Sharpley, R. (2008) Tourism and Development in the Developing World.
London and New York: Routledge.
Townsend, J.G., Porter., G. and Mawdsley, E. (2002) The role of the transnational community
of non-government organisations: Governance or poverty reduction? Journal of International
Development 14(6): 829–839.
Tsing, A.L. (2005) Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
17
Wearing, S. (2001) Volunteer Tourism: Experiences that Make a Difference. Wallingford,
UK: CABI Publishing.
Wilson, T.D. (ed.) (2008) The impact of tourism in Latin America. Special Edition of Latin
American Perspectives 35(3): 3–121.
18