<p> This study explores the increasingly popular phenomenon of volunteer tourism in the
Global South, particularly the governmental rationalities and socio-economic
conditions that valorize it as a noble and necessary cultural practice. Using
ethnographic material gathered during two volunteering programs in Guatemala and
Ghana, I argue that, although volunteer tourism may not trigger social change,
provide meaningful encounters with difference, or offer professional expertise, as the
brochure discourse often promises, the formula remains a useful strategy for
producing the subjects and social relations neoliberalism requires. The value of
volunteer tourism should not to be assessed in terms of the goods and services it
delivers to the global poor, but in terms of how well the pratice disseminates
entrepreneurial styles of feeling and action. Three merits stand out in particular. First,
volunteer tourism mobilizes a series of affective competencies and private
sensibilities that fit the global logic of capitalism. Second, it represents a new type of
moral and technical education that teaches young adults how. to operate in
multicultural settings and globalized sites. Finally, by virtue of having lived and
worked in places the Western imagination believes to be destitute and dangerous,
volunteer tourists are better positioned to live fully in the global moment. Together,
these effects demonstrate that, far from being a selfless and history-less rescue act,
volunteer tourism is in fact a strategy of power that extends economic rationality,
particularly its emphasis on entrepreneurship and competition, to the realm of political
subjectivity. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/19053 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Vrasti, Wanda |
| Contributors | Nyers, P., Political Science |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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