{"title":"Volunteer tourism in the context of development thinking","authors":"Jim Butcher","doi":"10.1177/14687976241233851","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Volunteer tourism is sometimes discussed as contributing to development goals in economically impoverished countries. Others argue that it contributes little if anything at all to material development, and others again claim that this is simply not its aim. Putting aside its contribution (or lack thereof), there is little doubt that volunteer tourism influences how development issues are constructed and mediated to the general public, framing the ways in which people’s desires to make a difference are realised. It is a ‘public face of development’ in this sense. This paper looks at volunteer tourism not as a form of development assistance per se, but instead examines how development claims associated with it intersect with important strands of development thinking. It reviews some important themes in development thinking in order to argue that it is changes in how development is conceived of that have made possible the unlikely association between a form of leisure and the erstwhile political and macro-economic aim of development. Further, it suggests that research in this area could usefully focus less on the actions of volunteer tourism providers and their clientele, and more on the underpinning ‘development’ assumptions reflected and reified through these actions.","PeriodicalId":47199,"journal":{"name":"Tourist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Tourist Studies","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687976241233851","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Volunteer tourism is sometimes discussed as contributing to development goals in economically impoverished countries. Others argue that it contributes little if anything at all to material development, and others again claim that this is simply not its aim. Putting aside its contribution (or lack thereof), there is little doubt that volunteer tourism influences how development issues are constructed and mediated to the general public, framing the ways in which people’s desires to make a difference are realised. It is a ‘public face of development’ in this sense. This paper looks at volunteer tourism not as a form of development assistance per se, but instead examines how development claims associated with it intersect with important strands of development thinking. It reviews some important themes in development thinking in order to argue that it is changes in how development is conceived of that have made possible the unlikely association between a form of leisure and the erstwhile political and macro-economic aim of development. Further, it suggests that research in this area could usefully focus less on the actions of volunteer tourism providers and their clientele, and more on the underpinning ‘development’ assumptions reflected and reified through these actions.
期刊介绍:
Tourist Studies is a multi-disciplinary journal providing a platform for the development of critical perspectives on the nature of tourism as a social phenomenon through a qualitative lens. Theoretical and multi-disciplinary. Tourist Studies provides a critical social science approach to the study of the tourist and the structures which influence tourist behaviour and the production and reproduction of tourism. The journal examines the relationship between tourism and related fields of social inquiry. Tourism and tourist styles consumption are not only emblematic of many features of contemporary social change, such as mobility, restlessness, the search for authenticity and escape, but they are increasingly central to economic restructuring, globalization, the sociology of consumption and the aestheticization of everyday life. Tourist Studies analyzes these features of tourism from a multi-disciplinary perspective and seeks to evaluate, compare and integrate approaches to tourism from sociology, socio-psychology, leisure studies, cultural studies, geography and anthropology. Global Perspective. Tourist Studies takes a global perspective of tourism, widening and challenging the established views of tourism presented in current periodical literature. Tourist Studies includes: Theoretical analysis with a firm grounding in contemporary problems and issues in tourism studies, qualitative analyses of tourism and the tourist experience, reviews linking theory and policy, interviews with scholars at the forefront of their fields, review essays on particular fields or issues in the study of tourism, review of key texts, publications and visual media relating to tourism studies, and notes on conferences and other events of topical interest to the field of tourism studies.