Doing gender in events: feminist perspectives in critical event studies

Abstract

attitude and practice with ethical underpinnings may be cultivated through various servicelearning abroad experiences (Feinberg and Edwards), by going to Guatemala and working directly with Maya women weavers in impoverished communities (Nelson), and by taking a guided educational tour of China with expert scholars (Shepherd). Instead, these case studies demonstrate the tourists (students and volunteers, too) reveal that they are decidedly not cosmopolitan in their actions and attitudes, because they are driven more by selfish selfinterest than helping, acquiring new knowledge, and understanding difference. Frankly, cosmopolitanism is not about racking up a bunch of things, knowledge, and experiences. It is an ideal, utopic structural position that is defined by ambiguous, relational elitist sensibilities. The tourists and culture brokers may navigate complex cultural spaces (knowmultiple languages and cultural-social-political ways) to have a good experience or be to be economically successful, but they are all vulgar cosmopolitans who may or may not actually aspire to the kinds of ideal liberal cosmopolitanism by which Shepherd frames this volume.