- Title
- Hopeful possibilities in spaces of 'the-not-yet-become': relational encounters in volunteer tourism
- Creator
- Everingham, Phoebe
- Relation
- Tourism Geographies Vol. 18, Issue 5, p. 520-538
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2016.1220974
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- Volunteer tourism has rapidly emerged as a pervasive form of contemporary global tourism. This paper examines the importance of incorporating non-representational theories into analyses of volunteer tourism. Discussions of volunteer tourism are often framed within fixed notions of culture, identity and power relations. In this paper I argue that attention to embodiment, affect and emotion can provide more nuanced insights into the ambiguities of volunteer experiences and encounters. Drawing on fieldwork from a small coastal town in Peru, the study focuses on the encounters between volunteers and locals and the role of emotions in the framing of their experiences. While emotions and expectations are often framed by development aid discourses that characterise volunteers and locals into neo-colonial binaries, there are also numerous possibilities for how volunteers and locals are ‘affected’. By attending to the ‘more than rational’ dimensions of the volunteer tourism experience I draw out the relationship between embodiment, affect and what philosopher of hope Bloch (1986) calls the ‘ontology of the-not-yet’. It is within the embodied encounters in spaces of ‘the-not-yet-become’ where hopeful possibilities in volunteer tourism are found’ This opens up new ways of understanding volunteer tourism. This may, in turn, facilitate more responsible and equitable practice in volunteer tourism projects.
- Subject
- volunteer tourism; non-representational theory; affect; emotion; development aid; neoliberalism; hope; 'the not-yet-become'
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1344769
- Identifier
- uon:29494
- Identifier
- ISSN:1461-6688
- Rights
- This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Tourism Geographies on 01/09/2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14616688.2016.1220974
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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