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Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 43, pp.

150169, 2013
0160-7383/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Printed in Great Britain

www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.05.002

THE POLITICS OF AESTHETICS


IN VOLUNTEER TOURISM
Mary Mostafanezhad
University of Otago, New Zealand
Abstract: In this paper I address the politics of aesthetics in volunteer tourism. By aesthetics, I mean two things. First, I adopt Jacques Rancieres notion of aesthetics as the structured way human sense is organized. I argue that volunteer tourism perpetuates an aesthetic
structure that systematically depoliticizes the global economic inequality on which the experience is based. Second, drawing on recent scholarship in critical tourism studies as well as
16 months of ethnographic research in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I illustrate how volunteer tourists aestheticize the host community members poverty as authentic and cultural. This reframing contributes to the legitimization of volunteer tourism as a celebrated cultural practice
that perpetuates the aestheticization rather than the politicization of poverty in the encounter. Keywords: politics of aesthetics, cultural politics, social movements, neoliberalism, volunteer tourism, Thailand. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION
One of the fastest growing niche tourism markets in the world, volunteer tourism is a type of tourism where people pay to participate
in conservation or development projects (Lyons, Hanley, Wearing, &
Neil, 2012; Mintel, 2008). Drawing on recent scholarship in critical
tourism studies as well as 16 months of ethnographic research in
Chiang Mai, Thailand, I address the politics of aesthetics in development oriented volunteer tourism in the Global South. By aesthetics,
I mean two things. First, I draw on Rancieres notion of aesthetics as
the structured way human sense is organized or how discourse frames
what is knowable. I also examine how volunteer tourists aestheticize the
host community members poverty through their descriptions of it as
authentic and cultural. This reframing of the encounter contributes
to the legitimization of volunteer tourism as a celebrated cultural practice that perpetuates the aestheticization rather than the politicization
of poverty in the encounter or what Ranciere refers to as postmodern
post-politics. Commenting on Rancieres notion of this concept, Zizek
notes that todays postmodern post-politics opens up a new field
which involves a stronger negation of politics: it no longer merely represses it, trying to contain it and to pacify the return of the
Mary Mostafanezhad (Lecturer in the Department of Tourism at the University of Otago,
P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, Otago 9054, New Zealand. Email: <mary.mostafanezhad@otago.
ac.nz>). Her main research interests lie at the intersection of the cultural politics and political
economy of tourism development in Southeast Asia. This paper is based on longitudinal
ethnographic fieldwork in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She has published on volunteer, cultural
and ecotourism.
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repressed, but much more effectively forecloses it, so that the postmodern forms of ethnic violence, with their irrational excessive character, are no longer simple returns of the repressed, but rather
present the last case of the foreclosed (from the Symbolic) which, as
we know from Lacan, returns in the Real (Zizek, 2004, p. 72). Postmodern post-politics brings us away from politics-proper and towards
depoliticized development through particular forms of knowledge production (Rancie`re, 2009; Tanke, 2011; Zizek, 2004).
Like all forms of knowledge production, knowledge in volunteer
tourism is discursively constructed and as such, embedded in complex
webs of power (Coghlan, 2006; Lyons et al., 2012; McGehee, 2012).
The dominant discourses in volunteer tourism privilege a particularly
neoliberal strategy that suggests that individuals and increasingly,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are legitimate and often primary actors in social and economic development (Conran, 2011; Lyons
et al., 2012). While development through volunteer tourism is increasingly common throughout the Global South, it is still relatively marginalized within the development sector. Yet, like other modes of
privatized development, this mode of development is increasingly conspicuous within the NGO sector. The growth of this sector in development is paralleled by the expansion of new social movements such as
indigenous, feminist and anti-globalization agendas (Escobar, 2004).
These movements increasingly intersect with lifestyle movements that
find a primary mode of articulation within alternative consumption
practices (Haenfler, Johnson, & Jones, 2012).
As neoliberal practices, these movements focus on the individual
consumer as a means to consciously contribute to broader social
change and have opened up new space for actors such as the volunteer
tourist who use corporate social responsibility, continuing education,
ethical consumption, or charitable contributions to lend capitalism a
human face (ibid). Indeed, it is suggested that the potential of volunteer tourism to contribute to social movements is directly related to its
ability to influence the volunteer tourists consumption strategies.
McGehee, for example, writes, [A] heightened awareness of oppression and inequality may lead a volunteer tourism participant to shop
at fair trade businesses, utilize more locally-owned and operated enterprises, eat locally raised food and target locally-owned accommodation
and restaurants whenever they travel. In other words, if volunteer tourism organizations provide ample opportunities for consciousness-raising experiences, the potential for actual change amongst volunteers
in everyday adoption of more socially-conscious economic and social
behaviour (i.e. personal as political) could be enormous (McGehee,
2012, p. 101). In this way, NGOs in development and lifestyle politics
in the Global North are mutually implicated within what Dove refers
to as the helping discourse. This discourse asks us to ask our ourselves how can we help or what can we give when perhaps, what
we should be asking is how have we hurt, or what have we taken
away? (1994). Volunteer tourism is particularly embedded within this
discourse where the primary questions being asked are how can I
help or what can I give back? (Chen & Chen, 2011; Lo & Lee,

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2011; Sin, 2009). While these questions are important, they also frame
volunteer tourism in ways that overshadow the historical and political
structures and global inequality that the encounter is based on. In this
way, these questions band-aid, rather than address broader political
economic structural inequalities.
The growing body of literature in volunteer tourism indicates both
an intensified interest in and more nuanced critiques of the industry
and experience (Conran, 2011; Cousins, Evans, & Sadler, 2009; Gray
& Campbell, 2007; Lyons & Wearing, 2008; McGehee, 2012; Mostafanezhad, 2012; Raymond & Hall, 2008; Wearing, 2001). Emerging
research examines volunteer tourism and development (Simpson,
2004), volunteer tourism and social movement participation (McGehee, 2012; McGehee & Santos, 2005), volunteer tourism as a postcolonial encounter (Palacios, 2010), the motivations of the volunteer
tourists (Lo & Lee, 2011; Sin, 2009), the decommodification agenda
in volunteer tourism (Gray & Campbell, 2007), host and guest relations (Lyons & Wearing, 2008), and the costs and benefits of volunteer tourism (Brown & Lehto, 2005). A significant body of work
addresses the current and potential role of volunteer tourism as
an agent for social change (such as expanding consciousness regarding global economic inequality) can now be identified (Coghlan,
2006; Conran, 2011; Gray & Campbell, 2007; Lyons et al., 2012;
McGehee, 2012; McGehee & Santos, 2005; Vrasti, 2012). This emerging literature draws on pro-poor, ethical, responsible and more recently, hopeful (Pritchard, Morgan, & Ateljevic, 2011) tourism
research. These agendas emerge in tandem with lifestyle movements
and are perpetuated in social movement organizations, mostly notably, NGOs. NGOs are now key players in alternative tourism development generally and volunteer tourism development more specifically
(Keese, 2011; Sin, 2010; Wearing, 2001). Various international (e.g.
Tourism Concern) and domestic (e.g. Cultural Canvas in Chiang
Mai) NGOs focus on alternative tourism as a development strategy.
These organizations offer alternative tourism experiences which
have become associated with globally conscious holidays. A key signifier within these experiences is encounters with poverty. Within this
niche market, tourism is identified as a strategy for poverty alleviation (e.g. pro-poor tourism, responsible tourism, volunteer tourism,
etc.) and poverty consciousness (e.g. reality tours, slum tours,
etc.). Indeed, Crossley points out how tourists themselves are now
demanding impoverished places as their holiday destinations
(2012, p. 235).
Critical Tourism Studies and Volunteer Tourism
While the twin goals of poverty alleviation and poverty consciousness
have been applauded within the industry as well as academia, they have
not gone without critique. Simpson notes how volunteer tourism
oversimplifies international development and potentially undermines
larger development initiatives (2004). Similarly, Guttentag has

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identified some of the possible negative impacts of volunteer tourism


including a neglect of locals desires, a hindering of work progress
and completion of unsatisfactory work, a disruption of local economies, a reinforcement of conceptualisations of the other and rationalisations of poverty, and an instigation of cultural changes (2009, p.
537). In response to these as well as other potentially negative implications of volunteer tourism, there have been calls for more critical, theoretical approaches to volunteer tourism, which maximize the positive
and minimize the negative impacts on host communities (McGehee,
2012; Swain, 2009). While it is important to examine the local implications of volunteer tourism, it is also crucial that our analyses look beyond the local to consider how a broader politics of aesthetics, to
which volunteer tourism subscribes, perpetuates a particularly neoliberal ideology and cultural practice. There is now a significant body
of literature that addresses the volunteer tourist, tourist motivations
and the potential negative implications of volunteer tourism, yet there
continues to be a noticeable absence of theoretically oriented research
that critically situates volunteer tourism within the broader political
economy of tourism and alternative modes of consumption and development. As a political economy analysis, I highlight the historical,
political and economic backdrop upon which volunteer tourism as a
development strategy exists in the Global South as well as the various
ways the cultural politics of the encounter contribute to the depoliticization of the experience. Drawing specifically from cultural political
economy, I argue that global economic inequality and neoliberal rationalities are necessarily cultural and that they have facilitated the emergence of volunteer tourism as a particularly neoliberal cultural
practice. In this view, the relationship between the political-economic
and the cultural are inescapable.
Critical theoretical perspectives are increasingly being recognized for
the ability to move tourism theory in new directions that identify the
root of the perpetuation of inequality as well as move us toward more
emancipatory forms of tourism experiences, management and governance (McGehee, 2012; Tribe, 2008). Yet, despite a few notable exceptions (Conran, 2011; Crossley, 2012; Dowling, 2003; McGehee, 2012;
Mostafanezhad, 2012; Wearing, McDonals, & Ponting, 2005), there
has been surprisingly little work that addresses volunteer tourism using
a critical theoretical lens. There has been surprisingly little attention
paid to the political economy of volunteer tourism development. It is
important to note how the ideologies on which volunteer tourism is
based perpetuate a homoeconmicus-model where neoliberalism becomes
embodied through the progressive assessment of the costs and benefits
of personal choice (Vrasti, 2011). As Vrasti comments, this model is to
a great extent, the result of a variety of minute biopolitical interventions and manipulations of the social environment such as the moralization of economic responsibility; the proliferation of empowerment
techniques (e.g., self-esteem and self-career) that promote
individual responsibly, risk-calculation, and managerial expertise, and
the valorisation of affective and aesthetic competencies to compensate
for the cutback in social services and safety provisions (2011, p. 2).

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This political-economic as well as cultural shift requires both intellectual allegiance as well as emotional investment (Illouz, 2007). Through
volunteer tourism, the aestheticization of this emotional investment is
well represented; Homoeconmicus-cum-volunteer tourist now makes regular appearances in orphanages and primary schools throughout the
Global South. This paper contributes to new conversations regarding
the broader political, economic and cultural implications of development oriented volunteer tourism in the Global South by illustrating
how the cultural practice overshadows the historical and political backdrop of the experience.
Rancieres Aesthetics
Ranciere reflects on the politics of a priori forms of what is sensible.
He highlights how knowledge is distributed within and between
groups. Thus, he refers to the distribution of the sensible, which
he argues, determines a mode of articulation between forms of action, production, perception and thought (Ranciere, 2004, p. 82).
Distribution refers to both exclusion and inclusion, while sensible refers to what can be understood or made sense of (Ranciere, 2004, p.
85). Hence, the distribution of the sensible (sometimes translated as
the partition of the sensible) refers to the implicit law governing
the sensible order that parcels out places and forms of participation
in a common world by first establishing the modes of perception within
which they are inscribed. The distribution of the sensible thus produces a system of self-evident facts of perception based on the set of
horizons and modalities of what is visible and audible as well as what
can be said, thought, made, or done (Ranciere, 2004, p. 85). In this
way, political struggle is the struggle over which discourses are intelligible or made sensible and which are made unintelligible or un-sensible. Building on this theoretical position, I argue that volunteer
tourism contributes to the discursive construction of the sensible
in international development. What becomes sensible in volunteer
tourism is the helping discourse, which suggests that primarily 20
35 year olds from relatively privileged backgrounds in the West (Wearing, 2010) can and should contribute to international development by
volunteering their time and money to teach English, care for children,
and other aid driven activities.
The depoliticization of global economic inequality through volunteer tourism is part of a much broader politics of development within
the international community (Escobar, 1995, 2002; Ferguson, 1994,
2006, 2010). Illustrative of the broader expansion of contemporary
lifestyle politics in the West (Butcher, 2010), there is an intensified
trend within international development to help through commodified contributions such as fair trade, ethical and moral consumer
goods and services (Bryant & Goodman, 2004; Carrier, 2010; Cohen
& Cohen, in press; Goodman, 2004, 2005, 2010). Reflecting on these
emergent global cultural formations Vrasti points out how, [T]he
idea that capitalism is a purely economistic and repressive reality opens

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the door to a variety of individualist and consumerist resistance tactics


(e.g., ethical consumption, green living, charity, volunteering) which
pose capitalism with a human face as the limit of our radical horizon
(Vrasti, 2011, p. 3). This transition to emotional capitalismwhich refers to the entanglement of economic and emotional as well as public
and private relationships (Illouz, 2007)and moral consumer markets
(Goodman, 2004, 2005) have paved the way for the rapid expansion of
volunteer tourism development.
Study Methods. The methodological context of this paper is based on
16 months of multi-sited, ethnographic fieldwork in Chiang Mai, Thailand between 2006 and 2012. I conducted semi-structured interviews
with 40 volunteer tourists at three NGOs in Chiang Mai including English Teachers Abroad, Friendship with Thailand and Borderless Volunteers. I use pseudonyms throughout the paper to protect the privacy of
my research collaborators. The NGOs that my research is based on are
involved in a variety development agendas such as teaching English at
impoverished schools and temples, building hiking trails, environmental education and child care at a womens shelter and HIV/AIDS
orphanage. I interviewed volunteer tourists until a data saturation
point was realized (Bernard, 2011). I interviewed each of the 40 volunteer tourists one time, all interviews were conducted in English and
each interview lasted between 30 minutes to two hours. Among other
questions, I asked the volunteer tourists what the most meaningful aspect of their experience was, how they perceived the host community
members, and why they wanted to volunteer in Thailand. I interviewed
the volunteer tourists at their convenience; this often meant that I conducted interviews at local bars, restaurants or at the volunteer sites.
I had various roles within the NGOs such as volunteer and activities
coordinator and translator between the host community members and
volunteer tourists (I speak Thai). Additionally, I also often became an
impromptu counsellor for volunteer tourists who experienced culture
shock. As a Western woman with Thai language proficiency, I may
have been perceived as having insider understanding of the local
communities. Volunteer tourists often came to me for cultural information as well as to talk about their own challenges of the experience.
I adopted these roles, in part because I used work as participant observation (McMorran, 2011). My multiple roles within the NGO as well as
my ability to communicate in Thai could have been a point of confusion for the volunteers, for whom the role of the international researcher may have been undefined.
Data analysis was conducted using methods from grounded theory
approaches (Charmaz & Bryant, 2010; Charmez, 2006). Grounded theory is an inductive approach to data analysis and is especially conducive
to ethnographic research (ibid). I digitally recorded and transcribed
all of the interviews so that they could be analyzed and coded using
grounded theory methods which include coding the transcripts and
interview notes for recurrent themes. To confirm the validity of the
data analysis, I re-coded transcripts on different days to confirm the

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consistency of my data. Additionally, I had colleagues and research participants validate my interpretations of the data. I also used data and
investigator triangulation in order to confirm that the data analysis
converges among multiple methods of analysis (Decrop, 1999, 2004).
I utilized several related data sets in my triangulation including fieldnotes during participant observation as well as before and after each
interview and the interview transcript. I also used informant triangulation to enhance the integrity of the coding and data analysis (Decrop,
2004).
POVERTY AESTHETICS
Poverty is a core aspect of development oriented volunteer tourism
where experiences are based on a common goal of overcoming economic and social marginalization. Yet, when volunteer tourists confront poverty, they often become uncomfortable and seek ways to
negotiate personal anxieties regarding the inequality of the encounter
by aestheticizing the host community members poverty as authentic
and cultural. This strategy, I observed, facilitates opportunities for volunteer tourists to continue their engagement with the host community
members on a perceptively more equal footing where socio-politicaleconomic differences are discursively swept aside to make space for
more aesthetic forms of engagement. Within this context, the backdrop upon which volunteer tourists emerge is within a reconstituted
search for authenticity in which engagements with real poverty have
become key signifiers of their success. It is noted how young people
(e.g. gap year tourists) in particular are a key target market of charities and NGOs seeking volunteers because not only are they young and
able-bodied but typically they are seeking novelty and authenticity
[emphasis added] in exotic places (Lyons et al., 2012, p. 367).
Rather than losing its relevance to tourism studies, the importance of
authenticity to tourism experiences has intensified so that today there
is an ever increasing craving or longing for the immediate, noncommercialised, brute natural world, characterised by the real authentic (Knudsen and Waade, 2010, p. 1). Performative authenticity in
particular not only signifies that we do and perform places by our actions and behaviours, but that places are something we authenticate
through our emotional /affective /sensuous relatedness to them
(Knudsen and Waade, 2010, p. 13 Building on this notion of performative authenticity, I suggest that volunteer tourism facilitates opportunities for these types of seemingly sincere encounters between the
hosts and guests. I also suggest that these encounters are mediated by an emerging discourse of poverty-as-authenticity which now
serves as a primary indicator of authenticity. How poverty has come
to symbolize the non-commercialized and natural world
(ibid)now key traits of authentic tourism experiences has been
largely under theorized. A result of this association is the depoliticization of poverty, where questions of why or how people became poor
are overshadowed by the aesthetic pleasure of the experience.

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Poverty as Authentic
Authenticity has not lost its holdover in tourism studies. As current
research suggests, tourists continue to be concerned with the authenticity of their experiences and correspondingly, researchers continue
to be concerned with the analytical use of the topic (Adams, 1997; Cohen, 1988; Knudsen and Waade, 2010; Maoz, 2005; Reisinger and Steiner, 2005; Steiner & Reisinger, 2006; Taylor, 2001; Watson and
Kopachevsky, 1994). While there has been a significant amount of work
on the conceptualization of authenticity in tourism experiences, with a
few notable exceptions, the linkage between poverty and authenticity
has yet to be explicitly examined in tourism literature (Chhabra, Healy,
& Sills, 2003; Cohen, 1988; Cole, 2007). Cole notes how tourists in
Indonesia preferred to visit perceptively economically poor villages
over the more developed ones (2007). This perception is similarly
reflected in popular culture where Hollywood star-cum-philanthropist,
Angelina Jolie describes the authenticity of visiting refugee camps:
When I am in a refugee camp, my spirit feels better there than it does
anywhere else in the world, because I am surrounded by such truth and
family. I feel so connected to it. I feel most alive, most myself, working
with people who have endured great losses and yet still feel grateful for
life (Madison Magazine, 2010).
This sentiment in public and popular culture regarding the entanglement between poverty and authenticity was a recurrent theme in
my research where more than 80% of volunteers commented on this
linkage. For example, while sitting outside of a cafe in Chiang Mai city,
James, a tall, brown haired 24 year old British volunteer tourist
explains,
[The volunteer tourism experience] affected me so much. . . The kids,
they dont even have pens and paper. But you just see how happy they
are when they can learn. Its an authentic kind of happiness. I think
just the satisfaction of attempting to help people who are really poor
is so powerful. That cant be experienced in the UK.

Similarly, while talking outside of the elementary schoolhouse where


more than thirty Thai children were screaming and chasing each other
around a slide, Adam, a 28 year old volunteer tourism from Germany
smiled as he explained,
The kids were the most memorable, because theyre very honest and,
what is the word. . . authentic. You know if they like you or not and
thats great to see every morning how 10 or 20 kids are running, come
running to you and hug you and one is hanging on your leg, the
other one on your arm, and yeah its great to see that. Its like, they
dont have anything, they are poor, so they dont have materialism
to hide behind.

James and Adams comments were echoed throughout my research


where it was suggested that there was something authentic about
the poverty of the host community members.

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In a related way, the inauthenticity of western materialism was a frequent topic of conversation among the volunteer tourists. The growth
of volunteer tourism has been linked to the growing disenchantment
with capitalist modernity within an increasingly guilt conscious society (Lyons et al., 2012; Pearce & Coghlan, 2008). In addition to
denouncing their own materialism, there was also a widespread fear
among the volunteer tourists that the host community members would
become too Westernized through exposure to Western people and
things. Caroline, a very articulate, well kept 67 year old Canadian woman who was thrilled with her volunteer experience notes how she
fears that the host community members will become too Westernized
through their exposure to Western culture and things. She describes
a conversation she had with her husband, Sam, a 69 year old Canadian
volunteer regarding this fear:
The only thing that scares me about this is like. . . were talking to a
Thai person and they were saying that some of the Western ideas
are being taken over here. Oh, my God, like I dont want that to happen. Take some of the positive that we have to offer, yes but this man
was talking about some of the rudeness that the Westerners have are
being adopted by Thai people. Sam and I are going like, Wow! We
dont want that to happen. Let them get our good qualities that we
have to offer, but certainly not negative ones. . . you see them with the
cell phones and the computers, I guess they want to become modernized but I hope not so much so where they want to lose their culture.
So I wouldnt like to see it becoming too westernized because I think
our values suck in many ways, right? Theres bigger and better things
and toys and many, many, many. . . and we dont see that here. People
are hard workers, they work for very little. They appreciate what they
have and what theyre doing.

Volunteer tourists frequently described the inauthenticity of Western


materialism as well as found it especially inappropriate to Thai culture.
These suggestions were often coupled with a newfound awareness of
their privilege which seemed to disturb their sense of self. In their
study of conservation oriented volunteer tourists in Costa Rica, Gray
and Campbell observe how the Volunteers want to see Gandoca stay
as is (in the words of one volunteer, I wouldnt want to see it more civilised) or with very minimal development. In this way, volunteers express an aesthetic that requires a development freeze for local
people. . . (Butcher, 2010). As Crossley points out in her psychosocial
analysis of volunteer tourism in rural Kenya, poverty can be conceptualized as a threatening object to volunteer tourists, inducing unconscious anxiety by challenging Western materialistic lifestyles and
identities (Crossley, 2012, p. 235). This observation is similarly observed in my research where volunteer tourists tended to respond to
this anxiety by dis-identifying with Western materialism which is perceived as an inauthentic contrast to poverty. What these observations
also seem to suggest is that the volunteer tourists perceptions of the
material poverty of the host communities are mediated by a perception
of cultural poverty in the West and corollary perception of cultural
richness in the Global South.

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Poverty as Cultural
Like authenticity, poverty is also described as cultural. The semiotic
relationship between poverty and culture is not unlike the relationship
between poverty and authenticity. Both concepts signify an unmediated encounter with poverty that go beyond the perceptively inauthentic nature of capitalism. This classic theme within tourism studies takes
an explicit form within volunteer tourism where there is a focus on the
decommodified aspects of the encounter (Gray & Campbell, 2007;
Wearing et al., 2005). Yet, in development oriented volunteer tourism,
an inadvertent commodification of the experience takes place through
the aestheticization of poverty as cultural. By aestheticizing poverty in
this way, the commodification of the experience is discursively swept
under the rug and volunteer tourists are able to maintain a seemingly
unmediated relationship with the host community members.
In the context of volunteer tourism, the alignment of poverty with
culture was suggested by more than 75% of the volunteers that I interviewed. Volunteer tourists frequently commented how the poverty that
the host community members experienced was okay because it was
part of their culture. For example, Chelsea, an enthusiastic 19 year
old American volunteer tourist explained,
When we were walking here, every morning we see the country side
that is a way different experience than only seeing the city. So you
see a lot of different places, a lot of different people, you see the poor
people and not only the people who speak English because they work
in tourism. When you go into the country side you see the culture.
People are poor here but that is part of the culture. That is how they
know how to live.

Noticing differences in the educational system was often a culture


shock to the volunteers, who usually came from upper-middle class
backgrounds and were working towards or had completed at least a
bachelors degree. Many volunteers were surprised at how interested
the students were and compared this to their own culture where, they
suggested students often take their education for granted. While at a
local cafe not far from the city center, Jackie, a 24 year Danish volunteer explains to me what Tim, an NGO manager told her,
Tim was telling us that if you give them a book, that is like the best
gift. If you give education thats the best thing to give. If you tell
the people you teach monks, they say you are good from your heart,
they are like wow!! Its the best thing you can do here. They dont
have anything but they are happy. I think when you dont have anything it becomes part of the culture to appreciate what you have.

Nadine, a 22 year old woman from New Zealand who volunteered in a


temple school had similar observations. The temple schools where the
volunteer tourists worked were typically underfunded. The classrooms
consisted of a chalkboard and desks that did not seem to be in any particular order. Students could also be seen walking in and out of the
classrooms as they desired. Despite the conditions, Nadine notes how
much the students enjoyed school.

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I think with the monks, they were enjoying the games we played so
much. So much fun to see them, they were screaming give more,
give more! I cant stop smiling every time I think of it. So enthusiastic and willing to learn. I asked them if they like school and they were
like, we really like school. Its not like Europe where nobody likes
school. Here they really do like school. Partly, I guess because they
dont have anything else. So, it is part of the culture to appreciate
these things.

Jan, a 23 year old volunteer tourist from England similarly notes:


They are so willing to learn. They really appreciate school. Its really
different in Thailand. They love education. Thats all they have. It is a
cultural thing I guess. But they have a more authentic lifestyle. That is
what makes them happy. I hope they dont become too Westernized
with IPods and video games and stuff.

This tendency to describe poverty as cultural is pointed out in related


contexts. For example, commenting on gap year travel, Simpson suggests how poor material conditions are often explained through the
language of culture. By suggesting that people do not mind being
poor, or that happiness is a greater wealth than material conditions,
a system of inequality becomes justified (Simpson, 2004, p. 688). In
this way, the aestheticization of poverty as cultural quickly develops
into a discourse or sensibility that naturalizes poverty.
AFFECTIVE ENCOUNTERS WITH POVERTY
In addition to aestheticizing poverty, volunteer tourists encounter
with poverty tends to evoke an affective response. Affect refers to the
impulsive aspects of human proclivities that are beyond empirical identification and are increasingly seen as integral to the tourism experience (Picard, 2012; Robinson, 2012). Often used as a synonym for
emotion, affect refers to what are perceived as prediscursive embodied
feelings, movements and human drives. The prediscursive emotionality
of affective responses is central to volunteer tourists experiences
where the seemingly decommodified nature of volunteer tourism
seems to buttress the affective response of the volunteer tourist. Andy,
a 28 year old German volunteer comments: People are poor, they
dont have those things and it is up to us to help them, its not for
commercial; its from deep inside. Similarly, Sannie, a 21 year old
Danish volunteer comments:
I think first of all for me I think its just the whole theory of you are
there to do something and do you do something meaningful. For
example, right now I am taking care of the children at the orphanage. . . I feel that I have to, okay, likeokay, there are good reasons
to get up in the morning. I feel like getting up in the morning a little
bit more.

These affective responses to the volunteer tourism experience are central to the encounter that depends on images of children, hugs and

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hand holding as these types of images effectively displace broader political economic relations of the encounter. Commenting on these types
of displacements, Zizek observes how These poetic displacements and
the condensations are not just secondary illustrations of an underlying
ideological struggle, but the very terrain of this struggle (2004, p. 77).
A shift from a sign to an affective economy is captured in volunteer
tourism which facilitates a widespread concern with performative
authenticity or the emphasis on either relating empathetically to
the other or connecting affectively to the world (Knudsen and
Waade, 2010, p. 3). The affective response of most volunteer tourists
to their experience is a key aspect of the aestheticization of poverty
within the encounter. The volunteer tourism experience reflects the
broader expansion of affective economies, which include pre-cognitive impulses and drives as well as more corporeal emotions and feelings which are essential and practical tools for understanding how
we become invested in particular structures of power (Vrasti, 2011,
p. 7). In this way, the politics of aesthetics within volunteer tourism
is perpetuated by the affective encounter where the moral response
to economic inequality becomes the consumer response within the intensely emotional culture that has emerged within the culture of capitalism. As a result, emotional life and economic rationality have
transitioned into emotional capitalism whereby the intimate and the
economic are intertwined (Illouz, 2007).
POLITICIZING AESTHETICS IN VOLUNTEER TOURISM
Within volunteer tourism, the relationship between givers and receivers are naturalized. This binary implies a priori uneven power relationship on which the experience is based. Yet, this relationship is
naturalized within the helping discourse (Dove, 1994) that is
widely perpetuated throughout the industry. This process leads to
the depoliticization of volunteer tourism. As Zizek describes Rancieres
theoretical perspective, the basic aim of antidemocratic politics alwaysand by definitionis and was depoliticization, i.e. the unconditional demand that things should return to normal, with each
individual doing his or her particular job (Zizek, 2004, p. 71).This
depolitcization tendency within contemporary Western society is materialized within Rancieres postmodern post-politics or the depoliticization of the political.
Yet, Ranciere notes that within the aesthetic structure there is the potential for politics to emerge through the rupturing of a shared sensibility. This possibility is relevant to the analysis of volunteer tourism
where visible forms of poverty are aestheticized as authentic and
cultural. Ranciere states that an aesthetic politics always defines itself
by a certain recasting of the distribution of the sensible, a reconfiguration of the given perceptual forms (Ranciere, 2004, p. 63). In this way,
Rancieres notion of heterology undoes the sensible fabrica given
order of relations between meanings and the visibleand establishes
other networks of the sensible, which can possibly corroborate the

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action undertaken by political subjects to reconfigure what are given to


be facts (Ranciere, 2004, p. 64). Thus, volunteer tourists regularly justify their participation through aestheticizing poverty which works to
legitimize volunteer tourism as a cultural practice. As McGehee points
out, The question becomes whether the unique motivations and attitudes of volunteer tourists, the catalytic potential of volunteer tourism
organizations, and the agency of the host community can overcome
the predominately western, capitalist environment in which they are often situated, an environment which depends upon production and
consumption, supply and demand and the perpetuation of inequality
(2012, p. 87).
Volunteer tourists affective response and corresponding aestheticization of poverty strategically displaces the history and politics of the
encounter. This displacement creates a sensibility around volunteer
tourism that focuses on individuals who do their part by making a
difference in the Global South through affective encounters with cultural others. Rancieres notion of heterology may be one way we can
move beyond this sense of volunteer tourism. Rancieres notion of heterology can be expanded to consider the aesthetics of volunteer tourism. For example, we can think about the interruption of the
helping discourse (Dove, 1994) and the eruption of a new aesthetics
that addresses rather than overshadows the structural foundations of
global economic inequality. Like Boykoff and Goodmans critique of
the celebritization of climate change, the danger in volunteer tourism for everyone else has been that it has further distracted and muffled
the articulations of discourses calling on systemic and large-scale political, economic, social and cultural shifts that will likely be necessary to
address the multifarious problems and difficult choices (2009, p. 404).
Yet, how this rupturing is to play out in practice is yet to be fully
worked out in academic or practitioner circles where a number of questions remain unanswered. Despite the lack of empirical work justifying
claims of volunteer tourism to facilitate cross-cultural understanding,
peace and global citizenship, volunteer tourism is recognized as a potential platform from which these ideals are possible (Conran, 2011;
McGehee, 2002, 2012; McGehee & Santos, 2005). To begin examining
the possibilities for the politicization of volunteer tourism as an agent
of social change, [A] solid, cohesive theoretical strategy and research
approach to volunteer tourism could serve to answer these very practical and applied questions well (McGehee, 2012, p. 87). This theoretical strategy will need to move well beyond volunteer tourism itself to
consider how the cultural practice is part of a much broader expansion
of moral economies and conspicuous redemption or the celebrated
individual consumer-advocate as a materialization of an intensified cultural logic of neoliberalism (Boykoff & Goodman, 2009).
VOLUNTEER TOURISM AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
As Margaret Swain observes, Tourism is an industry built on distinctions between strangers and friends, with inherent potentials for both

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163

oppression and empowerment (Swain, 2009, p. 505). Volunteer tourism is particularly well positioned to facilitate opportunities for both
outcomes because of the intimacy of the encounter. Indeed, the capacity for volunteer tourism operators to contribute to broader social justice agendas has been questioned (Guttentag, 2009; Lyons et al., 2012;
Raymond & Hall, 2008; Simpson, 2004). Additionally, the intensified
commodification of volunteer tourism by large and for-profit tour
operators has been observed (Coghlan & Noakes, 2012; Lyons et al.,
2012). These movements toward a more profit oriented industry threaten the ideological foundation of early volunteer tourism operators
who based their operation of perceptively decommodified paradigms
that were at least associated with, if not implicated in a number of
anti movements including the anti-globalization, anti-free trade
and anti-neoliberalism (Escobar, 2004; Ferguson, 2010).
Yet, if [S]ocial justice, in the simplest of definitions, means recognizing the existence of inequality, and then seeking social change
(Simpson, 2004, p. 690), then volunteer tourism can be seen as a platform from which to recruit broader social change through consciousness raising and the creation of more hopeful tourism worlds
(Pritchard et al., 2011). This potential was evident in my research
where volunteers frequently referred to their newfound commitment
to help make the world a better place. Anna, a 29 year old American
volunteer tourist explains: I guess having greater awareness would ideally result in being more open-minded, having more acceptance of different ways of life or different beliefs or different food. . . I found for
me its having that awareness makes me more open minded. . . Yet,
it is also through these types of individualized consumer action that
the contradictions of commodified social justice agendas are revealed.
As a result, [A]n important by-product of consciousness-raising is a
phenomenon known as taking on the personal as political (Srivastava,
2003) (McGehee, 2012, p. 101). As it is pointed out, [M]any volunteer tourism organizations offer opportunities for participants to learn
about the complex socioeconomic and political issues that are the
cause behind the inequalities they may see in the host communities,
or between the host communities and themselves (McGehee, 2012,
pp. 9293). While the personal becomes the political, it often becomes
political in particularly neoliberal ways where questions of larger social
inequalities are addressed through consumer choice. Following Foucault, Vrasti proposes a critical ontology of ourselves by which she
means that we consider the ways at which we, perhaps inadvertently,
perpetuate a system that dominates ourselves and others. She writes,
Before we can learn how to live-in-common, we first need to take a
moment to examine our deepest attachments to technological
advancements, sprawling acts of charity, gratifying types of employment, self-actualizing forms of consumption, and exclusionary forms
of attachment invest us in what remains an inherently domineering
and destructive mode of social organization (Vrasti, 2011, p. 1).
Even as the volunteer tourist seeks to contribute to the amelioration
of global economic inequality, their participation in a commodified
development agenda ultimately perpetuates neoliberal modes of

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conduct and encounter with the Global South. Albeit, without these
types of consciousness raising experiences, the everyday actions and
interactions of individuals will be less well positioned to contribute
to more radical structural change. In this way, it is arguably precisely
this heroism and championing that is needed to pioneer new-millennium reflexivity, usher in multiple-scale meaningful change and inspire emergent movements (Boykoff & Goodman, 2009, p. 404). It
is in this way that I, along with other hopeful tourism (Pritchard
et al., 2011) proponents suggest that volunteer tourism has the seeds
of potential to contribute to more radical structural change.
Beyond these theoretical observations, the practical implications of
these findings may include the development of volunteer tourism
experiences that promote consciousness regarding the historical, political and economic backdrop upon which the experience is based.
These types of experiences are already beginning to become available
through organizations such as Global Exchange. We may consider how
experiences such as this can contribute to global consciousness as well
as broader social justice agendas. Finally, the implications of the findings presented in this article may be limited by the context of the case
study with nonprofit NGOs in northern Thailand. As such, different
volunteer tourism contexts (e.g. for profit volunteer tourism organizations) may result in different manifestations of the politics of aesthetics. Research on these different contexts and the corollary politics of
aesthetics that materialize within them would be a welcomed contribution to emerging literature in critical tourism studies and volunteer
tourism.
CONCLUSION
In this article, I reflected on the politics of aesthetics in volunteer
tourism in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Drawing on Rancieres notion of aesthetics as the structured way human sense is organized as well as recent
work in critical tourism studies on the role of aesthetics in tourism
encounters, I argued that volunteer tourism provides an aesthetic
structure that depoliticizes and dehistoricizes the framing of global
economic inequality. This aesthetic structure is perpetuated by the aestheticization of poverty within the encounter. Volunteer tourists aestheticize poverty by articulating it as authentic and cultural. This
argument engages with recent calls for critical theory approaches to
volunteer tourism (McGehee, 2012) as well as observations that
[C]ritical Tourism Studies had emerged to engage inequalities, but
our emancipatory solutions remain elusive (Swain, 2009, pp. 506
507). In response to these challenges, I have argued that despite the
re-narration of global economic inequality as an aesthetic experience,
through the disruption of the aesthetic structure, volunteer tourism
can be reframed as a historically situated and politically implicated cultural practice.
McGehee suggests a possible relationship between volunteer tourism and larger social structures that exist both within and outside

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165

the realm of volunteer tourism (McGehee, 2012, p. 87) and suggests


that a critical and social movement theory lens may help us better
understand this relationship. Building on McGehees observations, I
have argued that within critical theory, political economy approaches
may particularly useful in expanding our understanding of the broader
political and economic structures of the cultural practice. Thus, in this
paper I have examined volunteer tourism at the intersection of political economy and cultural politics. It is in this theoretical space where
the politics of aesthetics can be identified. These implications exist
within and well beyond volunteer tourism and reflect a much broader
problematic regarding how to overcome social and economic inequality within a neoliberal global political economic system. Hence, rather
than being a question about volunteer tourism only, this question reflects a core anxiety of international development (Bianchi, 2009;
Comaroff & Comaroff, 2005; Duffy & Moore, 2010; Ferguson, 2006;
Hall, 2007; Harvey, 2005; Jenkins, 2005). Additionally, it is within this
cultural-economic milieu that we can identify a post-politics in volunteer tourism. As Zizek notes, In post-politics, the conflict of global
ideological visions embodied in different parties who compete for
power is replaced by a collaboration of enlightened technocrats (economists, public opinion specialists. . .) and liberal multiculturalists; via
the process of negotiation of interests, a compromise is reached in
the guise of a more or less universal consensus (Zizek, 2004, p. 72).
With its focus on the cosmopolitan moral consumer-cum-international
humanitarian, volunteer tourism seems to epitomize this trend par
excellence.
For volunteer tourism organizations to be a catalyst for social
change, it is important that we critically engage with the politics of aesthetics that volunteer tourism currently contributes to in order to recognize the broader issues at stake. For volunteer tourism to contribute
to social justice agendas attention should be paid to its politics of aesthetics and efforts need to be made to reorganize this framework in
ways that disrupt the aesthetic structure of the encounter. If the last
decade of intensified moral markets including fair, locally and ethically
traded goods and services have taught us anything, it is that these strategies often fall short of realizing the broader social justice agendas that
they seek to realize (Goodman, 2005; Guthman, 2004). Yet, what can
perhaps be more easily argued is that they have set the stage for an informed public that, armed with their fair trade chocolates and teas,
organically produced yoga mats and international volunteering experiences, may be willing to engage with more serious questions about
broader structural change. As such the politicization of poverty in
volunteer tourism may require an aesthetic opening where we can
see how the aestheticization of politics, the assertion of the aesthetic
dimension as INHERENT in any radical emancipatory politics (Zizek,
2004, p. 76).
Ultimately, I seek to contribute to emerging research in critical tourism studies that does more than simply identify the binary oppositions
or hegemonic representations of tourism phenomena, but rather
thinks through how we can disrupt contemporary aesthetic structures

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M. Mostafanezhad / Annals of Tourism Research 43 (2013) 150169

that perpetuate structural inequality and chronic poverty in the Global


South. Rancieres politics of aesthetics is particularly relevant to this
theoretical agenda where his work, far from standing for a nostalgic
attachment to a populist past lost by our entry into the global postindustrial society. . . is today more actual than ever: in our time of
the disorientation of the Left, his writings offer one of the few consistent conceptualizations of how we are to continue to resist (Zizek,
2004, p. 79).
AcknowledgementsThis article is based on research supported by the Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad and Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowships. I kindly acknowledge
Chiang Mai University and Payap University in Chiang Mai which acted as local institutional
sponsors. The National Research Council Thailand provided me with research clearance. I
am grateful to the NGOs who facilitated the opportunity for me to conduct my research at
their organizations as well as the host community members and volunteer tourists who took
the time to participate in my research.

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Submitted 2nd October 2012. Resubmitted 13th January 2013. Final version 26th April
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