‘Doing development’: the gap year, volunteer‐tourists and a popular practice of development

Abstract

Over the last ten years the gap year has become a popular and publicly recognized phenomenon. One of the most visible forms of this phenomenon has been the emergence of 'third world' volunteer-tourism programmes, which seek to combine the hedonism of tourism with the altruism of development work. Such programmes make the practice of international development doable, knowable and accessible to young travellers. This paper seeks to critique the construction of this public face of development, while also asking, from a pedagogical perspective, what travelling participants learn about 'the others' they encounter on, and through, such programmes.

Volunteer tourism, greenwashing and understanding responsible marketing using market signalling theory

“…Simpson (2004) notes that the language of development is rarely used in the gap year industry: its own brand of development discourse is preferred. .…”

“…However, as VT grows in popularity, the true value and costs with regard to the triple bottom line are being called into question (Goodwin, 2011;Wearing, 2001). VT organisations have come under criticism for being overly profit-driven, overpromising benefits, harming destinations and creating customer dissatisfaction (Benson and Henderson, 2011;Crossley, 2012;Simpson, 2004;Tomazos and Cooper, 2012). In this issue of this journal, Taplin, Dredge and Scherrer (2014) outline a monitoring and evaluation framework to assess VT's activities.…”

Volunteer Tourism: Evidence of Cathartic Tourist Experiences

“…Volunteer tourists are, 'those tourists who, for various reasons, volunteer in an organized way to undertake holidays that might involve aiding or alleviating the material poverty of some groups in society, restoration of certain environments or research into aspects of society or environment' (Wearing 2001: 1). Volunteer tourists are typically distinct in profile from other 'mainstream' tourists as they tend to be younger, are primarily motivated by altruistic motives (Brown and Morrison 2003;Simpson 2004;Callanan and Thomas 2005;Brown and Lehto 2005) rather than escapist travel motives, and do not generally pursue the typical international tourist itinerary (Stoddart and Rogerson 2004). The volunteering usually takes place in developing nations and involves a variety of environmental, welfare and community development projects.…”

Embodied experiences in international volunteering: power-body relations and performative ontologies

“…With such a small sample, we make no generalisable claims. Indeed, specifics such as destination, pedagogies and longevity of placement are (amongst others) important factors in volunteering's staging of the North-South encounter (for example : Brown, 2015;Simpson, 2004). Rather, we show that these embodied relationships can be highly significant to some volunteers, from there our analysis examines how researchers' interpretations of the data can then take these experiences in different directions, for which we draw on relevant research literature to situate and complement our data.…”