Abstract:A recent Aljazeera report on 'Cambodia's Orphan Business' explains 'how "voluntourism" could be fuelling the exploitation of Cambodian children'. Anti-orphanage tourism movements have emerged to resist the growth of Cambodia's contested orphanage tourism industry, which is blamed for widespread corruption and the exploitation of children for profit. Taking a Polanyian political economy approach, this article illustrates how the emergence of and response to the orphanage tourism industry represent, in Karl Pola… Show more
“…From this perspective, the meeting of (relatively) rich Northern constituents with (always) poor Southern constituents is always already delineated by broader uneven processes of historical (colonial) and contemporary (neoliberal) globalisation. Specifically, scholars have explored the ways that hierarchical North–South relations are preserved and reproduced in the spaces of international volunteering through “poor‐but‐happy” (Crossley, ; Simpson, ) rationalisations of poverty; the assumed “expert” roles of unqualified volunteers (Raymond & Hall, ); and the commodification of empathy (Sin, ); and sentimentality (Guiney & Mostafanezhad, ). In such readings of volunteering, global structural inequalities permeate relations between volunteers and hosts; volunteer–host relations are found to be subordinate to, or consistent with, macro‐level patterns of uneven power.…”
Scholars have explored the ways that hierarchical North–South relations are preserved and reproduced in the spaces of international volunteering. Global structural inequalities are widely understood to permeate relations between volunteers and hosts where even the intimacies of empathy and care are ascribed values drawn out of North–South divides. This article has two objectives. First, to explore the affective experience of volunteering for development as a potential realm in which more equitable volunteer–host relations unfold, and second, to include hosts (not just volunteers) in writing on international volunteering. Negotiating the politics of representation, the main body of the article draws on empirical data from fieldwork in India to write a performative account of volunteer–host relations. As the narrative progresses, volunteer‐host relations from outside the dichotomies imposed by the very uneven patterns of development that make hosts hosts, and volunteers volunteers. The article thus makes the argument that affective life in the spaces of volunteering opens up new possibilities for subjectivity that are insubordinate to – and therefore transcendent of – the subject positions delineated by the uneven flows of global power and privilege. The article closes by moving the discussion from transcendence to potential, suggesting that we might research further the potential political agencies that emerge from affective experience in volunteering and development.
“…From this perspective, the meeting of (relatively) rich Northern constituents with (always) poor Southern constituents is always already delineated by broader uneven processes of historical (colonial) and contemporary (neoliberal) globalisation. Specifically, scholars have explored the ways that hierarchical North–South relations are preserved and reproduced in the spaces of international volunteering through “poor‐but‐happy” (Crossley, ; Simpson, ) rationalisations of poverty; the assumed “expert” roles of unqualified volunteers (Raymond & Hall, ); and the commodification of empathy (Sin, ); and sentimentality (Guiney & Mostafanezhad, ). In such readings of volunteering, global structural inequalities permeate relations between volunteers and hosts; volunteer–host relations are found to be subordinate to, or consistent with, macro‐level patterns of uneven power.…”
Scholars have explored the ways that hierarchical North–South relations are preserved and reproduced in the spaces of international volunteering. Global structural inequalities are widely understood to permeate relations between volunteers and hosts where even the intimacies of empathy and care are ascribed values drawn out of North–South divides. This article has two objectives. First, to explore the affective experience of volunteering for development as a potential realm in which more equitable volunteer–host relations unfold, and second, to include hosts (not just volunteers) in writing on international volunteering. Negotiating the politics of representation, the main body of the article draws on empirical data from fieldwork in India to write a performative account of volunteer–host relations. As the narrative progresses, volunteer‐host relations from outside the dichotomies imposed by the very uneven patterns of development that make hosts hosts, and volunteers volunteers. The article thus makes the argument that affective life in the spaces of volunteering opens up new possibilities for subjectivity that are insubordinate to – and therefore transcendent of – the subject positions delineated by the uneven flows of global power and privilege. The article closes by moving the discussion from transcendence to potential, suggesting that we might research further the potential political agencies that emerge from affective experience in volunteering and development.
“…It has been noted elsewhere that orphanage tourism in Cambodia is becoming heavily criticised (Guiney and Mostafanezhad 2015). The rapid increase in tourism development mobility outlined here is emblematic of an expanding phenomenon, but one that is not always closely considered, as the spontaneity within the trend illustrates.…”
Section: Tourism Development As Dynamic Mobility: Tourist Volunteermentioning
confidence: 81%
“…These resistance movements are particularly opposed to short-term touristic engagement within orphanages, although they often criticise the entire phenomenon and the existence of orphanages at all. Although founded on ideas of development, tourism development mobility in this form is seen as inadequate and potentially extremely damaging (UNICEF 2011;Guiney and Mostafanezhad 2015). Ruhfus 2012).…”
Section: Tourism Development As Dynamic Mobility: Tourist Volunteermentioning
This book reframes tourism, as well as leisure, within mobilities studies to challenge the limitations that dichotomous understandings of home/away, work/ leisure, and host/guest bring. A mobilities approach to tourism and leisure encourages us to think beyond the mobilities of tourists to ways in which tourism and leisure experiences bring other mobilities into sync, or disorder, and as a result re-conceptualises social theory. The anthology stretches across academic disciplines and fields of study to illustrate the advantages of multidisciplinary conversation, and in so doing it challenges how we approach studies of movement-based phenomena and the concept of scale. Part I examines the ways in which mobility informs and is informed by leisure, from everyday practices to leisure-inspired mobile lifestyles. Part II investigates individuals and communities that become entrepreneurial in the face of changing tourism contexts and reflects on the performance of work through multiple mobilities. Part III turns to issues of development, with attention to the cultural politics that frame development encounters in the context of tourism. The varied ways that people move into and out of development projects is mediated by geopolitical discourses that can both challenge and perpetuate geographic imaginations of tourism destinations.The aim of this series is to explore and communicate the intersections and relationships between leisure, tourism and human mobility within the social sciences.It will incorporate both traditional and new perspectives on leisure and tourism from contemporary geography, e.g. notions of identity, representation and culture, while also providing for perspectives from cognate areas such as anthropology, cultural studies, gastronomy and food studies, marketing, policy studies and political economy, regional and urban planning, and sociology, within the development of an integrated field of leisure and tourism studies.Also, increasingly, tourism and leisure are regarded as steps in a continuum of human mobility. Inclusion of mobility in the series offers the prospect to examine the relationship between tourism and migration, the sojourner, educational travel, and second home and retirement travel phenomena.For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/SE0522 The series comprises two strands:
“…As explained above:[T]he direct encounter between the volunteer tourist and the child benefactor necessitates new theoretical and practical responses to an orphanage tourism industry that is implicated in myriad networks of international aid, tourism, celebrity, corruption, and local and international politics. (Guiney & Mostafanezhad, , p. 149)…”
Section: Resultsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Issues of corruption, paedophilia, trafficking, attachment disorders and other developmental issues are but a few of the concerns being raised about the potential damage caused by orphanage tourism (Ibrahim, ; Ruhfus, ). Literature to date explores the impacts on children – drawing on the general residential care literature (Richter & Norman, ; UNICEF, ), concerns around child protection (Guiney, ; Reas, ), anti‐orphanage tourism campaigns (Guiney & Mostafanezhad, ), the tourists involved (Proyrungroj, ; Tomazos & Butler, , ), and the commodification and objectification of children through orphanage tourism's popularity (Reas, ). Although these examinations add significantly to an understanding of orphanage tourism, the emotional entanglements within the phenomenon, including the stress and pressure that orphanage tourism places on participant children and volunteers, have yet to be properly examined.…”
Experiences involving vulnerable children are among the most popular volunteer tourism practices. Celebrity humanitarianism and aid campaigns promote images of vulnerable children receiving love and care from international celebrities and humanitarian actors (mainly women), normalising intimacy within popular humanitarianism, or “hug‐an‐orphan” vacations – vacations where tourists crave direct contact with children in global South countries (Schimmelpfennig, 2011, http://goodintents.org/orphanages/hug-an-orphan-vacations-3). Through accounts given by orphanage directors, volunteers, and commentaries on orphanage tourism, this paper describes the layered emotional entanglements within orphanage tourism. Volunteer tourism literature increasingly recognises the importance of affect in such experiences, principally concentrating on how it leads to its growing popularity. Indeed, many volunteer tourists are motivated from a distance to volunteer at orphanages, being drawn to the possibility of engaging with children. However, their emotions within these encounters are far less examined, and the reality of the lifestyle these children live in is often far more upsetting than expected. Regarding the orphans themselves, the argument I make within this paper is that the commodification of children through orphanage tourism experiences has resulted in an expectation that they will interact with tourists in particular forms. Children are expected to be “poor‐but‐happy” and to engage intimately with volunteers and visitors to engender tourist satisfaction and encourage sympathy and donations. The performance of this behaviour is mediated and controlled by their emotional supervisors, orphanage directors. Through volunteer tourism, children are now a tourist commodity, utilising their love and emotions and creating space for exploitation.
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