International Volunteer Tourism. Stephen Wearing

Volunteer Tourist Motivation

       Conclusion

       6 Volunteer Tourism Projects: A Proposed Mechanism to Improve Working with Local Communities

       Introduction

       Processes

       Case Study 1: Taita Discovery Centre in Kenya

       Andrew Lepp

       Case Study 2: Gibbon Rehabilitation Project, Phuket, Thailand

       Sue Broad and John Jenkins

       Case Study 3: Lessons From Cuba: a Volunteer Army of Ambassadors

       Rochelle Spencer

       Conclusion

       7 Volunteer Tourism: An Existential Perspective

       Matthew McDonald and John Wilson

       Introduction

       Authenticity in Tourism Studies

       Existential Authenticity

       Authenticity, Voluntarist Ethics and Tourism

       Conclusion

       8 Communities as More than ‘Other’ in Cross-cultural Volunteer Tourism

       Introduction

       The Changing Nature of Tourist Privilege over Host in Volunteer Tourism

       The Other

       The Othering of Local Communities through Tourism

       Cross-cultural Exchange

       Conclusion

       9 Looking at the Future of Volunteer Tourism: Commodification, Altruism and Accreditation

       Commodification

       Altruism (is not a Dirty Word)

       The Role of Accreditation in the Future of Volunteer Tourism

       A Final Word: Expanding the Research Agenda for Volunteer Tourism

       References

       Index

       About the Authors

      Nancy Gard McGehee, PhD, J. Willard and Alice Marriott Junior Faculty Fellow in Hospitality Management, 363A Wallace Hall Hospitality and Tourism Management, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA; E-mail: [email protected]

      Stephen Leslie Wearing, School of Leisure, Sport and Tourism, University of Technology, Sydney, PO Box 1 Lindfield, 2070 NSW, Australia; E-mail: [email protected]

       Guest Contributors

      Simone Grabowski is a PhD candidate in the UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; E-mail: [email protected]

      Matthew McDonald is a visiting research fellow in the Graduate School of Psychology, Assumption University, Bangkok, Thailand, and a chartered member of the British Psychological Society. He is the author and co-author of a number of books, the most recent including Critical Social Psychology: An Introduction, 2nd edition (with Brendan Gough and Marjella McFadden; Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Epiphanies: An Existential Philosophical and Psychological Inquiry (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009). E-mail: [email protected]

      John Wilson is an existential counsellor in the Graduate School of Psychology at Assumption University, Bangkok. He has a special interest in continental philosophy.

       Preface

      This book revisits and further develops the topics and themes covered in Volunteer Tourism: Experiences That Make a Difference, written over 10 years ago. In Volunteer Tourism, Wearing attempted to develop greater conceptual clarification around the notion of ‘alternative tourism’ with a specific focus on tourists who volunteer as a part, or for the whole of their travels. The book focused primarily on research carried out in the Santa Elena Rainforest, Costa Rica (Wearing, 1993; Wearing & Larson, 1996; Wearing, 1998, 2009) between the years 1991 and 1994. At this time, the paradigm of volunteer tourism was as an extension of ideas on community-based ecotourism (Wearing & McLean, 1997).

      Since that time, the majority of Wearing’s fieldwork has focused on areas closer to home in Australia, particularly Papua New Guinea and other South Pacific nations. Some of the following stems from the author’s experiences, research and recent publications carried out in these destinations from 2001 to 2012. This book incorporates some of the work written in previous publications with current thinking and research in volunteer tourism.

      Although international volunteering has existed for a number of years, the industry report ‘Volunteer Travel Insights 2009’ (Nestora et al., 2009) notes that ‘it was not until after the September 11th incident and the Indonesian Tsunami that travellers started to think about this type of travel and the market came to realise that they could volunteer on their vacation’. ‘The rise of volunteer vacations seems to be the product of a serendipitous alignment: 10 to 15 years ago, at the same time that trips abroad became easier and less expensive and better-traveled Americans began to seek out more unusual travel experiences, volunteering also became the stuff of national conversation’ (McGray, 2004: 1).

      In addition to the authors’ own work, we have had the opportunities to work closely on this book with a number of global scholars who are undertaking research in this area. Some of these are early career researchers who have contributed chapters. However, it is the growing body of work Wearing has developed along with that of Professor Nancy Gard McGehee from Virginia Tech, USA that provides this volume with new critical insights. Most notable is the addition of critical discussions that consider the overlaps and ambiguities surrounding volunteer tourism. Our work together draws on the links with other related areas of inquiry, including gap year volunteering,