‘The white woman's burden’ – the racialized, gendered politics of volunteer tourism

ABSTRACT

Talking about race in volunteer tourism is like breaking a taboo. By critically exploring the racialized and gendered politics of volunteer tourism from the perspective of the ‘white savior complex,’ we seek to open new avenues of discussion to break this silence. We employ a postcolonial feminist theoretical framework to analyze volunteer tourism. The meanings, practices, and policies of volunteer tourism development are informed by the racialized, gendered logics of colonial thought. If older colonial logics were predominantly masculinist, it considers the largely (white) women participants in contemporary volunteer tourism as a window onto current transformations in historic racialized and gendered logics. Colonial logics and discourses have shifted over time, from the erstwhile ‘civilizing mission’ to the subsequent mandate for development to contemporary depoliticized social causes such as ‘saving the environment.’ Volunteer tourism is an exemplar of this third discourse, as global North volunteer tourists, through their depoliticized logic of ‘saving’ and ‘helping’ the less fortunate others in the global South, inherits such distinctions and reproduces them further. Given the predominance of young white women in contemporary volunteer tourism, beyond these continuities, we also point to compelling shifts in this logic from the masculinism of historic colonial processes. We also highlight the religious dimension, how Christian ideologies which were so central to formal colonial processes continue to play an important role in volunteer tourism today. Future studies on volunteer tourism need to examine its emergence, growth, and popularity (with young white women in particular) from the perspective of historic and ongoing power relations having to do with race and racialized gender, which will enable a critical conversation on volunteer tourism that adds significantly to our knowledge of contemporary neo-colonial processes and their gendered dynamics.

摘要

谈论志愿旅游中的种族问题好比打破禁忌。我们通过从“白人救世主情节”的视角批判地分析了志愿旅游中的种族化与性别化的政治, 寻求为打破这一沉寂的研究领域开辟新的讨论渠道。我们利用了后殖民女性主义理论框架分析了志愿旅游现象。殖民思想的种族化性别化逻辑有助于我们理解志愿旅游发展的意义、实践与政策。如果说旧的殖民逻辑主要是男子气的, 它把当前志愿旅游中的绝大多数 (白人) 女性参与者视为一个窗口, 洞察历史上的种族化与性别化逻辑在当前的转型。米斯 (Mies) 和希娃 (Shiva) 在1993年已经解释了殖民逻辑与话语如何随着时间转变, 从以前的“教化使命”到随后授权发展当前诸如“挽救环境”的、去政治化的社会事业。志愿旅游是第三种话语的一个实例, 因为北半球志愿旅游者通过去政治化地“挽救”与“帮助”南半球较不幸运他者的逻辑, 延续了殖民逻辑的这些特征并且将之进一步繁殖。考虑到白人年轻女性在当前志愿旅游中占有主导地位, 与殖民理论的这些连贯性有所不同, 我们也从历史殖民过程的男性主义角度指出了这种逻辑的印象深刻的转变。我们也突出了志愿旅游中的宗教方面, 即在殖民过程中居以核心地位的基督教意识形态在当今的志愿旅游中是如何起到重要作用的。将来的志愿旅游研究需要从历史的视角和与种族与种族化性别有关的权力关系视角继续考察志愿旅游的出现、发展及普及化, 特别是在白人年轻女性中的普及化问题。这将推动志愿旅游的批判性讨论, 将会显著增加我们对当前新殖民过程及其性别动力学的了解。

KEYWORDS:

• Volunteer tourism
• white savior complex
• race
• feminization
• postcolonial theory
• postcolonial feminist theory

关键词:

• 志愿旅游
• 白人救世主情节
• 种族
• 女性化
• 后殖民理论
• 后殖民女性主义理论

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ranjan Bandyopadhyay

Ranjan Bandyopadhyay is an associate professor at Mahidol University, Thailand. Previously, he was an associate professor at The California State University, USA and also taught at The University of Nottingham, UK. He obtained his Ph.D. in Tourism and Socio-cultural Anthropology from The Pennsylvania State University, USA. His research interests include sociology of tourism, politics of representation, nationalism, heritage, nostalgia, identity and social justice. He has published in Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice and is an Associate Editor of the postdisciplinary journal - Visual Methodologies.

Vrushali Patil is an associate professor of Sociology at Florida International University in the US. She obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Maryland, Collge Park. Her research interests include postcolonial and decolonial feminism, transnational feminist theory, and global historical sociology. Her work has appeared in Theory and Society, Annals of Tourism Research, Signs, Sex Roles, and Sociology Compass.