“English for the global”: discourses in/of English-language voluntourism

Abstract

Drawing upon the notion of hyperglobalism and critical perspectives on English as an international language, this study examines the ways in which English language teaching via volunteer tourism (i.e. English-language voluntourism) is represented and legitimated as an altruistic practice among organizational sponsors and in the talk of current and former volunteers. Data were collected as a part of a larger, multi-sited ethnography that included interviews with program participants, fieldwork in the office of a sponsoring non-governmental organization, and a content analysis of organizational sponsors’ promotional materials. Data analysis illustrates that English-language voluntourism relies on and recreates a discourse of hyperglobalism in order to construct short-term, volunteer English language teaching as a benevolent and appropriate development intervention. However, English-language voluntourism program participants often come to a new, critical awareness of hyperglobalism and its attendant ideologies by participating in these same programs.

Keywords:

• hyperglobalism
• volunteer tourism
• English as an international language (EIL)
• neoliberalism
• development

Notes

1. The use of this term, Global South, indexes work in anthropology and critical geography that upsets the notion that industrialization indicates progress, and contests the idea that nations can be hierarchically ranked to indicate their economic, social, or cultural progress. Although “North” generally refers to the part of the world above the equator and “South” tends to identify nations below the equator, the terms Global North and Global South distinguish between social, technological, and economic differences rather than geographic location. These terms conceive of nation-states as existing in both present and historical relation to one another, and implicates the actions of the Global North in political, economic, and social problems arising in the Global South, such as: Belgium’s exploitation of mineral and agricultural resources in its colony of the Congo and its accompanying “Dominer pour servir” (dominate to serve) policy toward the indigenous population; the US corporation Union Carbide India Limited’s role and lack of accountability in the Bhopal Chemical Disaster; Royal Dutch Shell Oil’s degradation of Ogoni land in Nigeria for the exploitation of oil reserves; and other actions taken by Global North nation-states that exacerbate global inequity and contribute to localized economic, political, and social problems in nation-states historically or currently under colonial rule.