The fast-growing phenomenon of volunteer tourism encompasses a diverse range of activities, from conserving environments to working with host communities to alleviate poverty. However, understanding the complex relationship between volunteering and tourism requires a wide analytical framework. This book provides a broad and valuable insight into how volunteer tourism is growing and developing. Theoretical and empirical case studies from leading researchers in the field explore the experiences of the volunteer tourist and the power relationships between volunteers and host communities and commercial, non-commercial and government entities involved in developing and supporting volunteer tourism. The ambiguous and contested intersections between volunteering, travel and alternative tourism as a foundation for considering the future of volunteer tourism are also examined.
Essential for those interested in sustainable tourism, community and social development as well as commercial operators, NGOs and volunteer management organizations
Part One: Journeys Beyond Otherness - Communities, Culture and Power
Volunteer Tourism as Alternative Tourism: Journeys Beyond Otherness, K Lyons; S Wearing
"Pettin' the Critters": Exploring the Complex Relationship Between Volunteers and the Voluntoured in McDowell County, West Virginia, USA and Tijuana, Mexico, N McGehee; K Andercek
Volunteering Tourism Knowledge: A Case from the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, C Cooper, L Ruhanen; E Fayos-Sola
Lessons from Cuba: A Volunteer Army of Ambassadors, R Spencer
"Make a Difference!": The Role of Sending Organizations in Volunteer Tourism, E Raymond
Part Two: Inward Journeys: Motivations, Needs and the Self
The Volunteer's Journey through Leisure to the Self, S Wearing; A Deville; K Lyons
Gibbons in their Midst? Conservation Volunteers' Motivations at the Gibbons Rehabilitation Project, Phuket, Thailand, S Broad; J Jenkins
Discovering Self and Discovering Others through the Taita Discovery Centre Volunteer Tourism Program, Kenya, A Lepp
Negotiated Selves: Exploring the Impact of Local-Global Interactions on Young Volunteer Travellers, A Matthews
Opening the Gap: The Motivation of Gap Year Travellers to Volunteer in Latin America, N Söderman; S Leigh Snead
The Dynamics Between Volunteer Tourism, P Pearce; A Coghlan
Part Three: Journeys at the Edge - Overlaps and Ambiguities
All for a Good Cause: The Blurred Boundaries of Volunteering and Tourism, K Lyons; S Wearing
Volunteers as Host and Guest in Museums, K Holmes; D Edwards
Journeys for Experience: The Experiences of Volunteer Tourists in and Indigenous Community in a Developed Nation - A Case Study of New Zealand, A McIntosh; A Zahra
Absences in the Volunteer Tourism Phenomenon: The Right to Travel, Solidarity Tours, and the Transformation Beyond the One-Way, F Higgins-Desboilles; G Russell-Mundine
Mediation of Volunteer Tourism Alternatives: Guidebook Representations of Travel Experiences in Aboriginal Australia, T Young
The fast-growing phenomenon of volunteer tourism encompasses a diverse range of activities, from conserving environments to working with host communities to alleviate poverty. However, understanding the complex relationship between volunteering and tourism requires a wide analytical framework. This book provides a broad and valuable...