My research has dealt with volunteers and the numerous NGOs in the village for years, however I also take voluntourism itself as an object of study. The following is an article from The Anthropologies Project, that briefly discusses this phenomenon.
Arrivals, perceived and actual
Anthropologies Project, Issue 2: Anthropologies of Tourism
Ethnographies start with ethnographers. What classic, or contemporary for that matter, ethnography doesn't include an arrival story? Generally, it is some variation on a story about getting off the bus, waiting for the dust to clear, and then looking around and figuring out where to begin. These arrival stories are fresh in my mind, having spent the last five years or so reading ethnographies in graduate seminars. Sometimes topics seem to have their own arrival stories. This is the case with the anthropology of tourism. Many monographs about tourism at some point discuss the arrival of anthropology to tourism as a serious scholarly pursuit. In fact, most edited volumes on the topic dedicate much of the introduction to the telling and re-telling of this arrival. I suppose we call it “positioning,” but why the need to wax reflexive about an entire field of study?Voluntourism offers yet another layer of difficulty, for who among ethnographers is not at some time also a volunteer? I certainly have been asked to help from time to time with tasks such as translating promotional documents and painting signs, or troubleshooting a computer problem. I hadn't thought of myself as a volunteer in the context of my research on a community-based tourism initiative until last summer when a community leader asked me how I would like to be introduced to a group visiting from a similar project. Volunteer? Teacher? Anthropologist? My first reaction, of course, was anthropologist. Mario questioned this and wondered if they would understand what my role was. He said, “volunteer, I think Sarah.” He said that he would tell them I worked on the nature trail project. When I quibbled that I didn’t really work on that project, he countered, “but they will like that, they'll understand it. Everybody has a project.” And with that he identified me as someone who was in solidarity with the community. Even though I may have felt solidarity in my role as an anthropologist dedicated to this field site, he knew that what mattered more was the solidarity that others perceived me to have. He knew that they would want to know my arrival story; how I got there. By categorizing me as a volunteer, he was essentially telling them “she's supposed to be here.” Perceptions in this context are crucial to him. To be perceived as Maya garners interest of tourists and federal development funds. To be perceived as poor/traditional/rural secures the desire of volunteers to come to help. Similarly, to be perceived as standing in solidarity with this community provides voluntourists with a clean conscience…they have acted as conscientious consumers, as conservationists, as activists. Plus, they have achieved solidarity with other like-minded travelers who anxiously wait to tell their own arrival stories. And so maybe the telling and re-telling of anthropology's arrival to tourism (or vice versa) is also about perceptions. By explaining how we got here, we too are stating that we are supposed to be here.
Sarah Taylor
April, 2011