Volunteer Tourism

Dr Mary Mostafanezhad is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Hawai'i.

'This pioneering study seeks to dispel the naïve humanitarian illusions about voluntarism as a panacea for the social ills of neoliberal state policies and to show how that activity became commodified and absorbed by the capitalist system, thus unwittingly helping to strengthen it. Its key message is that good intentions can be exploited to maintain the social conditions they seek to ameliorate.' Erik Cohen, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel ’Morality tourism is the latest stage in the evolution of means to satisfy the biopsychosocial needs of Western (and non-Western) urban, alienated middle classes. Mary Mostafanezhad’s long experience in Northern Thailand where a plethora of NGOs and volunteers express the Peace Corps effect allows her to show us the possibilities of both danger and hope for sentimentality-based development activities, contextualized by her erudite discussion of our neoliberal world system.’ Nelson Graburn, University of California, Berkeley, USA ’While excoriating volunteer tourism's neoliberal underpinnings, this marvellous study also documents its transformative cosmopolitan hope for tourists, humanitarian organizations, and host communities that engage. A must read for anyone wanting to understand tourism's potential for social justice, and why this is so difficult to achieve.’ Margaret Byrne Swain, University of California, Davis, USA 'From Mostafanezhad’s engagement with geopolitics of hope, it is clear that she wishes to show the emancipatory potential underlying this tourism niche. The value of this book is unmistakable as Mostafanezhad’s optimistic tone but theoretically charged discussions further moral deliberations of humanitarianism and tourism by illuminating current policies and practices that ultimately sustain the political, economic, and social inequalities on which volunteer tourism is based.' Annals of Tourism Research

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Sentimental Sojourns in Northern Thailand; Chapter 2 “Making a Difference One Village at a Time”: Volunteer Tourism and the Peace Corps Effect; Chapter 3 The Seduction of Development: NGOs and Alternative Tourism in Northern Thailand; Chapter 4 Cosmopolitan Empathy, New Social Movements and the Moral Economy of Volunteer Tourism; Chapter 5 The Cultural Politics of Sentimentality in Volunteer Tourism; Chapter 6 Converging Interests? Cross-Cultural Authenticity in Volunteer Tourism; Chapter 7 Conclusion—Re-mapping the Movement: Popular Humanitarianism and the Geopolitics of Hope in Volunteer Tourism;