Parallel Practices of Visual Domination and Subversion

Volunteer tourism is seen as a form of good will tourism (Sin 2009), appealing to those who want to make a difference whilst travelling. Despite growing scrutiny over this utopian framing of volunteer tourism (Palacios 2010; Raymond and Hall 2008), there is limited exploration of this travel phenomenon (Alexander 2012; Nadeau and Lord 2017). Consequently, we know little about the broader sociocultural conditions which shape the ways in which this consumption practice is performed. As Urry (2002) exhorts, it is important to consider tourism in relation to wider economic, social, and cultural processes. This is also in line with a growing academic argument that discourses of ethical consumption, while advocating individual responsible consumption, depoliticize and deflects responsibility away from governments and large corporations (Carrington, Zwick, and Neville 2016), and that ‘ethical’ consumption practices should be explored as a structural rather than individual phenomenon. What is also less understood is how these sociocultural discourses are played out visually. This is surprising given a rich literature stream in marketing about the performative power of images, and the rise of social media. With the advent of various social media platforms, visual consumption has become a paramount means of apprehending the world and presenting one’s identity (Schroeder 2005), where the communicative power of photography generates and maintains these discourses in a ubiquitous and seemingly natural way (Schroeder and Borgerson 2005). To address these theoretical asymmetries we ask: what are the broader sociocultural discourses which frame volunteer tourism, and how do they shape visual representational practices in a volunteer tourism marketplace?