The road worth taking,the life worth living,and the person worth being: Morality,authenticity and personhood in volunteer tourism and beyond

Abstract

This article explores what volunteer tourists designate as moral in the practice of volunteering. Findings from in-depth interviews demonstrate how this experience’s moral worth relates to notions of moral personhood, rather than to responsibility for others. This article argues that in late modernity middle class volunteer tourists see the moral worth of the practice as resting on its capacity as an outlet for expression and cultivation of one’s true self. This emphasis reflects a contemporary ‘ethics of authenticity’, wherein being true to yourself is a moral principle and a contributing factor to a full existence. The article explores the ways this moral principle appears in interviewees’ wide moral perceptions and highlights the role of volunteer tourism in materializing these perceptions. By adding the moral layer to the quest for authenticity via tourism the article provides an insight into the role of tourism in peoples’ moral lives.

Keywords

ethics of authenticity existential authenticity moralization of tourism moral personhood self-development volunteer tourism

Introduction

In recent years, tourism researchers have become increasingly interested in understanding the various relations that can arise between tourism and morality. This ‘moral turn’ in tourism studies (Caton, 2012) appears in a growing body of literature introducing moral and ethical concepts into current debates on tourism (e.g. MacCannell, 2011; Mostafanezhad and Hannam, 2014; Smith and Duffy, 2004)¹ and in the increasing attention to new forms of alternative tourism (e.g. Butcher, 2003; Fennell, 2006). Opening a special issue of Tourism Studies dedicated to morality and mobility in tourism, Grimwood and Caton (2017) argue that advancing the moral turn in tourism studies requires inquiry into the moral features characterizing tourism as a social action and tourists as social actors.

This article responds to their call by examining tourists’ perceptions of the moral worth they designate to tourism as a social action in the case of tourists who volunteer while travelling, a practice known as ‘volunteer tourism’. Volunteer tourism is an alternative type of tourism (Butcher, 2003), which refers to practices performed by tourists intended to aid impoverished communities, alleviate poverty and care for the environment (Wearing, 2001).

Coupling travelling with volunteering, volunteer tourism’s basic features make it a potent site for exploring tourists’ moral perceptions. A growing body of literature on volunteer tourism emphasizes volunteers’ motivations (Broad, 2003; Brown, 2005; Sin, 2009; Tomazos and Butler, 2010) and experiences (Conran, 2011; Kontogeorgopoulos, 2017; Simpson, 2004); however, morality eludes scrutiny, relegated to an ancillary component of experience, often couched in normative terms of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’, ‘benevolent’ and ‘egoistic’. Therefore, complex ideas, conceptions and beliefs about morality underlying volunteer tourists’ motivations and experiences remain underexplored.

This article takes a non-normative approach to morality and investigates first-person evaluations and beliefs about things of significance by posing the following questions: (1) What do volunteer tourists designate as moral in the practice of volunteer tourism and why? (2) What are the social and cultural sources of their designations? (3) How are these designations incorporated into volunteer tourists’ wider moral views?

Using data from in-depth interviews, this article shows how moral designation in volunteer tourism relates to notions of what constitutes a moral person and to the ways volunteer tourism can enable the expression and cultivation of moral personhood through self-investigation and self-development. It argues that volunteering abroad can draw upon an ethic of individual self-expression and cultivation, rather than only responsibility for others or large-scale social change. This emphasis represents what Taylor (1992) describes as the contemporary ‘ethics of authenticity’, wherein being true to yourself has become a moral imperative leading to a full and rich human existence. Drawing upon Taylor’s notions of authenticity, this article scrutinizes the moral dimensions of self-expression and cultivation that take place in volunteer tourism, revealing tourism’s role as a site for social action in peoples’ moral lives.

In what follows, two main perspectives to inquire about morality in social science are juxtaposed with the main volunteer tourism research approaches and the advantage of utilizing a non-normative perspective are discussed in light of contemporary importance of the self for moral orientation. After describing the method – narrative interviews – the findings are dissected into four major themes emerging from the interviews: the road worth taking, the life worth living, the person worth being and the source of moral self. The conclusions revisit the argument about the relation between travelling, volunteering and self-cultivation, discuss further directions in the study of volunteer tourism and morality in tourism, and touch upon the implications of the findings in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Morality, authenticity and volunteer tourism: A theoretical discussion

Social science broadly defines morality as comprised of cultural codes that denote right from wrong, good from bad and worthy from unworthy, affecting individuals’ behaviour towards others and towards themselves (Sayer, 2005; Stets and Carter 2012). Despite a consensus on this broad definition, two distinct perspectives prevail regarding morality on an ontological level – normative and non-normative – leading to two distinct epistemological positions, which in turn result in two distinct kinds of knowledge production on morality (Tavory, 2011).

The normative perspective rests upon a substantive and a priori definition of morality as consisting of universal standards such as fairness, benevolence and caring for others’ wellbeing (Hitlin and Vaisey, 2013). Inquiring into morality from this perspective means examining people’s behaviour and social arrangements through universal standards, to determine the extent of their morality (Stets and Carter, 2012). Although academic literature does not generally focus on volunteer tourists' moral notions, moral normative assumptions can be discerned as underpinning various studies on volunteer tourism. In their review of research on volunteer tourism, Wearing and McGehee (2013) classify the literature into four research approaches: ‘Advocacy’ displays volunteer tourism as an ideal activity; ‘cautionary’ investigates volunteer tourism against the backdrop of global and historical power relations, warning of its potentially detrimental effects; ‘adaptancy’ calls for the implementation of certain practices in order to maximize positive effects while minimizing negative ones; and the relatively new ‘scientific platform’ aims for a more systematic and theoretically complex approach in examining volunteer tourism.

The first three approaches embed strong normative assumptions. For example, when studies taking an adaptancy approach refer to volunteer tourists’ motivation as ‘positive’ or ‘altruistic’ (Broad, 2003; Brown, 2005; Wearing, 2001), they assume substantive definitions of what is good. Similar assumptions can be inferred about cautionary studies when they refer to volunteer tourists’ motivation as ‘egoistic’ (Kontogeorgopoulos, 2017; Sin, 2009) or as being a form of ‘social egoism’ (Coghlan and Fennell, 2009). Research from these approaches tend to generate zero-sum, binary discussions on whether the local community or the volunteers benefit more from volunteer tourism (Everingham, 2015; Palacios, 2010), without directly examining moral perceptions.

Aiming to avoid zero-sum binaries and generate rich characterizations of volunteer tourists’ moral views, this article joins the scientific approach, which addresses volunteer tourism through a solid theoretical lens. Admittedly, some underlying theory may have normative starting points, such as neoliberalism or neocolonialism – both prevalent theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing volunteer tourism (Lyons et al., 2012; Mostafanezhad, 2013; Vrasti, 2012); however, research taking a more scientific approach tends to generate a less distinct normative voice. The article utilizes a non-normative perspective to morality thus avoiding substantial a priori definitions of morality (Hitlin and Vaisey, 2013; Tavory, 2011). Its aim is neither to provide a definitive answer as to whether volunteer tourism is moral, nor to measure the level of volunteer tourists’ morality. Instead, it investigates volunteer tourists’ definitions and classifications of morality and the social source and processes that sustain them. Applying a non-normative perspective (as opposed to normative) offers two distinct advantages when investigating volunteer tourism.

First, a non-normative perspective assumes people can imagine what ought to be vis-à-vis a given reality even if they cannot formulate their understandings into coherent philosophies (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). It sees individuals as capable of understanding moral codes and employing them in their everyday lives. Therefore, inquiries into morality from this perspective do not exclusively study people’s attestations of norms and values; they also observe the processes of evaluation and moral worth distribution that underlie social and personal narratives, identities and cognitive schemas (Lamont, 2000; Sayer, 2005). A non-normative perspective thus offers significant potential for revealing the moral notions underpinning volunteer tourists’ motivations and experiences.

Second, it is important to focus on individual classifications in light of discussions about contemporary sources of morality. Scholars argue that in late modernity individualization processes and the project of the self, wherein individuals are forced to form their own identity by themselves, turn the self into the source of morality (Bauman, 1993; Giddens, 1991), which Taylor (1992) calls ‘morality from within’. Since morality is a voice from within, the notion of authenticity – being true to oneself – has become an important source of moral orientation: ‘something we have to attain to be true and full human beings’ (Taylor, 1992: 26). Taylor describes how authenticity goes hand in hand with the culture of self-cultivation because one achieves authenticity through self-investigation and self-development as they enable interpretation and understanding of one’s true self.

Taylor emphasizes that, although related to individualization processes, self-cultivation is dialogical in nature because it takes place against a backdrop of a ‘horizon of significance’ – larger social and cultural contexts within which people operate and come to know themselves in meaningful ways. Whereas Taylor considers the worth of authenticity as universal, empirical findings illustrate that authenticity bears class features (Hookway, 2017; Skeggs, 2005). It is been suggested that authenticity as being faithful to one’s past (Heideggerian notion), is largely prevalent among working-class, while authenticity as self-realization (Taylorian notion) is more common among middle class, serving as a token of worth and a platform for moral self-creation (Schwarz, 2016).

Since MacCannell (1973) emphasizes modern (and also affluent) tourists’ quests for ‘authentic experience’, ‘authenticity’ is a prevalent concept in tourism and volunteer tourism literature (Brown, 2005; Cohen, 1988; Kontogeorgopoulos, 2017; Mostafanezhad, 2013; Noy, 2004). In his influential theoretical exposition of authenticity Wang (1999) differentiates among objective, constructive and existential authenticity. Objective authenticity relates to places, people or objects perceived as having immanent qualities that testify to their originality. Constructive authenticity refers to symbolic meaning attributed via social-public discourse to an object or a subject. While the first two types of authenticity are material and object-based, existential authenticity is activity-based and most directly relates to authenticity in the Taylorian sense. This type of authenticity refers to existential states that take place in spaces (i.e. tourism destinations) and provoke reflections through which subjects (i.e. tourists) can connect to their true selves. Tourism is considered as a social arena that offers respite from everyday life, hence a catalyst for existential authenticity (Brown, 2013). Kontogeorgopoulos (2017) shows how various dimensions of existential authenticity, often intertwined with material authenticity, are recurrent reasons and explanations among volunteer tourists regardless of factors such as age and nationality. Previous studies of authenticity have not attended to the moral implications of its pursuit. Applying a non-normative perspective in scrutinizing the moral dimensions of the quest for authenticity permits explanations on tourism’s integration into people’s moral lives.

Method

This study employed in-depth narrative interviews with 42 volunteer tourists from Israel. Narrative interviews are a common method for exploring meaning-production and self-telling in tourism research (e.g. Noy, 2004). They offer a useful tool for tracing self-perception and wide social views, which can deviate from the events forming the interview’s focus (Wortham, 2000) and thus can help uncover how people may define notions of morality beyond a particular social field or situation.

Interviewees were reached by snowball sampling, a method in which participants refer researchers to other potential interviewees (Small, 2009). Five separate snowballs were conducted in order to ensure that the topics discussed were not limited to a specific group of volunteer tourists. To minimize the organizations’ effect on the interviewees’ moral views and experience while maintaining some consistency between volunteering experiences, the sample included tourists who volunteered in two different organizations operating in different locales (Nepal and India).

The interviewees (22 female and 20 male) were Jewish Israelis in their 20s (21–29) from middle-class backgrounds, who participated in structured community development projects (ranging between 2 weeks and 1 month). The interviewees’ age and socio-economic demographic characteristics are resonant with general characteristics of volunteer tourists, who tend to be young adults, from middle-class backgrounds (Mostafanezhad, 2013), and who usually volunteer during a gap-year (Hermann et al., 2017; Simpson, 2004) or during university study (Schwarz, 2018; Sin, 2009).

Most of the interviewees (67%) volunteered during extended journeys (ranging from 1 month to a year) following their discharge from the military service. Such extended journeys – in most cases to South and Southeast Asia or South America – are a common activity for a gap year for many young middle-class Israelis (Noy, 2004). The rest volunteered during university semester breaks.

The interviews were conducted retrospectively, to explore meanings attributed to volunteering over time. Varying from a few days to 4 years, the interviews occurred at an average time period of one-and-one-half years after the return home. All interviewees were interviewed once each. Interviews were conducted in Hebrew and lasted from 1 to 2 hours. Pseudonyms were used to protect interviewees’ anonymity. Locations of the interviews varied according to interviewees’ preferences. I digitally recorded the interviews and manually transcribed them shortly after conducting them. Afterwards, I coded and evaluated the data using Maxqda, a qualitative data analysis software. To confirm data validity, I conducted coding and methods triangulation (Creswell and Miler, 2000). Namely, I re-coded the same transcripts on different days and used thematic and narrative analysis to verify the data converges among different methods of analysis.

The interviews were semi-structured and consisted of three main parts. The first solicited background information and encouraged interviewees to volunteer ideas, topics and experiences meaningful to them. The next part included specific questions about the travel and volunteering experience, including related events from before and after volunteering. Questions included: ‘Why did you choose to volunteer?’ and ‘Why is it good to volunteer?’ Follow-up questions referred to stories and events mentioned in the interview, such as: ‘How did you feel about it?’ and ‘What do you think about it now?’

During the interviews I had a dilemma whether to keep the interview flowing or occasionally stop the flow and probe for clarification. Although every interview had its own dynamic I usually kept the interview flowing, noting down my questions in order to return to them in the final part of the interviews, where I sought further clarification.

A narrative is a story told by people aiming for a certain objective and constructed through selection from available biographical material. The analysis, guided by Spector-Mersel’s (2011) comprehensive interpretive model, sought to identify the selection mechanism interviewees used to create their narratives. In line with Spector-Mersel’s model, I first marked the factual information provided by interviewees creating a partial biography of the interviewees and a ‘roadmap’ of the interview. Then I identified the narrative objective by ascertaining selection mechanisms used by interviewees: inclusion, sharpening, omission, silencing, flattening and ‘appropriate’ meaning attribution. I scanned the interviews while asking what the narrative is all about, which topics enter the narrative (inclusion) and which remain outside (omission or silencing),² what appears at the centre of the narrative (sharpening) and what stays in the margins (flattening) and what kind of alternative explanations are suggested and to which topics (‘appropriate’ meaning attribution). Finllay, focusing on recurrent themes I developed an interpretive framework presented in the next sections.

Findings and discussion

The road worth taking

When asked what is good about volunteering, the interviewees did not link volunteering to altruism or large-scale social change. However, they neither negated volunteering’s possible contribution to local society, nor denied their having a general motivation to help, as Mika expressed:

I travelled to see new things. Not the India that everyone sees. I travelled in order to expose myself to new things and to help…. People need to expose themselves to more places and to see things. . .that will make them think and enquire [themselves].

Alma cited similar reasons for volunteering: ‘I wanted to volunteer because I wanted to immerse myself in the local culture and to meet local people. To try to be less of a tourist’. She added how such experiences are part of ‘one’s personal process’. Mika and Alma ascribe moral worth to experiences such as cross-cultural encounters, cultural immersion and exposure to material and culturally different life settings. Volunteer tourism literature has indicated that such experiences are central to volunteer tourists’ accounts (Broad, 2003; Brown, 2005; Conran, 2011; Curtin and Brown, 2018; Everingham, 2015; Kontogeorgopoulos, 2017; Sin, 2009). Yet, it is important to note how Mika and Alma link these experiences to internal personal processes. In short, they ascribe moral worth to experiences of existential authenticity resulting from experiences of material authenticity.

Dori, who declared: ‘Volunteering was self-enriching. . .it was the most authentic experience I could ask for!’, draws a clear line between the experiences of material authenticity and existential authenticity. He elaborated on what he meant by authenticity and why it is self-enriching: ‘First, authenticity is eating local food and staying with a local family. [Second] to be affected by the sunlight. You get used to doing things according to the locals’ tempo – this is authenticity’.

Authenticity plays a fundamental role in the motivations, actions and experiences of tourists and volunteer tourists. Although the pursuit of authenticity and, particularly, existential authenticity is suggested to be among the egoistic forces behind volunteer tourism’s rising popularity (Kontogeorgopoulos, 2017), understanding authenticity as merely an egoistic force misses its moral implications for people’s lives. I suggest understanding the significant role of authenticity for both tourists and volunteer tourists in light of the contemporary importance of authenticity for moral orientation, which gives it a standing of a master narrative and turns the idea of being true to yourself to a moral imperative for rich and full life (Taylor, 1992). This imperative demands active self-cultivation through self-inquiry and self-development.

The interviewees’ generally saw tourism as an excursion outside of one’s regular sphere of life, creating mental space for reflection, offering an opportunity to learn about one’s self and, eventually, better connect with one’s true self. These sharpening articulations strongly suggest that they perceived tourism as an ideal arena to follow the moral imperative of being true to yourself.

While emphasizing the potential of tourism to stimulate existential authenticity, interviewees characterized volunteer tourism as especially capable of catalysing existential authenticity compared to other conventional types of tourism.

This view became most apparent in interviewees’ comparisons of volunteering with other parts of their journeys or with other journeys they had taken. For example, Dean commented that volunteering fosters self-cultivation better than mere travel: ‘It is something you can learn while travelling, but it is more extreme and intense while volunteering’. While Dean did not elaborate on this distinction, Iris, who decided to volunteer during her trip after standard tourist activities had failed to meet her expectations, offered:

If at the beginning of my trip, I was bored by the lack of doing something. During volunteering, I felt that I was doing something. You get up in the morning and you have a schedule. You do stuff. You’re involved in the place and. It is like you are living the local routine. We had a well in our house and we ran out of water. It is a more authentic way of life [than conventional tourism].

Iris also found authenticity in her relationship with local people: ‘Our local colleague. . . invited us several times for dinner. [Then] you’re not a regular tourist so you don't feel like an outsider’. She summed up her experience saying: ‘You challenge yourself and experience the people through doing something’.

Like Iris, Tommy spontaneously decided to volunteer while already travelling, a decision that left a sizable impact: ‘Volunteering left a deep impression in my consciousness in how I perceive myself, and how I perceive the world’. He also referred to authenticity when describing the differences between conventional tourism and volunteer tourism:

As a tourist there is a curtain, and [with volunteering] someone takes it off, and I saw what was happening behind it and you suddenly truly noticed the details. After volunteering my viewpoint was not that of a tourist but of someone who understands the local society in a deep way.

Iris and Tommy stressed material and existential authenticity when describing differences between conventional tourism and volunteer tourism, employing them as criteria for evaluating their travel experiences. These same criteria were voiced by majority (87%) of interviewees.

While scholars have documented volunteer tourists’ distance themselves from conventional types of tourism, based on their travel experience (Broad 2003; Butcher, 2003; Conran, 2011; Sin and He, 2019), it is important to note how interviewees ascribe worth to their travel experience and link it to their self-cultivation.

The interviewees’ criteria point to two ideal types, in a Weberian sense (Weber, [1947] 1981), of tourism and tourists. According to interviewees, the non-authentic type of tourism takes place in ‘tourism bubbles’, making ‘real’ encounters with material and human surroundings impossible. Those partaking in this type of tourism cannot come away with any existential experiences. In contrast, authentic tourism is considered to be taking place off the beaten track. Those participating in this type of tourism are curious about the local society and way of life, seeking intimate engagement and active involvement in locals’ lives and cultivating themselves in the process. Authentic tourism is thus perceived as worthy and therefore moral in the sense that it enables self-cultivation. Volunteering facilitates authentic tourism, allowing participants to cultivate in themselves attributes such as curiosity and sensitivity, and is thus deemed a worthy way of travel.

The life worth living

In his study, Noy (2004) emphasizes the interplay between material authenticity and existential authenticity in narratives of self-change among young backpackers. The self-transformative nature of the volunteer tourism experience is extensively addressed in the literature (Sin, 2009; Tomazos and Butler, 2010; Wearing, 2001). Curtin and Brown (2018) show how this transformation takes the form of self-improvement when, upon their return, volunteer tourists identify themselves as having become ‘better people’. However, the interviewees here did not present narratives of self-change, but rather of cultivation of the existing self for a life worth living.

Throughout their narratives, interviewees presented their decision to volunteer as stemming from their true selves; volunteering aligned itself with other actions and activities in which they had engaged during their life course. Ari’s reflection on the link between his decision to volunteer and other choices he has made during his life is a case in point: ‘There is an internal compass that knows what is good and what is bad and the choice is easy, even when it is not comfortable…. I try to live my life according to this compass’. Shelly similarly incorporated volunteering into her life course:

First of all, as a person, I always try, in anything I do, to throw in something extra. Even if [what I do] is for my personal benefit, I will try to add a little bit more meaning to it, maybe help others. So maybe. . .it always seemed reasonable that I combine volunteering with my trip.

In the interviewees’ narratives, volunteer tourism was not presented as an unusual and outstanding activity. It was positioned alongside other outlets for social involvement, where expressing and cultivating true self is possible. The interviewees’ biographical backgrounds make it evident that they had been socially involved throughout their lives. Most of them (85%) participated in extracurricular activities during their youth that had involved volunteering, such as youth movements and community work. Almost half (48%) remain active in different social settings. When referring to their future work goals, the majority (63%) declared the motivation to practice a profession that would allow them to be socially involved (e.g. civil servant) or help others (e.g. physician). Volunteering is thus presented as an outlet suited to their general aim of composing a life worth living.

Volunteer tourism’s moral worth lies within its basic features. Combining volunteering with travelling enabled interviewees to practice a familiar activity (volunteering) in a unique life setting (long-term travelling), one that, like other volunteer experiences, is considered as contributing to self-cultivation, as expressed by Zoe:

I already told you how the encounter with different cultures while volunteering at home was interesting for me. So, imagine an encounter with a completely different culture. I knew it would be very interesting for me and I wondered what it would bring out in me.

Kobi expressed similar views in reflecting on his motivations:

I was looking for an experience. I didn’t think about the essence of volunteering. I wanted something experimental and to see how I would respond to it. I have been working with youth throughout my life and I wanted to see how it would feel to do that with a community I didn’t know and did not necessarily identify with or understand.

Regularly socially involved throughout his life, Ran directly related volunteering and social involvement to self-cultivation:

I decided I wanted to have this experience [volunteering] before starting university, indeed, in order to complete the whole [personal] process I’ve been going through in the last few years in the youth movement, the military service and at work. I decided that I really wanted to finish it with volunteering.

Ran positioned volunteering abroad as culminating an extensive personal process, even linking his military service as a commander at novice basic training to his choice of volunteering project: ‘Because of my army service it felt right to join an educational project [abroad]. It was the most natural thing for me’.

With one exception, shortly before volunteering, all interviewees had completed service in the Israeli military, thus participating in organized violence. Even as they couched their volunteering in moral worth, their military activity did not give rise to moral questions. An integral component of the Israeli social order and central to good citizenship, army service is often experienced as a self-empowering professional opportunity generally unavailable to young adults in civilian labour markets (Karazi-Presler et al., 2018). Likewise, when this experience arose occasionally in conversation, interviewees presented their army service as part of a seamless narrative, as another outlet for social involvement and, more importantly, self-cultivation.

Inclusion of volunteering into their life course or emphasis on an organic connection between their prior interests and volunteering while travelling reflects interviewees’ beliefs about a life worth living. These beliefs play a dual role in social action constituting a priori motivational factors and/or post-priori sense-making mechanisms (Vaisey, 2009). In both cases interviewees presented volunteer tourism alongside other outlets for social involvement that enable the expression and cultivation of one’s true self.

This is not to be confused with instrumental self-promotion or CV enhancement for gaining advantage in higher education or in the labour market (Hermann et al., 2017; Simpson, 2004) – increasingly popular frameworks of analysis of volunteer tourism, which emphasize the impact of neoliberal rationalities on volunteer tourism (Lyons et al., 2012; Vrasti, 2012). Despite the strong emphasis on self-cultivation, only two of the interviewees stated that volunteering was raised in their university admission interviews. Nonetheless they stressed that they volunteered regardless of any future ambitions. When asked if she had listed volunteering in her CV Jasmine responded, ‘It is not something that’s supposed to promote you in your life. I mean, it’s something you do for your well-being, not in order to get any leverage’. This perspective dominated among the interviewees, who categorically rejected any association between volunteering and instrumental motivations, emphasizing instead volunteering as an outlet for expressing and cultivating their existing self.

In sum, interviewees perceive volunteering as part of a moral life course, a life of self-investigation and self-development, which leads to better connections to one’s true self. This way of life is made possible through engagement in different social outlets, which enable one to experience existential authenticity. In this life course, volunteer tourism’s moral worth is derived from the perceivably unique settings in which the practice takes place, which enables the pursuit of familiar activities in unfamiliar settings.

The person worth being

A helpful context for viewing interviewees’ perceptions of the road worth taking and life worth living is the contemporary project of the self, where individuals form their own identities relatively independently from traditional authorities (Giddens, 1991). The discussion of self-cultivation that recurs, albeit in different versions, throughout the interviewees’ narratives points towards a specific end, one which helps to reveal interviewees’ notions of what constitutes a moral person. These notions became most apparent when interviewees stressed the characteristics they shared with their volunteering peers.

Studies have found that camaraderie and meeting like-minded people provide profound motivations for volunteer tourists (Broad, 2003; Brown, 2005; Everingham, 2015; Kontogeorgopoulos, 2017), a finding likewise evident in this study’s narratives. When referring to their volunteering peers, interviewees use adjectives such as ‘great’, ‘amazing’ and ‘pro-active’ with the most commonly used adjective being ‘good’ (by 16 interviewees). I suggest their use of ‘good’ in this context served as an explanatory keyword, which bears fundamental symbolic meanings for a certain group of people organizing their understanding of a topic (Katriel, 1986). Therefore, it unfolds the interviewees’ understanding of what characterizes a moral person and explains the moral worth ascribed to camaraderie. Asked to elaborate on what she means by ‘good people’, Nelly characterized her volunteering peers:

You could find very good people in the volunteering programme. Like, you need to be a certain kind of person in order to get into such programmes. Someone who doesn’t have any social awareness or cultural curiosity will not get into these kinds of programmes. So, the people in the volunteering programmes had good intentions, they were curious and willing to experience new things.

Nelly’s statements reflect some themes that recurred in other interviews. Characterizing volunteers as a ‘certain kind of person’ implies that being good is a virtue that comes from within. When Amir commented on the worth of being around ‘good people’, he said that even prior to volunteering he had expected to find good people in the programme. According to him, such people are not simply good, but in ‘car[ing] about people around them’ are capable of extending goodness to others: ‘Being around them makes me want to be good, to do good [and] to be a better version of me’. In other words, the interviewees expressed how spending time with good people heightens existing virtues inherent in the self.

Elinor too had expected volunteering to be a ‘good and enriching experience’ because it ‘would be with very good people’. In her account of ‘good people’, Elinor mentioned ‘caring’ alongside other criteria, such as ‘true friends [and] educators,’ concluding: ‘Every person who participated in volunteering is a person who cares, who is there for the right reasons, which for me are the reasons that brought me to volunteer, simply to do good’. Here Elinor connected the way she saw her peers as good people with her sense of self. Her definition of ‘good people’ bears a strong sense of familiarity, a perspective commonly invoked by other interviewees.

This view of fellow volunteers as ‘good people’ was also expressed by interviewees who admitted they did not get along with them, with one notable exception. Sharon was disappointed with her volunteering peers because she had expected to find ‘like-minded people’ in the programme and this lack affected her experience: ‘I think the experience would have been better with other people or with people who are g – , who are more into it’. When I pointed out that she had almost said ‘good’, Sharon chuckled uncomfortably, saying that she had stopped herself because some of them were good people. Sharon characterized ‘good people’ as ‘people with values and agendas, someone you can talk to and have a meaningful interaction with’. And yet, her volunteering peers provided a counter-example: ‘It felt like volunteering provoked thought and discussion, but those discussions reached a dead end because of the human factor’. Despite Sharon’s dissatisfaction with her volunteering peers, her account of ‘good people’ was similar to those provided by other interviewees; she had expected to meet ‘like-minded people’ while volunteering and have ‘meaningful interactions’ with them.

Overall, interviewees characterized ‘good people’ as socially aware, caring, curious and having good intentions. Such characteristics can be made manifest through actions, such as volunteering, while their source lies within the person and needs further cultivation. ‘Good people’ likewise pursue a similar life course, which when viewed alongside interviewees’ identification with their volunteering peers reveals their notion of what constitutes a moral person.

Sources of moral selfhood

Even though interviewees presented their moral views and behaviour as intrinsic, these did not arrive in a vacuum. First, moral worth is conditional upon recognition by others, who need to validate actions and belief as good (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006; Tavory, 2011). Second, as Taylor (1992) argues, self-cultivation has a dialogical nature because it takes place against a backdrop of a horizon of significance – larger social and cultural contexts within people operate.

The interviewees were young middle-class Israelis and, indeed, their expression of moral sentiments, evaluative judgements and moral dispositions that constitute the notion of the moral person reflect a specific horizon of significance. Yet, authenticity, in the Taylorian sense of being true to oneself, functions as a moral imperative and prevalent axis for moral self-telling for the middle class in post-industrial society in the global north (Hookway, 2017; Skeggs, 2005). Moreover, although their notion of moral personhood indicates a specific horizon of significance, interviewees assumed it as universally applicable; and while they described being good as stemming from within, they also asserted that it requires cultivation. In both cases, they did not claim that being a moral person is exclusive to any particular social class, ethnic group or culture, but is rather a set of inherent virtues that can be cultivated in anyone. This position found expression when interviewees discussed interactions they had with the local community.

In response to the question how they hope volunteering benefits the local community, interviewees again ascribed moral worth to experiences such as cross-cultural encounters and exposure to a different way of life, only this time these experiences were said to cultivate individuals within the local community.

The interviewees expressed the hope that the cultural encounter which influenced them would also influence the locals. They wished that locals would develop curiosity towards new things and pursue social involvement presenting a reciprocal encounter between the two parties, as stated by Maya: ‘It is not about come and see I can do things better than you. On the contrary, you will teach me and I will teach you’. Maya elaborated on the desired outcome of her actions: ‘We come and do something good for them and I believe seeing that will make them want to do something good for others….’. She added: ‘It is inspiring for them, and maybe in the future they will say “I also want to contribute from myself to others.”’

Similarly, Ben came to a similar conclusion: ‘You come to people and believe in them and then they will do things by themselves’. He reported on a conversation he had with two local teenagers who had become active in the youth movement initiated by the volunteering organization and were sad that he was leaving:

They were depressed. I told them, ‘You can do everything by yourself. You can run the local youth movement alone’. But [they said], ‘When you and the volunteers are here everything is different. You encourage us to do things [and] we know we can do [it],’ [So] it is a push and volunteering is a platform for this kind of push.

Both Maya and Ben emphasized that only encouragement, and not force, could generate such hoped-for outcomes. The interviewees viewed their role as volunteers was to introduce new horizons of significance to locals, in the hope they would provide a ‘spark’, ‘boost’ and ‘drive’ towards self-inquiry and self-development, leading to a deeper connection with one’s true self, to pursue, in a word, ‘authenticity’.

While pursuit of existential authenticity mediated the volunteers’ relations with their host communities, it also led them to project their own notions of moral personhood on the locals. Critical views warn of volunteer tourism’s potential to become a new form of colonialism, neutralizing global structural inequality and power dynamics (Mostafanezhad, 2013; Palacios, 2010). Might this projection of moral personhood serve as just another form of colonialism and cultural paternalism?

The interviewees expressed awareness of their potential colonial role, acknowledging the global and historical power relations underlying their relationship as Western tourists with host communities. This is reflected in Abigail’s comment: ’The issue of volunteering in the global south was present. . . like how we, as white people. . . [know that] what we think [and do] as good is really good?’ Furthermore, they also acknowledged the possibility of negative outcomes of their volunteering, such as cultural coercion. However, in framing volunteering as an action that aims to support the cultivation of locals’ authentic selves, interviewees attempted to deflect these potentialities. Daria voiced this view:

I am a white woman [but] I don’t believe that this makes me better than the locals and capable of ‘saving’ them. I think that maybe we [volunteers] can expose people to new things and introduce new worlds to them. I tried to do that. Like, I am not better than you. You have you and I have myself. It was important for me not to volunteer in a project that has a superior attitude.

Ran echoed this stance: ‘It’s not like we are the know-it-all Westerners who come to change the world. It’s absolutely not the case. We want to open their minds to new things’. By displaying their awareness of historic structural inequality and power dynamics, interviewees presented themselves as cognizant and sensitive subjects. By emphasizing the fostering of locals’ true selves, interviewees try flattening some dimensions of these power dynamics, such as cultural coercion and paternalism. However, recognition of other dimensions, such as structural inequalities, did not feature in their narratives. In this regard, volunteering does not appear as a new reconfiguration of the relationship between individual and political issues, where personal identity is the starting point of social change (Butcher, 2017; Butcher and Smith 2010), but a full retreat from the political to the private realm. In the interviewees’ narratives of self-expression is presented as the starting point of volunteering and self-cultivation as its outcome for themselves and the hoped-for outcome for the locals.

Conclusion

This article demonstrated how volunteer tourists’ moral perceptions reflect a contemporary ethics of authenticity, attributing moral worth to expressing and cultivating one’s true moral self. The focus on moral personhood empirically illustrates Butcher’s (2003, 2017) conceptual claims about the language of personal virtue often used in alternative types of tourism. Cautionary views would probably problematize self-cultivation as the moral worth of volunteering, explaining it as an expression of social egoism akin to narcissistic and neoliberal cultures that focus on self-improvement. Although such explanations are possible they keep the academic discussion couched in zero-sum normative terms.

This article showed that despite their focus on the self, interviewees rarely linked their volunteer experience with instrumental aims and even rejected such links. This does not mean that volunteer tourism is altruistic, nor that it is egoistic. It means that volunteer tourists’ moral views are complex and should not be reduced to normative binary categories. These findings join recent studies indicating that volunteer tourists are cognizant of and responsive to external criticism regarding the self-serving aspect of volunteer tourism (Schwarz, 2018; Sin and He, 2019). Since volunteer tourists are aware of external criticism the academic inquiry should not only level criticism but also focus on how volunteer tourists perceive and evaluate their action in view of external criticism.

Such a line of inquiry is important as the findings show volunteer tourists are aware of structural inequality and the historical power dynamics in which they operate; however, despite their awareness volunteering as a social action is not aimed at a large structural change. Rather it is presented as stemming from one self and directed to support the cultivation of both volunteers’ and locals’ selves. This suggests a retreat from the political to the private realm in one’s moral orientation, a retreat that requires further systematic exploration that is relevant beyond the scope of volunteer tourism and tourism as it can deepen the understanding of the contemporary relations between the individual and the collective and between the political and the personal.

By relating morality, authenticity and volunteer tourism, this article also offers a new understanding of the role tourism can play in peoples’ moral lives and sheds a new light on the role of authenticity in tourism. Travelling to ‘authentic places’ and interacting with ‘authentic people’ goes beyond furnishing tourists with exciting and unique experiences; it also connects to a moral imperative of being true to yourself. These findings offer implications for the tourism industry, especially the alternative tourism sector. If tourism can enrich peoples’ moral lives by providing unique experiences, it is worth considering how exceptional events such as the COVID-19 outbreak and the ensuing interruption of most forms of tourism will affect the attractiveness and, more importantly, recovery of alternative types of tourism.

This article points to the need to widen the analytical frame for scholarly understanding of tourism beyond that of macro-social forces affecting the individual in order to also examine the meanings that individuals ascribe to their actions in light of structural conditions. The article focuses on tourists’ retrospective accounts. Future research may, therefore, investigate on-site moral worth attribution and compare it to retrospective accounts.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Netta Kahana

Notes

Author biography

Netta Kahana is a PhD candidate at the Sociology and Anthropology department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Her research interests are primarily centered on morality and tourism, particularly responsibility and accountability across socio-political and cultural spaces, which are significantly unequal.

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