ABSTRACT
Volunteer tourism as a concept derives from the wider concept of ‘alternative tourism’ (Wearing, 2001). It is a unique form of tourist behavior driven by an ideology. Its prime motivation is to contribute to society, and/or to a given community, by moving and living in it on a temporary basis, working as a volunteer to improve the quality of life of that community. Thus, the pure tourist experience becomes only a secondary motivation. Nevertheless, this secondary motivation plays an important role in constructing the overall travel experience. Hence, the intensive host-guest interactions, the exposure to local cultures, the cross-cultural experiences and the local tourist attractions are all perceived by volunteer tourists as a major benefit alongside the fulfillment of their ideological urge to volunteer (Mittelberg, 1988; Wearing, 2001). To a great extent, volunteer tourism is a form of travel which allows the individual to pursue two goals. One is the urge to escape from one’s social environment and experience different cultures with different norm and values systems. This form of escapism varies from the regular motivation to flee from routine and boredom. The second is the need to enrich self-identity by broadening one’s perspective on cultures and societies (Wearing, 2001). Although there is still a major debate amongst researchers as to what extent these types of motivations are too generalized and thus, perhaps, irrelevant, they can still be used to illustrate the sociological drive behind volunteer tourists (MacCannell, 1992; Mansfeld, 1992). Types of volunteer tourism and the prime ideological motivation vary. The typology could easily be explained by the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that shape the decision to undertake such travel. While the motivational ‘push’ factors identified above have been well documented in the literature, the ‘pull’ factors have been mostly ignored, especially in the tourism academic literature. Mittelberg (1988; 1999) in his work on volunteers to Israeli kibbutzim defined the ‘pull’ factors as inviting economic, socio-cultural and political settings that call for assistance or help. Thus, in most cases, the host community seeks low-cost manual workers to solve its workforce shortage and finds volunteering an appropriate solution. Hence, such volunteers may be treated as inexpensive labor rather than mere international tourists in pursuit of fulfilling their travel motivations. But what
of these motivations themselves? Mittelberg (1998) has shown that both guests and hosts bring a plurality of motives to the encounter between them (from what Cohen (1979) calls ‘touristic’ recreational motives, to meaning centered existential ones, so that the character of the resultant experience for the volunteer is an outcome of the negotiated resolution of the congruence or lack of it between these pluralities of motive (Mittelberg (1988: 63-83). Pearce and Coghlan (2008) citing Pearce (2005) report that they were able to distill from 14 recurring themes of motivation in tourism research, the three core motivations of (1) the search for novelty, (2) desire for escape and relaxation (3) opportunities to build relationships (Pearce and Coghlan, 2008: 140). Interestingly they determine that travel veterans ‘emphasize involvement with host communities and settings as important to them’ (2008: 140). Wearing (2001) also reports that while much research has been done on what he calls the vocabularies of motive of volunteer tourists, little research has been completed on the impact of these experiences on the development of self. It is precisely this theoretical question this chapter will address, in an examination of a case of volunteer tourism that both predates and is largely unacknowledged in the contemporary literature on voluntourism. Following Wearing’s pioneering discussion of the impact of the volunteer experience on the development of self especially amongst young adult volunteers, this chapter describes the high degree of self-development reported by kibbutz volunteers while exploring the mechanism by which this self-development takes place utilizing the concept of existential authenticity coined by Wang (1999) and utilized by Lev Ari and Mittelberg (2008).
