ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the language through which ethical tourism is advocated and discussed, and considers it as a social construct. It looks at the prospects for volunteer tourism and focuses on personal identity and selfhood, to generate greater political understanding and engagement, and argues that in fact the lifestyle politics that it represents reinforces antipolitics. It considers the view that the closeness and intimacy with people and places characteristic of this niche confers understanding and humanises politics. The extension of personal qualities associated with private actions directly into the realm of politics is central to the claims made for volunteer tourism. Given the importance of 'being there' in volunteer tourism, and the emphasis on personal encounters, it is unsurprising that tourists' accounts focus on intimacy. The chapter finally argues that the elevation of private virtues, unmediated by political framing, into the public understanding of development politics, does no favours to development or politics.
