Whiteness on Mission (Trips): Analyzing Voluntourism as a Racial Project
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Date
2021
Authors
Hunt, Emily
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Research increasingly takes a critical approach to voluntourism, but short-term Christian mission trips remain understudied, despite the fact that they represent a large share of the industry. Similarly understudied is the expression and reproduction of racial ideology in voluntourism and the positioning of volunteer tourists within systems of domination like white supremacy, neoliberalism, and neocolonialism. Utilizing post-colonialism and whiteness studies as my theoretical framework, I look at the intersection of whiteness and mission trips and ask: How do young white Christian mission trip participants express and reproduce racial and colonial logics? What motivates them to participate? What opportunities, if any, do mission trips offer for individual and collective resistance to systems of domination? What alternative models might interrupt harm? Drawing on Sylvia Wynter’s framework of the ‘We’/‘West’ centered as the norm through the production of the ‘Other’/‘non-West,’ I pursue a critical exploratory analysis of the racialized underpinning of mission trips. Research data consists of 33 semi-structured interviews with people who participated in mission trips, along with a literature review. Utilizing grounded theory for a narrative/thematic data analysis, I uncover participant motivations with significant ties to racial and colonial projects, as well as Christian institutions. In addition, I explore ten themes linking mission trips to domination and dehumanization. Participant resistance to such dominance mostly operated post-trip to question and critique missional oppression. I conclude with a brief exploration of alternatives, although insist that an alternative is not necessary to cease the practice. Future research stands to engage deeper and necessary issues in mission trips and voluntourism such as the role of institutions in perpetuating volunteer motivation, differences in practice across religious denominations, and host community resistance and resilience to Western volunteer tourists.
Description
99 pages
Keywords
volunteer tourism, mission trips, white, christian, racial project