I have claimed that the structure of this social space is intimately linked to touristic attitudes and I want to pursue this. The touristic way of getting in with the natives is to enter into a quest for authentic experiences, perceptions and insights.
(MacCannell, 1976: 105)
Rojek (1993: 133), in this respect, raises significant questions about the relation between ‘authenticity’ and experience. In relation to tourism, he states that the modernist quest for authenticity and self-realization has come to an end and is now equivalent to a mere consumption activity. However, in placing contemporary touristic practices within postmodernism, Rojek (1993: 126) states that postmodernism emphasizes the discontinuity of change and the irregularity of association and practice, leading to ‘the rejection of modernist universal categories of ontology and epistemology’. Rojek’s suggestion that tourism can become generalized and de-differentiated places emphasis on the different meanings and elements that arise. It questions the current order, but significantly, allows for tourism as a form of spectating and consumption.
Situating Volunteer Tourism in the Context of the Alternative Tourism Experience
Tourist development has not progressed without controversy. Disillusionment with ‘mass’ tourism (Mowforth & Munt, 1998; Sofield, 2003; Brammer et al., 2004; Holden, 2008) and the numerous problems it has engendered has led many observers and researchers to criticize the past methods and directions of tourism development and to offer instead the hope of ‘alternative tourism’. Pearce (1990) notes the term ‘alternative tourism’ has been adopted to denote options or strategies considered preferable to mass tourism. As R.W. Butler (1990: 40) states: ‘Alternative to what? Obviously not to other forms of tourism, but rather, an alternative to the least desired or most undesired type of tourism, or essentially what is known as mass tourism, such as the “golden hordes” of Turner and Ashe (1975), or the “mass institutionalized tourist” of Cohen (1972)’.
However, the term ‘alternative tourism’ is interpreted by various authors in widely differing and sometimes openly contradictory ways. R.W. Butler (1990), for example, places alternative tourism as up-market package tours of rich people to exotic destinations, mostly wilderness areas, whereas others define it as rucksack wandering by young people with limited financial means (e.g. Cohen, 1972), or anti-tourists seeking to avoid highly commodified mass tourist spaces (Welk, 2004).
The term ‘alternative’ logically implies an antithesis. It arises as the contrary to that which is seen as negative or detrimental about conventional tourism. In the domain of logic, an alternative is based on a dialectical paradigm that offers only two possibilities: a conclusion that is either one or the other. Therefore, the terminology of alternative and mass tourism are mutually interdependent, each relying on a series of value-laden judgements that themselves structure the definitional content of the terms.
Thus, the common feature of ‘alternative tourism’ is the suggestion of an attitude diametrically opposed to what is characteristically viewed as the ‘hard’ and therefore, ‘undesirable’ dominant forms of tourism. Like ‘alternative tourism’ this form itself has been designated by varying terms including conventional mass tourism (CMT; Mieczkowski, 1995) and mass tourism (MT; R.W. Butler, 1990), of which alternative tourism exists in fundamental opposition by attempting to minimize the perceived negative environmental and socio-cultural impacts. Various other descriptions can be found in the literature to allude to environmentally compatible tourism. Examples include green tourism (Song, 2012), nature-based tourism (Newsome et al., 2002), soft tourism (Mader, 1988; Mose, 1993), community-based tourism (Dernoi, 1988; Wearing & Chatterton, 2007), PPT (Ashley et al., 2000; Roe & Urquhart, 2001) and defensive/justice tourism (Krippendorf, 1982, 1987; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2008). In this way, the concept of alternative tourism can itself be as broad and vague as its diametrical opposite. Many divergent leisure types can be classified as alternative tourism, including adventure holidays, hiking holidays or the solitary journeys undertaken by globe trotters.
The term itself encompasses a wide range of connotations: tourists characterized by particular motivations; touristic practices; a touristic product; levels of technology; solutions to planning; local, regional, national and international politics; and as a strategy for development. In the last case, alternative tourism is the application to tourism of sustainable development practices in regions where tourism has been chosen as a factor in economic development.
Dernoi (1988: 253) initially defined alternative tourism by accommodation type: ‘In alternative tourism the “client” receives accommodation directly in, or at the home of, the host with, eventually, other services and facilities offered there’. However, he then went on to list a number of other features by which alternative tourism might be distinguished from ‘mass tourism’: ‘Simply stated, alternative tourism and community based tourism (CBT) are privately offered set of hospitality services (and features), extended to visitors, by individuals, families, or a local community. A prime aim of alternative tourism/CBT is to establish direct personal/cultural intercommunication and understanding between host and guest’ (Dernoi, 1988: 89; Priporas & Kamenidou, 2003).
Moving on from a supply-side focus and acknowledging the inextricable role of participants, the ECTWT (Ecumenical Coalition of Third World Tourism) states that: ‘alternative tourism is a process which promotes a just form of travel between members of different communities. It seeks to achieve mutual understanding, solidarity and equality amongst participants’ (Holden, 1984: 15). The stress here is on the facilitation and improvement of contacts between hosts and guests, especially through the organization of well-prepared special interest tours, rather than on actual development of facilities. As noted, however, such definitions are elaborated on by way of a systematic contrasting of the features of alternative tourism with those of what is perceived to be the dominant or mainstream variety. The distinction is usually between polar oppo-sites, and there is scarcely any recognition of variations in the mainstream, nor any evidence of the existence of intermediate cases. Another body of literature dealing with tourism typology gives greater attention to these variations with classifications between three or more categories that are not uncommon. Moreover, ‘alternative tourism’ as variously defined above, rarely occurs specifically as one of the classes in the typology literature.
Thus it would appear from the literature that all forms of tourism exist side-by-side, each playing an important role in the tourist spectrum.3 Both mass tourism and alternative tourism can be viewed at corresponding extremes of such a spectra and, as Mieczkowski (1995: 463) states, they should remain there. The relational elements of ecotourism, volunteerism and serious leisure, as definitional components of a specific alternative tourism experience, exist as modalities of tourism experience along many divergent and convergent points of this spectrum. By elaborating upon each of these elements as specific components of the volunteer tourism experience in the context of alternative tourism, and thus, explore the impact upon individual subjective experience, it is envisaged that the analysis of tourism experiences can achieve a clarity of focus through the recognition of the particular elements that contribute to the specific market segments of tourism.
The diagrammatic representation in Fig. 2.1 — adapted from Mieczkowski (1995: 460) — is designed to provide a framework in which to locate the volunteer tourism experience. Mieczkowski (1995) initially divides tourism into two broad categories. The first is CMT, which has prevailed on the market for some time. The second broad category is that of alternative tourism, a flexible generic category that contains a multiplicity of various forms that have one feature in common — they are alternatives to CMT. That is, they are not associated with mass large-scale tourism but are essentially small scale, low-density, dispersed in non-urban areas, and they cater to special interest groups of people with mainly above average education and with good incomes.