New Colonialists of Africa? - Tackling the White Saviour Complex in Contemporary Voluntourism Jude Cowden

This critical reflection aims to explore the modern-day necessary facilities: clean increasing phenomenon of voluntourism in food/water and health etc. These tourists the tourist industry, with western tourists then help for a set amount of time, building spending months or even years volunteering facilities or infrastructure such as a school for in African or other third world countries. It example and then will head back home to also attempts to examine how these attitudes their own countries to reap the benefits of tie into people’s understandings of the having this volunteering experience on their differences between how both “First” and CV. “Third” world countries work and explores the unconscious privilege and unequal race “Global Crossroad” is one of the most popular relations bundled up in these “selfless” acts. volunteer tourist websites online. The contribution draws on colonialist theories Interestingly their main tagline on the website alongside theories on the sociology of tourism is: “Over 20,000 happy volunteers since 2003” in order to examine how a distorted which implies the centricity of the experiences postmodern form of the tourist gaze has led of the volunteers, rather than referencing the to the growth of this sector. Doing so a happiness/improved wellbeing of the discourse analysis will be employed to study impoverished people they are being sent out the marketing of voluntourism on the most to help. Looking through how they have sold popular websites and unpacking the language their Ugandan retreats, they post (Global and assumptions implicit in how it is sold to Crossroads, n.d: n.p.: the public. Uganda declared independence from Volunteer tourism is one of the highest British colonization in 1962, but the growing sectors/”trends” of the tourism country has had some troubling conflicts since, most notably a bloody civil war. As industry today, with over 1.6 million people a result, there are thousands of displaced volunteering overseas every year children in Uganda, which is where (savethechildren.org, 2017). According to the volunteers are needed most. “Volunteer Forever” website, 93% of volunteers travel solo and 83% of volunteers This quote shows the obvious contradictions are female (2018). Voluntourism is often in this scheme, referring blatantly to how the characterised by volunteers travelling from recent collapse of British colonization is the western countries such as the USA, the UK and reason for the country’s divide as well as its other wealthy European countries to offer poor infrastructural and economic state. Yet help and support to poor third world it is signalled to be crucial that we return to communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America this troubled country to fix their problems. which lack sufficient infrastructure and many Frantz Fanon (1963), pioneer of postcolonialist theory, argues it is the output has on our perceptions of Africa – colonized people only who are able to rebuild and the costly knock-on effect this has on their own culture according to their own the continent… it sends a distorted image preferences and values, the culture which had of Africa which perpetuates an old idea been erased by colonialism. from the colonial era.

Voluntourism is also increasingly criticised in Lammy picks up on a very important theme popular media, with many arguing it feeds here in the issues with voluntourism. He into the “White Saviour Complex”. This is a argues charities like comic relief amongst others “tattoo images of poverty in Africa” concept perpetuated by much of the Western onto the public’s mind. media, e.g. in films and television, representing the white man (or woman) This distorted postmodern form of the tourist stepping into complex situations. Using their gaze has many assumptions and power (assumed unproblematically to be preconceptions baked into it that some could derived merely from being a western subject) see as implicitly racist; the first being an they are able to solve all the problems in this already assumed and implied paternalistic situation and are consequently hailed as a view of countries in Africa and elsewhere in saviour or a god. At the same time, they are the non-developed world. It is damaging to get something out for themselves in the form disseminate only the image of Africa as weak of work experience. Teju Cole (2012: 5) writes and needing outside help to the public as it concisely: becomes the only association one thinks of One song we hear too often is the one in when talking about Africa and by doing this, it which Africa serves as a backdrop for ignores the vibrant cultural scene in many white fantasies of conquest and heroism… countries as well as the human achievements Africa has provided a space onto which and successes Africans have had in the past white egos can conveniently be and present. projected…the usual rules do not apply: a nobody from America or Europe can go to ‘You would think there were no African think- Africa and become a godlike savior or, at tanks, no African universities, no African the very least, have his or her emotional human rights lawyers’ (Goffe, 2015: 3). needs satisfied. Many have done it under Perceptions like this can be dangerous and the banner of “making a difference”. damaging, not only for how the tourist gaze functions from tourist to the “consumed”, but Some charity institutions have picked up on reversely, the gaze emitting from the the problematic nature of their campaigns “consumed” towards the tourist, Vodopivec and thus Comic relief has ended its use of and Jaffe (2011) argue that voluntourism (white) celebrities for African charity appeals. promotes the idea that, for Africans, support This came after accusations from an aid and development comes only from the watchdog that their campaigns, particularly outside. Writing for the BBC, Zane (2016: 1) one fronted by Ed Sheeran in Liberia, reinforce explains that: “poverty tourism” and white saviour stereotypes. David Lammy (quoted in Because of the history of slavery and Rawlinson, 2019: n.p), a Labour MP who has colonialism, many people in Africa find long been critical of comic relief for portraying such attitudes deeply patronising and Africa as a continent of hopeless “poverty- offensive. Some argue that aid can be stricken victims”, said: counterproductive, as it means African countries will continue to rely on outside I hope my comments surrounding (this) help. will inspire the charity to refresh its image and think harder about the effects its

Many also argue that this is a new The wider structure of neoliberalism and an postmodern form of colonialism, known as expanding service economy has also led to the neocolonialism (Guttentag, 2009), ‘casting the introduction and growth of this previously white Westerner as the hero in a savaged niche sector, aiming to offer every different land’ (Cecil, Pranav & Takacs, 1994: 8). Boffey type of tourist experience. Is it this promise of (2011: n.p.) writes for The Guardian: consuming a unique experience in an exotic environment that is the prime reason for the ‘Are these the new colonialists? They’re growth of voluntourism? If this is the case, the students who go abroad to boost their voluntourism can actually be regressive and CVs, have a laugh – and help out in the damaging for these countries if the tourism developing world at the same time… The industry is doing nothing but commodifying gap-year industry is in danger of damaging Britain’s reputation abroad and raising their poverty in an exotic location as an fears that the west is engaged in a new opportunity for a holiday combined with a form of colonialism.’ career boost.

The point Boffey picks up on here is helpful as However, some would argue that due to our it forces us consider how much we are actually massive wealth and influence as a country, as helping and to what extent we are damaging well as our history of colonialism being these countries, the road to hell is often paved responsible for the underdevelopment of with good intentions as the saying goes. A these places, that we have a moral duty to point to reflect on should consider why we are support and help these countries and use our so enthusiastic to help countries so distant to privilege for good. I would say to those that us; and why do many not turn their “altruistic” would contend that, while it is correct that we gaze towards more local domestic issues in did have a large part to play in their the UK; ones that there are no shortage of, underdevelopment and supporting these such as the massive increase in homelessness countries is always a positive, I would argue and child poverty (Hood and Waters, 2019), that voluntourism is not the best way to go issues that are not too dissimilar to what about doing this. It seems that although this volunteers would be dealing with in Africa. move may look charitable from the outside, I would argue, relating to Giddens’ theory of Tourism sociologists Vodopivec and Jaffe late modernity and Beck’s risk society, accuse these companies as selling a holiday in contemporary life has made this act hyper- the name of “charity” which essentially individualised and often more about self- extracts value from vulnerable and oppressed development than about genuine support for minority groups in order to achieve an those less fortunate than ourselves. advantage in the employment market; self- development at the expense of people in Bibliography: developing countries. They argue that volunteer tourism, practiced through the Badshah, Nadeem (2019). 'White saviour' discourse of “altruistic individualism”, is in row: David Lammy denies snubbing Comic itself a product of neoliberal ideologies and Relief. [online] The Guardian. Available at: th subjectivities, which is (Vodopivec and Jaffe, https:www.theguardian.com. Accessed 13 2011). This is troubling because if the December 2019. emphasis continues to be shifted away from Bandyopadhyay, Ranjan (2019). Volunteer the structures that have caused these tourism and “The White Man’s Burden”: problems and more towards personal globalization of suffering, white savior qualities and virtue, the causes of oppression complex, religion and modernity, Journal of become more and more invisible and they will Sustainable Tourism, (27)3: 327-343. in turn reproduce these existing inequalities.

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