New Volunteer Tourism and Social Development Journal – Call for Papers

The Journal of International Volunteer Tourism and Social Development, a new peer-reviewed, transdisciplinary and transnational journal, is calling for papers. It says: “Given the prominence of tourism and its ability to shape social orders, critical scholarship in volunteer tourism would allow us to examine travel beyond consumerism, travelling with a purpose, the right to freedom of movement versus the consumption that it entails and the possible benefits of volunteer travel.”

“This journal invites papers which consider the implications of the expansion of the study of tourism addressing issues such as the evaluation of travel based on the benefits to poorer destination societies who often experience tourism in the form of further despoilment of their environments and distortion of their local economies towards services. It would provide the platform to link studies of unequal participation in tourism, with literature concerned with tourism, social and ecological justice and civil society in destination areas.”

The journal is a social science journal, with a special emphasis on volunteer tourism. Although it will be anchored in the social sciences it will also seek to encompass contributions from related areas. The journal will provide an outlet for publication for tourism and leisure related research and encourage inter-disciplinary approaches to the relevant subject matter.

The Journal of International Volunteer Tourism and Social Development is to provide a forum for debate against the backdrop of cross cultural interactions from local to global based within international volunteer tourism.

It seeks to draw on the development studies area and regional development area to attract work from outside of the tourism industry. The interface of development and its related research and practice with tourism. It will also focus on the local and regional activities of volunteering and its effects, providing an outlet for those who wish to place people at the centre of this type of work.

The Journal of International Volunteer Tourism and Social Development encourages papers which investigate the impacts of volunteer tourism on the work of workers in developing countries such as women in marginal rural communities and the division of labour once tourism comes to these areas. The changes brought about by globalisation and the spread of transnational social relations in volunteer tourism such as culture shock, the influence of emergent geographies of power, cultural identities and citizenship will be examined. How the forces of globalisation contribute to social exclusion and localisation, undermining the possibility of some local communities participating in volunteer tourism.

The Journal of International Volunteer Tourism and Social Development also seeks to encourage contributions related to innovations in social science research methods and their application to research on tourism. Being tourists, recording and interviewing tourists in situ, deploying covert methods, employing radical-innovative practices, the use of digital technologies, multi-site ethnographies and research studies, linguistic considerations, RRA and PRA techniques applied to tourism.

Contact Dr Stephen Wearing| Associate Professor | School of Leisure, Sport and Tourism | Faculty of Business |
University of Technology Sydney | Kuring-gai Campus | PO Box 222, Lindfield NSW 2070 |[email protected] |

Valere Tjolle