Being a Good Host

Emerging from discussions with indigenous group members was the acceptance that they needed to satisfy particular notions of hospitality while the volunteers were in the community. Achieving this is clearly a result of them, as both a group and as individuals, responding to, and negotiating, the direction given to them by the NGO, guides, and volunteers. In relation to the NGO, direction for their performance was given prior to volunteers arriving in the community. As the director of the NGO explains:

“We’ve always provided help for any community that we are working with to receive volunteers. There is a certain necessity for that from our side. As we work with school groups and organisations that are very demanding about what people can do, how they are looked after, and what type of supervision they have. If they are off working with some lady in a field, and she comes out with a machete and something happens, then suddenly we are liable.” The NGO director indicates in the above extract how, due to the upward accountability, he aims to direct indigenous community members to meet certain requirements of the volunteer tourism industry. The NGO does not view itself as imposing arbitrary conditions, but rather enacting necessary guidelines for the operation of a successful volunteer project within the global tourism industry. Therefore the desire of volunteers for adventure (Sin, 2009) coupled with safety (Soderman and Snead, 2008) results in the NGO ensuring that certain global international standards are abided by in the project. To achieve this, the NGO relies on expert knowledge imparted via technocratic forms of delivery such as training workshops, to meet ‘universal standards’ originating from the Global North. This prioritising of knowledge from the Global North therefore delegitimises or ignores locally based knowledge and understandings of how one should live in the world. The directors’ intervention in the communities functions as a typical development practice, which Kothari (2005: 443) describes as a “technical process of intervention that maintains the legitimacy and authority of Western modernity and the dominance of the neoliberal agenda”.

Moreover, the similar training being provided to both communities indicates the homogenising nature of capacity building instigated by the NGO, which leaves little space for any alternative conceptualisations of how volunteers should be hosted. In addition to meeting the requirements of the volunteer tourism industry, the director also implies an ulterior motive, stating:

135 “It’s a great opportunity for us to teach them about nutrition, hygiene, and how to act with foreign people. Because these people are going to come and stay and this is what they are going to expect…With the Tsa’chila, at the beginning they were terrified they could not even come out of their kitchen… It helps us to help them change a bit of their culture, in terms of just doing things a little bit better…Basically, to be normal.”

This extract indicates that the NGO interprets volunteer tourism as an opportunity to encourage indigenous members to change or ‘modernise’ their practices. Such a stance fits with Escobar’s (2011) observation of development practitioners being preoccupied with addressing perceived deficiencies within communities of the Global South. The director’s statement that they help those indigenous communities which receive volunteer tourists “to be normal”, although well-meaning, reflects embedded notions within modernisation theory, particularly of a desire “to make them more like us” (Corbridge, 2007: 179).

In addition to training, indigenous members have developed their performative role as good hosts, particularly in response to the continuous monitoring and auditing by the NGO and guides. The result is that the indigenous communities are subjected to what Baillie-Smith and Laurie (2011: 550) term the “pervasive audit culture associated with neoliberal approaches”. Examples of this include NGO staff making regular visits to both communities to discuss the projects, offering advice on how it could be developed further. The NGO also collates feedback from volunteers at the end of their visit, to identify any areas that their experience could be enhanced. The volunteer guides also monitor indigenous members’ performance, and encourage them to act in specific ways. As one French guide in the Kichwa community explained:

“When we are eating I always say to the indigenous hosts, “come here and join us”. It is difficult to get them to join, but sometimes they do. I think they don’t have the confidence, and also meals here are not so much of a social occasion as in France. I think it’s good though, if they can discuss with the volunteers their work and share stories whilst eating.”

The guide therefore indicates how he aims to direct indigenous members to tell stories about their lives and the community during meal times, with the aim of signalling to volunteers that they are receiving an intimate experience. It has been well documented that volunteers desire such an interaction (Conran, 2011), and how such experiences are a major motivation for participation in volunteer tourism (Lo and Lee, 2011). This desire is a central argument of MacCannells’ (1973: 592) classic thesis, in which he argues that tourists are dissatisfied with a mere performance and strive for truth and intimacy by “being at one with their hosts”. Recognition of volunteer tourism’s positioning as providing such an encounter, therefore results in the guide directing indigenous members to perform, ultimately selling this intimacy as part of the volunteer tourism experience.

The guides’ direction to indigenous members is not limited to their contact with volunteers, but also incorporates wider sustainability goals, as Tom an American guide in the Kichwa community alludes:

“I always try to stress to them the importance of buying locally. I’m sure otherwise they would just go to one of the big stores you see in town…I don’t want them to do that, when they could buy a few things from different people locally. This is better for the environment, as it is more likely to be natural than something imported from, well, who knows where? Also it helps the local economy, and in that way we can really help to make sure the benefits of us being here are spread more widely around the community.”

In such contexts the guides ensure that volunteer tourists’ generally high concern for sustainability (Gray and Campbell, 2007) is being met, by directing and monitoring the project leaders’ procurement decisions. The role of guides therefore goes beyond simply translating host members’ actions, to actively crafting and directing them, ensuring that they operate in a manner appealing to volunteers. The direction provided by the NGO and guides can be interpreted as aiming to transform indigenous members into subjects suitable for working within the tourism industry. Bondi (2005: 501) notes that the purpose of professionalisation is encouraging members to adopt “modes of action that express autonomous, decision-making agency, at the same time as submitting to disciplinary mechanisms”. The indigenous

137 members clearly adopted certain strategies, practices, and behaviours that are expected from professional employees of the tourist industry.