Refiguring self and identity through volunteer tourism

What are the impacts of the travel experience on the tourists self and iden tity? Does volunteer travel provide the opportunity to seek identity in oth er ways? Interactionist and postcolonialist theories explored within the co ntext of leisure and tourism studies may enable us to move beyond what has remained largely within the tradition of Western thought: a predominance of travel to escape, establish identity and a sense of personal individuality in the face of anemic forces of a technological world. It seems timely to develop a self-reflexive analysis of those practices assumed to be separate , such as an analysis of the self across cultures in the developed and deve loping world. We seek to achieve this using volunteer tourism as the focus, examining a dominant cultures' male view of destination communities and na ture as "other" in leisure activities. A greater recognition and incorporat ion of these in travel experiences allows us to not only enlarge our sense of individual self, but also benefit the communities in which we live and v isit.