Hope in the dark
Geographies of volunteer and dark tourism in Cambodia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2406103 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maria Koleth (The University of Sydney, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 681-694 |
| Publication date | 2014-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cultural Geographies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1474-4740 • E-ISSN: 1477-0881 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474474013519577 |
| OpenAlex | W2121520708 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 23 |
Increasing theoretical attention has recently been given to the importance of material experience to the emergence of hope. Drawing on geographies of hope and the monstrous, I explore the convergence of the hope for a better world with sites of past violence within volunteer tourism placements in Cambodia. Volunteer tourism, for which Cambodia is a popular destination, allows people to volunteer for short periods of time with development or conservation organizations. Volunteer tourists on medical and community development placements attest to a hopeful belief in contributing to the eradication of poverty through improving education and medical care. However, their hope for a better future is rarely considered in the context of the monstrous sites of remembered violence and deprivation that mark the history of the impoverished places where they volunteer. Using interviews with returned volunteer tourists and auto-ethnographic reflections on participant observation in Cambodia, I consider volunteers' visits to memorials for Khmer Rouge atrocities and communities of poverty as sites in which to observe the becoming of hope in a better future. This article gestures towards the capacity of post-phenomenological geographies of experience within specific sites to enable a greater appreciation of how this kind of hope comes to matter. The materiality of hope can then be construed as a contestation with the monstrous; between future connection and past violence
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Context (archaeology · Ethnography · Materiality (auditing · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Sociology · Structural violence · Tourism · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious Tourism and Spaces · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development
Chasing utopia
A critical review of dark tourism studies
Understanding non-visitation and revisit constraints at Remembrance Centre Camp Westerbork, The Netherlands
Unveiling dark tourism
Volunteer Tourism
Provocation and related subjective experiences along the dark tourism spectrum
Tourism to conflict-ridden sites
The Politics of dark tourism in Sri Lanka
Progress in dark tourism and thanatourism research
Evaluating volunteer tourism
Second language socialization in the margins
Crises of complicity
Towards a post-conflict tourism recovery framework
Affective politics of Australian development volunteering
The moment to come
Dark tourism and affect
Summers of war. Affective volunteer tourism to former war sites in Europe
Beyond difficult pasts
Indigenous resistance to settler colonialism
From mixed emotional experience to spiritual meaning
Decolonising the 'autonomy of affect' in volunteer tourism encounters
Factors affecting tourists' emotional reactions during a visit to a dark attraction
Towards an affective politics of hope
| Unique citing works | 23 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,92 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2026 (13) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 23 |