Getting in Touch with your Inner Angelina

Celebrity Humanitarianism and the Cultural Politics of Gendered Generosity in Volunteer Tourism

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5804149
AutoresM Mostafanezhad (0000-0001-9819-5245, autor correspondente)
Ano2013
Volume34
Fascículo3
Páginas485-499
Data de publicação2013-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThird World Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0143-6597 • E-ISSN: 1360-2241
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01436597.2013.785343
OpenAlexW2144921515
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas63

Reporting on the growth of volunteer tourism, a recent Time magazine article explains, 'Getting in touch with your inner Angelina Jolie is easier than it used to be!'. In myriad ways celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Madonna have made international volunteering sexy. These women and their adopted children from the so-called 'Third World' have come to symbolise popular humanitarianism in the West. This paper addresses the cultural politics of female celebrity humanitarianism and the corollary implications of this practice for 20-something female volunteer tourists in northern Thailand. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the cultural politics of gendered generosity in these encounters overshadows the institutional and historical relationships on which the experience is based and that, in a neoliberal sleight of hand, the political is displaced by the individual with celebrity sheen. 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Cultural politics · Generosity · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Sex work and related issues · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development