AFFECTIVE ENCOUNTERS WITH POVERTY
In addition to aestheticizing poverty, volunteer tourists’ encounter
with poverty tends to evoke an affective response. Affect refers to the
impulsive aspects of human proclivities that are beyond empirical identification
and are increasingly seen as integral to the tourism experience
(Picard, 2012; Robinson, 2012). Often used as a synonym for
emotion, affect refers to what are perceived as prediscursive embodied
feelings, movements and human drives. The prediscursive emotionality
of affective responses is central to volunteer tourists’ experiences
where the seemingly decommodified nature of volunteer tourism
seems to buttress the affective response of the volunteer tourist. Andy,
a 28 year old German volunteer comments: ‘‘People are poor, they
don’t have those things and it is up to us to help them’’, it’s not for
commercial; it’s from deep inside.’’ Similarly, Sannie, a 21 year old
Danish volunteer comments:
I think first of all for me I think it’s just the whole theory of you are
there to do something and do you do something meaningful. For
example, right now I am taking care of the children at the orphanage.
. . I feel that I have to, okay, like—okay, there are good reasons
to get up in the morning. I feel like getting up in the morning a little
bit more.
These affective responses to the volunteer tourism experience are central
to the