Study Abroad and

the Quest for an

Anti-Tourism Experience
Anthropology of Tourism: Heritage, Mobility, and Society

Series Editor: Michael A. Di Giovine

(West Chester University of Pennsylvania)

Mission Statement
The Anthropology of Tourism: Heritage, Mobility, and Society series provides anthro-
pologists and others in the social sciences and humanities with cutting-edge and engag-
ing research on the culture(s) of tourism. This series embraces anthropology’s holistic and
comprehensive approach to scholarship, and is sensitive to the complex diversity of human
expression. Books in this series particularly examine tourism’s relationship with cultural
heritage and mobility and its impact on society. Contributions are transdisciplinary in nature,
and either look at a particular country, region, or population, or take a more global approach.
Including monographs and edited collections, this series is a valuable resource to scholars
and students alike who are interested in the various manifestations of tourism and its role
as the world’s largest and fastest-growing source of socio-cultural and economic activity.

Advisory Board Members

Quetzil Castañeda, Saskia Cousin, Jackie Feldman, Nelson H. H. Graburn, Jafar Jafari,
Tom Selwyn, Valene Smith, Amanda Stronza, Hazel Tucker, and Shinji Yamashita

Books in Series
Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience edited by John Bodinger de
Uriarte and Michael A. Di Giovine
The Ethnography of Tourism: Edward Bruner and Beyond edited by Naomi Leite,
Quetzil E. Castañeda, and Kathleen M. Adams
Capoeira, Mobility, and Tourism: Preserving an Afro-Brazilian Tradition in a Globalized
World by Sergio González Varela
Rethinking the Anthropology of Love and Tourism by Sagar Singh
Tourism and Wellness: Travel for the Good of All? edited by Bryan S. R. Grimwood,
Heather Mair, Kellee Caton, and Meghan Muldoon
Bourbon Street, B-drinking and the Sexual Economy of Tourism by Angela Demovic
Anthropology of Tourism in Central and Eastern Europe: Bridging Worlds, edited by
Sabina Owsianowska and Magdalena Banaskiewicz
Apprenticeship Pilgrimage: Developing Expertise through Travel and Training,
by Lauren M. Griffith and Jonathan S. Marion
Cosmopolitanism and Tourism: Rethinking Theory and Practice, edited by
Robert Shepherd
Tourism and Language in Vieques: An Ethnography of the Post-Navy Period,
by Luis Galanes Valldejuli
Tourism and Prosperity in Miao Land: Power and Inequality in Rural Ethnic China,
by Xianghong Feng
Alternative Tourism in Budapest: Class, Culture, and Identity in a Postsocialist City,
by Susan E. Hill
 Study Abroad and
the Quest for an
Anti-Tourism Experience

Edited by
John J. Bodinger de Uriarte and
Michael A. Di Giovine

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 For our mothers, who instilled in us an early love for travel and
exploration, and encouraged us to study abroad. And for our students—
may they continue to travel, to learn, and to expand their horizons.

IN MEMORIAM
Edward M. Bruner (1924–2020)
 Contents

List of Figures and Tables ix

Foreword: Studying Study Abroad Against the Neoliberal Grain xi
Richard Handler
Preface: COVID-19 and the Shifting Ground of Study Abroad xv
John Bodinger de Uriarte and Michael A. Di Giovine
Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction: Asking Questions about Study Abroad and Tourism 1

Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte
1 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African
Study Abroad Programs 41
Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak
2 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? The Problems, Paradoxes,
and Successes of Running a Short-Term Travel Course 67
Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer
3 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling: Technologies
of Border Construction and Discourses of Border Crossing
in Study Abroad/Away 89
Neriko Musha Doerr
4 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad:
Provider Agencies, Liminality, and the Mediation
of Cultural Difference 119
Gareth Barkin

vii
viii Contents

5 Forbidden Learning: The Challenge of Dispelling Post-colonial

Tourist Imaginaries of Cuba through Study Abroad 149
Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer
6 Weekending Daring: Manufacturing the “Discomfort Zone”
and Making the Study-Away Self 177
John Bodinger de Uriarte
7 I Go to Cleanse My Head and Heart 195
Katharine Serio
8 Schooling Taste: Culinary Tourism, Study Abroad, and Food 215
Melissa Biggs
9 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy:
Betwixt and Beyond Touristic Consumption 235
Elisa Ascione
10 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad
Programs Targeted to Heritage Students 259
Annie Nguyen
11 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism: The Ethical
Implications of Study Abroad 281
Michael A. Di Giovine

Epilogue: Questioning the Future of Study Abroad in a

Post-COVID-19 World 325
Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte
Afterword: Keeping Study Abroad Real 347
Lisa Breglia
Index 351
About the Contributors 361
 List of Figures and Tables

FIGURES

Figure 1.1 U.S. Students Studying Abroad, 1985–2017 46

Figure 1.2 Study-Abroad Participation According to Program
Durations, AY 2016–2017 46
Figure 1.3 U.S. University Students Studying Abroad in Africa
per Academic Year 49
Figure 1.4 For Kenya, of the Sixty-Four Programs That IIE’s
Open Doors Listed, Only Thirty-Six Were Able to Be
Used Because the Data Were Current 50
Figure 1.5 For Tanzania, of the Fifty-Eight Programs That IIE’s
Open Doors Listed, Only Forty-One Were Able to Be
Used Because the Data Were Current 50
Figure 1.6 For Uganda, of the Twenty-Four Programs That IIE’s
Open Doors Listed, Only Twelve Were Able to Be
Used Because the Data Were Current 51
Figure 1.7 Numbers of U.S. Undergraduates Studying Abroad
in East Africa from the 1991–1992 Academic Year to
2016–2017 51
Figure 11.1 Spectrum of Anti-Tourism Forms of Travel 287
Figure E.1 Comparison of Inbound U.S. Study Abroad Students,
Inbound Tourists, and COVID-19 Cases in Top 7
Study-Abroad Destinations Among U.S. Students 327

ix
x List of Figures and Tables

TABLES

Table 1.1 Percentages of Students Participating in Different

Durations of U.S. Study Abroad, Academic Years
2006–2017 (IIE Open Doors 2018) 47
Table 3.1 Background of Participants in the Peru Trip 102
 Foreword
Studying Study Abroad Against
the Neoliberal Grain

In September 1968, my parents drove me from our home in a small Western

Pennsylvania town to a slightly larger Western Pennsylvania town and put
me on a train for New York City, where I was to attend university. My father
said (I remember clearly), “this is going to be a great experience for you.”
New York City was not new territory for me, since we often visited my
left-wing bohemian aunts there, but the world of the university was. We did
not use the word “transformational” in those days to talk about the experi-
ences that led to personal growth (Freudian theory was probably still too
much believed at that time), but I was nonetheless overwhelmed by the num-
ber of brilliant students, teachers and, above all, authors among whom I had
gone to live. I had no idea that so many people could think so deeply, from
so many angles, about a world that had suddenly become for me far larger
than anything I’d known.
At that time, we had “junior year abroad” but it was not much promoted.
Since I was already involved in a difficult adventure exploring the world of
a research university in a great cosmopolitan city during the tumultuous late
1960s, I saw no reason to go further afield. But that was then, the waning
post-war era when the United States loomed so large in world affairs (at least,
as most of our politicians saw it) that “the global” had not yet come fully into
view for us.
It would be a mistake to think that the university world of that time was
not a creature of U.S. capitalism; one has only to read Thorstein Veblen’s
bitterly funny work on “the higher learning in America” (written at the turn
of the twentieth century) to be disabused of any such notion. Still, the way
U.S. universities fitted into our capitalist economy and our “foreign affairs”
differed from what we are experiencing today. Then, protesting students saw
their urban universities’ expansion into the neighborhoods around them not as

xi
xii Foreword

benign urban renewal (to use the term of the times) but as the gentrification it
was (to use today’s term). And anthropologists were coming to see that their
work in colonial settings made them not social reformers but handmaidens of
imperialism. But neither of these self-critiques invalidated our conventional
view of the university itself as an ivory tower, set in capitalism’s city, to be
sure, and doing its bidding, but somehow quarantined from its worst effects.
The authors of Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism
Experience labor under no such illusion. As Michael A. Di Giovine and
John Bodinger de Uriarte show in their comprehensive introduction, the
study-abroad industry is fully representative of the myriad ways capital-
ist culture (with its accountancy, risk assessment, entrepreneurialism, and
individualistic doctrine of social responsibility) has restructured university
practices in the past three decades. We now meet the enemy daily on cam-
pus, and they are us.
In the fast (sometimes instantaneous) world of contemporary global capi-
talism, the leisurely junior year abroad is all but gone. It has become more or
less unmarketable to students who are not interested in spending years mas-
tering Chinese (not to mention languages with far less value for a business
career) but who want instead to pack their resumes with as many international
experiences as they can in the shortest amount of time possible. Institutions of
higher education quake in the face of ratings systems that rank them accord-
ing to (among many other things) the percentage of their students who gain
some form of global experience during their time in college. At the same
time, colleges and universities must defer to their risk assessors who tell them
which of last year’s study-abroad sites are still “secure” enough for this year’s
students. Such balancing acts will become even more difficult in the brave
new world of the global pandemic we all are facing.
Given the contemporary need for global experiences quickly acquired—a
need which many believe the internet can easily satisfy—we must be espe-
cially cognizant of various forms of anti-intellectualism that devalue the
classroom and “book learning” in favor of “experiential education.” Let me
be clear: we anthropologists both mystify fieldwork and learn from it, but for
the most part we do not feel the need to devalue traditional scholarship (the
literature of our field, accumulated over the generations) in order to overvalue
field experience. Yet, something like that has happened in undergraduate edu-
cation, where people who should know better speak almost contemptuously
of classroom studies being unable to deliver the wisdom that comes from a
service trip, an internship or a study-abroad experience. I am perfectly willing
to grant them that experiential education has pedagogical possibilities that the
classroom lacks, but they should see that the reverse is also true.
In sum, in the university world at present there is a frenetic desire among
all stakeholders for global experiences but much less appetite for “slow”
 Foreword xiii

thinking about the political and cultural economy of such experiences. And
it is here, in this gap, that Study Abroad: Student Travel and the Quest for an
Anti-Tourism Experience will make its contribution.
The authors of the present book are grounded in disciplines—anthropology
and cultural studies—that have a long history considering these pedagogical
issues. In particular, they know how to be wary of the underlying concept—
“authenticity”—which is the source of so much confusion. Also, they have
themselves engaged in fieldwork that has taught them how difficult it is to
learn something about other human beings across complicated cultural and
political boundaries. And they have led study-abroad experiences where they
have challenged their students to learn in similarly complex circumstances.
The critical anthropology of study abroad presented in Study Abroad and
the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience builds on anthropology’s always-
already awareness of its own contradictions. To what degree the chapters
gathered here manage to maintain that awareness, while suggesting answers
to questions that are perhaps unanswerable, readers will have to decide for
themselves.
Richard Handler, University of Virginia
 Preface
COVID-19 and the Shifting
Ground of Study Abroad

Work on this volume began in 2018 as we looked to study-abroad scholars

and practitioners to raise what seemed to be a fairly simple question: How
did student tourism and study abroad differ from mass tourism, and how did
study abroad provide a platform for touristic practices while claiming to not
be tourism itself? Over the course of our project, we reflected on questions of
sustainability and study abroad, delivery on the promise of global citizenship,
the value of embodied cultural immersion, and the role of risk and danger
management in designing study abroad programs.
We worked diligently on these questions, connecting in meetings and pan-
els, visiting lectures and national conferences. Our collective experiences and
fields of focus span continents and island nations, and depend on extended
networks of providers and colleagues.
As the final edits were being completed, and the manuscript was in the
hands of the publisher, the world changed dramatically. The global pan-
demic that began in early 2020 shut down study abroad programs across the
globe—students returned to their home institutions in mid-program, those
projected for the spring or summer of 2020 were cancelled, and international
travel came to a grinding halt. Taken-for-granted global mobility ceased, and
speculation about its return grew. As we see now, responses to the pandemic
varied by country, and national recoveries from early lockdowns and quaran-
tines has been irregular, to say the least. The global “we” is by no means out
of the woods yet.
The chapters in this volume do not include considerations of the effects of
the global pandemic, since they were completed before it began. However,
we have included an up-to-date Epilogue, featuring the thoughts of our con-
tributors, which addresses many of the current questions about the future of
study abroad in a pandemic and post-pandemic world. It is our hope that this

xv
xvi Preface

in-depth study on the state of study abroad will provide key takeaways as we
imagine profoundly changing study abroad practices to meet this new present
and future. It is without question that “business as usual” for study abroad
will not return in a post-pandemic world; we hope this book will substan-
tively contribute to its transformation.
John Bodinger de Uriarte and Michael A. Di Giovine
 Acknowledgments

This book grew out of productive conversations at several meetings of the

American Anthropological Association, and had its roots in the editors’
shared interest and work in study abroad. We are indebted to a number of
institutions, offices, and individuals that laid the groundwork for the content
and direction of the volume.
John Bodinger de Uriarte: I owe many thanks—without the support of
a number of institutions, offices, and individuals, this book would not have
been possible. First, I would like to thank the Global Opportunities Program
at Susquehanna University for providing the opportunities and encourage-
ment to participate in one of the most ambitious study-away programs in the
country. Special thanks to my colleague, Shari Jacobson, for our mutual pur-
suit of questions connected to the doing of study away and for co-directing a
program with me to the Galápagos; and to Scott Manning, the dean of Global
Programs at Susquehanna, for providing feedback during an initial drafting
of my chapter for this volume. Thanks as well to the different program co-
directors I have worked with over the years, especially Ahmed Lachhab—
your willingness to think and re-think the directions for the preparatory,
in-country, and reflective components of our many programs together has
allowed us to keep refining and bettering the model.
Michael A. Di Giovine: At West Chester University, thanks to the Center
for International Programs including Vishal Shah, Peter Loedel, and Nora
Maurer; to Radha Pyati, dean of the College of the Sciences and Mathematics;
Gautam Pillay, former associate vice president for Research and Sponsored
Programs; and to Hyoejin Yoon, senior associate dean of the College of Arts
and Humanities for their support over the years. I would also like to thank
The Umbra Institute, especially Daniel Tartaglia, Zachary Nowak, and Elisa
Ascione, for providing such a productive partnership. Yet at the heart of

xvii
xviii Acknowledgments

the volume is a much deeper experience with educational travel stemming

first from my family’s travels to Urbino through Ramapo College of New
Jersey’s study-abroad program in the 1990s, directed by Rosetta D’Angelo;
the BCSP program in Bologna, Italy, in 1998–1999 under the direction of
Elissa Weaver from the University of Chicago; and my work as director of
operations at International Seminar Design, Inc., in Washington, DC, under
the direction of Kennie Ann Laney-Lupton. My chapter, as well as parts of
the introduction, grew out of very fruitful and productive conversations over
wonderful Umbrian fare with Teresa Cutler-Broyles, Bob Donius, and John
Hartsock, and also with Jennifer Coffman in Vancouver. This book was
written with the partial support of a CIP Internationalization Grant at West
Chester University.
At Lexington Books, we wish to thank Kasey Beduhn for her patience and
continued, tireless encouragement. The considered and insightful suggestions
of the anonymous reviewer were invaluable. We are especially grateful for
Lena Morella at West Chester University for her work in indexing this vol-
ume. Finally—and most importantly—many thanks to our students who have
raised critical questions about study abroad, tourism, their own experiences
as student travelers, and the questions and promises of global citizenship. We
are indebted to them.
 Introduction
Asking Questions about Study
Abroad and Tourism
Michael A. Di Giovine and
John Bodinger de Uriarte

Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience begins with a
simple question: How can we think productively about tourism—especially
student tourism—within the contexts of study-abroad programs? This book
recognizes tourism as a multiplicity of practices associated with voluntary
and temporary mobility (Hall 2004, 2015; Di Giovine 2013; Burns and
Novelli 2008), many of which are directed at uncovering the “true authentic”
of being elsewhere. “Elsewhere” here refers to the elusive site of true engage-
ment with an exotic and imagined—and often pristine and seductive—Other
(see Picard and Di Giovine 2014), a cross-cultural experience that represents
a notable change from the everyday that both tourists and study-abroad stu-
dents seek. Early tourism scholars have argued that such sought-after change
of pace is useful for recharging one’s proverbial batteries and refreshing and
reinforcing the social order by drawing clear lines between labor and leisure
(MacCannell 1976; Graburn 1977); when coupled with dedicated learning
outcomes as study-abroad travel does, such deviation from the mundane also
can be useful in creating high-impact learning experiences (Kuh 2008), aid-
ing in the apprehension and retention of academic knowledge. Furthermore,
tourism scholars and study-abroad advocates alike have often argued that
such a change may also foster self-transformation (Burn 1985; Lean 2012;
Lean and Waterton 2014; Ricci 2014), and indeed, a key learning outcome
of many university study-abroad programs is the conversion of young and
impressionable students into veritable “global citizens”—critically engaged,
globally aware, comfortable with alterity, and socially responsible (Horton
2017; Streitweiser and Light 2009). This aligns with some tourism scholars’
rather utopian assertion that travel can be an effective means of intercultural
communication and peacemaking (see Moufakkir and Kelly 2010 for an
examination of this thesis), though these lofty goals of self-transformation
1
2 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

and the creation of global awareness and peace may not always manifest
themselves (Bruner 1991; Di Giovine 2010; for study abroad see Pedersen
2010).
From a quantitative standpoint, both study-abroad and tourism are experi-
encing rapid growth in the international market. According to the United States
Department of State, which funded the Institute for International Education’s
study, Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange (2018),
study abroad has consistently grown and diversified in the past decade,
with nearly 350,000 students earning credit with their home institutions
while traveling. A 2.3 percent increase over the year before, this means that
roughly one in every ten college students will study abroad in some capacity.
In addition, in the 2016–2017 academic year, 29.2 percent of these students
identified as ethnic or racial minorities—a jump of over 40 percent from the
previous decade, when the same demographic only accounted for 17 percent
of the study-abroad population (Institute for International Education 2018c).
Likewise, despite the precarity of travel in a world system plagued with ter-
rorism, warfare, and global economic inequality, international tourism itself
has increased along similar lines—to the point that by 2015, the total number
of international arrivals (1 billion, according to the UNWTO 2015) well sur-
passed the total number of military personnel deployed throughout the world
(27.5 million, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies
(2015)). This jump can be related, in part, to the growth of more affluent,
mobile middle classes in populous emergent economies such as China and
India; according to the UNWTO (2020), China is now the largest outbound
tourism market, growing consistently by over 7 percent every year. Thus,
just as U.S. study abroad has diversified, so too has international tourism.
Indeed, U.S. study-abroad statistics unsurprisingly mirror broader tourism
trends—after all, student travelers are included in the UNWTO’s metrics,
which are based on arrivals data compiled from national immigration offices,
border surveys, traffic counts, and accommodations data (UNWTO 2019),
such that—statistically at least—one may conclude that study abroad is a
mere subset of tourism.
However, despite the fact that study-abroad travel is often definitionally
and operationally subsumed under broader tourism rubrics—and critics such
as political scientist Jessica Namakkal (2013) have argued that it is nothing
but a new form of “neo-colonial tourism” (cf. Nash 1977)—study-abroad
practitioners, colleges, and universities, as well as the students themselves,
often take pains to police boundaries and distinctions between the two.
They argue that study abroad should challenge one’s cultural assumptions
and lay gentle, but definite siege to one’s “comfort zone”; it should not be
a touristic experience, if tourism is understood as a temporary, leisure-time
activity often marked by a certain level of superficiality in engagement with
 Introduction 3

the local “Other” (see Crick 1989). Thus, since study-abroad programs are
increasingly a component of the “university experience,” yet are also both an
outcome and a response to global tourism trends, it is worthwhile to inquire
into their interrelationships. Are such programs fundamentally transformative
and educational experiences or are their appeal and design less transformative
and more discursive? What are the components of study abroad that make it
a unique form of travel? How do professors and other study-abroad planners
and leaders balance the unique promises of study abroad against the struc-
tures and imaginaries of tourism?
With contributions from anthropologists and cultural theorists who have
deep ties and experiences with study-abroad programs, this book examines
the culture and cultural implications of study abroad from a variety of theo-
ries and perspectives. In particular, the book examines the ways in which
study abroad is often differentiated from mass tourism, both in discourse
and in practice; indeed, a central premise that the contributors unpack is that
study abroad can be considered a form of “anti-tourism”—a relational stance
that purports to provide an antidote to some of the more problematic aspects
of mass tourism. These contributions are based on qualitative, empirical
research—ethnographic engagement with study-abroad students, practitio-
ners, operators, and university administrators. In some cases, the authors have
worked as administrators, most have been faculty directors, and many have
participated themselves in study-abroad programs when they were students.
We recognize that, in many instances, the voices offered here can only be
partial—the length of the programs limits our ability to carry out sustained
ethnographic research. And yet, many of us rely on our interviews, conversa-
tions, careful observation, and other data-collection techniques to keep the
instersections and interrelationships between theory and lived experience
viable and present. We intend this book to be of use to both faculty and
administrators who are interested in creating study-abroad programs but also
those tourism and study-abroad researchers who wish to gain important eth-
nographic insight on this unique form of educational mobility. Indeed, while
the insights will be useful for practitioners—especially university study-
abroad administrators and planners—this is not a “how-to” or “best practices”
book but one that critically engages with discourses and practices of study-
abroad programs and its imagined differences with typical touristic practices.
The book will be of value to tourism scholars and study-abroad scholars who
are looking for qualitative, anthropological works well-informed by tourism
and travel studies.
Much has been written on study abroad. On the one hand, as universities
are increasingly adopting “internationalization” strategies that include growing
study-abroad programs, there is a significant amount of “how-to” texts aimed
at the technical aspects of adopting and implementing study-abroad programs
4 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

(Lewin 2009; Vande Berg et al. 2012; Whalen 2015). These texts frequently
extol the virtues of study abroad, and some are written by study-abroad advo-
cates such as the Institute for International Education (IIE), which also oper-
ates the U.S. government’s Fulbright program; or NAFSA: Association of
International Educators, which publishes the bimonthly magazine International
Educator (see www​ .nafsa​
.org). On the other hand, empirical research has
been conducted on study-abroad programs by a particular group of disci-
plines such as, most prominently, education. Indeed, articles on study abroad
are frequently featured in journals such as International Higher Education,
Journal of Research in International Education, and The Chronicle of Higher
Education; and there are entire journals dedicated to the subject, such as
Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad and Beyond: The ISI
Florence Studies in International Education, a peer-reviewed journal published
by a non-profit study-abroad provider. Language educators have conducted
in-depth research on the successes and pitfalls of language acquisition in full-
immersion study-abroad contexts (see, for example, Carroll 1967; Freed 1995).
Psychologists and social workers have produced a rich body of literature on a
variety of acculturation stresses for study-abroad students (e.g., the most down-
loaded articles in the International Journal of Intercultural Relations all center
on acculturation tensions in study-abroad students; see Smith and Nigar 2011;
Presbitero 2016). Increasing contemporary emphases on student wellness and
mental health in the higher education context also carry over into the training
for the administration and delivery of study-abroad programs (McCabe 2005).
Political scientists (Hensley and Sell 1979), geographers (Veek and Biles 2009),
sociologists (Fobes 2005), gender studies scholars (Gore 2005), and other social
scientists have examined the effects of study-abroad practices, though often still
within education-focused publications (see also the interdisciplinary collection
of essays in Vande Berg et al. 2012).
However, surprisingly, the anthropological literature on study abroad is
relatively thin, as is the literature from interdisciplinary tourism studies. This
is surprising because, on the one hand, both the anthropology of tourism as
well as interdisciplinary tourism studies have flourished in the past thirty
years and have diversified in terms of the topics of study as well as the demo-
graphics of researchers themselves. On the other hand, it is surprising because
anthropological research (“ethnography”) can be understood as a type of
study abroad, in that anthropologists (and anthropology graduate students)
often travel far distances abroad to study indigenous languages and cultures
in ways that may not be structurally too dissimilar from the long-term study
abroad experiences of undergraduates. This boundary between the doing of
ethnography and the doing of tourism is one carefully policed by anthropolo-
gists themselves, even though it can also be productively blurred (see, for
example, Claude Levi-Strauss’ Tristes Tropiques (1992[1955])). Indeed, as
 Introduction 5

La Brack and Bathurst (2012: 189–190) argue, the discipline of anthropology

itself strongly influenced the ways in which American outbound study abroad
developed, since it greatly contributed to the development of intercultural
communications studies, which, in turn, has been a leader in researching the
effects of study abroad and promoting its best practices. Thus, in addressing
the phenomenology of study abroad, its culture and cultural impacts, and the
ways in which various stakeholders negotiate tensions inherent in implement-
ing study-abroad programs, this book ultimately contributes to the introduc-
tion of a new subfield of study—the anthropology of study abroad.

WHAT IS STUDY ABROAD?

The terminology associated with study abroad has varied not only across time
but also from institution to institution, and in some ways is dependent on the
internationalization missions of the institution itself. In general, it is often
subsumed under the umbrella category of “international education” or “edu-
cation abroad,” which, in its simplest form, means education outside of one’s
home country (Forum on Education Abroad 2011). Yet this terminology is
inadequate for discussing the form of temporary educational experiences
that are implied in the phrase “study abroad,” since “education abroad” also
includes those instances in which a student matriculates and pursues a full
degree in an educational institution in another country, such as, for example, a
Japanese national who graduates from an institution in the United States. This
is not just a semantic concern; higher educational institutions often simultane-
ously seek to attract international students (particularly from emerging “mar-
kets” such as China and India) for direct matriculation, as well as to create
shorter term exchange programs where international students study abroad
temporarily while earning credit at their home institution, but they also seek
to supplement their own students’ education by offering a course or series
of courses abroad. These study abroad courses may be led and taught by an
instructor from the home institution.
In addition, some institutions eschew the term “study abroad” altogether,
preferring the term “study away,” as does one of the book’s co-editors. There
are important reasons for this distinction. On the one hand, most definitions
of study abroad specify that travel must necessarily be “abroad”—that is, out-
side one’s own host country. The Forum for Education Abroad, for example,
defines it as “a subtype of education abroad . . . or off-campus study that takes
place outside the country where the student’s home institution is located”
(2011: 12). This poses a number of problems, first of which is viewing this
type of travel in terms of geopolitical organization rather than the quality or
typology of experience. What about a University of Oregon student studying
6 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

abroad Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada? Surely her experience as a

Pacific Northwesterner studying in the Pacific Northwest does not necessarily
connote the kind of change-of-pace, culture, and scenery that even traveling
domestically to Florida, Texas, or New York would; the difference is that she
is crossing international borders. If Vancouver is “abroad” in the experiential
sense, then Florida, Texas, or New York surely should be counted in a similar
vein.
Likewise, many educational institutions, such as West Chester University,
where one of the co-editors teaches, considers travel outside of the conti-
nental United States to be “abroad,” (i.e., to Alaska and Hawaii, or Puerto
Rico, Guam, and other U.S. territories), even if they are geopolitically part
of the United States. Thus, an international education program in Hawaii or
Alaska would nevertheless fall under the rubric of study abroad, despite the
fact that these destinations are not, technically and geopolitically speaking,
outside of one’s home country. This has bureaucratic implications, as travel
“abroad” to these American areas is subject to different levels of audit within
the university (i.e., travel authorization must be granted by the Center for
International Programs) and the Pennsylvania State System; different forms
of insurance need to be issued, and even how the university calculates its
carbon footprint is different (WCU calculates it automatically for interna-
tional travel but not domestic travel, as the authorization forms are issued by
different organizations using different information management systems). It
also benefits students differently, as study-abroad students qualify for certain
grants while those who, say, travel on a similar course with an instructor to
Tucson, Arizona, to study migration in the Sonoran Desert, do not.
This becomes an issue of inequality especially when students are man-
dated to travel “elsewhere” to supplement their education, as, for example,
Susquehanna University does. At Susquehanna, a small liberal arts college in
rural Pennsylvania, all students must participate in the Global Opportunities
program, or GO, which is focused on providing a cross-cultural experience,
broadly conceived. To accommodate the varying interests and means of such
students, there are three categories of programs: GO Long (i.e., a semester-
long study abroad program—but for one exception, these are not led by SU
faculty); GO Short (i.e., a three-week program in Iceland led by faculty);
and GO Your Own Way, which provides more flexibility and includes
“full-immersion” domestic travel experiences. Such domestic travel experi-
ences—which, in the past, have included internships, study in a different
city, and even a homestay with an Amish family—may be less expensive,
less time-consuming, or less emotionally or psychologically taxing, while at
the same time providing the same experiential value of supplementing one’s
formal education by getting off-campus to gain a cross-cultural experiences
(and indeed, sometimes this is referred to simply as “off-campus study”
 Introduction 7

[Forum for Education Abroad 2011: 12]). Thus, “study away” is used at some
universities to be more inclusive to domestic student travel—that is, student
travel that might not be “abroad” but is still “away” from the student’s aca-
demic environment. Indeed, as the Forum for Education Abroad points out,
this term tends to be used in campuses where the same office is responsible
for international and domestic off-campus study (2011: 12). In compiling
this book we had originally thought to use “study away” to be more inclusive
and to not distinguish between international travel and other forms that take
a student elsewhere to supplement their education but decided on “study
abroad” because it is the preferred term in a majority of academic settings
(e.g., despite using “study away” in discourse, Susquehanna’s GO website
also uses “study abroad”). In addition, all of the contributors to this book have
written directly about international travel programs. Thus, our use of “study
abroad” is similar to our use of “tourism,” in that it can mean both domestic
or foreign travel.
In this book, study abroad is defined as a form of mobility in which
students voluntarily and temporarily travel elsewhere—off-campus, and,
most often, outside of their familiar cultural setting and formal educational
institution—to supplement their education through cross-cultural learning.
Breaking down this definition yields a more precise understanding of how
study abroad is used in this book.
First, we situate study abroad within a spectrum of other forms of mobility,
in which tourism and associated forms of travel play a part. The mobilities
literature is indeed vast since the “mobilities turn” in academia (Urry 1999,
2007; Sheller and Urry 2006; Cresswell 2006; Bissell and Fuller 2011),
which is an integrated approach to understanding the movement of people,
objects, and ideas across space and time, as well as its implications on society
(Schorpp 2017: 10). It is predicated on the contention that globalization has
qualitatively enhanced not only the corporeal movement of people across
the world but also objects, capital, and ideas—both physically and virtually
(Urry 2009: 4–5). Global movements include contemporary tourism, but also
business travel, second-home travel, warfare, trade, immigration and forced
migration, among others. Just as globalization is not unique—people have
always entertained ideas of a world outside of their immediate community
borders and have traded and traveled outside of their localities (Sahlins
2000: 488–489; Luhmann 1982: 295)—neither is mobility itself; however,
what is new about globalization (and thus contemporary mobility) is its
conflation of time and space (Giddens 1991; Harvey 1989) and the concep-
tualization of the world as a unified whole (Robertson 1992: 8), mediated by
new technologies. There are more people traveling in the world today, and
traveling farther—but, Urry points out, not spending more time away—as a
result of faster, cheaper, and more efficient travel (2007: 4). We see this in
8 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

study abroad demographics as well. For example, while European countries

continue to occupy the top five destinations for American students, locations
farther afield, such as China, India, and Australia all now occupy places in the
top 25, with China in sixth place (Institute of International Education 2018b),
even as the length of a study abroad trip decreases (Institute of International
Education 2018a); indeed, over 40 percent of students studied abroad outside
of Europe in the past decade (Vande Berg 2007: 394; Institute of International
Education 2018b; Deresiewicz 2009).
Another important concept in the mobilities literature is an acknowledg-
ment that such swift movements of people, things, and ideas—mediated by
contemporary technologies—enhances the interconnectedness of peoples
across the world. This has significant implications for study abroad. On the
“supply” side, such interconnectedness enhances opportunities to create and
organize study-abroad programs in increasingly more remote destinations,
thereby presenting at least the illusion of adventurously traveling farther
afield, outside of traditional tourist tracks. And on the “consumer” side, the
expanded social networks that students cultivate while studying abroad are
enhanced. On the one hand, the possibility of remaining connected through
social media with friends and family at home can serve as a social safety net
for the reluctant traveler. Critics, however, have argued that these same tech-
nologies present barriers to the mission of study abroad, as students are able
to remain in their virtual “bubble” rather than broadening their face-to-face
cross-cultural experiences in-country (Huesca 2013). On the other hand, such
instantaneous connectivity through social media seems to create more durable
social networks across the world, keeping students in touch with others they
met in-country. This includes other American students (see, for example,
Reinig 2013), but also the “locals” they met while studying abroad.
Second, by students, we do not mean exclusively the traditional college-
age student (c. 18–22), though “youth travel” is often related to study abroad;
to wit, the Student and Youth Travel Association (www​.STYA​.org), the tour
operator Travel for Teens (www​.travelforteens​.com) that promises transfor-
mative experiences with the tagline “be a traveler not a tourist,” and the well-
known travel agency Student Travel Association (STA, www​.statravel​.com)
all conflate education and travel, promise a qualitatively different experience
than tourism, and emphasize the transformative nature of their experiences.
However, in this book’s usage, “student” refers to anyone who is engaged in
formal learning. Frequently, high schools (and even younger-aged) students
participate in study-abroad programs, either sponsored by their institution or
by signing up for a private program. In addition, “non-traditional” students—
frequently those adults who are close to retirement and may be completing
degrees later in life or are seeking to participate in a formal continuing
education course—may also participate on study abroad programs. Finally,
 Introduction 9

as Katharine Serio’s contribution to this book suggests, it can also relate to

those on mission or service trips who might be engaged in spiritual learning
with their host churches, since they are supplementing their religious educa-
tion by engaging in an immersive cross-cultural experience. However, we do
differentiate study-abroad students from university alumni or museum docent
travelers who participate in the niche tourism form of educational travel, as
they do not consider themselves students and are not actively pursuing a for-
mal educational degree in the host institution.
Third, this definition also requires that the travel is voluntary and tempo-
rary, similar to definitions of tourism (see Di Giovine 2013a; Smith 1977;
Graburn 1977). Thus, this does not include other forms of international
education, such as “degree mobility” (King et al. 2010)—those who travel
abroad to matriculate directly into a foreign institution to complete a degree
(i.e., the Japanese national matriculating directly into a U.S. university, or
an American who studies for two years in a U.S. institution before formally
transferring to a university in the United Kingdom). Unlike these forms,
study abroad is temporary because it is limited in time and, like tourism,
comes with the understanding of “returning” home, as well as to one’s home
campus (at least to collect the degree, if one’s last semester is spent studying
abroad). Also like tourism, study abroad should be conceived of as a volun-
tary endeavor—that is, not coerced or enacted because of immigration, work-
related movements (on the part of the traveler or his/her parents or guardians),
fleeing warfare or economic strife, or other forms of migration that would
constrain the student to study away from their original home. In all of the
contributions to this book, students return home; their behaviors and actions
are conditioned by both the voluntary aspect of their participation (despite the
mandatory grade that comes along with it), as well as the understanding that
the experience is not permanent—though the length of time may vary from
only a week to a semester or a year depending on the program.
In this respect, writer Annie Nguyen’s autobiographical contribution to
this book powerfully pushes the boundaries of home and away, as well as the
notion of a return. A Fulbright scholar who studied for a year in Vietnam,
her refugee parents’ home country, Nguyen recounts the emotion-ladened
experience of “returning” to an imagined homeland she had never visited
before, to relatives she had never met. Like many first- and second-generation
Americans who cultivate a “hyphenated identity” (Trinh 1991), Nguyen
occupies a liminal space between the homeland in which she was born and
raised, and that of her family; returning home for her meant a return to a place
in which she had never set foot before, but where her roots—and her extended
family—were embedded. This study-abroad experience challenged ideas of
identity, kinship reckoning, and cultural and national histories. Indeed, many
students choose study-abroad sites that allow them to investigate heritage
10 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

claims more closely or to visit sites understood as significant to their own

families’ histories of migration or mobility (Petrucci 2007).
Fourth and most importantly, our definition specifies that study abroad
foremostly is travel elsewhere—that is, outside of one’s home environment,
be it domestic or international. From the educational standpoint, this means
that travel outside of one’s home campus (though students often still earn
credit through the home institution, and even attend classes sponsored by,
and/or instructed by, the home institution, such as West Chester University
in Perugia, or Susquehanna University in Morocco). We intend that it could
also include travel—if it is temporary and voluntary—to a student’s univer-
sity’s secondary campus, such as NYU Abu Dhabi or Georgetown’s Villa Le
Balze in Fiesole, Italy. However, we also intend it to include participation
in domestic travel programs for the expressed purpose of being elsewhere—
outside of, and away from, one’s home environment, quotidian culture, or
everyday life, so as to engage meaningfully in a cross-cultural experience.
Thus, this definition applies to a student from The College of Holy Cross or
The University of Chicago studying for a semester in Washington, DC, for
example; Washington is clearly not a foreign country, but the student’s intent
is to supplement her education by engaging in transformative experiences
and coursework outside of her home environment. As the contributions by
Bodinger de Uriarte, Lampman and Schweitzer, and Nguyen all reveal, study
abroad is intended to take students outside of their comfort zone, their typi-
cal and daily environment, so as to provide a transformative and impactful
learning experience. Seasoned study-abroad leaders, Bodinger de Uriarte as
well as Lampman and Schweitzer discuss in detail the delicate balance study-
abroad programs must achieve in challenging students: on the one hand, they
must balance adventure and risk with institutional concerns of liability; on
the other hand, they must seek to take students outside of their comfortable
bubble while nevertheless ensuring their contentment as higher education
consumers.
This is a key issue for many of the contributors in this book. As Neriko
Doerr argues in her chapter, study abroad exists through the necessary erec-
tion of boundaries, and all participants—both faculty directors and students—
engage in rituals to construct and maintain them. These are acts of Othering:
on a study abroad tour in Africa, for example, the incessant passing around
of hand sanitizer might appear banal, but Doeer astutely points out that it
constructs boundaries predicated on historically and racially situated notions
of purity and impurity, safety and danger, health and sickness, strength and
weakness, incorruption and corruption—all stereotypes that historically
inform Westerners’ latent imaginaries of the African Other. Yet boundary
construction is not only undertaken by the mobile, foreign traveler. Doerr
points out that, in developing countries such as Peru, site managers often
 Introduction 11

create class-based, economic boundaries between wealthy foreigners and

impoverished travelers; while ostensibly there are practical reasons for this—
locals in many developing countries cannot afford luxury trains or five-star
hotels nor do they usually cultivate the same expecations or desires of “qual-
ity” (a common discourse in the international tourism sector, for example, is
that there are local hotels, European standard hotels, and American standard
hotels; see Di Giovine 2009)—but it also serves to reinforce common stereo-
types about the Global North and the Global South.
And both groups police these boundaries. Travelers may engage in various
forms of social sanctions, should one of their own neglect to use sanitizer or
become too adventurous to the point that it appears to put them at risk (some-
thing Bodinger de Uriarte discusses in his chapter); likewise, local officials
will enforce differential pricing between tourists and locals (a prime example
is Cuba, which has two sets of monetary systems; see Simoni 2016). But even
the average local will play this game; street buskers will charge higher prices
to foreigners in these countries than to locals, Doerr shows. Likewise, Elisa
Ascione’s contribution reminds us that we should not think that the imposi-
tion of sometimes negative stereotypes is a one-way street; locals also have
agency to erect these boundaries. Ascione is an Italian anthropologist native
to the town in which she teaches food studies to American study-abroad stu-
dents; through her priviliged position (and linguistic competence), she finds
that her local service providers—butchers, chefs, and cooking instructors—
may consider her students not only mere tourists, but, because of their lack of
cultural competence in exhibiting simple cooking skills that Italian children
of both sexes exhibit, they are treated as ignorant outsiders. Ascione’s chapter
also brings to light the delicate positionality of the study-abroad faculty mem-
ber, who often is made to straddle multiple boundaries—student or tourist,
local or foreigner, representative of the host institution or advocate for the
foreign student (see also Di Giovine’s chapter in this book).
Underpinning Ascione’s and Doerr’s chapters are echoes of Fredrik
Barth’s classic text, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, which argues that such
boundary creation and maintenance “canalizes social life,” fostering both
a sense of shared identity among insiders as well as the perception of the
“dichotomization of others as strangers . . . [which] implies a recognition of
limitations on shared understandings, differences in criteria for judgment of
value and performance, and a restriction of interaction to sectors of assumed
common understanding and mutual interest” (1969: 15). Yet neither Doerr
nor Barth suggest that the American study-abroad student and the host
Other are hermeneutically sealed off from one another, or their cultures are
static. Rather, all are engaged in a mutual game of boundary negotiation and
maintenance, and often stereotypes integral to being accepted in a group are
negotiated among insider members. Indeed, Barth’s classic text stands as an
12 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

example of the interconnectedness, fluidity, and socio-cultural construction

of identities. The same types of identity negotiation and transformation are
promised of study-abroad programs.
In many study-abroad promotional materials—regardless of whether they
are domestic or foreign programs—the promise is made that the student
experience will not be a tourist experience but something deeper, based more
closely on building cultural competence or global citizenship (neither an aim
of commercial tourism, generally), and that challenging the student “bubble”
or comfort zone is a primary goal. In “seeing behind”—often through taking
part in service projects or voluntourism (see Vrasti 2012, for example)—stu-
dents are invited to a seemingly authentic experience and to participate in
projects that contribute to the well-being of sites and communities far from
what they might consider familiar. But do these experiences actually offer a
“backstage” view? And if so, how? And how does backstage access work as
a commodity or promise?
We base our overall engagement with this field on a careful reading of
Dean MacCannell (1976) and Ed Bruner (2005), especially in their use of
Erving Goffman’s (1959) concepts of frontstage and backstage, “staged
authenticity,” and borderzones between visitor and visited. The book also
problematizes notions of education and learning in the context of study-
abroad travel. Although the anthropology of tourism literature has certainly
grown significantly since these classic texts were originally published
(see Leite and Graburn 2009; Di Giovine 2017), they are still insightful,
and indeed inform the study-abroad process (Bruner himself began study-
ing tourism while leading student travel to Africa and Asia with Barbara
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (see Di Giovine 2019)). The idea of study-abroad
programs offering an authentic glimpse into other cultural lives and perfor-
mances is still powerfully compelling in the ways that study-abroad programs
are both designed and marketed. This collection looks at a number of critical
assessments that engage with questions of the (in)authentic and reveal diverse
ways of fostering a “backstage” (MacCannell 1977) experience in the host
country for students—from conducting service activities (see contributions
by Coffman and Prazak, Serio), to engaging in homestays (Doerr, Nguyen),
from instructing ethnography (Greer and Schweitzer, Barkin, Di Govine), to
integrating seemingly “adventurous” experiences into itineraries that may
also foster discomfort (Bodinger de Uriarte, Serio, Biggs), and other forms
of bodily engagement with the host community, such as dancing (Lampman
and Schweitzer) or eating (Biggs, Ascione, Di Giovine).
Last in the definition is the notion that study abroad is intended to supple-
ment one’s education. Taking a student outside of his or her environment,
engaging with difference, negotiating change, and conducting hands-on
learning in environments that cannot be accomplished on one’s home campus
 Introduction 13

all create a value-added element for one’s education. And there can be per-
suasive arguments for this goal—without this opportunity, what better way
to expose “selves” to “others”? Its lauded objectives are more often than
not either over-promised or fully unrealistic, and there are definitely cau-
tions and approaches that make more sense than others. But one danger of
a blanket condemnation of study abroad as an extension of colonialism is to
lose the opportunity for these interactions at all. Supplements can include a
course or a series of courses that are meant to enhance one’s formal learning.
It is not intended to supplant, nor to become, one’s sole form of education.
Nevertheless, it can be sponsored by the student’s same institution or, as is
becoming increasingly more popular in the neoliberal university marketplace,
organized by third-party providers. These include other academic and non-
profit study-abroad providers, such as Arcadia University or the Institute for
International Education (IIE), who operate the Fulbright program, but also
for-profit study abroad operators such as the American Institute for Foreign
Study (AIFS) or CEA.

HOW DOES STUDY ABROAD PURPORT TO

BE AN ANTI-TOURISM EXPERIENCE?

We can already see how study abroad is related to tourism, which the United
Nations defines as “the activities of persons traveling to and staying in places
outside their usual environment for no more than one consecutive year for
leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity
remunerated from within the place visited” (2010: 10). Both are temporary
and voluntary pursuits, often undertaken within a fixed time period and a
pre-planned date of return; both are unremunerated by entities in the host
country (if one even counts course credit as a form of remuneration), and
most importantly, both are travel elsewhere, outside one’s usual environment.
Even tourism statistics take into account study-abroad numbers, and many
study-abroad programs are offered by specialized tour operators.
Yet this book argues that study-abroad programs specifically position
themselves in opposition to mass tourism, in both discourse and in practice.
A number of different strategies have unfolded recently as part of this process
of differentiation. First and foremost, study abroad is considered an academic
pursuit, a form of deep and impactful learning that requires not only rigor-
ous planning on the part of the professor but also some measure of effort and
work on the part of the students; it is not all leisure, though as study-abroad
leaders know, much of the transformative learning experiences in a study-
abroad program occur informally, outside of the classroom. Complicating
this formal–informal learning process is the increasingly more rigorous
14 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

systems of assessment that are applied to these programs by the neoliberal

university. Thus, forms of engagement are formalized, among them the
service-learning components of many study-abroad programs (see Cororaton
and Handler 2013; Conran 2011, for example), as well as the implementa-
tion of educational tours, demonstrations and field trips; sometimes the
use of tour operators (or for-profit study abroad companies) are preferred
because of their cost, range of educational visits, and streamlined services.
Paradoxically, such experiences are often embraced by the mass tourism
sector. For example, “edutourism” (Keith and Keith 2010; Loveless 2014;
Yfantidou and Goulimaris 2018; see also Edutourism International www​
.edutourism​.com​.au) is a growing sector of an increasingly expanding and
multiple tourist market, and “voluntourism” is a $173B industry as of 2017
(see Pariyar 2017; Vrasti 2012; Sin 2009, 2010; see also www​.voluntourism​
.org, www​.gviusa​.com, www​.discovercorps​.com, and www​.savethechildren​
.org​.au). Such tourist industry sectors also involve elements of service as
components of travel and tourism, and study-abroad programs that include
service are specifically focused on primarily college-age students, including
but not limited to “gap-year” experiences. Such programs trouble distinctions
between tourism, education, and service. They also participate in power-
ful popular discourses about studying away from one’s local, comfortable
environment as an important process for self-discovery and the formation of
a more cosmopolitan “global citizen.” What are the mechanisms of engage-
ment or facilitation that lead study-abroad experiences to foster or claim more
authentic and transformative experiences, if they do so at all? And what are
the pedagogical practices involved as part of carrying out these promises?
In many ways study abroad programs, both those that involve service
projects and those that do not, are understood as practicing a particular kind
of “anti-tourism.” Although tourism researchers have occasionally used the
term “anti-tourism” since the turn of the millennium (see Foster 2009; Mee
2007; Welk 2004; Williams and Lawson 2001; Jacobsen 2000), the term has
become part of the popular lexicon in recent years, thanks to highly publi-
cized movements contesting “touristification” (Lanfant 1994) and “tourist
gentrification” (Gotham 2018) that have swept through Europe and elsewhere
starting in mid-2017. Fueled by a perception of “over-tourism”—that is, gov-
ernments’ and other powerful stakeholders’ unabashed aim to maximize the
amount of highly transitory tourists who often spend little time in a location
and are often uneducated about local history or culture, as well as the tourist
gentrification that has occurred as locals find it more profitable to rent their
homes on temporary bases through AirBnB, thereby threatening the social
fabric of local communities—these indigenous anti-tourism (and, arguably
“tourismophobic” [Milano et al. 2019; Zerva et al. 2019]) movements urge
that less is more, that to be sustainable, fewer aggregate visitors must spend
 Introduction 15

more quality time interacting with, and understanding, host communities. As

Hughes (2018) argues, it has become a veritable social movement in its own
right, often a heated protest against neoliberal urbanization processes and
market values.
Yet as Di Giovine argues in this book, while the current anti-tourism
movement may be a recent phenomenon, its ethos is not (see also Doxey
1975; Butler 1980); forms of temporary, touristic mobility from pilgrimage
to backpacking to the historical Grand Tour, from VFR tourism (“Visiting
Friends and Relatives”), to conducting ethnography and to study abroad
itself, often mark themselves in contraposition to traditional touristic travel:
their practitioners, and the visitors themselves, often take great strides to posi-
tion themselves as traveling “above and beyond” traditional tourism, despite
embracing similar imaginaries, engaging in comparable activities, and using
the same infrastructures, as mass tourism (Di Giovine 2013a, 2013b). Rather,
this book focuses on anti-tourism forms of visitation that are conceived of as
an antidote to tourism, especially within the frame of study abroad.
As the name implies, anti-tourism is often discursively used to indicate
a negative relation; it is a relational category that presents a set of practices
to avoid in the pursuit of the real, the formative, the deeply engaged. In this
paradigm, if mass tourism is “fast tourism”—quick, short-term, and superfi-
cial—then study abroad as an anti-touristic form is slow, longer term, deeply
engaged and educational; if mass tourism employs “staged authenticity” then
study abroad is authentic; if mass tourism is a leisure activity then study
abroad should require effort. Yet Di Giovine’s chapter also argues that anti-
tourism is an ethical discourse, a weighing of moral options to determine just
action—what behaviors ought to be carried out. As an ethical form of travel,
study abroad thus presents a solution for what tourism ought to be, what out-
comes participants ought to gain out of the experience, how visitors ought to
behave, how locals ought to be treated. In many ways, ethical stances such
as these underlie the missions of the institutions that inform study abroad:
study abroad ought to be a high-impact learning experience; it ought to be
sustainable; it ought to create just, socially conscious “global citizens” (see
also Greer and Schweitzer, this book).
Indeed, as Di Giovine shows, “anti-tourists”—visitors participating in
these alternate forms of travel—frequently see themselves as something dif-
ferent than tourists altogether, based on the ethical forms of engagement they
perceive as an antidote to modern tourism pressures. He proposes that anti-
tourism forms of visitation exist on a spectrum of ethical ideals, at the center
of which lies study abroad. Study abroad is both an ethical stance against
tourism—educational, engaging, high-impact, sensitive to alterity—as well
as a strategy of travel that incorporates other anti-touristic forms. The spec-
trum proposes service as an antidote to socio-economic inequality that has
16 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

been critiqued foremostly in these recent protests, education as an antidote

to the stereotype of touristic superficiality, and relationship-building as an
antidote to staged authenticity and the separation between stakeholders in the
tourism field.
Our use of “anti-tourism” in this book, therefore, is threefold: First, it is a
recognition of the promise of study abroad as not being primarily a touristic
experience but one that involves a more extensive and “behind-the-scenes”
engagement with the host culture; second, that such programs may be
seen as antidotes to standard tourism, especially in terms of their promised
breaking down of distance between a program participant and an imagined
Other; and third, a recognition that the current pushback on influxes of tour-
ists with seemingly little time or interest in more carefully engaging with
host cultures—as evidenced in recent protests in Barcelona and Venice, for
example—offers a different way to think about and value programs that
stress a longer in-country stay that includes local engagement on local terms.
Indeed, study-abroad programs, which have traditionally focused on living
for extended periods of time in a place to learn local history and culture,
are often compared as superior to regular tourism by offering students a
way to see behind the public facades of places and events shaped for tour-
ist consumption and providing a more formative, educational experience.
However, one challenge to this thinking may be seen in the growth of shorter
term study-away programming, often managed or created by domestic col-
leges and universities and led by their own professors and staff. Indeed, in
this book, many of the chapters—including those by Coffman and Prazak,
Greer and Schweitzer, Barkin, Lampman and Schweitzer, and Bodinger de
Uriarte—focus on such programs and the challenges they present in trying to
offer “immersive” experiences.

WHAT ARE THE COMMON ANTI-TOURISM

COMPONENTS OF STUDY ABROAD?

Each contribution to this book takes the notion that study abroad is an “anti-
touristic” form of travel as a point of departure and discusses both the ways in
which study-abroad programs position themselves structurally and behavior-
ally as different from tourism, as well as the individual strategies that study-
abroad leaders have used to achieve these goals. They roughly correspond to
three distinctive elements: maximizing the educational component of study
abroad such that it is a “high-impact educational practice” (Kuh 2008); creat-
ing more socially conscious, cross-cultural engagement that can transcend
the front-stage/backstage element of tourism through service activities; and
inculcating more socially conscious travelers to produce global citizens. It
 Introduction 17

is important to note that neither we nor the contributors take these terms at
face value but rather the chapters think critically and reflexively about these
terms and the promises of study abroad to actually effect such formative
transformations.

Education
This book engages with the largely imagined distinctions concerning the
formative abilities of travel in tourism and study-abroad experiences. In the
past century, anthropologists have looked at tourism as separate from more
serious, educational forms of studying (and researching) abroad—such as
ethnography (Crick 1985, 1995); Lévi-Strauss’ memoir, Tristes Tropiques
(1992[1955]), simultaneously criticizes tourists (“I hate traveling and travel-
ers”) while romanticizing his own travel-related exploits. Like Lévi-Strauss,
more recent critiques of intersections between tourism, travel, and anthro-
pology, as in Dennis O’Rourke’s classic 1988 ethnographic film “Cannibal
Tours,” or Ilja Kok’s more recent 2011 film Framing the Other, offer a criti-
cal portrayal of both tourism and popular or folk understandings of cultural
difference. O’Rourke straddles a line between a critical analysis of tourist
discourses about Otherness and how such discourses borrow from folk under-
standings of “culture,” anthropology, and modernity—a borrowing that also
informs many students who participate in study-abroad programs. Taking
the trope of the cannibal, and examining the creative way that both host and
guest negotiate a liminal “borderzone” (Bruner 2005), O’Rourke’s film begs
the question, who is the cannibal? Who is really consuming whom? However,
despite these critiques, early anthropology of tourism scholars, such as Nelson
Graburn (1977), nevertheless point out that tourism is a “sacred journey,” a
ritual experience intended to create a break from the everyday, to refresh and
renew the social order.
An entire niche group of educational travel (see, for example, the
Educational Travel Consortium: http://educationaltravel​.travel/) emerged in
the first half of the twentieth century as educators like John Dewey and oth-
ers toured seemingly progressive schools in the Soviet Union (see Ravitch
2000; Dewey 2008). Dewey modeled his ideas, in part, on the eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Grand Tour—a precursor to Anglo-Australian “gap year”
practices—in which wealthy Northern Europeans supplemented their classi-
cal education in history, archaeology, Latin, and Greek by living for extended
periods of time in Southern Europe, the perceived cradle of their European
civilization (Brodsky-Porges 1981). As Jeremy Black states (1985: 234),
such travel was also undertaken to allow these young men to mature, and
“the principle motives advanced for foreign travel were that it equipped the
traveler socially and provided him with useful knowledge and attainments.”
18 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

In fact, in tracing the evolution of the Grand Tour, John Towner (1985) found
that, as travel became cheaper and more accessible to an emerging European
middle class, the length of time in-country diminished to the levels that John
Dewey and others suggested for American trips abroad (but see Contreras
2015 for a counter-narrative to this). Nevertheless, as Michael Vande Berg
argues, study abroad was rather elitist “in intention and practice” up to the
turn of the millennium; its goals were “vague and undefined,” as it was
assumed students “would in some mysterious way learn through exposure to,
through contact with, another culture” (2007: 393). Indeed, as Gore argues,
throughout its development in the United States, study abroad was framed
less about gaining valuable book knowledge, as it was about “gaining social
standing and enjoy[ing] personal pleasure” (2005: 32).
Two changes occurred in the past twenty years that shaped present-day
study-abroad programs. First were changes in the neoliberal university which
altered the way study abroad was conceived; Vande Berg calls this the shift
from the under-defined Junior Year Abroad—where top-performing (and
wealthier) students were sent abroad on a vague Grand Tour-like mission to
learn (about the place, about oneself)—to a Student Learning Paradigm, in
which study-abroad travel is subject to measurable pedagogical and outcome
assessment. The growth of assessment metrics in higher education—espe-
cially when modeled on an outcomes-focused framework borrowed from
neoliberal corporate discourse and practice—has been the subject of numer-
ous critiques in the last twenty-five years (see Shumar 1977; Starthern 2000;
Tuchman 2011; Hyatt et al. 2015, for example). But the “cross-cultural expe-
rience” offered by many study-abroad providers and programs is difficult (if
not impossible) to quantify within “audit culture” (Strathern 2000) terms.
Part of the rise of predictable outcomes as an element of higher education
and the connected rise of public critique of liberal arts education as poten-
tially disconnected from practical career preparation has placed some of the
promises of study abroad under closer, market-minded scrutiny. And many
universities, Susquehanna among them, have shifted to include promoting
study abroad and cross-cultural experience as marketable resume builders. As
Talya Zemach-Bersin notes, in this scenario “education itself has become a
product that is packaged and sold to student consumers” (2009: 305). Indeed,
this “product” is consumed as part of a larger process that imagines a par-
ticular career return on investment, and this is no less true for study-abroad
programs and offerings. Indeed, to draw from Zemach-Bersin once more:
“Students are told that they can purchase not only international travel itself,
but also cross-cultural understanding, global citizenship, personal advance-
ment, and adventure” (305).
This complex set of engaging activities produces what George Kuh
(2008) calls “high impact educational practices.” Seen in contradistinction to
 Introduction 19

surface-level learning, these practices focus on integrative, deep approaches,

which, according to Kuh, tend to produce students who “earn higher grades
and retain, integrate and transfer information at higher rates” (14). They
achieve these superior outcomes, he argues, because they (a) demand that
students devote considerable time and effort to purposeful tasks; (b) place
students in circumstances that compel them to interact meaningfully with
peers and the faculty member; (c) engages students in diversity through cross-
cultural contact with people who are different from themselves; (d) students
are given feedback about their performance; (e) opens students eyes to how
learning works in different settings “on-and-off campus”—that is, they are
opportunities to “integrate, synthesize, and apply knowledge”; and (f) they
are transformative and life-changing, in that it creates self-reflexivity and
awareness of one’s positionality in the world (3–17). Kuh specifically lists
study abroad as a high-impact educational practice; even short-term study
abroad demands a considerable amount of dedicated, uninterrupted time, it
puts them in closer contact with peers and the faculty director, it specifically
is intended to engage in cross-cultural contact, opening students’ eyes to
understand how learning works on and off campus, and, as a consequence,
requires performance feedback and fosters self-reflexivity.
The recent, renewed emphasis on experiential learning represents some
serious shifts in the academy and, at least partly, represents a response to
increasing insistence on outcomes-based learning that focuses on “deliver-
able” (and directly employment-relevant) “skills” (see Uriciuoli 2010, 2018)
as important elements of higher learning as measured by the neoliberal
marketplace. In referring to neoliberalism, we draw from Wanda Vrasti’s
definition as “a set of power relations that extends the logic of market rela-
tions to the entire social field, from macroeconomic policies to public policy,
education, labour, recreation and personal conduct” (2012: 20). Additionally,
as shorter programs often rely on tour providers to make lodging, event, and
travel arrangements, how do you make clear to the students that they are
involved in an academic endeavor and not simply an organized group tour?
One of the key distinctions is between leading a student-populated tour group
and leading a class focused on learning through experiences and assignments
while abroad. The dynamics of the full-time nature of the program is also
challenging: while any college course may have a range from diligent and
engaged students to those trying to coast with as little effort as possible, the
24/7 framework of the program makes it more difficult to make this range
fully workable for all students involved. A disaffected student in one class
for three hours a week is far different than one as a constant for three weeks,
for example.
The second major shift can be considered the commodification or neolib-
eralization of study abroad. On the one hand, universities have conceived
20 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

of study abroad as a product to market (much like the university experience

itself); on the other hand, as indicative of other neoliberal processes, univer-
sities have shifted some of their study-abroad operations to private and non-
profit tour operators, who are seen as possessing more specialist and technical
knowledge of study-abroad travel than the average professor. These operators
approach study abroad from the perspective of educational tourism, a niche
form of travel promoted for museum members and university alumni associa-
tions. Indeed, as study-abroad programs become more and more “taken for
granted” as a component of the liberal arts college experience, building dis-
tinctive offerings also fits within a larger array of the marketplace of higher
education (see Donoghue 2008; Tuchman 2009; Giroux 2007; Washburn
2006). We invoke the marketplace here with some caution. Our question is
not only about the marketability of college programs but also about the mar-
ketability of college graduates, where service and study-abroad experiences
work as resume builders, and as some sort of practical experience; nor is it
that a career in manual labor is a projected post-graduate outcome but that the
romanticized understanding of manual labor—as insulation against privilege,
perhaps, or as a gumption-builder—carries its own particular unquestioned
value (see Bodinger de Uriarte and Jacobson 2018).
Thus, as Tayla Zemach-Bersin suggests, “study abroad is often seen as a
commodity, as an entitlement, as a non-academic adventure” (2009: 303; see
also Loveless 2014; Ogden 2008). Indeed, many colleges and universities
offer educational tour packages, often led by faculty, for their alumni (see
the Vassar Alumni Travel Program, for example). While often packaged in
educational terms as “lifelong learning,” an extension—albeit shorter—of
their original study abroad experiences, it is used as a way to foster a sense
of identification with one’s alma mater, which, it is hoped, leads to economic
support down the line (Di Giovine 2009). In the current neoliberal university
system, the educational alumni travel model has begun to be embraced by
universities for their current students, marketed especially to those whose
work or increasingly siloed plan of study does not allow for the traditional
semester- or year-long study abroad experience. Such edu-tourism models
are often brief trips (1 week–10 days) during spring break or the summer that
nevertheless couple pedagogy with the tourism experience (see Keith and
Keith 2010).
Stemming as well from the Grand Tour, educational travel is intended to
be more formative, more “authentic” and more insightful, than daily, middle-
class travel experiences (Di Giovine 2009); yet many are also ways to assert
class differences. A hallmark of high-end educational travel, other than the
quality of the hotels and services, is the inclusion of what the industry calls
“privates”—private “behind-the-scenes” visits with curators, museum direc-
tors, and locals—even counts and countesses who open their homes and villas
 Introduction 21

for luncheons with the group, often at exorbitant prices (Di Giovine 2009:
163–165). While eschewing the expensive hotels and garden luncheons,
study-abroad programs such as those described in this book by Ascione,
Barkin, Lampman and Schweitzer, Biggs, and Di Giovine frequently involve
such behind-the-scenes tours and “slower” engagements with hospitable
locals (also at significant economic price, unbeknownst to the students) that
differentiate the experience from the faster, more superficial forms of tourism.
Sometimes carefully guided instruction that places students outside of their
comfort zone are undertaken; anthropologists Barkin, Greer and Schweitzer,
and Di Giovine all teach and require some form of ethnographic research on
their trips. The bread-and-butter of anthropological research, ethnography is
the set of qualitative research methodologies that are intended to allow the
researcher to “grasp and then render” (Geertz 1973: 10) the “imponderabilia
of everyday life” (Malinowski 1961: 20) through extended engagement with
“locals” that includes participant observation, conversations and interviews,
and oral history elicitations. Ethnography is very much an embodied, total-
izing form of research; it requires the student to taste, feel, hear, smell as well
as to see life—to temporarily be “the local,” while also reflexively being an
outsider. Thus, Lampman and Schweitzer’s students engage in ethnography
while participating in indigenous dances and festivities, and Di Giovine’s
students’ research projects focus on foodways, requiring that they literally
get a “taste of ethnographic things” (Stoller 1989). Other tactics of getting
students out of their comfort zone include integrating more adventurous
experiences with alterity—experiences that range from utilizing homestays
as Doerr discusses, to eating foods that might be difficult and unusual to the
Western palate, even to the faculty director, as Biggs admits in her contribu-
tion. Sensitive to the different thresholds of each student, others offer extra
side-trips, organized by adventure tourism operators. Bodinger de Uriarte
problematizes these types of experiences in particular, focusing not only
on the obvious commercial aspect of these experiences that complicate the
study-abroad program’s anti-tourism ethos but also brings to the fore the very
real concerns that risk-adverse students, parents (who are the ultimate paying
clients), and the university itself have.

Service and Service Learning

Many of the book’s chapters focus on attaining the elusive backstage touristic
experience through service and hands-on learning, experiences that purport to
provide students with opportunities to delve deeper than a superficial tourist
experience. Under the aegis of practical, community service, and interactive
coursework, many study-abroad programs promise insight into the inner
workings of local organizations or practices that the traditional tourist cannot
22 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

obtain, often through educational connections the instructors or study-abroad

operators possess (see Lampman and Schweitezer, this book, for example).
Our invocation of “backstage” indicates MacCannell’s (1976) concern, build-
ing from Goffman (1967), with the mystification of presented appearance
as an effort to more deeply inscribe that experience with the flavor of an
imagined “authentic.” Service, as a component of study abroad, is another
set of practices for student engagement that is flavored with the authentic, an
important component of transforming the strange into the familiar through
lived experience. But the growing role of service, especially within student
experiences, potentially flattens this distinction—all are imagined as “giving
back” to some sort of universalized whole in need of individual hands-on
help from members of the developed West (Bodinger de Uriarte and Jacobson
2018; see also Serio et al. this book).
Service—with its projected outcomes and its (largely) physical labor offers
a set of affirmations that also might potentially distinguish the study-away
experience from mass tourism. (Some NGOs, such as the Tucson-based
humanitarian NGO Borderlinks, also offer service opportunities that cater
to both adult FITs and study-away student groups and are often marketed
in similar ways as university study-abroad programs (see www​.borderlinks​
.org; see also Salazar 2004); these are often subsumed under the category of
short-term voluntourism (see, for example, Mostafenazhad 2014)). Yet, as
Di Giovine argues in his chapter, despite the altruistic aims of such service
learning-cum-voluntourism projects, such engagement may not be as clearly
ethical as it seems. On the one hand, critics argue that study-abroad students
often do not possess the skills necessary for the services they render, lead-
ing the locals to incur additional costs that sometimes outweigh the benefits.
Furthermore, the students may not possess the cultural competencies to
engage in such service-oriented interactions nor may they understand the
culturally specific behaviors and taboos or culturally sensitive ways of inter-
acting with locals. On the other hand, service learning often becomes yet
another means of constructing the types of boundaries that Doerr discusses in
her chapter, perpetuating stereotypes between the white savior and the needy
primitive Other. That is, especially when enacted in developing countries,
service learning projects obscures the neoliberal, neo-colonial policies that
create the very inequalities which enable the volunteer experience in the first
place (Mostafanezhad 2013b: 150), those that “allow some to take a cheap
vacation holiday in other people’s lives” (Vrasti 2012: 8).
In many ways, study-abroad service projects make little sense in strictly
market terms. It would be hard to argue that the cost of travel and lodging
and meals for groups of students from affluent countries to spend a limited
period painting a school room or working to establish a park trail is fully
cost efficient. On the local end, furthermore, the use of untrained laborers
 Introduction 23

frequently costs more than they ultimately produce; one story that circulates
in study-abroad circles is of locals tearing down houses, walls, other con-
struction built by volunteers to be able to rebuild them correctly once they
have left. If the ultimate goal is to improve infrastructure or resources in a
particular site, it would make more strictly financial sense to send monies
directly to sites in need to create or support professionally trained local paint-
ers, builders, or trail blazers, keeping the funding outcomes within the local
economy, ensuring a correctly done project, and greatly reducing the carbon
footprint of national and international travel. We suggest that many service
components of study-abroad programs are not primarily about getting schools
painted or trails cleared. They are about providing a careful immersion into
Otherness (Picard and Di Giovine 2014) that does little to challenge estab-
lished tourism imaginaries (Salaar and Graburn 2014), including that “they”
need help that only “we” can provide—what Mary Mostefanazhad and others
have called the “Angelina Effect” of broader neoliberal voluntourism efforts
(see Mostafenazhad 2014; Mostafenazhad and Hannam 2014) and which
is lampooned in social media by Barbie Savior (www​.barbiesavior​.com).
Our provision of “helping” insulates us from being rank tourists, elevat-
ing our experience to a field of affective “giving back.” At the same time,
the currency of such helping—realized as labor hours or value given—also
participates in a larger contemporary discourse about subjecting “the college
experience” to an increasingly ubiquitous structure of neoliberal measuring.
Many colleges and universities have yearly campaigns to meet and surpass
goals for the number of service hours performed by their students, faculty,
and staff; how these are counted, and whether the service completed success-
fully meets a clearly identified need, is less clear.
This giving back is also projected as a means to getting students out of the
bubble of study away as a part of seeking the authentic in-cultural otherness.
This, of course, is paradoxical. As the contributors to Picard and Di Giovine’s
book Tourism and the Power of Otherness: Seductions of Difference (2014)
argue, tourism is predicated on notions of otherness, and John Urry’s classic
notion of the “tourist gaze” (1999) shows that tourists approach the toured
through oppositional categories of difference. Yet these differences are often
constructed by locals and industry professionals (MacCannell 1976), and fre-
quently tourists and the toured encounter each other in a liminal borderzone
(Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2005), in which both attempt to act out,
and negotiate, tourism imaginaries of each other (O’Rourke 1988; Salazar
and Graburn 2014; Graburn and Gravari-Barbas 2011; Gravari-Barbas and
Graburn 2012). Yet as Salazar (2014) argues, guides may play on these
seductive—if not factually correct—imaginaries to engage in “sedutain-
ment,” seduction for edutainment purposes. Salazar builds on the concept of
“edutainment” innovated by Walt Disney (1954) to teach moral lessons while
24 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

entertaining, allowing for its willing and unknowing consumption by children

(Fjellman 1992). Some heritage sites and museums—particularly science and
childrens’ museums—embrace this as a means of instructing scientific or his-
torical knowledge about the world in a fun and accessible way (Balloffet et al.
2014; Hertzman et al. 2008; Jones 2007). But young children are not the only
ones to be “edutained”; at its best, educational tourism—with its emphasis on
leisure and entertainment—is a form of edutainment, and study abroad is not
different. Like mass tourism packages, study-abroad programs are marketed
as a fun, exciting, and engaging way to learn, a way to “get outside of the
classroom”; to wit, a resource packet for study-abroad faculty compiled by
NASFA: Association of International Educators suggests they emphasize that
a program “lets you expand your academic learning outside the classroom”
(www​.nafsa​.org), the University of Denver advertises, “At our University,
you’ll have the chance to get real-world experience outside the class-
room” (https​:/​/ww​​w​.du.​​edu​/a​​cadem​​ics​/o​​utsid​​e​​-cla​​ssroo​m), and Goabroad​.c​
om extols, “the world is our classroom!” Building on this, a Ramapo College
of New Jersey news article entitled “Study Abroad Extends Learning Outside
of the Classroom” begins with the well-known quote by St. Augustine, “The
world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page” (Garcia 2016).
Likewise, for-profit companies have invented a number of “edutainment” and
dating apps that are specifically marketed to study-abroad students interested
in enhancing their social and linguistic experiences through social media
(Kennett and Jackson 2014).
Much of the current literature on study abroad offers exercises or caution-
ary tales to get one’s students out of the bubble or away from taking in “the
view from the veranda” (Ogden 2008). Service allows a way for students to
imagine that they are outside of the bubble, that somehow they have suc-
cessfully challenged or breached their comfort zones through the discomfort
of labor (Urciuoli 2010, 2013; Cororaton and Handler 2013; Hickel 2013).
Indeed, breaching the comfort zone, in and of itself, is sometimes projected
as the goal of study abroad (see Bodinger de Uriarte, this book). We suggest
that, rather than a confirmation of authenticity, service potentially confirms
the absence of falsity as experienced through the body—the risk of perforat-
ing comfort zones, itself, guarantees the truth of the experience.
At the intersection of tourism and study abroad, our questions focus more
on the increasingly individualized set of expectations and measurements for
one’s experience “elsewhere.” Here the pursuit is less for a confirmation of
authenticity—“here is true, unstaged alterity,” one might say—and more for
a confirmation of experience through individual discomforts and uncertain-
ties. Indeed, an inherent contradiction in study-away programming is the
desire to push students out of their comfort zone while at the same time
designing programs to deliver consistently predictable, measurable, and safe
 Introduction 25

experiences (see Greer and Schweitzer, and Bodinger de Uriarte, both in this
book). As Robert J. Gordon observes: “Paradoxically, the destination has to
be both accessible and inaccessible, distant from civilization yet comfortable,
dangerous yet safe” (2006: 21). Discomfort can actually be seen as an issue
to be managed or erased, especially as student evaluations are an increasingly
important element of faculty review and evaluation procedures.

Internationalization and the Creation of Global Citizens

By offering an array of shorter student edu-tourism experiences—sometimes
coupled with a course on-campus during the regular school year—universi-
ties are not only able to demonstrate their support for “high-impact learning”
experiences but they are also able to deepen their “internationalization” mis-
sions. UNESCO (qtd. in Vincent-Lancrin et al. 2015: 40) defines internation-
alization as

a form of higher education that takes place in situations where the teacher,
student, programme, institution/provider or course materials cross-national
jurisdictional borders. Cross-border education may include higher education
by public/private and not-for-profit/ for-profit providers. It encompasses a wide
range of modalities in a continuum from face-to-face (taking various forms
from students traveling abroad and campuses abroad) to distance learning (using
technologies and including e-learning).

Yet as Subrata Kumar Mitra argues for the case of Indian higher education,
internationalization requires “an institutional vision to motivate people to
change the whole to think globally and collaboratively. It is a way towards an
ever-changing, diverse external environment that focused on global environ-
ment” (2010: 105).
The support for edu-tourism and study-abroad experiences, therefore, is
perceived to help produce “global citizenship,” what Zemach-Bersin defines
as “an ideology that attempts to appeal to notions of global responsibility,
community, mutual learning across cultures, and idealism” (313). At the turn
of the millennium, there was a concern that universities were not preparing
students to meet the needs of an increasingly globalizing society; Virginia
Strauss, Executive Director of the Boston Research Center for the 21st
Century, writes that a 2003 Global Attitudes Survey, distributed internation-
ally by the Pew Research Center, revealed “a widespread belief among people
in most nations that their culture is superior to others,” with the United States
at the forefront of this ethnocentrism (2005: xiii). Many attributed culpability
to higher education institutions; in Our Underachieving Colleges, Derek Bok
contends that students obtain “very little preparation either as citizens or as
26 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

professionals for the international challenges that are likely to confront them”
(2006: 233; qtd. Braskamp 2008). Vrasti identifies this as “the depoliticiz-
ing logic of multiculturalism” (2012: 26), where the political and economic
contexts that make these programs both possible and desirable are elided.
Courses on the study of study abroad are called for, opportunities to offer a
critical and differently appreciative lens for considering the promises—both
false and possible—for the development of a multicultural “global citizen-
ship.” And, as Vrasti observes, this quality or goal is currently often promoted
in terms of its marketability.
Bok’s choice of words are important, as they reveal the concern with
operationalizing outcomes of study abroad; one engages in the experience to
develop of a particular set of skills and competencies needed to solve new
kinds of problems brought about by globalization and the greater intercon-
nectedness of peoples—from immigration to international law and busi-
ness—and to live in that world. Indeed, such a goal is increasingly framed
as a way of “professionalizing” students to be more competitive in the job
market, providing advantages for those intending to enter the increasingly
disembedded, global business field. From this “neoliberal approach” to study
abroad (Mule et al. 2018: 23), a global citizen is one who can “live and work
effectively anywhere in the world” (Noddings 2005: 2–3). This increasingly
includes integrating “responsible leadership” training, as Sroufe et al. (2015)
argue for MBA-focused study-abroad programming.
Yet as Suárez-Orozco and Sattin point out, this perspective seems out-
moded, thanks to the dissolving of geopolitical boundaries and the intensifi-
cation of global mobilities: “Competition is yesterday’s challenge. Today’s
challenge is collaborating to solve global problems that spill over national
boundaries” (2007: 59). They argue that purely business-oriented concep-
tions show how “out-of-sync” schools are with the global world and decry
the glacial pace with which educational institutions are evolving to meet
the sophisticated challenges of globalization (58; see also Gardner 2004).
Students must be instructed, they argue, to employ critical thinking, com-
munication, language, technology, and collaborative skills—all components
of a good study-abroad program. Scholars who subscribe to this way of
thinking approach study abroad and its outcomes from two distinct direc-
tions, argue Mule et al. (2018: 23), and often fall along different disciplinary
lines (Reysen et al. 2012). On the one hand is the radical/conflict approach,
which tends to focus on a critical analysis of global structures, inequality, and
power relations; on the other hand is the critical/transformationalist approach
that focuses on activism and social transformation. The former, they argue,
are arguably emphasized in disciplines such as education, which promotes
awareness; while social work may embrace the more activist interpretation of
global citizenship (Mule et al. 2018: 23). Indeed, as Kinginger (2010) argues,
 Introduction 27

an activist stance is necessary to combat the “sheltered” program designs and

the interest in meeting the desires of the students-as-consumers, which mark
much of the study-abroad programming.
Either way, if such critical engagement can be gleaned through a travel
program, then it promises to provide an “anti-touristic” form of engage-
ment. But while the development of global citizenship is often pitched as an
“anti-bubble” and transformative outcome for study away, it takes a number
of presumptions of access and mobility for granted, as well as assuming a
particular fixedness to nation-state boundaries as easily breachable “culture
boundaries,” promoting globalism over nationalism. After all, Jim Butcher
(2017: 127) points out, “global citizenship does not come with its own pass-
port” even as it references the obligation of (global) citizens to be active and
knowledgable participants in social and political processes. Indeed, Butcher
and Smith point out, global citizenship involves a shift away from political
citizenship toward a more moral form of citizenship, recognizing common-
alities in the world even as it asserts difference and attempting to act on it
(2015: 94). Consequently, Benjamin Feinberg (2018) argues, students are
often forced to negotiate the tensions between assigning and acknowledging
cultural differences, and then trying to transcend them. Thus, students tend to
“focus on the cosmopolitan community as limited to people like themselves
(and in contrast with less powerful “locals”),” while also “escaping into an
imaginary cosmopolitan space of individual interaction (outside of particular-
istic identities),” states Noel Salazar (2018: 190).
While identifying with a global community is privileged over that of a
certain nation (Bianchi and Stephenson 2014), Butcher and Smith disagree
with the fundamental globalist premise of global citizenship which posits
traditional national citizenship as limited or parochial or that engaging in
activism within the nation-state does not have global consequences (2015:
94). It is through engagement in national politics, such as voting, campaign-
ing, attempting to change laws and advocating for the ethical treatment of
individuals, within one’s country can large-scale change be effected (92;
Parekh 2003: 12). But some suggest “the nation-state is fading as the prin-
ciple site of identity construction” (Lewin 2009: xiii–xiv; see also Di Giovine
2009), even as others point to an contemporary international rise in national-
ist movements that may trouble the ideals of a globalist future. Programs that
focus on delivering both cultural difference and global citizenship through
border-crossing practices may under-problematize the roles of hybridity and
diasporic communities in identity-building. In assessing the promise of global
citizenship, which is tied to many study-abroad programs as a “value added”
(Tarrant et al. 2013) and deliverable outcome, careful attention should be
paid to both the promise of global citizenship and the privilege of assuming
such status. Study abroad may make the false promise of developing global
28 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

citizenship while really affirming the development of positioned global

consumers (Zeymach-Bersin 2009), or exercises in cosmopolitan tourism
(Feinberg 2018), or the opportunity “to help liberal subjects consolidate their
social capital and social mobility because, ultimately, the world is made for
their inhabitation” (Vrasti 2012: 23). To draw from Lewin again, in the search
for authentic culture “elsewhere,” identifying that cultural Other “becomes a
means and end to itself rather than a means for understanding its relationship
to the global forces surrounding it” (2009: xvii) or a direction for learning
that might have greater implications for thinking about a more complicated
understanding of extended citizenship.
In the current higher education marketplace, things like global citizenship
are presented as a “value added” for the commodity of study abroad (Stoner
et al. 2014). Problematically, it thus must be featured as a measurable out-
come of the experience (Stoner et al. 2014; Chang 2016) not necessarily as
introductions to ways of thinking, influx and undergoing critical and ongoing
reflection. The problem with an outcome-based emphasis in program evalu-
ation (which also reflects the current neoliberalization of higher education as
a predictable set of purchasable commodities and anticipated-to-guaranteed
effects) is that such nuanced states of becoming are more difficult to sell.
They also are difficult to articulate, both by study-abroad promoters as well
as the students themselves (Streitwieser and Light 2009). Indeed, such a form
of education is ultimately intended to mold students to be “culturally sophis-
ticated enough to empathize with peers of different races and religions and of
different linguistic and social origins. Education for globalization should aim
to educate the whole child for the whole world” (Suárez-Orozco and Sattin
2007: 58)—how does one promote this to employers? How does one utilize
these skills after they return home? Thus, as Young and Reminton (2014)
argue, the study-abroad experience does not end when students return to cam-
pus but rather the skills supposedly gleaned must be developed. They propose
that career counselors should understand what skills can be harvested from
study abroad and how to “help these students understand the significance of
their newly acquired status as a global citizen,” they write. Such understand-
ing needs to engage thoughtfully with assertions that study-abroad students
“acquire expertise and self-esteem during their travels and translate their
enjoyment into entrepreneurial advantages” (Vrasti 2012: 25).

IS STUDY ABROAD SUSTAINABLE?

Ultimately, these chapters deal with the question of the sustainability of study
abroad. By sustainability, we mean the ways in which study-abroad programs
can self-perpetuate, particularly given the tensions program directors face in
 Introduction 29

negotiating neoliberal market values and the intent to produce lofty ethical
outcomes. Yet we also mean sustainability in the broader sense, as the ability
to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the needs
of the future (William McDonough and Associates 1992: 3). Sustainability
studies is a burgeoning field of inquiry, as scholars, politicians,and busi-
ness leaders attempt to address pressing global crises on what the United
Nations calls the “three pillars” of sustainability: environmental, economic,
and social. With growing global inequality, ecologically damaging climate
change, and human rights exploitation, scholars argue that there is an ethical
imperative from the Global North—who are, incidentally, the largest produc-
ers of mass tourism and study-abroad students—to address these problems
(Moore and Nelson 2010; see also Brundtland 1987).
Interdisciplinary tourism studies itself is concerned with sustainability;
entire journals are dedicated to the theme, such as The Journal of Sustainable
Tourism. Indeed, the anti-tourism movement itself can be seen as a com-
mentary on the perceived unsustainable nature of mass tourism: critics argue
that it is damaging to the environment, particularly when airline or cruise
travel in involved; its proclivity toward “vertical integration” (De Kadt 1976)
and domination by multinational businesses exacerbates economic inequal-
ity and harms the social fabric of communities; and unequal development
without community buy-in, as well as “over-tourism” pressures on the host
population, threatens the loss of tradition and a sense of place, as well as the
marginalization of indigenous communities. Furthermore, climate change,
rising sea levels, and the increase in natural disasters threaten natural and
cultural heritage resources, locals’ livelihoods, and tourist flows themselves.
Yet while purporting to address many of these issues, study abroad, as a
form of privileged travel, contributes to many of these same environmental,
economic, and social ills. While it is largely out of the scope of this book to
address environmental sustainability—as this is not directly an element that
study abroad, as an anti-tourism movement, addresses—the chapters in this
book do engage productively with the complex social and economic impli-
cations of study-abroad programs, particularly in their impacts on both the
student traveler and the local.
Beyond purely academic pursuits, sustainability is also a growing opera-
tional concern within the university, and different institutions address the
growing need to be sustainable and ethical actors. Yet study abroad poses
unique tensions, particularly if a university’s Strategic Plan emphasizes both
internationalization and sustainability. For example, in 2017–2018, 536 West
Chester University study-abroad students alone visited 45 countries and
logged 4.5 million miles of air travel not including faculty members. In line
with its Strategic Plan, which emphasizes internationalization and the creation
of global citizens, the university aims to increase study abroad by 50 percent
30 Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte

in the next two years. Yet it also aims to be at the forefront of environmental
sustainability and has adopted a Climate Action Plan to be carbon neutral by
2025. Paradoxically, these goals conflict: an increase in international travel
by students and faculty increases its carbon footprint. However, the potential
for positive environmental change through study-abroad programming can be
vast, if the transformative nature of study abroad can truly be realized. Each
program provides opportunities for learning, as well as for changes in atti-
tudes and practices. As the chapters in this book show, the decisions that fac-
ulty study-abroad directors make, both programmatically and behaviorally,
can very well affect the university’s environmental sustainability, as well as
the economic and social sustainability of its students and the communities
that they come in contact with during the course of their experience abroad.

TOWARD AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF STUDY ABROAD

Designing and executing study-abroad programs thus presents a set of prac-

tical and theoretical challenges, for example: the duration of the program;
the balance of “down time” and academic work; the distinction between
tourist activities and non-tourist or anti-tourist activities; running potential
damage control on tour guide narratives framed to emphasize the exotic; the
24/7 nature of study-abroad programming and responsibilities; and mov-
ing between the roles of professor, research leader or colleague, counselor,
administrator, and unwilling concierge. In recognition of such challenges
we ask, what practices can we put into place to overcome or mitigate them?
The chapters in this book illustrate different efforts to deal with some key
issues: immersion, for example, or negotiating virtual and other connections
to home. How do expectations of global citizenship both erase and reaffirm
boundaries of the nation-state? What sort of elements need to be present in
a successful preparatory class? A successful post-trip reflection class? What
sort of research or other work could or should be carried out in the study-
away site? How do students navigate the freedom of being away from their
host campuses with the academic expectations of different study-abroad pro-
grams and sites? And how might reflective, post-study abroad assignments
and projects be imagined and executed?
The contributions in this book therefore interrogate the often-taken-for-
granted notions by universities and other stakeholders that study-abroad oppor-
tunities are distinctly different from tourism, indeed that they can serve as an
antidote for the typical touristic experience, if not a form of anti-tourism. With
a number of the book’s contributions based on long-term university collabora-
tion and partnerships with service providers, many interrogate the idea that
study-abroad programs achieve deeper connections with the touristic backstage
 Introduction 31

than typical short-term tourism does. While the notion of staged authenticity
has been thoroughly discussed in interdisciplinary tourism studies, the study-
abroad literature has not adequately addressed the subject. This book, then, rep-
resents one of the first to bridge both the anthropology and sociology of tourism
literature with what can be called a nascent anthropology of study abroad.
In addition, authors examine the multiple ways in which stakeholders assert
their agency—from service providers to study-abroad centers, from university
short-term “in-house” programs to semester-long programs in partnership
with host universities. They also examine the extent to which study- abroad
experiences are truly transformative, questioning how such transformations are
substantively different from those claimed as an element of standard touristic
experiences (see, for example, Graburn 1977), and what the promise of global
citizenship may actually mean in the delivery of study-abroad goals.
As a form of travel that purports to be high-impact, educational, engaging
and transformative, study abroad often is often set apart, in discourse and
practice, from other forms of mobility. Stemming from the Grand Tour and
other historical forms of anti-tourism, its goals are lofty and ethical, promis-
ing to produce “educated” students in the holistic sense of the word: “being
able to see the connections that allow one to make sense of the world and
act within it in creative ways” (Cronon 1999: 12). The contributions in this
book examine these premises, problematizing the taken-for-granted assump-
tions concerning study abroad. Utilizing deep ethnographic engagement with
students, faculty, locals, and other stakeholders, they illuminate the unique,
epistemic culture (Knorr-Cetina 1999) of study abroad, contributing—it is
hoped—to the development of a more robust body of literature on the anthro-
pology of study abroad. As the world seemingly becomes more polarized
and views become more ethnocentric, and as higher education struggles to
meet the lofty goals of high-impact educational practices while transforming
(troublingly) into more neoliberal, market-driven entities, there is a need for
more research on the efficacy of these promises, study abroad’s function in
higher education, and the impacts of study-abroad programs—on students,
educational institutions, and locals, as well as the environment—and its over-
all sustainability. The stakes are indeed high.

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 Chapter 1

“Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in

East African Study Abroad Programs
Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

INTRODUCTION

In the past few decades, the number of U.S. undergraduates studying abroad
has greatly increased. Though still only a small segment of the overall trend,
study abroad in Africa has also grown significantly, mostly in the form of
short-term programs, and more recently still, incorporating more service-
learning or internship opportunities into their programming. Many U.S.
students who pursue study-abroad opportunities in East Africa say they are
motivated to do so by a desire to travel and learn about some place “unusual”
(to them) in a non-tourist manner, pursue personal development, and expand
their resumes. Another compelling reason they choose that part of the world
is, to quote numerous application essays, “to help.” In East Africa, volunteer
programs have proliferated, borne of entrepreneurial efforts by for-profit
tour companies and nongovernmental organizations—some international,
some East African, some a combination. These entities seek to capture some
portion of foreign revenue that pours into the area via classic safari tour-
ism, and student groups are among those targeted consumers. The notion
of volunteering appeals to a general desire to “do good” and anti-touristic
mentalities possessed by many student visitors to East Africa. Study-abroad
programming has responded with increased emphasis on service-learning
and short-term internships as means of explicitly integrating “doing good”
toward others via experiences that are meant to be high impact for the stu-
dents themselves. Many scholars have rightly asked how social scientists,
study-abroad practitioners, and the wide range of participants in such pro-
gramming might better approach and assess how the motivation of young
Americans to “do good” overseas often leads to individual student/volun-
teer’s self-transformation (“feeling good”) but without comparable benefit

41
42 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

to those who were targeted by the volunteer work (see Bandyopadhyay and
Patil 2017; Luh Sin et al. 2015; Mostafanezhad 2013a, 2013b, 2014; among
others). This recent spate of literature connects short-term volunteerism to
the oft-critiqued concept of “voluntourism”, and trends of short-term volun-
teerism raise questions about how high-impact learning for U.S. undergradu-
ates might also impact the local communities in which such pedagogies are
realized.
In this chapter, we examine the growth trends of study abroad in general
and East Africa in particular, international volunteerism, the rise of credit-
bearing study-abroad programs in East Africa, and the ways in which these
trends impact one another and the locales in which they happen. In doing
so, we grapple with the concept of “voluntourism”—and accusations that
some study-abroad programs have veered into it amidst trends of shorter,
flashier study-abroad programming. This chapter also approaches how short-
term programs’ structures and delivery impact the ways in which student
participants and host community members make meaning about and for one
another, articulate their understandings of the histories and environments
they encounter together, and assess issues of power that accompany their
encounters. We provide two vignettes that outline aspects of those issues.
We conclude by offering thoughts about what can make for a high-impact
program that accomplishes the “doing good” ideal—good for host communi-
ties, students, and teachers.

HIGH-IMPACT LEARNING PRACTICES

As is well documented, international education via study abroad is consid-

ered a high-impact learning practice that expands participants’ perspectives,
often qualitatively changing their sense of personal responsibility at home
and globally (Kuh 2008; Stebleton et al. 2013). Advocates, such as Institute
of International Education President Alan Goodman and Stacie Berdan,
argue that study abroad is the best way to gain the “international experience,
language capabilities and cross-cultural communication skills necessary to
succeed in the global economy” (Goodman and Berdan 2014; see also AIFS
2013; Anderson and Lawton 2011; Braskamp et al. 2009). They also state
that the wide variety of study-abroad programs, their flexible timescales, and
variable costs, have significantly eroded barriers posed by financial need,
disabilities, ethnicity, and sexual orientation (ibid). And in fact, the numbers
and percentages of U.S. undergraduates studying abroad have increased
dramatically in the past 30 years, with recent statistics indicating that one in
ten U.S. undergraduate students now studies abroad prior to graduating (IIE
Open Doors 2018).
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 43

Scaffolding refers to support provided by a teacher or other individual to

assist a student via temporary, adjustable instructional techniques that build
on one another and move the student toward understanding and greater inde-
pendence in learning and applying knowledge (Smit et al. 2013; Holland
2001). Scaffolded learning involving knowledge acquisition and applica-
tion through high-impact practices, such as internships, community service/
service-learning, and/or research components, during study abroad—already
a high-impact practice—seems an indisputable “best practice” to educate
about the global and collective nature of knowledge production and learning
today (Kahn and Agnew 2017). As argued elsewhere in this volume, study-
abroad programming has been pitched as an alternative and perhaps even an
antidote to standard tourism. Many of the authors within this volume have
led overseas programs and thus draw on those experiences to suggest that
contextualized, place-based learning, with its promise of breaking down bar-
riers between and among ourselves and so-called “other” people, places, and
practices, can be done well, or at least better. Close encounters with people,
places, practices, and possibilities—with the intent not just to understand but
also to share such understanding—are at the very heart of the discipline of
anthropology. Such encounters, scripted and unexpected, and learning moti-
vate those of us involved with this book and fuel our larger research projects.
As for how to manage those encounters, their outcomes, and representations:
the devil is in the details, and, as most of us know, the learning is ongoing
(see, for example, Tucker 2014). When we willingly take students to what
they may initially perceive as some romanticized contact zone, the unjaded
among us have accepted responsibility to help them understand from whence
such imaginaries have come (Salazar and Graburn 2014; Salazar 2012; Pratt
2007), as well as how to overcome them. If study abroad is meant to be an
antidote to the production of “tourism imaginaries” (Salazar 2012), then those
of us involved in study-abroad program design and leadership have effec-
tively enrolled (Latour 1987) in the project of promoting intercultural com-
petence, summarized as knowledge about cultural issues, as well as the skills,
abilities, and motivations to act in intercultural contexts (Williams 2009;
Deardorff 2004). Intercultural competence depends on in situ sense-making,
in which “complex network[s] of relationships, values, and consequences”
are negotiated (Roberts 2018).

VOLUNTEERING AND/OR VOLUNTOURING?

A clever word that is indeed listed in the Oxford English Dictionary,

voluntourism refers to “tourism in which travelers spend time doing vol-
untary work on development projects, usually for a charity” (OED 2015).
44 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

According to the OED, the term first appeared in 1991, coined by members
of the Nevada Commission on Tourism to recognize Nevada residents who
“volunteered” to support “tourism.” Then-Governor Bob Miller established
the VolunTourism Award to honor those who did it well. The phrase caught
on and has since gone viral. While the word itself is relatively new, its
roots can be traced back to mass movements of American volunteerism,
including the establishment of the Peace Corps in 1961 and its promoting
service learning around the globe; the burgeoning of university-approved
study-abroad programs in the 1970s and the 1971 launch of the Earthwatch
Institute’s Volunteer Vacations (now Earthwatch Expeditions); the 1980s
growth of ecotourism to combine tourism with learning about or at least
supporting environmentally conscious accommodations and tours; and
the rapid post-Cold-War proliferation of volunteer vacations, specialized
travel agents, and internet connectivity in the 1990s. The fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989, and the attendant declaration that the Cold War had ended,
launched a period marked by new wealth in northern countries, a wave
of democratization, trade liberalization, cheaper air flights, and increased
tourism (Mowforth and Munt 2015). These past three decades have also
seen some efforts at corporate social responsibility that manifested in
1995 through Action without Borders, which led to entities like idealist​
.o​rg and the expansion of gap year and academic voluntourism (Calkin
2015; McGloin and Georgeou 2015; Zeddies and Millei 2015). There have
been compelling arguments about how voluntourism—often sought out as
responsible travel—exists because of neoliberal conditioning that enables
safe and predictable volunteering in exotic (to U.S. citizens, at least) locales
through commodified (read: priced) experiences that cater to a relatively
elite and largely female customer base and depend on having that customer
base stand in marked contrast to an “underprivileged” community in need of
help (Keese 2011; Bandyopadhyay and Patil 2017; Mostafanezhad 2013a,
2013b, 2014). Now there are dedicated organizations that have embraced
the term “voluntourism,” such as VolunTourism​.or​g, which describes its
mission as “quite simple: To Educate, To Empower, and To Engage” and
its approach as “the integrated combination of voluntary service to a des-
tination with the traditional elements of travel and tourism—exposure to
arts, culture, geography, history, and recreation—while in the destination”
(voluntourism​.o​rg). Of course, there are also variations on the theme, and
many luxury voluntourism opportunities have arisen, with agencies that
specialize in high-end ecotourism with a bit of volunteering, or companies,
like Travelocity, that refined their search options to include “Travel for
Good” itineraries. Numerous specialty providers partner with higher educa-
tion institutions to offer for-credit international volunteering opportunities,
and short-term studyabroad programs reliant on third-party providers and/
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 45

or non-academic partners have also been subject to serious critiques (see

Barkin 2018; Cororaton and Handler 2013).
The rise of volunteering parallels the rise of nongovernmental organiza-
tions (NGOs). The term “non-governmental organization” and its acronym
“NGO” were launched along with the United Nations in 1945–6. NGOs
became a growing alternative/complement to IGOs (inter-governmental orga-
nizations) and began to proliferate rapidly, with many promoting an apolitical
pro-development agenda (Ferguson 1990). In the 1990s, the so-called global
north sought new channels for funding to so-called “developing” nations,
given the widely acknowledged failure of state-sponsored development,
the corruption of national governments, and attempts for multinational aid
institutions to discipline countries via structural adjustment programs. NGOs
became the vehicle of choice for humanitarian and development projects.
Today, at least ten million NGOs exist around the world, and 1.5 million
of them operate within the United States alone, according to the U.S. State
Department. Frequently, NGOs are set up to provide opportunities for will-
ing do-gooders, and frequently, such volunteers and their contributions are
critical to operations. For many international NGOs, partnering with U.S.
universities seems like a no-brainer, and therefore working with students
already studying abroad seems to make perfect sense as those opportunities
expand the volunteer pool and enhance the legitimacy of the NGO enterprise.

STUDY-ABROAD TRENDS

In 2014, the Institute of International Education (IIE) launched its “Generation

Study Abroad,” a five-year initiative to double the number of U.S. under-
graduate students who study abroad to 600,000. The 2019 deadline marked
the 100th anniversary of the IIE, as the organization was established in 1919
in the aftermath of World War Iby a trio that included two Nobel Peace Prize
winners.1 They believed that lasting peace could only come from greater
understanding between nations—and that international educational exchange
formed the strongest basis for fostering such understanding (“History” 2017).
This latter claim may not only seem fairly reasonable, it also resonates with
some of the ideals described above in conjunction with voluntourism. How,
then, to increase international educational exchange?
As noted above, IIE President Alan Goodman and Stacie Berdan (2014)
claim that the wide variety of study abroad programs—variable according
to structure, topic, timing, and cost—have significantly eroded barriers for
university students to study abroad. The wide variety of credit-bearing study
abroad program structures can be categorized according to common structural
patterns, outlined by Williamson (2008) in the following four models: island,
46 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

Figure 1.1  U.S. Students Studying Abroad, 1985–2017. Data source: IIE Open Doors
2018.

integrated, hybrid, and field-based. Island programs are typically sponsored

by U.S. universities and/or third-party providers with curricula specifically
targeting American students, and those American students study alongside
other American students. In integrated programs, American students enroll
directly in courses alongside local students at a host university, while pro-
gram sponsors may provide additional services required by non-local stu-
dents, such as assistance with course registration and language tutoring. A
hybrid program blends elements of both island and integrated programs, so

Figure 1.2  Study-Abroad Participation According to Program Durations, AY 2016–

2017. Data source: IIE Open Doors 2018.
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 47

that students may undertake a portion of their coursework at a host univer-

sity and the remainder at a study center or other locales. Hybrid programs
are common in countries where the primary language of instruction is not
English. Finally, field-based programs refer to programs that involve a the-
matic and geographic focus, with students undertaking field study training
and usually completing an independent study project. While there are indeed
benefits and drawbacks to each of these, the current growth tends to be in the
island and field-based styles of programming. Further, the average duration
of study-abroad programs is declining; now, two-thirds of students who study
abroad do so on short-term programs of eight or fewer weeks.
A more detailed summary of the study-abroad programs in which U.S.
undergraduates participate appears in table 1.1 below.
Another significant pattern to note is that study abroad continues to attract
mostly women. According to the IIE’s most recent Open Doors (2018)
data for academic year 2016-7, women comprised 67 percent of the student

Table 1.1  Percentages of Students Participating in Different Durations of U.S. Study

Abroad, Academic Years 2006–2017 (IIE Open Doors 2018)

Note: Percent distribution may not total 100.0 due to rounding.

48 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

population studying abroad. For comparison, in the fall of that academic

year, women accounted for 56 percent of total undergraduate enrollment
(“Undergraduate Enrollment” 2018).
The growing trend of volunteering in study-abroad programs, as described
above, often occurs in the form of internships and service-learning compo-
nents. However, engagements with volunteer work abroad vary greatly. The
number of undergraduates participating in service-learning or volunteering
opportunities, such as non-credit-bearing volunteering through the home uni-
versity or mission trips, is difficult to calculate, as programs report anything
from a few hours to more sustained engagements within that category. Still,
IIE’s Open Doors (2018) data reported a minimum of 6 percent of under-
graduates studying abroad participated in service-learning or volunteering
opportunities.
The notion of “giving back”—embedded in service-learning and also tied
to some internships—is highly attractive to prospective students making their
choices about overseas programs and has become a significant marketing
angle (IIE Open Doors 2018). The desire to see another part of the world
and be helpful in the process seems good and decent. In fact, some students
come from programs at their home universities that more or less guarantee
that they will make a difference in the world through scholarship and com-
munity service (Cororaton and Handler 2013). What, then, are the ideological
underpinnings of the “helpfulness” undergraduate students anticipate provid-
ing and the ways in which they understand such assistance contributing to the
host community in the short and long-term? Just traveling somewhere does
not guarantee global citizenship and experiential learning, and a “‘student as
customer’ model of higher education” is likely not the best approach when
trying to achieve something akin to pedagogical value (Barkin 2018). After
some context regarding study-abroad trends in Africa, we shall provide two
vignettes that underscore that claim.

STUDY ABROAD IN AFRICA

In keeping with growth trends summarized above, study abroad in Africa has
also grown significantly in the past three decades, and also mostly in the form
of short-term programs (IIE Open Doors 2018). For American undergraduates,
studying in Africa for an entire semester is quite rare, as is direct enrollment
in African educational institutions. In examining trends in study-abroad pro-
gramming in East Africa, we began to try to piece together the extent to which
service-learning or internships have been incorporated into those experiences,
as well as considerations of capital flows and ebbs in host communities. These
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 49

foci are means to assess the extent and types of benefits participating students,
programs, and host communities accrue as a result of study-abroad experi-
ences. We are also very interested in how host communities and other Africa-
based providers of services respond in instances when study-abroad programs
are shifted or cancelled due to local or global emergencies.
The overall number of U.S. undergraduates studying in Africa experienced
a general upward trend between the 1970s and 2009, during which this demo-
graphic leaped from a mere 0.5 percent to 5 percent of the overall popula-
tion of U.S. undergraduates studying abroad and many-fold increase in raw
numbers. From 2009, the numbers held relatively steady for two more years,
before registering a notable decline. Between the academic years of 2012-13
and 2013-14, numbers of U.S. undergraduates heading to Africa dropped
12.5 percent, and then another significant decline of 8 percent was reported
between academic years 2013-14 and 2014-15. Sub-Saharan Africa experi-
enced a decline of 19.7 percent from 2013-14 to 2014-15. The 2012—2015
decline has been tied to the economic downturn, as well as security con-
cerns and perceptions of disease threat (e.g., concerns that highly localized
outbreaks of Ebola affect regions much larger than they do). Numbers then
began rising again, with a 5.5 percent uptick in the 2016-17 academic year,
the most recent period for which data are available.
Like the trends noted above regarding study abroad in general, study
abroad in Africa is also dominated by short-term island and field-based
programs. These kinds of programs, from a management perspective, have
different sets of obligations than semester and year-long programs, the latter

Figure 1.3  U.S. University Students Studying Abroad in Africa per Academic Year. Data
source: IIE Open Doors 2018.
50 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

of which typically have long-term leases, significant capital investments in

durable goods, and year-round staff. We looked more closely at the three East
African countries of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, as we have worked in that
region for many years, to help us better contextualize the numbers and trends,
as well as their impacts. IIE’s Open Doors (2016) included a list of some of
the major programs about which they had collected data, and we followed up
by examining their websites. For those for which websites were listed, we
found the following:
Some of the websites have not been maintained because many programs
had indeed shut down temporarily or permanently, which resonates with the
study-abroad trends for those three countries in recent years.
As noted above, most students participate in short-term island and field-
based programs. With this in mind, how do investments—in student learning,
local communities—vary?

Figure 1.4  For Kenya, of the Sixty-Four Programs That IIE’s Open Doors Listed, Only
Thirty-Six Were Able to Be Used Because the Data Were Current.

Figure 1.5  For Tanzania, of the Fifty-Eight Programs That IIE’s Open Doors Listed, Only
Forty-One Were Able to Be Used Because the Data Were Current.
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 51

Figure 1.6  For Uganda, of the Twenty-Four Programs That IIE’s Open Doors Listed,
Only Twelve Were Able to Be Used Because the Data Were Current.

Figure 1.7  Numbers of U.S. Undergraduates Studying Abroad in East Africa from the
1991–1992 Academic Year to 2016–2017. Source: IIE Open Doors 2018.

EAST AFRICA

The authors of this paper are both long-term field workers in East Africa and
have both led study-abroad programs in the region. We are generally sup-
portive of the IIE initiative to increase the number of U.S. undergraduates
who study abroad, as we, too, support the learning outcome of intercultural
competency (knowledge about cultural issues, as well as the skills, abilities,
and motivations to act in intercultural contexts) as integral to critical thinking
52 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

and communication skills (Williams 2009; Deardorff 2004), valued by and

nurtured through a liberal arts education. We are interested in how an expan-
sion of U.S. undergraduates studying abroad may affect the growing market
of study-abroad programming, or at least accommodation of study-abroad
programming, in particular regions of East Africa, as security concerns in
some areas have led to concentrations in others. Further, we would like to
know the degree to which students demonstrate increased skills tied to high-
impact learning, such as “increases in critical thinking and writing skills,
greater appreciation of diversity and diverse viewpoints, and higher levels of
engagement, both in and out of the classroom” (Kuh 2008), and the kinds of
programming that seem to promote those skills effectively.
Having analyzed trends in study-abroad programming for U.S. students,
we now discuss some specific examples of international internship, service-
learning, and volunteerism opportunities via short-term study-abroad pro-
grams in East Africa. We have interviewed program providers, students, and
NGO directors or sponsors. From this, we have refined our key issues of
“degree and kind” to focus on program quality, assumed and demonstrated
impact for student-learners and host communities, and long-term planning
for program sustainability. Further, these interviews have prompted us to
consider the ways in which East African internship or service-learning oppor-
tunities deal with essentialist images of Africa as a “place in need” of outside
help. How can we, as learners, researchers, and educators, think productively
about study-abroad programming as an antidote to what many critics have
described as crass and/or extractive tourism (Salaar and Graburn 2014)?

SEMESTER-LONG STUDY-ABROAD
PROGRAMS, KENYA-STYLE

One author (Coffman) benefitted from a semester-long study-abroad pro-

gram through St. Lawrence University’s (SLU’s) Kenya Semester Program
(KSP) during her undergraduate career. Founded in 1974, SLU’s Kenya
program has been one of the longest-running study-abroad programs in East
Africa. Located in a leafy suburb of Nairobi, the KSP operates from a per-
manent facility that serves as home to directors and staff, as well as home
base for the students. During the author’s program, she participated in three
separate homestay experiences—one in a rural, agricultural community,
one in a middle-class urban community, and one in a rural, pastoralist com-
munity—for what SLU directors have called “total cultural immersion” and
binary deflation; the program design purposefully placed students in multiple
homes to build intercultural competence as described above. SLU manages
expectations and “homestay family fatigue” by rotating locales for homestays
every three years, which host families know in advance. Instructors include
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 53

teaching faculty from Kenyan institutions, international nongovernmental

organizations, and SLU in New York. The semester concludes with a month
long internship—described as an independent study—for each student and
selected to meet his or her individual interests. And, with some of the money
generated by study-abroad participants, two Kenyans per year are given full
scholarships to attend SLU in Canton, New York, to earn their undergraduate
degrees. SLU has many fixed costs—the center itself (land and built infra-
structure), permanent staff, vehicles, and maintenance. Other regular costs
are shared among different locales through working with different host com-
munities and other learning partners over time. The SLU program has dem-
onstrated long-term, multi-faceted investment within Kenya.
With perhaps fewer fixed costs, other longstanding semester-in-Kenya
programs, such as those operated by the School for International Training
(SIT), University of Minnesota, and American University, still have plenty
of obligations, including each with its own contracted staff. They have also
shifted programming and some locales over time for reasons similar to SLU
and to share the resources that these programs have historically brought into
the regions where they conduct their programs. Major economic contribu-
tions to local communities include being hired on as permanent or temporary
staff, and also being paid to serve as host families to visiting students. The
issue of expectations of and responsibilities to host families thus looms large
in program management. That Kenyan families might compete with one
another to host an American student is not surprising. The idea is that while
Americans who study abroad gain immeasurable educational experiences,
they also contribute to the communities in which they live, both culturally
and financially (Coffman 2000).
In recent years, all four of the aforementioned study-abroad programs have
run below their capacities, for example, operating in fall 2016 with between
one-third and two-thirds of enrollment ideals of around thirty students per
term. Discussions with program directors and some instructors around that
time indicated a range of possibilities to explain this, the most prominent
being fears of illness or insecurity. While neither Ebola nor Boko Haram have
a presence in East Africa, each of those had been cited as reasons for students
not going to “Africa”—any part. Further, there are changes in students’ pre-
ferred foci—including many students’ searching for short-term study-abroad
programs that still include service-learning opportunities, internships, and/
or public health practicums. Thus, there is increasing competition from
shorter term academic and third-party provider programs, many of which
emerged with those very foci driving their programming. As one program
director noted, “There are pressures to neo-liberalize,” meaning to become
more economically competitive by staging cuts to portions of programming
and, in some instances, outsourcing certain modules so as not to bear direct
costs. Some semester programs have launched their own short-term summer
54 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

options, as well, in an effort to gain some of that market and thus subsidize
their semester programs. Still, when numbers are low, or when programs
must cancel (e.g., due to post-election violence in Kenya in spring semester
2008, low enrollments), expectant host families and other partners suffer,
too. SLU and SIT have both responded to such cancellations by paying out
a portion of expected revenue to homestay families, for example, but unless
student numbers increase again, this cannot be sustained. All programs have
restructured to some degree, and negotiated new and different partnerships.
Short-term programs, such as those that run only during the summer
months for U.S. institutions, avoid some of those problems, but many direc-
tors still report difficulties when programming must be cancelled or relocated
and the negative impacts that has on host families and other partners. After
all, these programs are not funded by charities and cannot give donations,
but rather are ventures nested within non-profit state or private university
administrative contexts.

MARKETING “AFRICA”

Just before our current batch of undergraduates were born, something major
was happening: the dawning of social media and greater accessibility to the
world via the information superhighway (as the internet was called in 1994).
An overwhelming amount of data has been at their fingertips since they can
remember, and yet “othering” persists (Calkin 2015; Holden 2013), as seen
in international headlines that continue to highlight “Africa” as a place of
promise and a place of need.
To return to the IIE goal of doubling the number of U.S. undergraduates
who study abroad: Why do that? According to NAFSA (“Trends in U.S.
Study Abroad”) and IIE (IIE Open Doors 2018), the number of students
studying abroad at any given time still represents about 1.6 percent of all
U.S. students enrolled at institutions of higher education in the United States,
meaning around 10 percent of all U.S. graduates will have studied abroad by
the time their degrees are conferred. Going back twenty years to the 1994-95
academic year, and the dawn of the internet, 76,000 U.S. students studied
abroad, vs. 332,727 for academic year 2016-17, an increase of 340 percent,
while the overall number of students attending undergraduate institutions
increased only 40 percent.
For the 1997-1998 academic year, the approximately 3,000 American
students who did choose a study abroad program to Africa favored the fol-
lowing five countries, ranked in descending order: South Africa (617 stu-
dents), Kenya (606), Ghana (486), Zimbabwe (286), and Tanzania (224).
In all five countries, English is widely spoken. These countries accounted
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 55

for 2,219 of the 3,000 students traveling to Africa, nearly 74 percent. To

compare study abroad elsewhere during the same academic year (1997-
1998), 25,900 American undergraduate students chose to study in Great
Britain, a country that, by the way, previously maintained a colonial pres-
ence in all five of the aforementioned African countries. It appears that lin-
guistic comfort is important both psychologically and materially, enabling
students to imagine that they will have more meaningful interactions with
the people whose communities they visit. This is even more of a key vari-
able the shorter the trip, as it relates to what Barkin (this book, chapter
4) describes as promoting a discourse of access. That and other chapters
(Doerr, chapter 3; Bodinger de Uriarte, chapter 6) also describe efforts in
programming to manage risk while still producing a sense of authentic
engagement and daring or discomfort—while carefully orchestrated—that
trigger feelings of investment and achievement. These are reasonable
attempts among study abroad directors to protect their students while
educating them, to steer students away from hedonic activities and more
toward eudemonic—in sense of promoting well-being—engagements.
And indeed, a sense of purpose and “doing good” has been described as
essential for a meaningful life, as well as a healthy one; students, among
others, can quickly turn against people and projects they find disingenuous
(Gunderman 2017).

DROP-IN ACTIVISM IN UGANDA

During a recent winter term, a small group of students from a progressive

liberal arts college in the northeast traveled to Uganda to learn about the work
of grassroots activists involved with AIDS education and awareness raising
to halt the spread of the disease in their communities and to offer support to
their efforts to teach the activists to make videos to use in spreading their
message. This was an optional, applied, credit-bearing course carried out
between semesters. The goal of the program was to expose students to social
activism, as well as the mixed effects of Western commerce, tourism, and for-
eign aid. They also witnessed how NGOs and grassroots organizations, both
those run by Ugandans and by foreigners, grapple with the legacy of colonial
structures and the present-day reality of market capitalism in a country the
World Bank (2018) continues to describe as low income. Prior to travel, the
students learned about the challenges and practical impediments such NGOs
face against a background of pervasive North-South power dynamics and
inequality. While in Uganda, their task was to train NGO staff in video skills
and in using digital video as a powerful medium for social change. The pro-
gram in Uganda lasted for five weeks.
56 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

Before departure from the U.S., students had learned the rudiments of vid-
eography: image and sound recording, editing with Adobe Premier Elements,
and message shaping. They became instructors using the “Train the Trainers”
model. They carried out one round of training in Kampala, and another in
a small town in the southwestern corner of the country, on the border with
Rwanda and Congo. Participants in Kampala were selected by the directors
of two umbrella NGOs, both with grassroots membership organizations
throughout the country. Eight activists in Kampala were trained, then four of
them accompanied the group to the southwest to train another eight people.
Each round of trainings took six days. The students bought and donated the
video equipment — four full sets, one for each local partner organization.
The trainings in Kampala proceeded with hitches due to timing, punctual-
ity, and lack of preparation. The activists had not been prepared for participa-
tion ahead of time, so trainings interfered at times with personal schedules,
and levels of participation varied. The activists were unhappy that the student
group did not pay them or provide any other significant form of compensa-
tion; they were well aware of other visiting groups and NGOs that compen-
sated well. Disgruntled with receiving only their fares and food, and with the
equipment at the end of training belonging to the partner organizations and
thus not the individuals, participants did not see free training as an adequate
benefit. The American students, who had paid all the costs of the trip, were
shocked by this expectation. This reality largely reflects the extent to which
NGOs compete with each other in their target settings to attract a clientele
with what they offer. The students had stepped into a much larger context that
they did not understand.
Keen to help fight AIDS, the students were uneasy with the choice some
groups made to produce a film addressing other issues, such as youth unem-
ployment or maternal health. This raised serious questions of whether the
activists were really free to choose topics they viewed as important, or were
they to comply with the group’s agenda of exposing our students to working
with issues of HIV/AIDS?
Even when asked to share their experiences as AIDS activists with the stu-
dents, the sharing was minimal, and the exposure to their work on the ground
only happened after the trainings were completed, and only by a couple of
the activists. Mostly, they were not inclined to show the students the work
they did. And most disappointing for the students, the activists showed very
little interest in the students and their motivations for coming to Uganda. The
activists also ridiculed the students and challenged the legitimacy of their
endeavors because they were not “expert” videographers. When the group
arrived in the small town to the southwest of Kampala, despite the assurances
that NGO groups were waiting to be trained, we encountered only a fledgling
activist group in a region where HIV/AIDS carried a heavy stigma, with only
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 57

a couple of activists willing to be trained because being trained equated with

being seen as people living with AIDS. Our contact, an elementary school
head mistress, brought several of her students to join the trainings, and in
time, other individuals, especially peer mentors from the hospital came
forward. However, it was challenging to use a particular model and then dis-
cover the infrastructure necessary to support the model simply was not there
(see also Cororaton and Handler 2013), including the fact that only one of the
activists being trained had ever worked on a computer before. The students
struggled with how to teach editing to a group lacking even basic computer
skills. Again, there had been a mismatch of intentions, skills, and resources,
and the egalitarian dream (Ibid) was dashed.
While in Uganda and certainly thereafter, the nagging question emerged
of whether this particular endeavor would be categorized as service learning
or voluntourism. Before we left the U.S., all the students were against taking
part in poverty tourism (visiting impoverished areas to witness how people
there live; typically an “authentic urban-poor” site for the tourist gaze (Urry
1990)). Those of us who agreed to lead the trip certainly considered the pro-
gram one of service learning, which is meant to be an approach to tackling
real-life problems in partnership with members of a particular community,
in this case AIDS activists in Uganda. The students wanted to empower
AIDS activists who were dedicating their lives to helping others. They saw
that teaching video skills would provide a powerful medium for the activists
to broadcast their messages, to educate and enlighten other Ugandans about
the dangers and strategies of living with HIV/AIDS. At the end of the trip,
the students struggled to hold on to some sense of accomplishment. For the
leaders of this service-learning trip, the ephemeral nature of what our hosts
gained (other than the very solid equipment) became clear—we had been
one more group coming through only briefly, and the simplistic nature of our
relationship with the places and people we visited was obvious to the activ-
ists who chose to engage only minimally with our group. Less clear but still
quite striking is what the students gained: many insights that challenged their
understandings and perceptions of their contributions and responsibilities to
those they met in Uganda, to their home communities, and to their places in
the world. These were tough lessons, but full-fledged reflection enabled them
to see how much they learned through the experiences in the places they vis-
ited. They could no longer be comfortable with simple binaries; their under-
standings became much more complicated, and they had to contend with the
reality that dropping in with good intentions cannot alone cure AIDS. Their
frustrations and thoughtful reflections converted their seemingly failed efforts
at volunteering into a significant, if humbling, learning process.
This particular example, being a “one-off” program, had minimal invest-
ment in infrastructure and no long-term financial investment in the individuals
58 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

or organizations with which it partnered. There was a disbursement of “gifts,”

in this case the camera equipment, but no promise of follow-up or assistance
with maintaining the equipment or further training the staff. Inadequate
efforts to build meaning into the study-abroad program—to build trust and
understanding between the American visitors and their Ugandan hosts—
undercut what had looked like a purposeful, focused project, and revealed
that the project’s conception on the U.S. side had not considered the desired
outcomes on the Ugandan side.

LEARNING FROM LABOR: SAND DAMS IN KENYA

For several summers in a row, students from a large public mid-Atlantic uni-
versity partnered with a local NGO called Utooni Development Organization,
in south central Kenya for a portion of a two-month-long study abroad pro-
gram that visited many locales in Kenya. Utooni was formally established
by Joshua Mukusya in 2002 and registered as a Kenyan nongovernmental
organization in 2005, but emerged from a history of self-help projects tracing
back to 1978.
Utooni works with registered community self-help groups who approach
them for assistance. Utooni’s main activities include: sand dam construction
as a way to capture and store rainwater; tree planting of indigenous drought-
resistant species; terracing; improved crop production, using drought-
resistant crops and conservation agriculture; and community-to-community
participatory learning exchanges. Our program’s visit to Utooni followed
significant preparation in the U.S. and in Kenya and built on previous interac-
tions with the organization. Students had already completed readings, three
weeks of classes, a 1.5-week homestay, and many discussions with program
leaders and local staff about expectations for their engagement with Utooni.
In other words, significant efforts were happening to promote intercultural
competence. The initial visit to Utooni for the students lasted four days.
Utooni’s Kenyan staff gave the first day on-site orientation and program
overview. The next two days students performed intensive labor alongside
members of a self-help group to construct a sand dam in the area where they
lived. The fourth day was dedicated to reflection and visits to completed sand
dams and their associated horticultural projects. This schedule was largely
crafted by Utooni’s Kenyan staff, who were clearly in charge of this portion
of the program.
The physical labor was tough and initially disheartening to most students
as they saw themselves struggling to establish the work rhythms and efficien-
cies of their Kenyan partners. This became a great learning moment for most
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 59

students, as they overcame their discomfort, generally safe and carefully

orchestrated as it was, and learned from those with whom they were working.
But, first, some turned on each other as they dealt with that discomfort—some
claimed to be working harder than others or blamed others for disrupted
work flow, and some suffered crises of confidence about their own abilities.
In the early afternoon of the first day of laboring alongside members of the
self-help group, a student who tended to lead whenever he could said to one
of the authors, “We are getting our asses handed to us. We need to do bet-
ter.” He had viewed the students’ discombobulated efforts as failure instead
of process. Fortunately, our hosts helped the students overcome self-doubts
and hyper-competitiveness, and by the end of the first day, the students came
closer to the patterns of work they admired among their Kenyan hosts and
engaged in many small jokes or bigger conversations with them, too. They
learned that the physical labor was easier and more enjoyable with social
interaction. The second day of labor went much more smoothly, and there
was invariably great joy among the students as they observed what they had
helped to accomplish in two days. The students had to admit that they slowed
down the group they were trying to help, and thanked them for their patience
and mentoring.
Students learned a great deal throughout the entire study-abroad program,
and those of us grading their written work can attest that their content knowl-
edge and analytical skills were, on the whole, impressive achievements. But,
for many students, these accomplishments were less tangible—i.e., they
began to recognize they had not mastered intercultural competence—and thus
many reported really enjoying doing “dirty work,” by which they meant liter-
ally getting dirty as they built things to which they could refer later as what
they did (see also Bodinger and Jacobson 2018). With a variety of assess-
ments measures we learned that it takes a while—and lots of reflection—to
process the larger contextual issues. As one Kenyan insightfully told me,
“Americans smell like soap and think they can fix everything.” He added that
he learned to be patient and teach them how Kenyans deal with their own
problems, and in the process, he had come to admire the U.S. students’ work
ethic and desire to “do good.” Critiques of university-age volunteers’ confla-
tion of “doing good” and “feeling good” rightly abound (Bandyopadhyay
and Patil 2017; Mostafanezhad 2013a, 2013b, 2014; Conran 2011), and yet
there is also room to see these students’ in situ responses and privileging of
labor-as-accomplishment as part of a longer process of learning and becom-
ing better doers and thinkers.
The students did indeed have formal and informal means by which they
continued to think about the work they undertook and the larger projects hap-
pening at Utooni. For many at Utooni, the opportunity to interact with and
60 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

teach visiting Americans had become a source of enjoyment or at least occa-

sional amusement, often tied to Swahili malapropisms, and part of their own
ongoing learning. “And their money helps,” another staff member added.
With that, the value of this intercultural exchange—of ideas and resources—
became clear and helped to validate the partnership.

LEARNING FROM STUDY ABROAD

The two examples from Uganda and Kenya highlight some of the problems
that can emerge in well-intentioned volunteer projects abroad, including role
ambiguity (Palacios 2010) and inadequate preparation or skillsets among the
volunteers. As seen in both examples, volunteers often overestimate how
helpful they can be, and frustrations can arise for all involved when those
being targeted for assistance ask questions or request specific skillsets to
which the volunteers cannot respond. Disappointments among members of
the host community can arise as they find what the volunteers offer as mildly
or largely irrelevant to their more immediate goals, akin to the “top down
development” models for which larger aid organizations are justifiably criti-
cized. Intra-group conflicts over work happen, with such contestations being
fairly common within student groups when some students view themselves
as more committed or more “genuinely” involved than others. Feelings of
frustration during or after the trip can emerge, as volunteers suspect they
were short on both time and skills to affect real, positive change. While any
or all of those may be tough for students and even trip leaders to handle, each
outcome can allow for better, deeper learning to emerge, as also seen in both
examples. To be frustrated and challenged in such a way as to be humbled
seems far better than another possible result of such efforts: a disturbing rei-
fication of Eurocentric attitudes when target populations defer to volunteers’
input and recommendations.
Tucker (2014: 199) suggests we move away from “assumptions of fixed
cultural positions in tourism encounters, and towards focusing on the fluid-
ity and mobility of positions and relations between so-called ‘tourists’ and
‘toured’” or, as seen in the above examples, service-learning hosts and
guests. Tucker does this very thing as she reflects on her earlier work and
how she herself had enrolled in the project of seeing and reporting on binary
divisions and emphatic difference in her field site in Turkey, only to real-
ize later that things are, well, more complicated. Learning, as noted above,
is ongoing. Can we thus not expect this to be the case for at least some of
our students and ourselves, despite the bounded rationality through which
we may first (and subsequently, though the bounds change) perceive an
encounter?
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 61

SO NOW WHAT: CONSIDERATIONS FOR

DOING GOOD HIGH-IMPACT LEARNING

Bringing together the rapid growth trends in study abroad, the desires that
many students have to “do good” and have it be meaningful and purpose-
ful for themselves and others, and understanding that most opportunities to
engage in these high-impact practices are going to be via short-term pro-
grams, we have a few recommendations of what to consider for the design
of study abroad and service-learning and/or internships therein. First, scale
matters. When considering a partner organization or focal project, determine
whether it is appropriate, manageable, and sufficiently localized. Ask whether
it addresses cultural, political, environmental realities? Is it flexible—can it
respond to changes in the above factors? Can we contribute meaningfully
even if briefly, and how will it continue without us? A common error is scal-
ing up too fast (or at all), as seen with the ambitious video project in Uganda,
as described above. Another key consideration is tied to monitoring and
evaluation.
Given that the recent discussion of “high-impact” learning practices has
turned to a discussion of what specific activities lead to improved student
learning, it seems we should tentatively approach determining “best prac-
tices” for community-engaged study-abroad programs, a phrase that irritates
the authors of this chapter as there is often little evidence to support such
claims. Therefore, we recommend sharing assessment protocols and data—
overseas partners to program leaders before the study-abroad program starts,
program leaders to the larger community of international educators so we
can learn from each other about how programming and quality learning can
be improved. That means talking about what goes wrong, as seen above,
and how to manage it on-site. Failure, after all, can provide some of the best
teachable moments. A difficult topic to broach in the worlds of academia and
NGOs, is the issue of the cult of personality. Can a structure—study abroad
program, NGO, site partner—survive changes in leadership? How long is too
long for an individual to be in charge of programming? And, relatedly, what
happens when a working relationship is halted, due to concerns about insecu-
rity or changes in leadership? What are the responsibilities that study abroad
program leaders have to host communities?
Despite the potential risks noted above when study abroad programs enroll
fewer students than anticipated or are forced to cancel programming in a
locale altogether, there are still many significant benefits. For the host orga-
nization and host communities, there would have typically been contributions
to the host organization’s operating budget and to host families’ incomes;
the promotion of efficiency and legitimacy within the host organization, as it
should report out how any investments are expended and be able to articulate
62 Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak

the short- and long-term benefits thereof; and, as Palacios (2010) notes, an
“expansion of the host organization’s network base through post-volunteer
involvement in promotion, fundraising and other types of supportive activi-
ties”—sometimes that short-term volunteer student makes a long-term and
very meaningful commitment to the organization. We have seen that with our
own students, and it has made a significant difference in the lives of many.
For the students, study abroad in East Africa and elsewhere, when done
thoughtfully and with an emphasis on engagements that nurture meaning and
self-realization, promotes cultural immersion, civic engagement, and commit-
ment to sharing skills and other resources (including funds); supports profes-
sional and personal development in a structured setting; encourages humility
and opens up the opportunity to learn from others. It may also be worth recog-
nizing the great learning and maturation project of university students in their
late teens and early twenties—many are busily encountering new-to-them
systems, knowledge pools, and people at home and abroad.2 The impulse to
act on emotion may, in part, explain the allure of tourism imaginaries that
drew some of our students to East Africa in the first place. For both students
and hosts, study abroad with service-learning and/or internships can indeed
provide long-lasting, useful experience by building on the desire to “feel
good” to promote intercultural competence and figure what “doing good” can
mean and look like (Palacios 2010), opportunities to understand and imple-
ment transformative learning (Knollenberg et al. 2014), and psychological
support and hope through the relationships built through such programs.
The not-very-shocking conclusion is that context and flexibility matter
greatly in study abroad programming. While guidelines could be established
to increase the likelihood of successful international internships, service-
learning, and other volunteering components of credit-bearing study-abroad
programs, and there have indeed been efforts toward that end, program
success in achieving the ideals of high-impact learning still comes down to
the commitment of the people involved in organizing and getting people to
reflect on the work they have done and the context in which they are doing
it. Further, pedagogical intent does not guarantee the same outcomes in every
student, of course. There is no simple metric to evaluate who “gets more”
out of these experiences, although it is easier to guess in some circumstances
than others.

NOTE

1. IIE was established by two Nobel Peace Prize winners: Nicholas Murray Butler,
president of Columbia University, and Elihu Root, former secretary of state, and by
 “Doing Good” and Doing It Quickly in East African Study Abroad Programs 63

Stephen Duggan, sr. professor of political science at the College of the City of New
York and IIE’s first President (“History” 2017).
2. See, for example, neuroscience approaches to explain these processes as out-
lined by Arain et al. (2013).

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 Chapter 2

Two Weeks to Global Citizenship?

The Problems, Paradoxes, and Successes
of Running a Short-Term Travel Course
Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

As Mark Twain famously said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and nar-
row-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts”
(Twain 1984). In recent years, many universities have instituted a variety of
programs aimed at creating “global citizens” of their students. The purpose
of these programs, framed largely in the same terms, is to create students
who are globally aware and engaged in processes and projects aimed at help-
ing global others. These programs often take shape in short-term courses of
anywhere between two to six weeks. They typically involve service learning,
development projects, culture and/or language immersion, and various types
of field schools. Our own experiences running a two-week ethnographic field
methods course, open to students from any academic major, to the West
Indies alerts us to the challenges and problems of living up to the rhetoric of
the “global citizen.” This chapter explores the challenges of generating an
“authentic” travel experience in distinction to the supposed superficiality of
conventional tourism. In this chapter, we interrogate the language of global
citizenship, asking whether an intensive two-week fields-methods course
truly does more to create a global citizen than any other type of travel. In
so doing, we explore the paradox found between the lofty rhetoric of global
citizenship and the realities of running a short-term travel course.1
Social theorist Raymond Williams offers as one among several definitions
of “culture” that it is a state of being learned, studied in the long duree of
Western intellectual thought, and sophisticated in tastes (Williams 1983a,
1983b). To be cultured, in this sense, is to be elite, both intellectually and
in socio-economic class. The term “global citizen,” currently in vogue in
the American academy, carries a similar gloss as the now dated cultured.

67
68 Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

The term, though often vaguely defined (if at all), is presumably intended
to evoke notions of a cultured student—one who is broadly educated in
the liberal arts and who knows a thing or two about global others. For
many university programs, the term global citizen is often meant to evoke
images of students who are, “caring, embrac[e] cultural diversity, promot[e]
social justice and environmental sustainability” and who have “a sense of
responsibility to act for the betterment of the world” (Reysen et al. 2014: 5).
The international anti-poverty organization, OXFAM (2015: 5), developed
resources to help educators create curriculum around the notion of global
citizenship for students of all ages. They state that a global citizen is one
who;

• Is aware of the wider world and has a sense of their own role as a world
citizen
• Respects and values diversity
• Has an understanding of how the world works
• Is passionately committed to social justice
• Participates in the community at a range of levels, from the local to the
global
• Works with others to make the world a more equitable and sustainable place
• Takes responsibility for their actions

In this iteration of global citizenship, as with many others in university set-

tings, pressure is placed on teachers to produce students who understand the
complexities and problems of global dynamics and who accept responsibility
for its improvement. Indeed, the role of instructors is critical as “research on
the influence of university instruction revealed that how university adminis-
trators discuss globalization and how professors frame the concept of global
citizenship for students influences students’ degree of identification [as]
global citizens” (Blake et al. 2015). As a relatively recent pedagogical para-
digm and learning outcome, global citizenship requires instructors then not
merely to promote global awareness but also to instill a sense of identification
with global others. Interestingly, however, there is little discussion in these
types of definitions that include an individual’s rights, which the term citizen
ordinarily implies.
The label global citizen then carries a paradoxical gloss as the term citizen
implies both rights and responsibilities typically conferred by a nation-state.
To speak of global citizen then is to suggest a kind of “denationalized” citi-
zen, to use Sassen’s language (2013: 280), who in some sense abdicates, or at
least minimizes, his or her role as citizen of a nation-state. “Citizenship here
resides,” Sassen points out, “in identities and commitments that arise out of
crossborder affiliations” (213:282).
 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? 69

The global citizen, therefore, is not only educated in the Western philo-
sophical and methodological canon but is now also informed about the lives
and cultures of global others, and importantly feels responsibility both for
certain rights as a citizen and a sense of commitment to other citizens in this
now globally “imagined community” (Anderson 1991). Importantly, the stu-
dent is also able to identify as a global citizen who, in addition to being an
active agent for social change, participates in the on-going discussion about
what it means to be human (Byers 2005). The replacement of culture (in the
class sense) with global citizen then marks an epistemological turn in the
modern academy away from allegedly ethnocentric pedagogies and toward
inclusion and activism with cultural others. It is a turn toward a recognition
of the implicit value of the knowledges of global others and the pedagogical
value for American students in situating Western intellectual history as one
among many such histories.
The confrontation of these different histories carries unquestionable
power differentials and a radically disproportionate access to resources. The
Western imperial project, designed largely for the purpose of extracting all
manner of resources from global others, certainly cannot be ignored as an eth-
ical problem inherent in our course. After all, the very premise of the course
asks the students to extract data from West Indians so that they can become
better researchers and thinkers. As Talya Zemach-Bersin has pointed out,
“American students who study abroad cannot be removed from the political
and national contexts from which they come” (2007: 25). However, while
students may not be removed from the cultural and geo-political contexts
from which they come, we believe that they can be compelled to think and
act differently in the world. In other words, simply because someone comes
from an imperialist country does not ipso facto make them an imperialist
when they go abroad.
In response to global citizenship skeptics, Ross Lewins draws artfully on
debates within the Frankfurt School on the problems and potentials of mass
production in the age of modernity. While Adorno and Horkeheimer see
a bleak future inaugurated by a culture industry designed only to promote
consumerist ideology, their colleague, Walter Benjamin sees the potential for
a democratization of art through mass production. Likewise, Lewins claims,
study abroad, particularly those programs with institutional support, can
democratize learning experiences previously open only to an elite few. And
though there is undoubtedly a consumerist element in universities’ marketing
of global programs, this is merely a reflection, Lewins claims, of the larger
process of globalization and, as such, “Perhaps we need to jump full force
into this mass culture and open up a space for students to think about how it
functions” (2009: xvii). Building on Lewins’ point, we could also note that
the entire university experience, not only study abroad programs, is deeply
70 Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

enmeshed in consumer culture. As Fredric Jameson (1990) has accurately

stated, capitalism has penetrated every corner of our lives, leaving little
room for escape. The belief that study-abroad programs are somehow com-
promised by a link with consumer-based tourism overlooks the glaring fact
that participation in capitalist practice is not something one chooses to opt
into or out of—it is always/already present. Furthermore, students, as with
most consumers, are not passive dupes. They are active intellectual agents
(see Gramsci 1992) whose “expectations constantly form and re-form as
[they] proceed through . . . the touristic ritual” (DiGiovine 2009: 168). As
anthropologists of tourism have noted, tourists bring their own interpretive
schema to travel events and encounters just as consumers of any media or
particular cultural institution do. However, the interpretive frames by which
they read the unfolding cultural dramas around them are often shaped by
popular perception, which is ever willing to truck in resilient essentialisms.
Our goal, as instructors of a methods course for all academic majors, is to
attempt to mitigate the approach of travel as a fulfillment of one’s desires
and fantasies of the other, as much tourism, particularly in the West Indies,
is often approached (Gmelch 2003). Rather, our efforts focus on encouraging
students to apply ethnographic skills (really just good life skills) of listening
to others, observing carefully, and thinking creatively about what they’ve
seen and heard.
Fulfilling the mission of turning out global citizens has resulted in the rise
of global/international studies majors, study-abroad programs, and short-term
travel programs intended to accomplish this goal through language/culture
immersion, service learning, and field methods. According to the Institute for
International Education (2018), the number of U.S. students participating in
any type of travel course increased almost 46 percent (223,534 to 325,339)
from the 2005–2006 to 2015–2016 school years. Moreover, during those
same years, participation in short-term travel classes (defined as 8 weeks
or less) rose over 2.5 times from 57,895 to 154,861. However, does simply
traveling to another country create a global citizen? Or does a course such
as we have designed amount to little more than glorified tourism? How do
we get students to be in a place where they begin to understand the value of
global citizenship?
Our developing expertise rests in a field methods course, which we run
every other year in the English-speaking country of Trinidad and Tobago,
West Indies. To date, we have taken four classes totaling over ninety students
(there have also been four additional trips with 1–3 students to conduct more
in-depth ethnographic projects). Among the many lessons we have gleaned in
our experiences with the course is the grounding realization that there are infi-
nite ways of being in a place, and as such there is little guarantee of any kind
of consistent epistemological outcome. Unlike in a conventional classroom
 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? 71

setting, being in the field is a much less predictable, one might say control-
lable, environment. As such, students must have the skills necessary to learn
something from and within that dynamic public space. Most students are typi-
cally not overwhelmed or radically disoriented in most classroom settings,
however they can be, and often are, in bustling field sites like Trinidad’s
capital city, Port of Spain. Needless to say, it is difficult to learn much of
anything when overwhelmed or disoriented, hence the reason our prep-course
focuses on skills that give them concrete practices to focus on while in the
field. To know more about, say, the colonial history of Trinidad and Tobago
and how that has shaped present realities, requires being in a place as a
learner of that complex and on-going process. That holds true for any subject
a student may broach with Trinidadians. If they are there as students of a
process, in the Geertzian sense of not studying people but processes among
them (Geertz 1973), then there is some possibility of achieving, however
fractional, the goal of global citizenship. In essence, what we strive to avoid
are field accounts one might hear from a holiday traveler. As Clifford Geertz
has acerbically remarked, the dreariness of travel writing is that it reads like
“one damn thing after another” (Geertz 1988: 37). While students bringing
their fantasies and desires to Trinidad, as a tourist might, may be unavoidable,
we can prepare them to bring some analysis to bear on their experiences. The
dilemma we face as instructors then is rather obvious—how do we ensure
that, once in the West Indies, students are present, intellectually and interpre-
tively, as learners of Trinidad and Tobago?
The problem is a nagging one for a host of reasons; regulating others,
especially college students in the Caribbean, presents obvious challenges, for
example, getting them to conduct fieldwork rather than play, keeping them
from drinking to excess, and asking them to work together cooperatively
have required creative and vigilant effort on our part. Assessment (both on
written work and their field methods) is wrought with contingencies (e.g.,
how much and of what kind of writing is acceptable?). If their field methods
are strong, but writing is comparatively weak, how do we assign an accurate
grade? Or the reverse, if they write well and make meaningful observations,
but their methods of implementation seemed comparatively thin, how do we
measure their performance fairly? Finally, fieldwork is messy, and knowl-
edge is always already incomplete, patchy, discontinuous, and subjective. In
light of fieldwork’s (life’s) messiness, how do we bring some order to bear
on the ways in which students engage while in the field? In this chapter, we
will describe our course methods and experiences, identify some key chal-
lenges and a few successes, and share our experiences in view of the episte-
mological goals of global citizenship in contrast to the goals of most tourist
experiences. We argue that although achieving the status of global citizenship
remains an elusive target, through the use of ethnographic methods, one can
72 Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

expect, following Lewins and OXFAM, that students become more aware
of the wider world, more respectful and valuing of diversity, and gain a bet-
ter understanding of how the world works. Ideally, they also begin to think
about their position in the world and how they might use that to work with
others toward a more equitable world. Additionally, we also argue that the
intensive focus on methods and analysis separates this from a conventional
tourist experience.
We intend our course design to offer students of all majors enough meth-
odological tools to allow them to conduct meaningful (albeit limited) research
projects. Through the prep class and the design of the fieldwork portion,
we push students to look beyond the expectations of pleasure and reward
tourists often bring with them (Kempadoo 1999) and instead focus on devel-
oping methods that cultivate philosophical inquiry and critical reflexivity.
Furthermore, the course endeavors to offer students a skill set that attunes
them to the different contexts of global others. All this together gives them
what they need to go out into the field and engage with global others in a more
focused and meaningful way.

COURSE OVERVIEW

Every other year, we offer a short-term travel course to Trinidad and Tobago,
which occurs during a 3-week winter term in January. In order to be approved
for that course, students are required to enroll in a semester-long prep-course
that is 2-credits and meets weekly for 90 minutes in the fall immediately pre-
ceding traveling. In the prep-course, students learn about the socio-political
history, as well as the contemporary life, of Trinidad & Tobago. Students are
also instructed on the skills of fieldwork and develop a research project they
will carry out during the travel class. Additionally, we take along a teaching
assistant, often a student from a previous class.
For the January travel class, we fly into Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago’s
largest city and stay in apartments that can accommodate five to seven stu-
dents each. The apartments are fully furnished, including kitchens and a
washer and dryer. Students are encouraged to shop at a grocery store close by
to save money on food as well as be introduced to local foods. The first day
in Trinidad (a Friday) is spent orienting the students to Port of Spain, the pub-
lic transportation system, and taking care of other logistics required for the
course (e.g., obtaining cell phones for student teams). The weekend is spent
taking group excursions (a walk downtown to get a lay of the land, a trip to
the Asa Wright Nature Preserve, to Maracas beach) and ensuring students
are ready to start work first thing Monday morning. These trips are intended
to introduce students to Trinidad —its social and ecological landscape—as
 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? 73

well as to get them comfortable meeting people, asking questions, and finding
their way around. Additionally, the second Sunday, we take a four-hour ferry
ride to Tobago where we stay for three nights, affording them the opportunity
to engage with Tobagonians. On Wednesday of week two, the class returns to
Trinidad where we hold a group meeting for final reflections (written reflec-
tions are due the last day) and preparations are made to return to the United
States.
Students in this course are expected to be highly independent; they are out
of the apartments by 10:00 AM each morning and return shortly before sun-
set. Each evening there is a group meeting where students share key experi-
ences they had throughout the day. Plans are solidified for the following day
and then students are free to go back out into town (within designated areas).2
Throughout the week, students are required to write posts to discussion ques-
tions via an online discussion forum. These questions take into account how
long students have been in Trinidad & Tobago, asking for more as their expe-
riences deepen. For example, their first post, due the first Tuesday after they
arrive, will ask them merely to reflect on some of the differences they have
been observing between Trinidad & Tobago and the United States and to
describe the kinds of conversations they have been having. The second post,
due after they have been in Trinidad for a full week, includes questions on
how personal interactions are different/similar than in the United States and
to reflect on any times they may have felt like an outsider. We also include
questions that ask them to reflect on the methods they are using and the types
of results those methods are producing. For example, we ask if they have
been able to ask several different people the same questions in order to get
a sense of how Trinidadians and Tobagonians variously interpret their own
social world. In a more challenging vein, we ask them to link what they are
seeing and hearing with the material we read in the prep class. The third post
is due after spending three days in Tobago and asks them to compare and
contrast Tobagonians and Trinidadians and how their perspectives on issues
germane to students’ projects may differ. The fourth and final post is due the
morning they depart back to the United States and asks them to reflect on
their experiences as a whole and discuss skills learned. In addition to these
discussion questions, faculty meet with students one-on-one throughout the
week to hear about their progress and help students think more analytically
and reflexively.
What we hope the prep-course achieves is a deeper understanding of
the history and cultural patterns of Trinidad and Tobago and, importantly,
how to use ethnographic methods to observe and analyze specific features
of Trinidadian life. Following McClellen and Hyle (2012), we use a multi-
modal approach, which involves readings, writings, in-class activities, such as
interviewing classmates, ethnographic games, and observation development,
74 Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

the prep class attempts to prepare students for the challenges of conducting
fieldwork among people with radically different approaches to daily life.
The benefits of a course like this are that it asks students to observe
the social arrangement of political otherness and the fashioning of moral-
symbolic worlds that are every bit as human as anyone else’s. It asks them
to take notice of the myriad ways in which political life is ordered and can
be ordered. And it suggests, however implicitly, that the ways of being
human are as numerous and complex as each individual with whom we
share a world. Thus, the awareness of Trinidad and Tobago our students
gather from the readings and activities from the prep-class comes face to
face with the lived realities of the country when they land and must begin
interacting with its citizens. In this sense, the course combines traditional
in-class knowledge gathering through readings and lectures with in-field
knowledge gathering through ethnographic methods and international
experiences.

PREP-COURSE

One of the first challenges we face as instructors of an elective field meth-

ods course to the Caribbean open to all majors is getting students to take
the semester-long preparation component seriously. Taken together, the
prep-course and the travel course have three main outcomes (outlined in the
syllabi): (1) increased knowledge of the social-political history of Trinidad
and Tobago, (2) a deeper understanding of ethnographic methods and their
application, and (3) greater confidence to negotiate foreign contexts indepen-
dently. Were all the students advanced-standing social science majors, the
task would be made somewhat easier as the students would appreciate, at
some level, the difficulty of social research. Our students’ majors, however,
cover a wide range and many come to us with little to no training in social
science research design and implementation. As such, we have observed,
through the development of their field projects, many students, particularly
those from the natural sciences, carry the dispiriting bias that social science
is the easy science, and thus should not present much of a problem once in
the field.
The “soft science” (Cassell 2002) bias thus requires creative and insistent
course lessons designed to disabuse them of a belief that will not serve them
well once in the field. Anything short of that would allow them to believe,
mistakenly, that the course is a vacation to the West Indies punctuated by
a few obligatory conversations with locals. Students infected with this bias
then struggle to apprehend the critical importance of methods training before
going into the field. To mitigate this problem, we have students develop
 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? 75

projects early in the semester and begin collecting data on it within the first
few weeks. Telling students that collecting, interpreting, and analyzing social
science data is difficult does little to alter their assumptions about our disci-
pline’s complexity. However, having them do it for themselves does. As one
student stated, “It’s one thing to read an ethnography in class and talk about
the concept of field research, but it’s another thing entirely to get to do that
research for yourself.”
Students are free to explore any topic they wish, within certain parameters.
We encourage students to choose research areas that build on their majors
or interests. We also steer them toward projects that would offer readily
available interlocutors. More importantly, we want them to have projects
that allow for a variety of different sources from which to draw data. Some
common projects focus on art, ecology, politics, economics, and gender and
sexuality. Thus, students interested in art are expected to contact galleries,
dance studios, or artist collectives of whatever type of art they are interested
in. Students of environmental studies reach out to naturalists, environmental
activists, and writers concerned with ecological preservation. Students inter-
ested in issues of gender and sexuality will schedule meetings with members
of LGBTQ outreach and activist groups. With the advent of the Internet,
accessing data, making local connections, retrieving secondary sources (e.g.,
journal articles, newspapers, monographs, etc.) and setting up meetings for
when they arrive while in the prep-course are relatively easy to accomplish.
By the end of the semester, students have an annotated bibliography (some-
where between seven and ten sources) from which they draft a prospectus
(research proposal) on their chosen topic. The thing that all projects share
in common is broad accessibility to ethnographic data that does not require
specialized expertise. In other words, they design projects and generate ques-
tions that nearly all Trinidadians and Tobagonians can discuss at some level.
Historical and cultural content shares nearly equal space with methods
instruction as we attempt to prepare students to conduct ethnographic field-
work, albeit at an introductory level. By the end of the semester, just before
takeoff in January, students should not only have a strong sense of the place
they are going to, and the history that shaped it, but also a fully developed
research project. Moreover, students are ready to apply fundamental skills of
social scientists—interview techniques (including how to follow-up), note-
taking in the field, how to observe in light of one’s research goals, and basic
data analysis in the field to sharpen one’s approach (Bernard 2011; Faubion
and Marcus 2009).
As an example of the benefits of using the prep-class to establish connec-
tions and set up meetings ahead of time, one student interested in Trinidad’s
increasing crime rate was able to speak with both legal experts and lay
Trinidadians about the issue. Since nearly every Trinidadian has an opinion
76 Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

on the matter of crime and what to do about it, our student was able to col-
lect a good deal of data from a variety of sources. He became fascinated
by Trinidadians’ responses and proposed solution to the problem of crime,
which was, as he found, to “bring back the hangman” (see, for example,
Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, October 20, 2010). As this student’s work
aptly demonstrates, by the end of the semester-long prep-course it is clear
to the students that it is incumbent upon them to determine what to observe,
who to talk to, what to take note of, and what questions to ask of their inter-
locutors, of themselves, of us, and of the nature of their conceptual enterprise
more broadly.
Though this sounds like a large burden to bear for a class comprised mostly
of non-majors, the guidance we offer in the prep-course continues once in the
field where, though the stakes are raised being in situ, the level of support
necessarily intensifies.

IN THE FIELD

Our expectations for the data students collect in the field remain grounded
by the realities of fieldwork—limited time parameters, adjusting to a new
place, locating the right people to talk to, and the standard social intimida-
tions that accompany all ethnographic (thus social) projects. However, we do
hold high expectations for being in the field as much as possible and plying
ethnographic practices while there. We have fashioned several strategies to
encourage students to engage as much as possible in social research and to
use and hone the ethnographic skills we worked on in the prep-course.
As stated above, each pair of students is expected to be out of their apart-
ments by 10:00 AM. Through our experience running this course, in order
to discourage the students’ inclination to stick with people they know while
in the field, we do not allow them to work in groups larger than two (special
circumstances notwithstanding). Since each student is working on his or her
own project, their research partners accompany them for support and safety.
The job of each research partner is to support their partners while they meet
with others and for each of them to help each other work their way through a
new social and geographic terrain. We stay in contact with each pair through-
out the day with cellphones that we issue upon arrival. By using the cell
phones, we learn how the students are doing, where they are, and who they
are with. In the cases where multiple groups have met up and begin travel-
ing in large packs, we remind them that ethnographic skills are best acquired
relatively independently, which we emphasize, along with the help of our
teaching assistants, throughout the trip. Given Trinidad’s alarming crime
rates and Port of Spain’s downtown, which becomes eerily desolate after
working hours, students must be back to our apartments by sunset (around
 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? 77

6:00 PM). Students are certainly free to go back out to eat, imbibe Port of
Spain’s nightlife, or just lime (a Trinidadian term for “hanging out”) on the
streets with friends. However, they do so in designated, well-populated areas
close to our apartments. Admittedly, one of the most challenging aspects of
the course is keeping tabs on where our students are in the evenings when the
excitement for Trinidad’s notorious nightlife kicks in. Through a combination
of phone check-ins, help from our teaching assistant, and guidelines about
where to go and how late to stay out, we attempt to keep students safe while
recognizing that (a) they are adults and (b) a large part of Trinidadian culture
revolves around what one observer creatively termed “raucous eudaimonia,”
that is, partying.
In order to offer support and guidance in the field, we try to accompany stu-
dents on at least one of their trips, especially those students who are going far
afield (i.e., outside the city limits of Port of Spain) or who make a request that
we accompany them. For example, several students interested in Trinidadian
politics managed one year to organize a meeting with the President of the
People’s National Movement (PNM), Trinidad & Tobago’s oldest political
party. They asked Dr. Greer to accompany them to the meeting. After the
meeting, Dr. Greer was able to offer insight, specific feedback, and, in this
case, praise, for the way the students conducted the interview.
Additional supports include evening meetings with the entire class, which
are held each night to check in on the day’s progress. At first, they are more
general in nature—“how did it go today? Any successes? Any challenges?”
But then, once they have had more time in the field, we ask them to be more
reflective—“how can you historically and culturally contextualize what you
are observing”? Students are then randomly assigned to one of three groups
where they will give more formal presentations of their work to date (one
group each evening for three evenings). Aside from providing accountability,
it offers a venue for students to talk to their peers and ask for assistance, for
example, finding specific resources, and for faculty and their peers to give
feedback that is useful for all to hear.
Another important practice is meeting with students individually through-
out the week to check in with them and offer suggestions and guidance where
it is needed. We set up shop in a cafe near our apartments where students
are able to share their fieldwork experiences while we look over their field
journals. This arrangement allows us to work individually with students as
they make their way through the challenges of fieldwork. This is especially
critical since students are graded on the actual data they gather, its analysis,
and reflexivity of that analysis within the field experience.
Students learn quickly that Trinidad is an exceedingly social place. Most
Trinis love to talk and will carve out substantial portions of time to do so.
“Liming,” or hanging out and chatting, is a Trinidadian way of life (Greer
2011). Over the many years the two of us have spent in Trinidad, we have
78 Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

heard countless theories about Trinidadian culture, history, politics, econom-

ics, crime, corruption, and myriad other topics from Trinidadians. Students
who encounter a particularly talkative Trinidadian sharing his or her numerous
insights and theories about the country can sometimes return to inform us that
everything we told them about Trinidad is in fact wrong, because they heard
differently from a more authentic source—the omniscient informant—who
told them what’s really going on. Encounters like this are precisely what we
want students to experience. Listening to, asking questions of, and learning to
follow threads with Trinidadians and Tobagonians is where the hard skills of
ethnographic data collection are practiced and perfected. However, they must
learn to contextualize that voice and situate it as one among many other voices.

DATA WITHIN THE MUNDANE

The relative independence of our students is where the pedagogical and philo-
sophical dilemma lies. While we make no promises of global citizenship, we
do lay claim to conducting a social science methods course. As stated previ-
ously, we hold ourselves accountable for ensuring that students complete the
courses (both the prep and travel portions) with three main outcomes: (1)
increased knowledge of the social-political history of Trinidad and Tobago,
(2) a deeper understanding of ethnographic methods and their application,
and (3) greater confidence to negotiate foreign contexts independently. This
is a tall order for a two-week travel course with mostly non-majors. Some
questions we keep in mind as we work with them in the field are: How do
we ensure that they are applying the methods when in the field if we cannot
always accompany them? How do we assess, critique, and improve skill
application in the face of such independence? More philosophically, what do
we expect them to have gained from two weeks in Trinidad & Tobago apply-
ing, however inconsistently, the methods we have worked on?
Toward answering those questions, consider the case of the student
researching Trinidad’s crime rate. We are well aware that the two weeks he
spent in Trinidad & Tobago would not yield a tremendous amount of ana-
lyzable data on a professional level. The issue for us is not the amount of
data gathered but rather the methods practiced to acquire them. Was he able
to ask meaningful questions and follow-up on them, even if with different
interlocutors? Was he able to find data in a variety of sources? Was he able to
analyze his data in light of the materials he read before arriving in the field?
If the answer to those questions is yes, we believe we will have moved those
students toward greater reflexivity and social–historical contextualization.
In the first iteration of the class, we found that the way we had designed the
course assignments allowed for a bit too much independence for the students,
and we were challenged to ensure they were applying the methods in the
 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? 79

field. A large paper (an ethnography of sorts) due several days upon returning
home did little to hold them accountable when they were in situ. Though they
were expected to keep a field journal, we put more stock in the ethnography,
assuming, wrongly, that students would discuss their data collection methods
in detail. We remedied the problem by having routine and on-going check-ins
that require students to share their work with us and the rest of the class (e.g.,
the evening meetings).
For our last trip (January 2018), we drafted a series of directed questions
that students were required to respond to and posted them to an online dis-
cussion forum for us to respond in turn. Before we adopted the online-based
system, we kept the longstanding ethnographic tradition of keeping field
journals, which we still recommend. However, we found that even though we
requested reflection on methods and analysis of data, the journals read more
like diaries—long on summaries of things they did and people they talked
to and short on substantive methodological and theoretical discussion. In
some of the worst cases, students hastily scratched out vapid descriptions of
a few places they went and perhaps some food they ate or a new drink they
tried. While Geertzian (Geertz 1973) thick description may be a tall order for
twenty non-majors, we knew we could do better.
The directed questions, coupled with regular evening and one-on-one
meetings to follow up on their fieldwork and notes, attempt to steer the
students away from simply recording the mundane, and getting them to
recognize there is data within the mundane (Peterson 2009). In other words,
the questions and routine meetings hold them accountable for having some
kind of analysis of the symbolic world around them. The goal is to help stu-
dents recognize that the seemingly quotidian events unfolding before them,
whether at home or in the West Indies, is an elaborate performative drama
filled with signs and significations. This approach, though abstract for many
students initially, relieves the pressure of having some kind of grand ethno-
graphic encounter—walking the streets of Trinidad & Tobago and engag-
ing in conversation is a grand ethnographic encounter if analyzed as such.
Approaching the course as a series of encounters with the mundane also helps
us more easily negotiate what we call “the omniscient informant syndrome.”
This is a case where a student puts so much value on one informant’s claims
that they take those claims as gospel, assuming them as capital T truth about
Trinidadian life.

WHAT SEEMS TO BE WORKING

A key metric of our success is the feedback we get from students both
in the field and in our course evaluations. We have found that in-person
discussions with students in situ about their impressions of fieldwork, and
80 Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

the field itself, provide much richer narratives of the course’s effective-
ness than the course evaluations completed upon returning. As with any
course, there will be those students who take the class and its lessons
more seriously than others. This is no less true of our course in Trinidad
& Tobago—some students will work diligently to apply the methods train-
ing in the field to become better researchers, thinkers, and citizens of our
complex world, others will resist that training and view the course as an
opportunity to fulfill fantasies and desires as many tourists would, and
others will fall somewhere in between. While we do not have precise mea-
surements of where our students fall on this continuum, we do have strong
evidence, through observations, course evaluations, and discussions, to
suggest that most of our students engage in good faith to apprehend and
apply the skills we teach. We can see the benefits of students applying
these methods reflected in the course evaluations. The four primary themes
that emerged from their comments include the overall experience, the
work, being pushed to engage with locals in ways they would not have if
they merely traveled there as tourists and learning more about themselves
and others.
Students speak about the overall experience they have during the travel
portion of the class, typically ranking it as among their most interesting life
experiences thus far. Since most of our students are drawn from small towns
and rural areas, responses like this are common. Beyond the brief responses
such as “[an] amazing experience” or “a fantastic experience,” students stated
how the experience of the course affected them.

[It] was an amazing experience and I am happy with the research and travel
opportunity!
It is the most life-changing experience I’ve ever had.
Great experience for cultural understanding.

Students also referred to the hard work they did with their projects and how
that allowed them to have opportunities for more meaningful projects.

I came to work hard but I also wanted to really embrace the culture. My
research project changed as time progressed, and even while I was in
Trinidad and Tobago. Part of the fun of the project came from hard work we
put into it.
[The Professors] set this class up in a way that allowed everyone to do a project
they were excited about while still holding us too high standard of work.
I loved the work we were doing in Trinidad & Tobago so I didn’t hold back.
 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? 81

A key component of this course is to push students to think differently

about the world, to conceptualize it more creatively (Rabinow et al. 2011),
and to recognize that the methods we insist on them using help them accom-
plish these things. We push them to conceptualize the world they have stepped
into in ways that consider as many contextual contingencies as imaginable.
Put another way, we push them to think beyond the frames of typical tourism
that nearly always place the self as the center of observation and analysis,
evidenced in the comments below. Evening class meetings and individual
meetings afforded us the opportunity to hear where students are at, and then
push them to do more, ask more questions, and/or seek out new informants.
Course evaluations described how being pushed to go beyond their “comfort
zones” added to the course and their experiences. In our experience, being
pushed beyond their “comfort zone” typically means being asked to engage
with others in ways they ordinarily would not.

I grew so much from this. It brought me out of my comfort zone and really push
my boundaries in a good way. When I got back I had this awesome feeling of
independence and like I can do anything.
Very good opportunity to immerse yourself into a different culture. [Professors]
pushed us out of our comfort zones so we could get as much out of the course
as we could.
Pushes you to interact with a different culture in really beneficial ways.
You’re pushed to do more than you’re comfortable with and end up loving that
you’ve tried so many new things.

[The professors] are always asking you to do more, learn more, be more.

Student learning can take place in a variety of ways. Students discussed how
they learned about themselves as much as they did about Trinidad & Tobago and
how, through that experience, they felt more “aware” and that it “really opened
[their] eyes”. In other words, they believed that their experiences were more
meaningful than they would have been had they traveled merely as tourists.

It was really interesting to listen and learn at what everyone had to say about
certain issues and beliefs.
This trip really opened my eyes to the world. It may only be one different cul-
ture, but it shows just how different their culture is from America and means
that everywhere you go will be diverse.
Traveling has helped me to become more aware of the world.
82 Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

I learned a lot about other people on this trip. Not only Trinidadians but U.S.
people too.
I learned so much about myself through this class.

As with any travel class, there are challenges that present themselves,
sometimes on a daily basis. When students offered critical feedback, it was
most often around the issue of organization/logistics, which often times are
out of the control of the trip leaders. However, what the criticism underscores
is the difficulty for many students of being in a foreign environment without
a daily, hour-by-hour itinerary as one might experience on an organized, pre-
planned tour.

There are a few organizational aspects that could’ve been improved

Certain things could have been organized/planned/communicated better
Some kinks with organization and communication

THE CHALLENGE OF ASSESSING STUDENT WORK

Once in the field, student assessment takes on a different tenor. We no longer

have standard papers to read, critique, and grade. Rather, we have twenty
students making their way through Trinidad & Tobago with partially remem-
bered methods and imperfectly rendered projects. But if we maintain any
hope of our students using and thus properly learning ethnographic methods,
we must create measurable learning outcomes, however imprecise that sci-
ence may be. As stated previously, we make every effort to accompany our
students at least once as they conduct meetings and observations in the field.
We also use this time, importantly, to review methods and remind them of
what we went over in the prep class. Finally, we read their journals, which,
as indicated above, are now directed by questions that steer them away from
diary entries. Yet the question remains, how do we assess such an eclectic,
exceedingly imprecise body of work? Indeed, much of that “body of work”
is more of an event than an analyzable artifact, making the use of grad-
ing rubrics problematic. In other words, since our students are engaged in
on-going processes that involve interactions with all manner of people and
places, much of which we will not be present for, what they produce is not
easily captured in written work; the written work is not all they do. As such,
how do we accurately, and equitably, assess events, in all their varying con-
texts and contingencies, over more conventionally measurable assignments?
To put the assessment problem in starker relief, imagine the recurring,
very real case of the student who does deeply engaged, thoughtfully driven,
fieldwork (by modified standards, of course). This is the student who
 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? 83

makes an effort to meet with Trinidadians and Tobagonians at multiple

opportunities. She does detailed background research, sets up meetings,
reviews her data for refining her questions, makes astute observations and
uses those to inform further work with informants, and importantly takes
guidance and feedback well from instructors. Taken together, this reflects
the work one does to practice informed, thoughtful ethnography and would
therefore seem to warrant high marks in the grade book. The problem,
however, emerges that her writing does not match the excellence of her
fieldwork. How do we then assign a grade to this student while remaining
fair to others? What events and artifacts do we assess and what carries the
most weight?
While we have yet to discover a simple solution that upholds the standards
of fairness that we can apply in a typical classroom setting, for this program
we have elected to put more weight on the practicing of fieldwork methods
than writing. Since we are running a methods course, we prioritize the use
and practice of ethnographic methods. This, predictably, raises its own set of
problems, especially in the case of excellent writers (strongly valued in the
liberal arts). However, the way we see it, even the best writing cannot salvage
poorly executed fieldwork. Thus, 80 percent of the students’ grades hinge on
active, engaged, and meaningful fieldwork.
Though the weight may appear high to some instructors and thus pedagogi-
cally problematic, it must be borne in mind that two weeks is insufficient time
to conduct quality field research and write a strong ethnography. However, it
seems two weeks is enough time to demonstrate a strong understanding and
application of methods, hence the heavy weighting of fieldwork over writing.
If pedagogically our approach is not ideal, students do seem to be respond-
ing well to the arrangement. In addition to the usual comments about how
“cool” Trinidad and Tobago was, more substantive comments indicate that
many of them truly apprehended what ethnographic methods are and how to
use them. Most students are surprised that social science would be so, in one
student’s terms, “sciencey.” The rigorous focus on planning the project, writ-
ing a prospectus, collecting, organizing, and analyzing data, and presenting
their work is not what most students have in mind when they imagine a trip
to the Caribbean. What, precisely, they have in mind is unclear, but a rather
rigorous methods course rarely makes the list. It is common for students to
report their surprise that a travel course would hold such high expectations,
but that, in turn, they were glad we did.

DISCUSSION

Experience, in and of itself, does not alter one’s way of thinking but rather
it is the meaning one makes of the experience that does so. Every encounter
84 Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

with an/other subject or object has a transformative effect on individuals in

a Hegelian (Hegel 1977) dialectical sense. Subjects, Hegel contends, are in
a continual state of transformation as each encounter with other subjects and
even objects shifts, however slightly, not just perception but their very ontol-
ogy. The question before us as instructors of a short-term travel course is the
kind of alteration we wish to affect in our students.
The question we face is whether that change fundamentally alters the way
they think about a world of cultural others. In other words, students going
to the West Indies as tourists, with all the expectations of pleasure and fun
that typically accompany such trips, are unlikely to refocus their orientation
to other contexts, lifeways, and how they see others. However, if they go as
observers and listeners of complex social–cultural processes, they are cer-
tainly more likely to have had dialectical experiences that do alter the way
they think about the world. Hypothetically, could a student who was, say,
racist, return from a country comprised of people 40 percent of African heri-
tage, 40 percent of East Indian heritage, and 20 percent either a mix of those
or from somewhere else altogether, and be less racist? Or not racist at all?
This dilemma returns us to our primary pedagogical and philosophical
problem—does a travel course, can a travel course, necessarily open a student
to appreciating the complex lifeways of others? Will it create a global citizen?
Or, at least, contribute to the formation of a sense of commitment to global
others? In the case of our hypothetical racist, they could return from the West
Indies having had all of their worst biases about people of color confirmed.
They could return more entrenched in their misguided views than when they
left. For example, if they were inclined to believe that people of color are
predisposed to criminality, corruption, and immorality, they could look at
Trinidad’s violent crime rate spiraling out of control and talked about daily
in nearly every venue, they could hear and read about unchecked political
corruption, and they could see all the street limes and wild parties, and come
home more convinced in their views than when they departed.
This is an extreme example, but not markedly so. We have had students
ask, in distressing rehearsals of abiding essentialisms, if Trinidad’s problems
could be linked to the nation’s demographic profile. Simply traveling, as a
tourist might, is not necessarily an effective antidote to prejudice. However,
understanding social form and practice within historical and contemporary
political-economic context typically is (see Rabinow et al. 2011). Our course,
as we have described throughout this chapter, must be as much content as
methods training. Folding both elements into a 2-credit prep-course that
many students approach as the fine print they have to endure until they get
to the main event is difficult. Yet, if we want their experience to be anthro-
pological (to yield insights about the norms and forms of others and the self)
versus a traditional tourist experience (where any research is more about the
 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? 85

best places to eat and sightseeing trips), they must have some understanding
of the broader context of the country they will be working in for two weeks.
The course therefore cannot be strictly focused on methods but must also
include historical, political, and sociological–anthropological texts and class
discussions.
What we therefore strive to accomplish in our students’ work is that they
are able, at least to some degree, to situate the data they collect within the
social–historical contexts we covered both in the prep-class and the on-going
discussions while in the field. In the face of such limited time horizons, we
cannot reasonably expect richly detailed analyses informed by complex theo-
retical paradigms. But we do expect them to try to contextualize the narratives
they collect and events they observe. Though this skill is one of the most dif-
ficult for many of them to apply, we have found that with repetition comes
habit. In specific, the habits we attempt to instill, especially once in the field,
are those revolving around inquiry and analysis rather than pleasure-based
tourism.

CONCLUSION

In the introduction to his now classic book The Repeating Island, Antonio
Benítez-Rojo calls for a rereading of the Caribbean, urging scholars of the
region to look beyond the usual frames of development that have dominated
interpretations of the West Indies since the advent of imperialism. Drawing
on Roland Barthes’ insight that upon every first reading “the reader inevi-
tably reads himself,” Benítez-Rojo calls upon observers “to do the kind of
reading in which every text begins to reveal its own textuality” (2006: 2).
Benítez-Rojo’s plea is a challenging one even for advanced scholars of the
region, let alone for American undergraduates who are accustomed to read-
ing themselves into virtually every text they encounter. As such, we are fully
aware that despite the many challenging historical and social science texts
we cover in the prep class, many of our students still bring their desires for
fun and pleasure with them to Trinidad & Tobago. However, through both
the prep and travel portions of the course, we believe that with enough focus
on methods, and insistence on bearing in mind Trinidad & Tobago’s colonial
history and its geo-political present, we can encourage students to allow the
country to reveal its own textuality, even if only fleetingly.
The goal is to get our students to see something other than themselves
in the Caribbean social landscape. Speaking to imaginary tourists, Jamaica
Kincaid writes in A Small Place, “You see yourself lying on the beach, enjoy-
ing the amazing sun . . . You see yourself taking a walk on that beach, you
see yourself meeting new people (only they are new in a very limited way,
86 Aaron Andrew Greer and Don D. Schweitzer

for they are people just like you). You see yourself eating some delicious,
locally grown food. You see yourself, you see yourself” (2000: 13). Though
our time in the field is short, we attempt to get our students to see both other
textualities rather than their own as well as reflexively contextualizing their
own place in global modernity.
We labor under no illusion that a semester-long two-credit prep-course
that meets every other week for an hour-and-a-half, followed by two weeks
of in situ fieldwork, will awaken all of our students to the long history of
the imperial project and its lingering effects on other nations. Nor will it
give them profound insight about Trinidadians and Tobagonians and their
historically and contemporarily shaped lives. And for most of our students,
it is unlikely that they will retain the finer points of the methods they
practiced in the course and in the field. As dispiriting as that realization is,
we have also seen profound change in the many students who applied the
methods and challenged themselves to conduct ethnographically engaged,
contextually informed field work. Students from a host of different majors
have reported that the independent nature of the course pushed them to
interact with others and explore Trinidad & Tobago in ways they would
not have if they came as tourists. By doing this, we feel this will encourage
them to explore other novel worlds in ways they would not have without
our course. This is spiriting news. Whether or not this makes our students
“global citizens” remains an open question. But that the ethnographic pro-
cess we move them through builds the tools for confident and contextually
contingent exploration of others’ lives and worlds tells us our course design
is on the right path.

NOTES

1. A note on students’ course comments: Throughout this chapter, student com-

ments, from course evaluations, will be used to reinforce themes and ideas. Individual
exemplars from students that may have been confusing or awkward to the reader were
edited with care to insure the speaker’s intent was not lost.
2. Trinidad has an alarming rate of violent crime, currently ranked third in the
West Indies for murder rate and eleventh globally. These crimes are often centered in
specific neighborhoods, and, as such, students are made aware of the areas they are
allowed to visit to insure they do not wander into an unsafe area.

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 Two Weeks to Global Citizenship? 87

Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. 2006. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the
Postmodern Perspective, 2nd ed. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bernard, H. Russel. 2011. Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and
Quantitative Approaches. Lanham: Alta Mira Press.
Biehl, João. 2013. Ethnography in the Way of Theory. Cultural Anthropology 28, no.
4: 573–597.
Blake, Marion, Lindsey Pierce, Shonda Gibson, Stephen Reysen, and Iva Katzarska-
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 Chapter 3

Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing,
and Labeling
Technologies of Border Construction
and Discourses of Border Crossing
in Study Abroad/Away
Neriko Musha Doerr

FROM BORDER-CROSSING TO OTHERING

Out of many differences, we notice only some. Difference is not an absolute

quality between groups of people but something we notice in a sociocultural
context that makes that difference meaningful and thus consequential. For
example, not being able to hear is meaningful difference and may be catego-
rized as “disability” in a society where communication occurs dominantly
through auditory means; it would not be so in a society where everyone uses
sign language. We as individuals are part of the process of constructing such
sociocultural contexts as well as performatively acting to reiterate differences
and corresponding borders (McDermott and Varenne 1995). Therefore, I
suggest we need to move away from assuming that differences or borders are
there to be crossed, and instead examine the process of differentiation and
border-making—otherwise known as “othering.”
Othering constitutes the Self relationally and hierarchically in diverse
ways, through literature and academic works (Fabian 2002[1983]; Said
1978), media texts (hooks 1992), museums and performances (Fusco 1995),
as well as through travels and travel writings (Pratt 2008[1992]; Lisle 2006).
In travel, “Others” can reveal “a cosmological center of Self located beyond
the immediate realms of the everyday” (Picard and Di Giovine 2014: 1), with
some “magical” overtones of dangerous supernatural power to which Others
have been linked and which allows the Western Self to renew the moral

89
90 Neriko Musha Doerr

order (Picard and Di Giovine 2014). Such “representational assemblages” are

transmitted and shared, interacting with the tourist’s personal imaginaries to
create meanings of the destination and travel experiences (Salazar 2012: 2).
Controlled othering is at the basis of tourism industry. It is controlled
because there is a tension between standardization and differentiation.
Standardization in tourism occurs within a shared infrastructure (e.g., air-
lines and hotels), a shared standard of quality in the amenity, and the inter-
changeability of destinations as a “paradise” or “getaway” when natural or
man-made disasters render another destination unavailable. Differentiation
in tourism is also necessary as tourist sites compete for tourists—“profiting
from difference.” There is also differentiation from the “everyday” to make
the destination a “getaway” from the mundane (Picard and Di Giovine 2014;
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998).
In study abroad, there are different contours of such “benefits” of differen-
tiation. Aiming at nurturing students’ “global competence” and “intercultural
sensitivity” (Deadorff 2009; Lewin and Van Kirk 2009), as I argued else-
where (2013; 2016; 2017; 2018) and as I will detail in the next section, study
abroad relies on the existence of difference, which then reifies borders. There
are three ways that difference becomes crucial in study abroad: study abroad
is promoted as an “adventure” (Zemach-Bersin 2009; see also Bodinger de
Uriarte this volume) that necessitates novelty of the destination and experi-
ence; what is considered as the best learning experience in study abroad
(Laushauber 1994)—immersion—relies on the difference of the destination
in terms of people and their lifestyle (Doerr 2013, 2016; Doerr and Suarez
2018); and one key component of the expected learning process—going out
of one’s comfort zone—necessitates the destination to be a different, thus
disorienting, place for the students.
This chapter builds on this understanding, but shifts the focus to various
practices during and after studying abroad, and examines how they work to
construct the very difference/borders with which the study-abroad project
aims to engage. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork and narrative analyses
on study-abroad trips, I examine three cases that show such construction
of borders. The first case examines collective rituals done by American
study-abroad students in Sierra Leone who were concerned with cleanliness
and sanitary safety. These rituals created a border between the “we-t​he-vu​
lnera​ble-t​o-ger​ms-an​d-thu​s-in-​need-​of-pr​otect​ion” and “they-who-live-with-
these-germs,” but also pushed them to cross that border by “safe-guarding”
them from perceived germs and diseases. The second case investigates
study-abroad students in Peru who experienced and also perpetuated the
border drawn by wealth differences, with some implications to nationality
initiated by what I call social-pricing—pricing based on the perceptions of
the consumers’ social status. The last case analyzes the act of labeling certain
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 91

experiences as “immersion experiences” by one Colombian American study-

abroad student in Spain, supplemented by discussion of existing literature,
as a border-making practice. By showing two types of borders—between
study-abroad students and people in the destination and between wealthy and
non-wealthy individuals that cut across the first border—I argue that border-
making is a scale-making practice that asserts which scales constitute relevant
and meaningful units of analyses.
This chapter is part of my wider research on learning practices among
study-abroad students and how they construct imaginaries of space, time,
and subjectivities during study abroad (2012, 2013). In what follows, I will
review the existing literature on study abroad, explain the methods I used, and
describe and analyze the three cases mentioned above.

Border-Crossing or Border-Construction?
The Need of Borders in Study Abroad
The main focus of existing research on study abroad centers on its main
goal: to nurture students’ “global knowledge” (Hovland et al. 2009),
“global competence” (Lambert 1994), and “cross-cultural adaptability”
(HRDQ-U 2019). Some researchers discuss how to measure such outcomes
accurately: through performance-based assessment, self-assessment, or
statistics (Carlson et al. 1990; Deardorff 2009; Laubscher 1994; Lewin
and Van Kirk 2009; Plater et al. 2009). Others suggest activities that foster
these desired outcomes: well-planned pre-departure experiences (Brustein
2009); ethnographic projects (Ogden 2006; Roberts 1994); reflective writing
(Chen 2002); and service work, internships, and co-op programs (Bringle
and Hatcher 2011; Lewin and Van Kirk 2009; Plater et al. 2009). Hardly
examined is a core assumption of study-abroad goals: the pre-existence of
“cultural difference.”
I have argued elsewhere (2013; 2016; 2017; 2018) that the educational
project of study abroad as it stands constructs the very difference it aims to
bridge, as I review below. There are three ways by which study abroad relies
on the existence of difference/borders. The first is the view of study abroad
as an “adventure.” Advertisements (Zemach-Bersin 2009) and guidebooks
(Doerr 2012) for studying abroad tend to stoke students’ fascination with
“difference” (Oxford 2005: 96), oftentimes referring to the experience as “an
adventure abroad” (Loflin 2007: x). The notion of adventure relies mainly
on the existence of stark difference between study-abroad students’ home
and host societies or at least providing opportunities for new and different
experiences: if these societies are seen to be similar to each other, visiting
the host society does not constitute an “adventure” (Doerr 2012; also, see
Kirshenblatt-Gimblet 1998).
92 Neriko Musha Doerr

The second is the discourse of immersion. Immersion is described as to

live:

in a ‘living laboratory’ that forces them to become actively involved in the

learning process on every level—intellectual, psychological, and emotional.
This holistic dimension is what makes education abroad uniquely suited to pro-
moting an appreciation for cultural differences. (Laubscher 1994: xiv)

Here, because learning activities are not clearly outlined, noticing differ-
ence is inherently connected to “learning” experience: for example, students
report learning how French people dress by identifying their difference from
how Americans dress (Doerr 2017). I will provide some critique of this dis-
course later in the chapter.
The third is the view that learning in study abroad comes from a disori-
enting experience offering cognitive dissonance. Researchers say being in
an unfamiliar environment, especially if tools of observation and analysis
as well as reflective opportunities are provided, allows students to critically
examine their surroundings and their own place in them (Brockington and
Wiedenhoeft 2009). This type of experience—that of cognitive dissonance—
allows students to learn to navigate unknown environments and confront their
personal limitations, leading to self-confidence, increased adaptability, risk-
taking, empathy with others, knowledge of another “culture” as well as their
own, and ability to shift their perspectives (Brockington and Wiedenhoeft
2009; Cushner 2009). Suggesting that students learn through crossing the
border of their comfort zone, which is often assumed to overlap with the
nation-state borders (Wolf 1994), is another way study abroad highlights and
constructs the border.
This structure of study abroad constitutes an important environment
which pushes students to notice particular difference, thus creating “borders”
(McDermott and Varenne 1995). This chapter builds on the above research
and further argues how practices in study abroad highlight and construct these
differences, thus borders, between the students’ home and host societies as
well as along the class lines, complicating such border construction.
Richard Wilk (1995) argues that “globalization” produces not so much
homogenization through spreading similar things throughout the world but
rather creates shared frameworks of differentiation, a “global structure of
common difference” where differences are perceived and judged with the
same criteria. In the field of tourism, Michael Di Giovine (2009: 159) argues
that tourism packages “unity in diversity” across time and space to create
ritualized encounters with differences. Such encounters would foster the sen-
timent of communitas, the state of chaos and unity that represents the opposite
of normative structure of the society and yet imbues vitality to it (Turner
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 93

1974: 273). In this chapter, I argue that study-abroad practices produce differ-
ences through the act of othering. However, while these differences are con-
structed along the lines of nation-state borders where the concept of “culture”
often overlaps (Wolf 1994), practices I examine in this chapter also highlight
class difference thus construct class borders.
Discussions on borders tend to focus on those of national security initiated
by the state and yet carried out increasingly by dispersed agents, including
citizens. Johnson and Jones (2014) argue that the end of Cold War created
the discourse of globalization—the breaking down of barriers—while the
border work became harsher through increased patrol and new surveillance
systems. The kinds of border work had changed recently as well: border
work was strengthened at the physical border itself but also decentered
expanding to daily life, in the form of checking of immigration documents
and raids in search of undocumented immigrants. The agents of border work
also expanded to multiple local actors—every citizen reporting suspicious
acts encouraged after 9/11—and local police officers carrying out immigra-
tion enforcement that used to be solely the realm of the federal government.
These new “imagined” borders shape our view of the world and our place
in it as well as our relation to other people. What we see today is a form of
sovereignty that is contingent and mediated at multiple scales through mul-
tiple actors, not the state acting on behalf of people for their security (see
also Jones 2012). However, the kinds of borders I examine in this chapter
are cultural borders constructed in daily life without necessarily implicating,
though still intertwined with, security issues and those which operate at vari-
ous scales, including class borders.

FIELDWORK ON STUDY ABROAD

All three cases introduced in this chapter are based on my ethnographic field-
work on study-abroad experience by students in Cape College1 faculty-led
study abroad trips to Sierra Leone in 2012 (the first case), to Peru in 2016
(the second case), and narratives of a student who studied abroad in Spain in
2013 at a local university in a program designed for American study-abroad
students (the third case). Cape College is a public liberal arts college in the
northeastern United States with an enrollment of about 6,000 students. The
details of each program will be introduced later.
Most research on study abroad derives from the sending side’s concerns
and presents little supporting evidence, Amit (2010) argues. Ethnographic
work on study-abroad students’ experience could fill this gap though it differs
from conventional ethnographic fieldwork (Murphy-Lejeune 2002) as it is
multi-sited. Such sites include the study-abroad students’ home country and
94 Neriko Musha Doerr

host country, as well as various countries students may travel to during their
study-abroad stay.
This chapter uses a case study method that focuses in-depth on students’
specific subject positions and the contexts in which they are situated. Talburt
and Stewart (1999) critique study-abroad research as generalizing students’
experiences abroad, ignoring how the students’ race and gender affect their
experience. The case study method responds to this critique, seeking instead
qualitative analyses that capture connections between various factors from
socio-structural to locally specific, nuanced and situated processes of learn-
ing, holistic understanding of individuals’ experiences, and relations of
power between the researcher and the researched that quantitative studies can
overlook. This chapter in particular focuses on the class position of students,
with some discussions on their subject positions in terms of race. The tables
provided in this chapter keep the analyses open-ended, allowing the readers
to further examine connections between the students’ subject positions and
their actions and statements.
Ethnographic data are always a result of unique interactions between
researchers and the researched, situated in layers of relations of power
(Clifford 1988). I had taught as adjunct faculty at Cape College during these
research periods, but none of the students involved in these trips had taken
my classes. Although these institutionally established power relations, our
interaction was unlike professor–student relations in the classroom, because
not only was I not giving them grades but I also positioned myself as some-
one who was learning from them as I carried out ethnographic research of the
trip. For example, all students called me by my first name without my active
invitation, which is otherwise uncommon.
Below are three cases that show diverse ways borders get constructed
through practices during and after study-abroad trips: safe-guarding the stu-
dents from [perceived] diseases and uncleanliness through collective rituals,
social-pricing things in the destination and differentiating people accordingly,
and labeling certain acts as “immersion.”

SAFE-GUARDING: COLLECTIVE
RITUALS IN SIERRA LEONE

This section analyzes collective rituals that occurred during our two-week
trip from May 19 to June 2, 2012 aimed at providing support in terms of
resources and knowledge in maternity health care in Sierra Leone. A 4-credit
course designed and taught by two nursing professors, this trip worked with
a Non-Profit Organization (NPO) in Sierra Leone. We spent our first week
in Freetown and the second in Bo. We visited hospitals, a nursing school,
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 95

markets, beaches, and an orphanage. Members of the NPO we worked with

and hotel staff and drivers—all Sierra Leoneans—were with us every day.
All eight students and two professors participated in my research, which was
carried out in three stages: before, during, and after the trip. In all stages, I
interviewed all participants and carried out participant observation through-
out the trip.
Below, I describe two collective rituals—that of disease prevention and
that of cleansing—and analyze how they were both rituals of safe-guarding.

The Rituals of Disease Prevention: Vaccination,

Malaria Pills, and Insect Repellent
Our trip was marked with health precautions that ushered the impression that
we were going to a place with severe health risks. A yellow fever vaccination
was required for a visa to enter Sierra Leone. Hepatitis A and B, Rabies, and
Typhoid vaccinations were recommended, which most of us followed. For
malaria, we brought pills to take daily while in Sierra Leone. Travel nurses
also told us not to drink tap water or eat food that was washed with tap water.
(During the trip, many of us did have mild travelers’ diarrhea. In addition,
one student became violently ill for 24 hours from the palm wine he bought,
which caused us much anxiety.)
In my pre-trip interviews, I asked the students what they were worried
about the most. Five out of eight students mentioned getting sick, three
specifically mentioned malaria. One of the students shared with us that her
mother almost died of malaria when she traveled to Uganda, creating a fear
among us about malaria as deadly, although that is true for only one of five
strains (Center for Disease Control and Prevention n.d.).
During our stay, we also played out collective rituals of malaria preven-
tion: taking malaria pills together after every breakfast. We consciously did
it together by reminding each other to take these pills. Most of us also put on
insect repellent every time we went outside because mosquito bites can cause
malaria. In my post-trip interviews, some students said they put on repel-
lent “every single second. After shower. Morning. Before going anywhere”
(Brittany). Others did not bother: one did not think she would get malaria
(Lisa) and another stopped after a few days, because he was tired of being
sticky and “did not get bit that much anyways” (Muhammad).

The Rituals of Cleansing: Hand Sanitizer

Another daily collective ritual was the use of hand sanitizer. Almost every-
one carried their own bottle but it was usually shared; whoever took one out
offered it to others. It happened before meals at the table and after visiting
96 Neriko Musha Doerr

hospitals. In the post-trip interview, I asked students when they used hand
sanitizer and why. Four responded “all the time” and one simply responded
“yes.” It indicated their sense that people and things were not “clean” there.
Elias said he used hand sanitizer “Like every hour, every ten minutes”
because “I felt . . . [there were] sanitation issues. So I felt like I needed to
protect myself.” Tiffany used it “after everything. Before eating, after eating,
after using bathroom, after anything.” I asked if she felt a lot of the things
were not very clean, to which she replied “Yeah. Definitely.” Lisa used it “to
prevent catching anything.” Allison used it “because I wasn’t sure what kind
of illnesses and bacteria they might have had or could give me. Also, a lot of
them didn’t seem to always have clean hands and feet.” Brittany explained,
“I’m very aware of micro-organisms and they have different, more vast kinds
of bacteria.”
Others reported using it more moderately. Muhammad said he used it
“before I would eat . . . and like if I would shake a lot of people’s hands . . .
Especially in the hospitals ‘cause I don’t know what stuff they touched or if
they have any illness.” Fern said, “I wasn’t really big on the hand sanitizer
. . . Maybe like one or two times a day . . . after like I touch something dirty,
but other than that, like if they would hug me or shake my hands, I wouldn’t
use hand sanitizer. I think that’s very rude.” She felt “most people used it
more than me.”
Some explained the frequent use was due to our frequent visits to
hospitals:

When we contact people [in Sierra Leone], it was mainly in the hospital . . . and
you’re gonna need that in the hospital . . .They have hand sanitizers in the doors
in the hospital [in the United States also]. Over here [in the United States], I’m
not in the hospital walking around touching patients . . . so I guess that’s the big
difference. (Anjana)

Here, while Muhammad downplayed his use of hand sanitizer, Fern

explained how frequent use of hand sanitizer in Sierra Leone is not based on
the prejudice about the country being “less clean” but on the kinds of things
we did—such as interacting with sick people—more than what we would do
in the United States.
Hand sanitizer use stood out because at the time of the research it was less
common in the United States to use it frequently, especially collectively. It
had to do with how we used it in lieu of washing hands with water because,
in Sierra Leone, water was not only often not accessible but also perceived
as “dirty,” in terms of having bacteria in it with which our stomachs are not
familiar, which would thus cause travelers’ diarrhea: “[In the United States], I
wash my hands before I eat and have more access to soap and water . . . Over
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 97

there [in Sierra Leone] . . . they don’t really have soap and water . . . so hand
sanitizer was the only option,” said Anjana.
The professors leading the trip—more knowledgeable about health risks
and more familiar with Sierra Leone—reported using hand sanitizer less
frequently. Dr. Phillips used it “before meals, maybe after examining a child,
patient… I did not use it as much as others around me. Maybe I did not feel
the fear factor.” Dr. Binghamton “used it . . . when I consciously knew that I
touched something yucky . . . I didn’t use it like every fifteen seconds.” She
also explained that “it’s really been kind of documented not to work that well
. . . They say if you touch something overtly disgusting, yeah, but . . . for the
average everyday stuff it [does not].” She felt students “are of the generation
where everything that they’ve ever touched is like Lysoled to death,” and that
travel nurses put fear in them.

Collective Rituals of Safe-Guarding and

Othering that Made us Daring
Our use of vaccination, malaria pills, insect repellent, and hand sanitizer were
collective rituals of protection from various diseases: the first three preventive
and the last one after the fact. Ironically, these rituals pushed us to be daring:
they “safe-guarded” us to do things that we might not do otherwise, keeping
us in the “bubble.” Vaccination and malaria pills eased our anxiety to venture
into a country that we may not have otherwise visited. Insect repellent made us
feel safe to be exposed to mosquitos that might carry malaria. The assurance
that we could use hand sanitizer afterward made us feel comfortable ventur-
ing into “not quite sanitary” situations: when we visited hospitals, none of us
hesitated to shake hands with patients, though the interviews show that many
of the students were worried about contracting sickness from them—know-
ing we could use hand sanitizer afterword, we touched them nonetheless. We
gave hugs to children in the orphanage, which was followed by the use of
hand sanitizer by some (not all), indicating for some it was a “dirty” experi-
ence and, without hand sanitizer, they may not have hugged the children.
Frank Furedi (2006) argues that we live in the “culture of fear” where the
target of fear can be anything because it really is about the culture of distrust
in humanity in general. This distrust pushes us to think of human relationships
in terms of reducing risk—emotional and/or physical harm that derives from
the developed relationships—rather than of other aspects involved in nurtur-
ing social relationships. The collective rituals of protection under discussion
reduced the fear of diseases by reducing the “risk” of catching them, which
then allowed us to explore more engaging relationships with Sierra Leoneans.
Problematically, these rituals also othered Sierra Leone space as dirty and
dangerous, and differentiated our group from the local population in Sierra
98 Neriko Musha Doerr

Leone; they were collective rituals of othering the space and people of Sierra
Leone. Because local people were not taking malaria pills or using insect
repellent and, as far as we know, they were not using hand sanitizer—Sierra
Leoneans who spent time with us did use it when they were with us at the
dinner table, but they never carried a bottle like we did—our use of these
things highlighted the perception that Sierra Leone is not safe (disease-wise)
or clean enough for us. This created a border at the scale of nation.
As a collective ritual, there was a kind of peer pressure to accept the offer
to use hand sanitizer. With the round of hand sanitizer before each meal,
we were participating in the ritual of differentiating ourselves from Sierra
Leoneans who did not use hand sanitizer, either because they are familiar
with or did not mind the local germs or had different worldviews regarding
health and illness. The rituals divided us into we-th​e-vul​nerab​le-to​-germ​s-and​
-thus​-need​-prot​ectio​n vs. they-who-live-with-these-germs. Rituals and ritual-
istic practices not only give meaning to the space but also establish relation-
ships between people (de Certeau 1984; Suzuki 2008). Specifically because
it was done collectively, it became a matter of creating borders, carving out
a bubble.
This kind of bubble exists in various types of tourism. For example, in
“slum tourism” and other forms of “poverty tourism” that are motivated by
understanding and creating empathy for those in poverty, the bubble comes in
the form of observer’s blind spot: the observer not being able to observe him/
herself in the act of observing, which creates specific imaginaries that hide the
relationship between the observer (those who can afford to travel to observe
poverty) and the observed (those in poverty) that structure the formers’ per-
ceptions and works to privilege “observer-dependent construction of reality”
(Meschkank 2011: 61). In such “dark tourism” as well as “heritage tourism,”
however, certain subversive performances, such as the narrative performance
of travel guides that shift and bridge these two groups (Bunten 2008; Suzuki
2016), for example, can work to “pop the bubble,” challenging the tourists’
stereotypes about the destination.
These border-marking rituals derive not only from medical findings but
also from culturally informed perceptions. Dirtiness and getting sick were
seen as connected in biomedicine that is “objective” and “scientific” truth.
However, both are also connected to cultural beliefs. What is considered
“dirty” is cultural; Mary Douglas (1980[1966]) once analyzed it as something
out of place. Soil in the field is not “dirty” but soil in the kitchen floor is, for
example. Beliefs in what causes disease is cultural: it could be a curse, the
effects of a body losing its necessary balance, or germs. Although the first
two may seem more cultural than the last from the biomedical perspective,
the first two can also be explained scientifically—the first, as the psychoso-
matic effects for those who believe in the efficacy of a curse and the second,
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 99

as the holistic approach to medicine—and the last can also be seen as cultural.
The notion of bacteria causing disease can lead to a folk belief because we
do need some bacteria to help build our immune system: when contact with
bacteria is avoided 100 percent, especially for small children, they are more
likely to become sick later (WebMD n.d.). The exaggeration of disease-pre-
venting practices—such as using hand sanitizer every ten minutes—though
based on medical findings on the risks of diseases, is based on cultural beliefs
rather than medical necessity, as the nursing professors suggested.
Researchers have discussed that studying abroad in Third World destina-
tions risks perpetuating colonial relations (Woolf 2007), especially if it is
not accompanied by discussions of structural causes of imbalances of wealth
around the world (Nenga 2011). As we worked with the NPO, we talked
about the lack of infrastructure for sanitation as a result of a decade-long civil
war, from which Sierra Leone was still recovering. Even with such discus-
sions, these rituals perpetuated the view that the Third World, not the specific
post-civil-war conditions, is not sanitary enough for the First World travelers,
who need protective rituals to experience it. These collective rituals simulta-
neously created borders between illness and health and between “clean” and
“unclean” and pushed us to cross them.

SOCIAL-PRICING: CLASS BORDERS IN PERU

In Peru, study-abroad students experienced divided consumer experience

depending on their disposable cash. Whereas the border was drawn between
study-abroad students and people in the destination in the above case in Sierra
Leone, the border in this Peru experience was drawn across students and the
people in Peru. “Those with money” included the local wealthy population
and foreign visitors with a strong currency exchange rate, including wealthy
American college students studying abroad. “Those without money” were
the local population with modest financial resources, as well as less-wealthy
American study-abroad students. Some divisions were institutional, and oth-
ers by the willingness and ability to spend money. In this section, we discuss
both by focusing on two cases: differentiated train fees and differently priced
night clubs.
During a Cape College study-abroad trip for business students to Peru from
May 16 to 29, 2016, led by a business professor, we experienced this social-
pricing in person as two groups emerged during the trip. At first, it appeared
the division was based on personality preferences, if not cliquishness, as the
division was not officially sanctioned in any way. (Although some students
who roomed together ended up in different “groups”—one student told me
her roommate acted like a different person to her, since she was very friendly
100 Neriko Musha Doerr

when they were in the room together but very cold when everyone else
is there—I ended up in the group my roommate belonged because I went
along with the flow around me). However, it soon became apparent that it
also reflected divergent willingness to pay more money for food and other
activities. Through our own divided practices, we noticed the ways things
were priced differently for different costumers in Peru. I call this “social-
pricing” because it is based on expectations of the customers as to how much
disposable income they have and are willing to spend on a particular item or
activities; it is based not only on their economic background but also on their
priorities informed by their tastes, lifestyles, and value systems that reflect
their social status. It is also based on the perception on the part of the seller
what the customer deserves or is entitled to in terms of their heritage and
belonging, that is, as “Peruvians.”
Although it was a credit-bearing course led by a Cape College professor,
like the Sierra Leone program, an external study-abroad provider designed
the entire trip, and we were accompanied by guide(s) from the provider at all
times, along with one local guide while we were in the Cuzco area. We spent
ten days in Lima visiting small businesses and government organizations, as
well as museums and archaeological ruins. We then spent four days doing
excursions (we had a half-a-day of lecture during this excursion period) in
Cuzco, Ollantaytambo, and Machu Picchu.
Similar to my research in Sierra Leone, I interviewed students and the
professor before, during, and after the trip. One student initially did not
wish to participate in my research (i.e., doing interviews and consenting
to recording her comments) but later decided to be interviewed and for her
comments to be used in my research. For the post-trip interviews, I inter-
viewed five students; these were not all of the students, as I will explain
later. I also observed pre-trip meetings as well as participated in all aspects
of the trip.

Trains
An example of the institutional social-pricing is the transportation to the
archaeological site of the Inca Empire, Machu Picchu, from the nearby city
of Cuzco. There were four ways to get from Cuzco to Machu Picchu served
by two train companies—PeruRail and Inca Rail (The Man in Seat 61 n.d.)2—
that had social-pricing: one option was only for Peruvian nationals (includ-
ing those with a Foreigner’s Card with permanent residence) and its price is
drastically different—10 soles (US$1.50) one way compared to US$77.00,
the cheapest option open to all for a slightly shorter distance. Here, it is the
explicit social/legal status and implicit economic status that differentiated the
customers.
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 101

The first of four options was the Peruvian-only train offered by PeruRail.
Since April 2009, this was the only option leaving right from the city of
Cuzco (Avenida Sol station); it went to Aguas Calientes near Machu Picchu.
Subsidized by the Peruvian government for the cost, a round trip from Cuzco
to Machu Picchu was 20 soles (US$3.00), as mentioned above. Passengers
were allowed to bring large loads, including livestock, on the train (Machu
Picchu n.d.).
The second choice left from Poroy, 13km (8 miles) from Cuzco. PeruRail
offered three kinds of trains with differing prices: “The Hiram Bingham,”
the super-deluxe option that included gourmet meals and drinks, entertain-
ment on board, bus connections, entrance to the Machu Picchu citadel, and
a guided tour ($475 one way); “The Vistadome,” the mid-range option with
panoramic windows that included snacks and non-alcoholic drinks ($90 one
way); and “The Expedition” (formerly the “Backpacker”), the budget option
with panoramic windows and a buffet car ($77 one way).
The third choice departed from Urubamba, 53 km (33 miles) from
Cuzco. The fourth choice was to take shuttle trains from Ollantaytambo,
89km/56miles from Cuzco, by PeruRail (some Vistadome for $54 one way
and others Expedition for $35 one way for the second choice explained
above, though fares vary by date and time) or Inca Rail (fares from around
$70 one way, with three classes—Machu Picchu [economy], Executive, and
First Class).
Our group went with the fourth choice, driving in a van from Cuzco to
Ollantaytambo and taking Vistadome from there to Aguas Calientes near
Machu Picchu. On the way, we had a meal and a fashion show of alpaca
clothing on board. Coming back, we had another meal and a performance of
Saqra, a dance of tricksters from the highlands of the Cuzco Region.
Our study-abroad provider in Peru chose the train, and the price was
included in the study-abroad package. Accordingly, it was not obvious how
much we had paid for the travel though we were aware that there is a much
cheaper local train (the first choice) that is only for the Peruvian nationals.
The tour guide had told us that it is a fun, groovy ride as sometimes you ride
with llamas and other livestock. Some of us wished we could ride it, and oth-
ers did not. But it was clear to us that the Peruvian government recognized the
difference in wealth between the local population and the visitors, subsidiz-
ing local-only trains and also securing income from tourism by prohibiting
non-Peruvians from taking advantage of the drastically less expensive choice
to visit Machu Picchu, one of Peru’s main tourist attractions. This is similar
to the differentiation between a “local price” and “tourist price” at markets
in many developing countries that seeks to equalize not only the disposable
wealth gap between those who can afford to travel for leisure and those who
cannot but also exchange rates that may be unfavorable to the developing
102 Neriko Musha Doerr

countries (Bruner 1989). On the other hand, this may have to do with the
issue of national patrimony: to whom these historical sites belong (hence no
need to pay beyond minimum cost) and who should pay for access to see it
as outside visitors.

Night Clubs and Two Groups

After a couple of days into the trip, the group divided into two—named
Group A and Group B here—with some students moving between the two
toward the end of the trip. Group A had Marie (a “Hispanic” senior), Siena
(an “African American” junior), Kelly (an “Indian-American” senior),
Vera (an “Italian American” junior), and Nina (a “white” senior). Group B
had Carla (a “Hispanic” junior), Diane (a “white” sophomore), Ariana (an
“African American” senior), and Sam (a “white” sophomore) (see table 3.1).
Because I roomed with Carla, I often did things with Carla, and thus also with
Group B, as mentioned.
Students in both groups commented explicitly on this division in their
interviews. “We were separate . . . Two groups.” (Kelly: Group A); “Split”
(Vera: Group A); “There was kind of division. Split into two different
groups.” (Sam: Group B); “Cliquey. Separated 5-5.” (Diane: Group B);
“Separation in the group . . . made things uncomfortable . . . Felt like cliques.
Separation.” (Ariana: Group B)
Out of three similar two-week study-abroad trips (to Sierra Leone, Ghana,
and Peru) and five one-week alternative break trips (to Massachusetts,
Arkansas, New Orleans, and New Mexico twice), I had participated in all

Table 3.1  Background of Participants in the Peru Trip

Name Major Year Self-identification Group

Marie International business senior “Hispanic” A
Siena International business junior “African A
American”
Kelly Business administration senior “Indian American” A
Vera Contemporary art junior “American” A
contract
Nina business and senior “white” A
administration
management
Diane finance sophomore “white” B
Carla marketing finance junior “Hispanic” B
Ariana psychology “African B
American”
Sam International business sophomore “White” B
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 103

activities of the trip for research purposes; having this type of clear division,
with open conflict that involved switching roommates from the assigned
ones, was rare. Also, I always roomed on my own in other trips, because I
was a professor or a chaperone. However, I had to room with a student for this
trip because it was organized by an outside provider who treated me as one of
the trip participants. It made me somewhat part of Group B via my connec-
tion to my roommate, Carla, as we ate and went out together, although I kept
a neutral position in interactions with everyone. My tie to Group B resulted
in some tension between Group A members and myself, to my surprise. For
example, as mentioned, three out of five Group A members did not respond to
my request for the post-trip interview which involved meeting up somewhere
during the summer. I have done eight similar fieldwork trips previously,
but this was the first time that I did not even get a response for my request
for post-trip interviews, pointing to the level of tension that even involved
myself, although unintended.
The reasons for division were several. Some said it had to do with differ-
ent personalities (Kelly; Vera; Ariana; Sam). Diane specifically elaborated:
“Difference in personalities. [Group A was] more outgoing . . . I was more
quiet and go eat and do something more quiet . . . Harder to talk to them.”
Some said it was different interests and preferences in activities: “People
wanted to do specific things.” (Kelly); her group “wanted to explore” but oth-
ers didn’t (Vera). “Different interest, value, what we liked to do. One group
was more adventurous, they wanted to do—drinking and partying, casinos,
be out late and do all the stuff. Other group wasn’t really into that” (Ariana).
“Same group of girls gone out.” (Diane). Group A “went out a lot . . . Casinos,
club in Lima, sushi, Indian food” (Kelly). Food preference also mattered:
Vera argued that Diane’s food preferences divided people during meal time.
Carla also talked about accommodating Diane’s needs: “They were like . . .
‘We are eating sushi and that’s it.’ We tried to accommodate Diane.” Others
were more specific. For example, Vera said it was due to Group B doing
things with Carla’s Peruvian family separately from the group (her family
took Group B for lunch once).
The division emerged initially in two ways, as suggested in the above
quotes. It seemed that the division had a lot to do with preference and per-
sonality differences and reflected the available funds for students to spend
as well. First, as dinner fell as “free time,” Group A tended to go to expen-
sive restaurants, Group B did not. Some students in Group B mentioned
that they cannot afford to eat out every night, so I suggested deli food at
a supermarket and to eat it at the table there or in the hotel room to save
money, a practice I usually do when traveling on a budget. Following my
suggestion, Group B did so several nights. Group B also catered to Diane
104 Neriko Musha Doerr

who would eat only pasta and rice, which meant not going to the restaurant
Group A chose.
Second, Group A went out almost every night in Lima, while Group B did
only once. Group A went out to casinos and clubs at the mall in Miraflores,
an upscale town. The mall looked like ones in the United States, and things
there were expensive. A website called “A gringo’s guide to night life in
Lima, Peru” (Nomadic Hustle n.d.) lists Miraflores as one of three best neigh-
borhoods for good nightlife: “This is the neighborhood for travelers in Lima,
Peru. It’s safe, filled with modern amenities like cafes and coworking spaces,
and features great nightlife, too.” The website also writes “You could easily
spend US$200–300 on a big night out in Miraflores.” Group B went out one
night when Carla’s cousin, who lives in Lima, took us to a club in a town
where locals hang out, according to her, and things are less expensive than in
Miraflores, which is for American tourists and rich Peruvians.
Although the main distinction was class-based, with different levels of
willingness to spend our funds—and that the group division cut across
race—there were nevertheless some racial overtones as well. As the title of
the aforementioned web article shows (Nomadic Hustle n.d.), the expensive
activities are labeled “gringo” things. And the low-cost night life Group B
enjoyed was to go to locals’ hang out, showing “Peruvian” aspect of this
class, although Group B also included “White” and “African American” stu-
dents besides “Hispanic” Carla.
In Cuzco, during the second week, the group dynamics changed as an inter-
nal split occurred in Group A. For the first time in this trip, some Group A and
Group B members went out together to a club. The club was full of locals,
and Nina (Group A) wanted to go elsewhere, where there were “no sweaty
locals.” She said she preferred clubs with Americans, like those in Miraflores.
The term “sweaty locals” struck me as epitomizing the split between these
groups: Group A mingled with American visitors and wealthy locals, with
some disdain for not-so-wealthy locals (with whom Group B mingled through
Carla’s family).
Our group dynamics and resultant experiences throughout the trip reflected
a border defined by wealth difference, with some implications to one’s
nationality. The border, hence, was created at the scale of class, while inter-
secting with the scale of the national. On the one hand, some were institution-
ally created borders, like our train to Machu Picchu that was 120 times more
expensive than the Peruvian-only one, in which the assumption of difference
between visitors and Peruvians was wealth disparity (though Peruvians also
can take expensive trains), as well as the social position we held in relation to
Inca heritage. On the other hand, our separate experience in eating and going
out derived from our willingness (i.e., priority) or ability to spend a lot of
money. The border thus was made via social-pricing.
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 105

LABELING: DECIDING WHAT IS AND WHAT

IS NOT “IMMERSION” IN SPAIN

The discourse of immersion in study-abroad literature encourages students

to “live like a local” and “become part of the culture by staying with local
families and giving back to local communities . . . [to] attend classes and
participate in activities with local students . . . taught by local staff” (Hovey
and Weinberg 2009: 37). Researchers hierarchize experiences as some pro-
viding more immersion than others: homestay over residence in a dormi-
tory with American students (Chieffo and Griffiths 2009), for example, and
direct enrollment rather than faculty-led programs where students stay with
American faculty and peers the entire time (Deardorff 2009), like the Sierra
Leone and Peru trips described above. Experience itself matters more than
setting: even if the student lives with a host family, using a computer or
watching TV in one’s room is considered not immersive. The worst experi-
ence is embodied by students who “travel in large groups, and are taught in
American-only classrooms. They live and go to bars with other Americans
. . . These students (at best) simply get the American college experience in
a different time zone” (Hovey and Weinberg 2009: 36). “True immersion”
is about doing something different from what they can experience at home;
simply crossing geographic borders is not enough if students still live like
Americans in the host society (for analyses of this discourse, see Doerr 2016).
The question, then, is what constitutes the “American college experience,” as
not all American college students go to bars and drink in the same way, for
example; to assume so is to impose a particular stereotype. In the same vein,
how do we know what “local ways” are? That is, because there are no clear-
cut guidelines as to what constitutes these assumed differences, deciding what
is or is not immersion (i.e., what are “local ways” and what are American
ways) actively constructs the border between the home and host societies.
Researchers participate in this process—suggesting what constitutes
immersion and what are home and host societies’ ways of living—as the
above literature shows. Students also become part of this border-construction
process when they discuss what is and what is not immersion. Richard
Suarez, a former study-abroad student, and I have examined this process
elsewhere (2013; 2018) in collaborative work analyzing his labeling what
was and what was not immersion during his trip to Spain. This chapter builds
on its analyses and re-interprets Suarez’s views of immersion in terms of
constructing borders in two ways: between study-abroad students and the
people in the host society and between the wealthy (i.e., study-abroad stu-
dents and wealthy local people) and the less-wealthy local people. This is a
very small sample—one student—to make a general argument. However, in
a field of study predominated by surveys of a large number of students, this
106 Neriko Musha Doerr

case study offers a unique angle for its in-depth, collaborative nature of the
analyses that allows for nuanced understanding of various aspects of a study-
abroad student experience situated in specific contexts (for this collaborative
process, see Doerr and Suarez 2013). In order to connect this individual case
to the wider discussion, I draw on existing literature that investigates the same
topics.

Suarez’s Experience
Suarez, a double major in psychology and marketing, finished his junior year
before traveling to Spain in 2013 for three months: the first (May 28–June
23) in Madrid with the family of his uncle, who is originally from Colombia
(Suarez migrated from Colombia to the United States at the age of one); the
second (June 24–July 30) in a study-abroad program designed for American
students in Bilbao; and the third spent traveling around on his own (July
31–August 22).
I interviewed Suarez in person before his departure, via Skype during his
stay in Spain, and in person after his return to the United States. I had already
visited the university where he studied in Bilbao for four days (July 13–16) in
2011 for another research project, interviewing its administrators and teachers,
observing classes, and visiting a dorm and a host family. In my interviews dur-
ing and after Suarez’s trip, as well as discussions while collaborating to write
the article from which this section draws (Doerr and Suarez 2018), he reported
that his first month was not immersive, but his second and third months were.
Below, I will summarize how Suarez interpreted each of his three months in
Spain in our discussions during collaboration with some supplementary litera-
ture to show how labeling an act as “immersion” creates borders.

Staying with an Uncle: Not Immersion

Staying with his uncle, his wife, and their six-year-old son in a Latin
American community a twenty-minute drive from Madrid, Suarez spent time
looking around Madrid on his own or staying home watching TV with his
young cousin. Suarez considered this month not immersion because he had
to do many “touristic” things on his own while his uncle worked; because he
“wasted” a lot of time watching TV with his cousin, which felt like babysit-
ting; because he felt it was just staying with “family”; and because his uncle
identified himself as Colombian, not Spanish.
Though the first reason matches the discourse of immersion that devalues
“touristic” activities, the second and third reasons contradict how immersion
is usually described: “eat what the locals eat, sleep like locals sleep, and
interact with the locals on a daily basis, from the time you wake up to the
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 107

time you pass out in utter exhaustion” (Williamson 2004: 235). Nonetheless,
doing mundane things (i.e., things the locals do in their daily lives; second
reason) and being treated as family by locals (third reason) did not constitute
“immersion” to Suarez. Suarez’s observation suggests that immersion implic-
itly means something other than “living like a local”: it means doing exciting
things as an outsider. This overlaps with other students’ observations that, for
example, spending too much time doing homework, household chores, and
watching TV—how “locals” tend to live—is not a good host family experi-
ence (Kumagai 2017; Kinginger 2008). Also, there is an added aspect to this,
in that the mundane has to present some newness to the students—Suarez at
one point mentioned that his uncle’s lifestyle was that of a Colombian, which
resembled his own lifestyle in the United States as a Colombian American.
The other mundane experiences mentioned above by students—homework,
chores, and TV—were the kind of mundane activities that they are familiar
with. The kind of mundane that actually differed from the students’ familiar
lifestyle could be labeled immersion by some students—an American study-
abroad student labeled her sipping cups of coffee for a long time at a café in
Paris and wearing long pants and flats, something she said was very different
from clothes she wears back home—was immersion (Doerr 2015, 2017). That
is, immersion is not just “how locals live” but “how locals live that is different
from the students’ home life”: mundane and authentic (see McConnell 2000:
51) that are different and exotic (Salazar and Graburn 2014; Picard and Di
Giovine 2014), the key ingredients of attractive travel. Suarez’s fourth point
implies that calling an act “immersion” involves one’s assessment, informed
by the self-identification of the person involved, that the person is a legitimate
member of the society. Questions of acceptability as a “host family” to let stu-
dents “immerse themselves” was a concern for potential host families as well:
for example, in a different context, where I had done fieldwork interviewing
host families, indigenous Maori families expressed that the small numbers
of Maori host families made them feel marginalized because it indicated that
they are (seen as) not “good enough” as host families, and a single mother
articulated that she wanted to host study-abroad students but felt her family is
not “good enough” to “represent” Aotearoa/New Zealand (Doerr 2009, 2013;
Doerr and Suarez 2018).
The third and fourth points here suggest that calling an act “immersion”
is a performative act of border-making between the student and the people
in the study-abroad destination. The label “immersion” indicates that the
student is not related to the people with whom s/he is interacting: because
Suarez felt he was living with his “family,” he did not label this stay with his
uncle as “immersion.” That is, if s/he is “one of them” (as a family), stay-
ing with them is not labeled “immersion.” Labeling some acts “immersion”
also suggests that the student considers the people he/she is interacting are
108 Neriko Musha Doerr

legitimate members of the host society, as when Suarez knew his uncle did
not consider himself a Spaniard or part of Spanish society, but also when
host families themselves may feel they are “legitimate” representatives of
the society.

Study-Abroad Program in Bilbao: Immersion

The month spent attending a study-abroad program in Bilbao was more of an
immersion experience, Suarez said, because he had a good time partying with
fellow American students as well as local people he met at bars and fiestas,
and traveling every weekend with his new friends.
On the one hand, Suarez’s labeling these activities as immersion contradicts
the discourse of immersion that discourages students from spending time with
fellow compatriots. On the other hand, this labeling resonates with the dis-
course that equates immersion as “adventure,” something enjoyable—“The
most exciting and interesting study-abroad experiences are created when we
are interacting directly with the native citizens of a foreign country” (Oxford
2005: 114)—and making “the most of every weekend and the free time you
are given” (Loflin 2007: 130). This is consistent with others reporting how
students did not feel they are doing good “immersion” when the host family
did not provide them with “fun” or “interesting” experiences, as those whose
host family left them alone watching TV most of the time (Kinsinger 2008;
also, see Mendelson 2004). In contrast, taking lessons in stereotypically “tra-
ditional” activities of the destination, though many locals themselves may not
do them, are seen by students as immersion (Kumagai 2017). Note also that,
in Suarez’s comment, having a good time was related to activities that tend to
cost money—going out and traveling; not many local students can afford to
do such activities constantly, compared to less costly ones like spending time
with the host family or watching TV at home.
In Suarez’s formulation, immersion is about having a good time and mak-
ing the most of one’s time there. It is not really about “living like a local”—
after all, not all locals party and go out or travel intensively or take lessons
in “traditional” crafts. To call these activities immersion, thus “living like a
local,” suggests a particular type of “local” suggested in the imaginary of the
destination (Salazar 2014) not only in terms of ethnicity but also in terms of
economic conditions, thus creating a border drawn between wealthy and not-
so-wealthy locals, with study-abroad students (and some international trav-
elers) joining the former. This border resonates with social-pricing in Peru.
Just like ethnic group boundaries are maintained not because of the group’s
isolation but because of interaction across the group boundaries (Barth 1969),
imaginaries of the study-abroad students and “the local” are constructed rela-
tionally to each other, constituting borders between them.
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 109

A Month of Traveling: Immersion

Suarez spent his last month in Spain traveling. He “couch-surfed” (i.e., found
a place to stay through a website that lists openings submitted by people
who provide travelers with inexpensive lodging in their homes) in Malaga,
using it as a base to make day trips. His host also took him to places and
introduced him to her friends, who were mainly expatriates (she herself came
from Germany five years prior), allowing him to meet new people. Suarez
considered this immersion firstly, because he was on his own doing things as
opposed to things organized by a travel agency or school, which to him was
too touristy. Although buying tickets on his own and looking up travel times,
he suggested, were things he felt locals would do, he did not think traveling
around much was what locals did. Second, Suarez considered this immersion,
because he met many people. This relates, to a degree, to the discourse of
immersion that encourages making local friends (Loflin 2007), though most
of the friends he made were not locals. This implies that expanding one’s
horizons by meeting people, whether local or not, made it immersion for
Suarez. A similar view was reported by a student who found making friends
with other international students to be meaningful, even if they were not local
(Doerr 2015; Kumagai 2017).
In light of the first month—he met his uncle and his family for the first
time, but meeting them and interacting with them was not considered immer-
sion by Suarez—“meeting people” here meant meeting people who are
strangers. What is suggested about this last month is the mirror image of the
first month—labeling an act immersion suggests that the people that he met
are strangers. This is often a retrospective othering practice because labeling
was done later when looking back on the experience. Here, reflexive reflec-
tive discussions and writing about the study-abroad experience created a
border between Suarez and the people he met.

Labeling an Act Immersion as Border-Making Practice

The above discussion suggests that labeling an act “immersion” constructs
borders in two ways. First, the contrast in Suarez’s labeling of his first month
with his uncle’s family “not immersion” and his last month traveling “immer-
sion” indicates that labeling an act “immersion” is a border-making practice
between the students and those among whom the students immerse them-
selves. If students are one of them, as in family, interaction between them
is not considered as immersion. Second, the contrast of Suarez’s labeling
his first month as non-immersive and second months as immersive—where
immersion is having a good time doing many things that are out of the ordi-
nary—created a border between those who can afford to do so (study-abroad
students and wealthy locals) and those who cannot (not-so-wealthy locals
110 Neriko Musha Doerr

who can only afford to do mundane things like watching TV). The first over-
laps with the scale of the national and the second, class.
I have argued elsewhere (2013; 2016; 2018) that the notion of immersion
is based on and perpetuates the nation-state ideology in which each nation
is viewed as internally homogeneous and distinct from each other. This link
between the notion of immersion and nation-state ideology becomes apparent
when assumed that “living like a local” in the host society is intrinsically dif-
ferent from students’ home life. It also becomes apparent when the discourse
of immersion discourages spending time with compatriot students, suggesting
that students from the home country are all the same. This chapter further
adds to the understanding of the notion of immersion: the practice of labeling
certain acts asimmersion is an act of border-making.

DISCUSSION

Study abroad is often praised as a border-crossing experience that pushes

students out of their comfort zone, creating cognitive dissonance and oppor-
tunities to learn something new (Brockington and Wiedenhoeft 2009).
Encounters with the cultural Other are often said to be an important compo-
nent of this experience.
However, the process is more complex than students pushing themselves
out of their comfort zone, as the border between the comfort zone and the
brave-new-world cannot be readily assumed. In these examples, such a bor-
der is actually created not only by discourses in study abroad but also by vari-
ous actions of students before, during, and after their studying abroad, such as
using hand sanitizer, preferring certain (costly) activities, and labeling some
acts as “immersion.” Also, the border can be drawn not only between the
student’s home and host countries but also in terms of wealth differences that
cut across the former border: the wealthy (among those in the host society
and among study-abroad students) vs. the not-so-wealthy (among those in the
host society and among study-abroad students).
Regarding tourism, Salazar and Graburn (2014) argue that various con-
structed imaginaries of a place lure visitors who seek to be there themselves
and experience and document those imaginaries. With such constructed
imaginaries, constructed borders emerge. However, such imaginaries can be
fragmented and subverted with diverse individuals involved in the process.
Arguing that study abroad follows a similar process, I further add an exami-
nation of how individuals not only experienced and documented but also
actively created, engaged in, and acted out such borders.
In the Sierra Leone case, we created the border through various collective
rituals—the ritual of disease prevention involving vaccinations, malaria pills,
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 111

insect repellent, and cleansing with hand sanitizer. These rituals highlighted
the border between the study-abroad students from the United States (we-t​
he-vu​lnera​ble-t​o-ger​ms-an​d-thu​s-in-​need-​of-pr​otect​ion) and people in the
Sierra Leone (they-who-live-with-these-germs) by marking Sierra Leone
people and space problematically as “dirty” and disease-causing. At the same
time, these rituals helped us be daring enough to cross the border because
these rituals “safe-guarded” us from perceived diseases.
In Peru, the border was constructed by differential price, separating wealthy
study-abroad students and wealthy locals from less-wealthy study-abroad stu-
dents and less-wealthy locals (although the gap between the last two may still
exist), though at times (as in train fees), less-wealthy study-abroad students
were forced to join the former. Although differences in train prices were set
by the Peruvian government based on nationality, the night club prices were
set by club owners and the design of the city, focusing on those who have
more expendable money, which reflects the club owners’ perception of the
link between nationality and other social status and wealth.
The case of Suarez in Spain showed that labeling certain acts as immersion
constructed two kinds of borders. The first is between the students and people
among whom they are “immersed”: the label only applied to the people
whom the student felt as “strangers,” those whose mundane lives differed
from the student’s, as the key attraction of travel in general is to “get away”
from their own, more familiar mundane lives (Picard and Di Giovine 2014;
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998). The second is between wealthy locals (who can
afford costly activities, including travel) and not wealthy locals, because the
label only applied when students copied the wealthy locals.
Although study abroad is often viewed as a border-crossing experience,
because of that very focus borders are ironically constructed in the process
of studying abroad. This is a scale-making practice that pushes us to notice
borders at particular scales, and not others, as meaningful (see McDermott
and Varenne 1995). Scale-making is a process of making claims about par-
ticular scales (e.g., local, regional or global) as relevant “units of culture and
political economy through which we make sense of events and social pro-
cesses” (Tsing 2000: 347). It is not a neutral practice, as scale is “a relational,
power-laden and contested construction that actors strategically engage with,
in order to legitimize or challenge existing power relations” (Leitner et al.
2008: 159). Scales are fluid and constructed through the practices of everyday
actors and organizations that make particular scalar configurations solidify in
consciousness and practice. Scalar representations can have material effects
as they enable certain ways of seeing, thinking, and acting (MacKinnon 2010;
Moore 2008).
The border-making practices discussed in this chapter are scale-making
practices that solidify difference at the scale of nation as well as class. The
112 Neriko Musha Doerr

borders were specific to the destination as well as the design of the program.
Though we interacted with nurses, nursing students, and patients in Sierra
Leone, our nursing students did not develop comradery with nurses or nurs-
ing students there. Instead the focus was on national difference marked by
presence/absence and tolerance to disease-causing elements. This contrasts
with the cases of Peru and Spain, both of which did not involve any sanitary
precautions. As to the design of the trip, the Sierra Leone trip was not con-
ducive to differentiating the group in terms of disposable income: we ate all
meals together and the difference in dispensable cash during the trip did not
matter because all meals were included in the price for the trip. In contrast,
the Peru trip was conducive to making apparent the difference in disposable
cash among the group members because the trip involved much free time
that gave us choices of places to eat and many night-life opportunities. Thus,
the Peru trip highlighted the class difference among students that cut across
their ethnic identification, and connected wealthy study-abroad students to
the wealthy people in the host society (and less-wealthy study-abroad stu-
dents to the less-wealthy local people). That is, although students’ ethnic or
class background did not affect their experience too much in Sierra Leone,
their class status made student experience different in Peru, mainly due to the
design of the program. Suarez’s interpretations of his experiences in Spain
emphasized more general social distance among people. The relative free-
dom of his program, compared to the faculty-led trips, created individualized
opportunities for consumer practices, which then highlighted class difference
manifested as accessibility to costly activities. As to his own perception of
these costs, Suarez marked the period of study abroad as a special time for
which he had saved up over the years. Suarez said he did not concern himself
too much about the cost of activities in the way he would at home. This con-
trasts with the class division among study-abroad students in Peru.

CONCLUSION

Although study abroad as an educational project aims to cross “cultural

borders,” this chapter examined how it constructs and perpetuates various
borders through practices during and after the study-abroad trip. Shaped by
the situations in the destination and design of the program, various borders
were created. As an endeavor that relies on the existence of difference, study
abroad shares many aspects with tourism. However, its specifics differ.
As an educational project that focuses on the existence or assumption of bor-
ders, we need to discuss this aspect more rigorously and involve study-abroad
students in that discussion, not necessarily to stop border-construction but to
understand how it works and how it is part of the process. Thus, if these borders
 Safe-Guarding, Social-Pricing, and Labeling 113

involve problematic stereotypes and prejudices—as in the case of using hand

sanitizers after visiting an orphanage or calling local people “sweaty locals”—
students can be involved proactively in altering such constructions.
It is also important to offer different angles in understanding taken-for
granted assumptions in study abroad and beyond. For example, highlighting
the value of seeing similarity without trivializing differences—perceiving
diverse variations—may be more valuable than focusing on negotiating dif-
ference. Rather than stressing difference through discourses of adventure,
immersion, and cognitive dissonance, we can talk about common struggles,
such as nurses dealing with similar problems; some patients’ reluctance to
visit doctors, but for different reasons, for example. That is, we can avoid
constructing borders and instead see something else in the interactions among
people. And rather than being concerned about whether an experience is
“immersion,” we can encourage students to examine experiences they shared
with the locals, not as “living like a local” but as two individuals with varied
backgrounds spending time together, which is shaped by both of them in
a particular local context. It is about time study abroad can be reframed as
finding shared humanity in varied contours of life instead of encountering
cultural Others. Instead of aiming for students to jump into the pool of other-
ness—immersion—we can aim for students making meaningful experiences
together with the locals, as well as with their fellow compatriot students.

NOTES

1. All institutional and personal names are aliases.

2. All train prices mentioned here can be found on this website. Some pricing var-
ies depending on the day and time.

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 Chapter 4

The Imperative of Access in

Short-Term Study Abroad
Provider Agencies, Liminality, and the
Mediation of Cultural Difference
Gareth Barkin

Study abroad is often framed as a rite of passage for American undergraduates,

who are represented as returning with a newly globalized worldview born of
deep, intercultural engagements. This framing depends on, among other
things, students’ time abroad incorporating a period of disconnection from
the social frameworks and hierarchies of home, during which they earnestly
negotiate the ambiguities and challenges of cultural difference. Providers of
increasingly popular short-term study-abroad trips are tasked with balancing
students’ desire for “authentic,” transformative experiences, on the one hand,
and providing them a sense of security, connection, and comfort, on the other
(Squillace and Cassell 2019; Starr-Glass 2020; Van Tine 2011). This chapter
examines the role of provider agencies in mobilizing the imperative of access
to international education as a tool in the neoliberalization of study abroad.
Based on ethnographic research of short-term programs in Indonesia and
Thailand as well as interviews with provider agencies, I explore their risk
management strategies and efforts to mitigate the discomfort and ambiguity
associated with the cultural encounter. Drawing on contemporary applica-
tions of Victor Turner’s work on liminality in the context of study abroad,
I analyze evidence indicating that many provider agencies, in an effort to
increase program marketability, pathologize disconnection and seek to medi-
ate or avoid challenging engagements with cultural difference.

119
120 Gareth Barkin

THE IMPERATIVE OF ACCESS IN

SHORT-TERM STUDY ABROAD

Students on my short-term study-abroad trips to Southeast Asia demonstrate

what strike me as contradictory impulses toward framing their time abroad:
often, they discuss the trip as a sort of ritual pilgrimage and a search for
transformation through engagements with cultural difference—as a voyage
and a period of separation. At other times, however, they discuss the trip as
an on-going struggle for wellness, comfort, and connectedness. The latter
includes not just biomedical concerns related to the new environment but
also the psychological security of remaining continuously in touch with par-
ents and friends back home; integrated into the life they have, from the other
perspective, left behind. Even as they procure SIM cards and ask homestay
parents for Wi-Fi passwords, many of my students have expressed a desire or
expectation that they will disconnect from the conceptual “Western world,”
and hope for a transformative experience of identity development that might
be characterized by anthropologists as a rite of passage (Turner 1969; Van
Gennep 2011 [1960]). Often building on work pioneered by anthropologists
studying travel and tourism (Di Giovine 2011), the connection between
studying abroad and Victor Turner’s conception of ritual pilgrimage has long
been an interest of academics (see Hoffa and DePaul 2010), largely trading on
the notion of time spent overseas as a liminal period in the lives of students
(Turner 1979; Van Tine 2011).
This tension between the desire for study abroad to serve a ritual-tran-
sitional role, chiefly through mind-expanding negotiation of sociocultural
difference, and the temptations of remaining safe, connected, and insulated
from the various discomforts and ambiguities integral to that negotiation,
is not a new one: for scholars focused on cultural tourism, and particularly
authenticity-seeking backpackers and “gap year” travelers, this is well-worn
territory (e.g., Fussell 1982; O’Reilly 2006; Snee 2013). However, the role
of educational institutions in promoting one or the other side of this equation,
directly or by proxy, appears to have changed in recent years, as provider
agencies increasingly play a central part in constituting short-term study-
abroad experiences (Barkin 2018). Importantly, this comes at a time when
short-term programs have rapidly become the avenue by which a significant
majority of American undergraduates study abroad (Institute of International
Education and Farrugia 2018).
This chapter investigates several ways that a concern with access and
accommodation becomes alloyed, largely by provider agencies, with comfort
and the mediation of difference, and how these concerns may promote study-
abroad practices that minimize risk, ambiguity, and engagement with diverse
worldviews. Based on an on-going research project focused on understanding
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 121

how administrative and neoliberal exigencies are shaping the rapidly growing
short-term study abroad industry, my discussion here focuses on the ways
concepts such as access and accommodation are constituted and mobilized by
American study abroad providers, particularly in developing-world spaces. It
explores neoliberalization practices in higher education, drawing on the work
of Chris Shore (2017) and Pierre Bourdieu (2001), through examples drawn
from ethnographic engagements and interviews with study-abroad practitio-
ners. In this effort, I draw on the concept of the ideograph (McGee 1980) to
explore the role(s) of access and accommodation talk in the neoliberalization
of study abroad. As part of this exploration, I ask how (increasingly norma-
tive) short-term programs facilitated by institutional providers—through their
focus on a particular vision of health, comfort, and connectedness—have the
potential to mitigate the experiential, intercultural benefits associated with
international education (Interis et al. 2018; see e.g., Lutterman-Aguilar and
Gingerich 2002).
This chapter also questions whether providers’ focus on particular con-
structions of “access” challenges the impact of study abroad in two ways:
first, in undermining its capacity to create a liminal space for participants, and
second, through the mediation of participants’ engagement with those areas
of cultural difference that are associated with the development of intercul-
tural competence and the reduction of ethnocentrism (La Brack and Bathurst
2012). As Ayeh (2018) has recently detailed, communications technology has
already changed the degree and nature of disconnection once compelled by
international travel significantly (or, as Frey [2017] has argued, essentially
eliminated it). Nevertheless, the act of traveling far from home, to unfamiliar
cultural spaces, can still serve as a premise on which to embrace a period
of liminal disengagement from sociocultural frameworks of home and an
openness to non-judgmental engagements with alterity (Duffy 2018; Graburn
2004).
Short-term programs have become the dominant form of study abroad
for American university students in the past fifteen years (Institute of
International Education and Farrugia 2018), but as a practice distinguished
from the longer term programs that historically dominated overseas educa-
tion, they have received relatively little scrutiny, despite their greater vari-
ability of curriculum and practice (Landon et al. 2017). The rapid increase
in popularity and the institutional pressures behind short-term programs
have created a lucrative opportunity for provider agencies, many of which
are for-profit corporations and aggressive advocates of the practice (Barkin
2018). This in turn has led to more explicitly touristic engagements on short-
term abroad programs, evidencing new leakages between expectations and
outcomes associated with tourism and international education (Barkin 2015;
Lemmons 2015; Ramirez 2013). I previously wrote about the role of these
122 Gareth Barkin

providers in shaping curricula and authoring the sorts of encounters students

have while abroad (2018). Here, I focus on a distinct area of this shift toward
a student-as-consumer model of study abroad as service: the pathologization
of ambiguity, difference, and some forms of discomfort through the impera-
tive of access.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS

This chapter is part of an ethnographic project focused originally on short-

term, faculty-led study abroad (hereafter STFLSA) that I began in 2015,
when I spent five months in Southeast Asia directing a year-long, multi-sited
international education program. In a recent article based on this research
(2018), I argued the prevailing institutional focus on increasing study-abroad
participation numbers, rather than on the pedagogical goals and outcomes
of international education (and how best to achieve them), has often pushed
STFLSA toward for-profit provision agencies, and that these commercial pro-
viders often rely on tourist-oriented simulacra to constitute their programs.
As an Indonesia specialist focused on mass media industries’ production
of national culture, and as an advocate of study abroad in the region, I had
noticed the increasing popularity of short-term programs drawing credit from
American universities. The first trip I conducted, in 2007, was through a
college that encouraged faculty to work with providers, most of which were
specialized, for-profit travel agencies catering to higher and secondary edu-
cation, mission trips, and other forms of group travel, which they squeezed
into uncomfortably similar molds. All of these—from my observation—bor-
rowed heavily from what Craik labels “touring culture” (1997), depending
the aestheticized difference of non-threatening, constructed “others” who
are encountered largely in “tourist bubbles” (Judd 1999) produced to allow,
curate, and monetize such engagements.
I started the project focusing on ethnographic research among program
staff in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Ubud, Indonesia, in 2015, as they remain
among the most popular destinations for short-term programs in Southeast
Asia and because of my experience conducting STFLSA in these areas. I
worked with contacts in agencies catering to study-abroad programs, who
provide services ranging from field treks to volunteer opportunities to
“cultural crash courses,” to identify ten short-term study-abroad trips that
would take place during my time in the region, and conducted interviews
with faculty directing six of these programs, as well as two more by phone
thereafter. Of these eight, three originated at liberal arts colleges, while
five were from larger research universities; they were equally distributed
between Ubud and Chiang Mai. One program, with which I had spent time
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 123

in Thailand, I also met with later in Singapore. In addition to semi-struc-

tured faculty interviews, with the six programs I visited in person, I was
able to spend varying amounts of time—generally five to eight hours each
—accompanying and observing the programs themselves and conducting
informal interviews with students and agency staff. I also conducted eight
separate, formal interviews with local contractors and tourism companies
that provided support for American and international providers and engaged
in dozens of informal conversations with their employees and managers
throughout the process.
Though I was fortunate to have the opportunity to chat with students on
these programs, my focus was on those who had developed, constituted, and
who led the programs. It was through these experiences that I became aware
of the central role that specialized agencies commonly play, and so on my
return to the United States, I refocused my research to explore their role in
shaping STFLSA as well as longer term programs. I have done this through
an on-going series of interviews with representatives from provider agencies,
both non-profit and for-profit. I initially conducted in-depth phone inter-
views with nine provider agencies, and since then have interviewed twelve
more representatives, six in person, during campus visits. All are afforded
anonymity here, and I have made an effort to avoid identifying information
about their employers as well. These fifteen semi-structured interviews with
study-abroad provider agency representatives are the primary data source for
this chapter, though I also draw on the ethnographic engagements described
above, as well as my own experience in international education.
Previously (2018), I argued for a reflexive approach to the “discourse of
going,” and that studying abroad should not, in and of itself, be the core
goal for institutions seeking to internationalize their campuses or increase
students’ intercultural competence. I encouraged a pivot toward critical,
experiential pedagogy focused on outcomes and the interventions necessary
to promote them (see also Landon et al. 2017; Ogden 2007). In this chap-
ter, I explore providers’ focus on accessibility, their framing of access as
it relates to study abroad, and how it translates into real-world practice and
policy. I argue that neoliberal exigencies lead providers to focus not only on
the management of risk but also on a broad accessibility to their programs
that mediates or circumvents certain engagements with cultural difference,
which are arguably central to achieving learning outcomes often considered
to be international education’s greatest strength (Bennett 2010). Beyond this,
I make the case provider agencies’ focus on access, as a part of a health and
safety discourse, is at odds with the important goal of making space for a
period of liminal disconnection for American university students. This focus
encourages what I describe as a recurrent reintegration: on-going efforts to
mitigate the intensity of engagement abroad through practices that aim to
124 Gareth Barkin

avoid the disconnection, discomfort, and confusion commonly associated

with liminality (Beech 2010).
As mentioned above, I come to this investigation as a frequent practitio-
ner of short- and long-term study abroad since 2007 and author of essays
on its effective practice and integration into the broader curriculum of lib-
eral arts education (2015; 2016). As a long-term leader of my university’s
International Education Committee, I have also been at the center of review-
ing and collaborating on other faculty members’ abroad programs, which
has included discussions with provider agencies on how they might improve
short-term programs. This chapter draws on that experience, as well as the
interviews and ethnographic research discussed above.

LIMINALITY VERSUS COLONIALITY

Before discussing the ethnographic data collected for this project, it is

important to articulate the central tension I will be exploring and some of the
theoretical concerns that surround it. The primary juxtaposition here is the
intersection of two relatively modest literatures, both of which build on foun-
dations in popular social theory. These are (1) explorations of study abroad
as a transformative rite of passage for students, which necessarily frame time
spent abroad through the lens of liminality (Starr-Glass 2016, 2020; Ybarra
1997) and (2) scholarship that approaches international education abroad
through a postcolonial lens, focusing on power disparities, maintenance of
alterity, and uncritical approaches to pedagogical engagement (Doerr 2012,
2017; Ramirez 2013; Zemach-Bersin 2007). The former revolves around Van
Gennep’s (2011 [1960]) conception of the period between ritual stages, when
an individual is passing from one social status to another, and was developed
more comprehensively by Victor Turner (1969, 1987), who explored the idea
of liminality in more broadly applicable ways, including through travel and
pilgrimage (1979), which became foundational to the early anthropology of
tourism, and the articulation of tourism as ritual (Graburn 1979, 1983; Nash
et al. 1981). The latter category draws on ideas popularized by Edward Said
(1978), examining the representational and discursive legacies of the colonial
project as they continue to permeate popular culture, tourism, and the acad-
emy (e.g., Boehmer 1993; d’Hauteserre 2004; Spivak 2005).
Study abroad is not central to either of these literatures, but scholars address-
ing it have modestly drawn on both, if not within the same studies. The view of
U.S. study abroad as a rite of passage is connected with studies of educational
travel more broadly, dating back to the American Grand Tour of the nineteenth
century, which popularized the notion that travel was an important part of elite
education while largely reinforcing the authority of the Eurocentric canon
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 125

(Tillman 2008). The incorporation of internationalization rhetoric into the pro-

motion of study abroad, along with the reification of intercultural competence
in the 1990s (Bennett and Hammer 1998; Hammer 2012), helped to cement as
common sense the notion that studying abroad yields a fundamentally differ-
ent, more enlightened perspective on cultural difference, along with the social
capital associated with the certification of that worldliness (Bourdieu 2011
[1986]). Van Tine, who studied the experience of liminality on short-term
study abroad trips, largely through ethnographic work with student partici-
pants, notes her data “suggests that in general these participants perceive the
study abroad program as a chance to experience a liminal space” (2011, p. 47).
She goes on to detail students’ decisions to participate in a Thailand program
she studied were “very much rooted in the perception that this was an oppor-
tunity to experience a space apart – albeit within the comforts of a guided tour
approach” (2011, p. 47) and provides voluminous interview data to support
this claim. Describing a similar service learning experience abroad, Tonkin
and Quiroga (2004) articulate the value of the liminal space and leaving one’s
“comfort zone” in achieving outcomes many students find the most valuable:

The journey forced many to question aspects of their home culture, such as
consumerism, individualism and the linear understanding of progress and suc-
cess. While it is a moment of cultural criticism, at the same time the liminal
experience usually serves to reestablish and consolidate a sense of identity as
one’s culture is not only questioned but also partially reaffirmed. (2004, p. 140)

They observed the experience of liminality and separation from home

yielded a powerful “turning point” in the lives of many students, compel-
ling them to rethink entrenched concepts of race, gender, status, and equality
more broadly. For some, it prompted shifts in career choices (2004, p. 143).
In cases like this, the experience of study abroad promotes connections that
subvert students’ taxonomies of identity as they navigate culturally varying
spaces wherein status hierarchies are often difficult to intuit. STFLSA can
further challenge students’ awareness of social hierarchies by complicating
the power–distance between them and their home institution faculty members
(Barkin 2015), whose authority and social position may be complicated by
the horizontal comradery of the common journey and the humanization of
shared living experiences (Hofstede et al. 1991).
On STFLSA programs, where a group of students are often living and/or
traveling together in close quarters for a short but intensive period of study
in unfamiliar spaces, the experience may take on elements of a group ritual
passage or pilgrimage. Victor Turner argued such experiences depend on a
period of liminality followed by reintegration into society, often in a new
role or refigured status (1969). In such liminal periods, when one is “betwixt
126 Gareth Barkin

and between” broadly accepted social roles within known frameworks,

social norms that previously scaffolded daily life become ambiguous, sus-
pended, or even inverted. For Turner, this was what allowed for creative
and playful refigurations of identity—a space for individuation and reflex-
ivity that dissipated with reintegration into more earnest and fixed identity
categories (see Rosaldo et al. 2018 for a compelling discussion of Turner’s
legacy to the anthropology of creativity). Van Gennep’s and Turner’s
influential ideas were mobilized across a range of disciplines, including
humanistic psychology (Parsons 2002), and in anthropology became central
to studies of pilgrimage, travel, and tourism (e.g., Graburn 1983; Turner
1979; Frey 2004).
Any changes in social status linked to studying abroad, while generally
informal, may depend on the presumption of this liminal separation in which
the student gained new and qualitatively different insights from engaging
with cultural difference in raw and unmediated ways (Beech 2010). This
presumptive depth of experience, along with the associated certification
of the university, distinguishes the cultural capital earned studying abroad
from that associated with tourism or culturally focused travel. In my own
experience taking students abroad,1 the perceived hardship associated with
the experience has often become a point of pride for returning students. This
may involve some measure of the myopic “discomfort as authentication”
trope that others in this book appropriately interrogate (e.g. Bodinger de
Uriarte, Doerr, Serio) but students’ evaluative commentaries often focus on
the pedagogical interventions we mobilize to promote some disconnection
during their time abroad, largely through collaborative work with Indonesian
students and guided integration into local social contexts (Barkin 2016).
This “hardship” is constructed less around absent luxuries than in psycho-
logical terms—the loss of cultural safety nets or affirmations of antecedent
value systems and having to engage in the often-difficult work of negotiating
cultural ambiguity. Such contrasts illustrate the central nature of liminality
as an agent of study abroad’s (potential) impact, reflecting its mobilization
in late twentieth-century humanistic psychology, where “individuation” and
the process of self-realization were posited to take place within the liminal
space (Parsons 2002). As Shorter (2015 [1987]) noted, this serves to “‘[make]
whole one’s meaning, purpose, and sense of relatedness” (p. 79). These
articulations mirror some of the personal development narratives my recent
STFLSA students have related in assessment surveys, as well as the senti-
ments students in Van Tine’s study (2011) articulated when discussing their
motivations for studying abroad.
The countervailing discourse, which revolves around themes of health
and safety, I characterize here as one of coloniality and colonial bodies
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 127

(Anderson 2013). Rather than STFLSA in general, here I am focused on

the developing world, where many dormant narratives related to tropical
and exotic maladies can be activated by risk-averse administrators, study-
abroad offices, and even government representations through the Centers
for Disease Control (Etheridge 1992). While premised on the unassailable
priority of keeping U.S. students safe and healthy while abroad, the ways
this discourse permeates STFLSA as an industry alloys such concerns with
broader cultural framings of the body in colonial spaces (Anderson 2013).
This may range from the desire to avoid discomfort and regional/cultural
difference that may impact health (e.g. climate, sanitation, diet) to the pro-
tection of the body through biomedical prophylaxis, the use of which may
itself take on ritual qualities (Bodinger de Uriarte and Jacobson 2018; Doerr
in this book).
This apposition—between the desire to be insulated from the infectious
dangers of postcolonial (or otherwise alien) spaces, broadly conceived, and
the yearning for a transformative experience that seems to demand a with-
drawal from the sources of that insulation—can be a central tension in short-
term programs. Importantly, though risk averseness is an acknowledged and
overt goal among every provider agency I spoke with, the focus on individu-
ation through study abroad is amorphous and variable, finding its way into
institutionalized rhetoric largely through the totemic repetition of such terms
as “transformative” and “life changing” (e.g. Brown 2009; Woolf 2011).
Nevertheless, this would-be outcome remains firmly embedded in study-
abroad media and rhetoric, particularly that of for-profit providers, where the
semiotics of personal transformation can be an important selling point of their
product: although students may wish to remain safe and healthy abroad, they
do not seek out abroad experiences because they want to be safe and healthy
(Heywood et al. 2012).
While the transformative power of study abroad may remain vague and
imagistic in provider media, the discourse of health and safety is compara-
tively concrete and comes to students from a variety of directions (Anderson
2003). In my experience conducting abroad programs, it is also palpably
influential. The act of traversing the Global South is, for many, an active proj-
ect of bodily safeguarding and environmental insulation through heavy use of
pharmaceuticals, insecticides, (preemptive) antibiotics, and other biomedical
talismans that effectively pathologize postcolonial spaces, what Anderson
(2003) termed “the third-world body.”
This framing of developing-world spaces as toxic and threatening to
American bodies may have its roots in colonial discourses of hygiene,
related cultural distinction, and broader Orientalisms (Anderson 2006),
but it is perpetuated in important ways through institutional risk avoidance
128 Gareth Barkin

among universities and their partner organizations. As study abroad becomes

increasingly commodified and subject to the influence of for-profit agencies,
its foci and the talk surrounding them have shifted. Whereas safety and liabil-
ity concerns have always been an integral part of studying abroad, my inter-
views with STFLSA providers in the expanding for-profit world demonstrate
that they are now increasingly key selling points of programs, and more
importantly for this discussion, they have expanded demonstrably in scope.

MANAGING AND SELLING DIFFERENCE

As noted above, my work to understand the role of for-profit study-abroad

provision agencies was rooted in field observations in Southeast Asia, where
I noticed a rise in U.S. student groups engaging with the cultural tourism
economy. As with the general influence and popularity of these agencies,
their focus on safety, liability, and comfort came as a surprise to me and
emerged inductively from my earliest interviews with provider representa-
tives. Although my focus here is predominantly on for-profit agencies, many
non-profit representatives provided helpful insights into accessibility, health,
and safety trends, as they tended to be (with notable exceptions) prone to
critical reflection on the marketing and institutional pressures they were com-
pelled to contend with.
For example, in discussing the rise of short-term programs with
“Jennifer”2 from non-profit provider (NPP) #1, she laid out her theory that,
contrary to IIE’s statistics, shorter term study abroad trips had not surged
in popularity over the past ten to fifteen years, at least not to the degree
reported (e.g., Institute of International Education 2016). Instead, she
argued (from her own observations) that the perceived spike was largely
a reporting issue that resulted from institutional efforts to rein in existing
faculty-led programs, which had been common but informally managed
for decades. She argued this was predominantly a way to control the risk
and resulting liability these informal programs brought to their respective
universities.
Secondarily, this reining in of abroad programs fed into the internation-
alization wave that hit many American universities in the early years of the
twenty-first century (Kreber 2009), when international engagement became
more overtly competitive in the realm of institutional rankings and brand-
ing. Jennifer’s evidence was limited to her and her colleagues’ longitudinal
experience in the field, but she also noted that she had recently observed an
increasing number of universities institutionalizing a requirement that faculty
always work with an outside provider, whether they felt they needed that sup-
port or not, explicitly due to liability concerns.
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 129

PATTERNS IN STUDY-ABROAD PROVISION: HEALTH,

SAFETY, AND THE IMPERATIVE OF ACCESS

Below I lay out patterns observed in my ethnographic and interview data that
relate to issues of health, safety, and accessibility. I draw predominantly from
interviews with provider agencies, but also conversations with faculty and in-
country staff, as well as my broader ethnographic project in Southeast Asia.
Liability insurance was an unexpected selling point in my discussions with
for-profit providers. Although I never asked about it, the representatives I
spoke with all raised the issue in one way or another, and it became a clear
theme across those conversations. Representatives often brought up their
liability packages (some referring to them as “products”) as a centerpiece of
their service. FPP #1, the largest for-profit provider I spoke with, which pur-
portedly works with between 500 and 600 U.S. colleges and universities each
year, boasted that they carried more liability insurance than any of their com-
petitors (US$15 million per incident). Heather, at FPP #2, which I discuss in
greater detail below, emphasized not only their liability insurance but also
their on-staff medical and psychological professionals who had the ability to
provide for students experiencing emotional or psychological distress during
their short-term programs, which she claimed reduced the likelihood of those
participants being sent home. Heather told me this served two functions: it
meant students would have “a better experience,” and secondarily, “we get
fewer refund requests.”
The focus on emotional well-being mirrors recent trends in the Forum on
Education Abroad conference, which have shifted not only toward health and
safety concerns in recent years but particularly toward mental health (Forum
on Education Abroad 2018). With each for-profit agency I spoke with, health,
safety, and wellness concerns were brought up as competitive selling points.
By contrast, these services rarely came up in my conversations with NPPs,
except when I made a point of asking. In those cases, I found they carried
similar liability insurance to the for-profits but tended to frame it as a requi-
site obligation of the service they provide.
More than assurances about insurance, expatriation, and emergency pre-
paredness, FPPs often framed their approach to health and safety under a
broader umbrella of efforts they make to ensure a “good experience for all
students” (a phrase that came up in a number of interviews) including those
students who might otherwise find study abroad too challenging to enroll.
This was most pointedly emphasized by FPP #2, the only corporate provider
I spoke with that also conducted longer term programs, and which employed
a large, permanent staff abroad. Their representative Heather added a new
dimension to the accessibility conversation in focusing on their provision
of mental health professionals catering to students who experience anxiety,
130 Gareth Barkin

discomfort, or homesickness abroad. Reflecting a pattern that others have

observed across study-abroad provision for American students (Bathke and
Kim 2016), these mental health services were part of an array of accessibility-
related practices that included program directors trained in handling reluctant
students, programming specifically designed to accommodate them (see
“The Cultural Safety Net” section below), and on-going communication with
parents. Heather stated several times that “all students should be able to go
abroad,” and that the “ease of entry” offered by these services and policies
helped to ensure that would be possible.
Providers’ framing of homesickness and anxiety connected to travel as
symptoms demanding professional treatment recalled the medicalization
processes often described by sociologists (Aho 2008; Conrad 2007; Conrad
and Slodden 2013), in which previously nonmedical concerns come to be
discussed and defined as illnesses, disorders, or medical problems. Conrad
and Slodden describe this process as it has played out in recent decades with
social anxiety disorder and more recently with bereavement, noting “the
expansion of depression to include bereavement is an effort to expand the
DSM to include normal grief as a psychiatric disorder,” by ignoring context
(2013, p. 71). It also bears mentioning that the authors attributes the recent
rise in medicalization of mental health conditions to market exigencies
including the economic interests of psychiatric professionals as well as the
pharmaceutical industry (Conrad and Slodden 2013).
Nevertheless, NPP agencies were not far behind the FPPs in the provision
of mental health services but tended to frame them as emergency services,
not part of any broader package of interventions intended to provide greater
access to students who might otherwise have difficulties in culturally unfa-
miliar environments or who would be reluctant to study abroad without them.
When I brought up that theme with NPP #2, their representative Martina
seemed puzzled, and instead offered that they work with faculty to be up-
front with students about the rigors and challenges of their programs, in an
effort to ensure those who enroll are appropriately prepared to meet them.
She expressed more concern with the integrity and rigor of the programs
themselves than in broadening their accessibility.
Another pattern in my interviews with for-profit agencies (as well as
reviews of their promotional literature and web media) was strong focus on
students’ parents. This included direct appeals and reassurances regarding
safety and risk, as well as ways to connect. Several FPPs brought up on-
going communication with parents as a priority in their program design and
boasted of providing students with a range of means to do so. Lisa from FPP
#4 told me they often received calls from parents and that their policy was
to “reassure them that their kids won’t be out of communication for much
longer than the flight itself, if that.” Mark from FPP #3 echoed the sentiments
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 131

of many providers in noting that his agency’s attention to parents served two
objectives: the first was that, he claimed, parents often retained a good deal of
decision-making authority when it came to students’ ability to study abroad.
While it was not likely that they would stoke interest among their children,
they were seen as a common barrier, particularly with short-term programs
in which students are almost universally responsible for all financial costs,
over-and-above conventional tuition, and which were rarely ameliorated by
financial aid (Barkin 2018).
Therefore, his agency focused on parents’ concerns as a way of reduc-
ing the chance they would balk at their child’s choice to study on an FPP
#3 program. While students tended to focus on the content and destinations
of the programs, he observed that parents were more commonly focused on
health, safety, and other risk factors, which they preemptively addressed.
Second, he observed that parents worrying while their child was abroad had
historically led to a lot of work for his organization’s staff, and sometimes
for universities they worked with, who would field anxious calls and emails,
particularly when they had not heard from their child for an extended period
of time. “Connecting students and parents is a win-win for us,” Mark related,
“because it makes the students feel comfortable, hopefully, if they’re far from
home for the first time, but it also relieves the parents’ anxiety . . . so we don’t
run into that nearly as often as we did before.”
This institutional focus reflects broader efforts in higher education to
manage the surge in parental involvement in postsecondary education over
recent decades (Pizzolato and Hicklen 2011). Odenweller’s recent work on
this topic is exemplative of the perspective many NPPs expressed toward
the shift—she explored a variety of “negative effects” that result from what
she labels helicopter parenting, including a “conformity orientation” among
Millennial students, ineffective coping skills, dependency on others, and
“overburdened college campuses” (2014, p. 407) . What distinguished the
conversations with FPPs on this topic from those I have had with staff in non-
profit sectors of international and higher education was the lack of critical
concern for promoting student independence. FPPs instead tended to discuss
parents as co-customers, along with their children, whose expectations and
needs they were competing to meet.
Distribution of mobile phones upon arrival at study-abroad sites was a
common topic in my first round of interviews from 2015, and often framed
as a tool not only for maintaining safety but in-group communication as well.
This was the case with NPPs as well as FPPs, and all interviewed agencies
required or provided mobile phones or SIM cards on some short-term pro-
grams. But while NPPs framed the cell phone as a helpful tool for keeping
track of students, generally offering them inexpensive “dumb phones” that
could be used for little more than in-country calls and SMS, most FPPs in
132 Gareth Barkin

my initial interviews approached the mobile phone as another vector of the

accessibility discourse, emphasizing their import in maintaining relationships
with friends and family at home. These providers offered students on some
programs (particularly those outside Europe) either smartphones with data
allowances or data-ready SIM cards for students wishing to use their own
phones,3 but a connected smartphone was required on most programs. More
recent interviews with the same providers, conducted in 2017–2018, indi-
cated shifts in mobile phone policies connected to the rise of international
plans offered by most U.S. carriers and resulting desire among students to use
their own phones and plans.
Although it varied not just by provider but also by individual program and
destination region, the most common policy at that time was simply to require
students have a functioning smart phone and be reachable through it, to par-
ticipate in the program. Shifts in technology and the economics of mobile
providers have therefore obscured this topic as a vector of differentiation
among FPPs, but its history illustrates the for-profit world’s prioritization on
student comfort and connectivity. Still at the forefront, FPP #2 now advertises
that they explicitly ensure students remain connected to Twitter, Facebook,
and Snapchat (in addition to email and the web), ostensibly as part of their
effort to provide students with “health and safety knowledge” and their over-
all promotion of “safety & well-being away from home.”
The requirement of smartphones on STFLSA represents an interesting
example of the eroding barrier between safety/risk management, mental
health maintenance/accessibility, and immersion mitigation. Though on the
decline, international data access has been one common barrier to ambient
social connectivity while abroad (Duffy 2018), especially in shorter trips
during which students have fewer opportunities to explore local alternatives.
This sort of disruption, which educators interested in high-impact abroad
experiences tend to favor for their promotion of local engagements, explora-
tion, and reflection (La Brack and Bathurst 2012), has been effectively tar-
geted and largely effaced by commercial providers, who have little incentive
to challenge paying customers.
This customer-centric framing of disconnection illustrates the porousness
of expectations between tourism agencies and study-abroad providers, as well
as their “clients,” and in so doing shifts conceptions of what studying abroad
can or should endeavor to deliver. This is demonstrated by the growth of
short-term programs themselves, which have increasingly blurred this imag-
ined boundary (Michelson and Valencia 2016), but their increasing popular-
ity can also be seen as a symptom of these shifting expectations.
Non-profit agencies, many of which had histories of distributing “dumb
phones” for in-group communication only, rarely expressed interest in
helping students maintain ambient connectivity to their parents or social
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 133

networks. Nevertheless, the interest in avoiding worried calls and emails from
parents seemed nearly universal, and as of 2020, their connectivity policies
were largely indistinguishable from those seen in FPPs.
As evidenced by my interviews and a growing literature, wide-ranging
efforts to provide increased safety, comfort, connectivity, and “wellness”
(broadly construed), often pioneered by commercial agencies with roots in
the world of travel agencies and tour providers, have become increasingly
normative not just in short-term but also conventional study abroad (Bathke
and Kim 2016), particularly at center-based programs4 catering predomi-
nantly to American undergraduates. While working to increase access for
students of different backgrounds and capacities to educational opportuni-
ties that increase intercultural competence and understanding (via studying
abroad, away, or otherwise) is a moral imperative few would question, some
changes in practice carried out in the name of accessibility (to study abroad
in particular) reflect an increasingly porous boundary between access and
comfort. Beyond the connectivity and wellness-related practices discussed
above, this approach is also evident in the mediation or avoidance of conten-
tious areas of cultural difference.

PATTERNS IN STUDY-ABROAD PROVISION:

THE CULTURAL SAFETY NET

Maintaining a far-ranging safety net, including strong connections to family,

friends, and social networks from home, may be one avenue toward render-
ing international education less threatening and more accessible to a broad
range of potential participants. This imperative reflects a rising movement
to increase access to higher education generally, as well as generational and
technological shifts that allow for new, compelling modes of communica-
tion that have altered the landscape of normative connectivity across many
other social fields (e.g., Lai and Hong 2015; Pizzolato and Hicklen 2011).
Much of the data collected for this study that I found most interesting,
however, revolved around the blurring of boundaries between articula-
tions of access and of comfort, particularly as that comfort depended on
the maintenance of U.S. college students’ antecedent cultural frameworks.
Throughout my interviews, and increasingly since I began this project in
2015, both for-profit and NPP agencies related to me the ways their pro-
gramming had been either changed or was specifically developed to accom-
modate American students’ apparently increasing resistance to encounters
with certain vectors of cultural difference, particularly in less-developed
countries (see Squillace and Cassell 2019 for an alternative analysis of this
shift). What follows are three brief vignettes, drawn from my interviews and
134 Gareth Barkin

ethnographic work, which provide a sense of how these decisions are made
in context and which illustrate a range of ways that providers chisel away at
discomfort and ambiguity in the cultural encounters they mediate.
The first vignette is drawn from several interviews with representatives
of two center-based program providers that operate largely in Europe, and
cater to American students interested in both quarter and semester-long study
abroad, as well as short-term and “faculty led”5 programs. Center-based
programs are distinguished from other provider types, in that they do not
(a) facilitate enrollment at local universities—the approach most commonly
associated with studying abroad —nor are they (b) field-based, focused on
ethnographic, “immersive,” or itinerant (rather than traditional classroom)
pedagogy. Instead, these operators have their own study-abroad center(s)
that operate as miniature, short-term universities for a continuous flow of
undergraduate students from the United States, often drawing on nearby uni-
versities to recruit faculty for their courses and programs (Hendrickson 2016).
Because these providers work continuously teaching students from the United
States and tend to employ local university instructors (rather than guides who
are comfortable in the customer-centric field of tourism), several representa-
tives told me they frequently send their faculty on trainings focused largely on
recreating the American college classroom. “A lot of what they learn is about
having a more interactive classroom, and how to handle student opinions and
discussion,” one employee told me on condition of complete anonymity, “but
the part [returning local instructors] always talk about are the social issues,
the hot-button social issues in the U.S. aren’t necessarily familiar to them.
They have to be trained about identity politics and what’s a sensitive topic and
what isn’t, and how to discuss it – or, you know, just avoid it.”
These trainings parallel the interpretive mediation that Katriel (writing on
tour guides at Israeli settlement museums) termed “the poetics of indirec-
tion,” replacing direct confrontation of difficult or controversial topics with a
lighthearted but engaging dance around them (2013, p. 7). More broadly, as
Di Giovine argued in the context of world heritage tourism, the act of guid-
ing tourists trades not just on linguistic fluency but also “a guide who shares
similar life experiences, interests or personality traits with his clients might
be better suited than one who ‘speaks’ in another set of cultural metaphors,
expressions, or concerns” (2008, p. 289). In this case, perceived insensitiv-
ity in the negotiation of “hot-button social issues” in the classroom mirrors
the unsuccessful tour, while agency framing of the instructor’s skill set has
expanded to include those cultural awarenesses that were previously beyond
their purview. For students, overcoming the need for such culturally bespoke
performance can be considered central to many educational goals associ-
ated with studying abroad, including increased intercultural competence (La
Brack and Bathurst 2012).
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 135

When I followed up about this avoidance, the provider representative

elaborated that “most of [the local faculty] will just try to avoid these kinds
of sensitive topics, whether it’s gender or immigration or whatever, espe-
cially if the class doesn’t force them, because the pressure from [the provider
institution] is to avoid negative reports . . . and not just how they teach, but
the syllabi too and what they cover.” Although subject matter varied, similar
trainings were common practice across a variety of providers, commercial
and non-profit. These were more institutionalized among center-based pro-
viders I spoke with, but the practice was widespread, and two of the provider
agencies I interviewed had reportedly sent some instructors to the United
States to study the dynamics of American college classrooms first-hand.
Most of my interviewees at provider agencies left me with the sense
that they felt accommodating American students involved a good deal of
mediation and risk averseness, but there were also a handful that gave spe-
cific examples of curricular changes that had been motivated by concern
over student comfort and cultural expectations. Among these is my second
vignette, which came from a provider agency that regularly conducted a
prison tour as part of a criminology course taught to study-abroad students.
The focus on comparative criminology was a popular topic, and the agency
incorporated prison tours and sit-down conversations with convicts to
illustrate criminal rehabilitation practices in the host country through first-
hand accounts. According to interviews with two provider employees, this
practice was canceled in the wake of complaints from an American student
who took issue with the idea that speaking (as a class) with a convicted
criminal who had once engaged in violent crimes was integrated into the
course. The student reportedly considered it triggering of personal traumas
they had endured and criticized program staff for including the prison visit
as part of the course. The program’s staff, I was told, discussed making the
field trip optional (it had been a core part of the course, and one of its few
experiential interventions to take advantage of the local setting) but decided
that would create logistical problems. They instead removed the prison visit
from the course entirely and chose to focus instead on “making sure the
course felt safe and comfortable for everyone, which is our first priority.”
This example helps demonstrate, among other things, how the prioritization
of safety and comfort in the affective sense can intersect and conflict—in
provider decision-making—with experiential engagement within culturally
unfamiliar spaces.
A final vignette comes from a provider focused predominantly on devel-
oping-world programs, including in North Africa, and which made an effort
to incorporate best practices for fostering intercultural competence, including
research projects, homestays, and collaboration with locals (Bennett 2012).
One of their programming representatives, Laura, described to me the recent
136 Gareth Barkin

difficulties they had struggled with in accommodating some American stu-

dents who took offense to what they perceived (and which Laura herself
characterized) as local prejudices and skin-color-related discrimination. One
student in particular, who described herself as a person of color, created
waves in the organization through a series of emails they sent detailing what
they described as incidences of racism they had encountered during their par-
ticipation in a North Africa program. The student faulted the cultural setting
of the program itself and also program staff (many of whom were themselves
from the host country) for perpetuating what was perceived as negative,
retrograde framings of race and ethnicity. Their criticisms did not focus on
a single, major incident, but instead the student described ongoing micro-
aggressions, including more open commentary and joking about skin color,
as well as a perceived attitude of skin-color-based hierarchy on the program.
Laura described the conflicting priorities discussed by the program leader-
ship as they tried to negotiate between their prioritization of hiring local staff
and “immersing students in local culture” with their sympathy for the plight
of this student and acknowledgment that race, skin color, and ethnicity are
constructed and discussed very differently in the program’s North African
setting than in the United States, particularly on U.S. college campuses.
Their effort to address the student’s (and others’) concerns was on-going at
the time of my interview but included major revisions to cultural trainings
for local staff, a more hands-on role for American administrators and staff
with a stronger background in American college culture, and some local staff
contracts not being renewed.
These three vignettes reflect patterns I observed throughout my interviews
with providers, particularly when discussion moved from accommodation
into cultural and programmatic areas. In all of these cases, provider represen-
tatives struggled to negotiate the intersections of pedagogical goals, particu-
larly those related to intercultural competence, and concern over students’
comfort and wellness. Several made the point that their pedagogical goals
were unlikely to be met were students to feel significant discomfort or hostil-
ity directed toward them (as with the last case). At least two representatives,
however, lamented their agencies’ concern over accommodating U.S. under-
graduates’ cultural expectations, arguing that the risk-averse focus allowed
students to avoid those encounters with cultural difference that would likely
yield the most insight.
Particularly in short-term study abroad, mediation of the cultural encounter
is essentially unavoidable, but approached mindfully and with an aware-
ness of current best practices in intercultural learning (e.g., Barkin 2016;
Bennett 2012), this can be an asset. Shorter programs are more dependent
on such intentional mediation, as local, cultural encounters must largely be
facilitated through instructor interventions. However, it goes without saying
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 137

that study-abroad participants need not be ethnocentric philistines to find

some elements of local culture in the places where they are studying (or in
their home countries) to be shocking or objectionable, including, potentially,
beliefs and practices surrounding gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class,
caste, and many other social cleavages. At the same time, the benefit of inter-
cultural development and communication is generally framed as demanding
a degree of engagement in local, cultural contexts and awareness of social
spaces that are not, for example, the mediated simulacra of tourist bubbles,
built to cater to visitors’ existing cultural frameworks (Judd 1999). Indeed, a
central premise of interactionist anthropology and its contemporary legacies
revolves around the need to engage with cultural difference first-hand in order
to gain insight not only into its semiotic diversity, but eventually the arbitrari-
ness of one’s own cultural worldview (Geertz 1973).

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

Victor Turner abstracted the idea of the liminal stage in ritual to broader
life arenas, but his focus remained on moments or periods of time in which
social reversals, inversions of hierarchy, and antistructure opened new doors
to self-awareness, personal growth, and, if successful, transformation (1987).
As Tonkin and Quiroga (2004) argued in a similar context, Turner’s concept
“represents a journey from a zone of comfort to a zone where reversals and
inversions can be part of the growing process of students” (p. 139). Drawing
on Chisholm (2000), they argue this boundary crossing may trigger “delight,
wonder, joy, surprise, but also apprehension, disgust, disappointment, or
confusion” and that “reconciling these contradictions is a slow and some-
times painful experience” (p. 140). Of these experiences and emotions, this
research provides evidence for the argument that increasingly professional-
ized study-abroad provision agencies seek to maintain the delight, wonder,
and joy of encountering cultural difference while dispensing with the rest. Of
course, this yields something different all together, and below I lay out my
analysis of how it differs from what Turner and others have articulated, but
particularly how this shift has been made possible, given its pedagogically
questionable priorities.
In this chapter, I have provided data that illustrate some of the ways in
which an increasing emphasis on access and comfort for American students
has influenced the character and focus of study-abroad experiences, including
the role of liminality, and the shifting mediation of the cultural encounter.
My argument here is that this shift, apparently fueled by for-profit providers
but embraced by the field as a whole, builds on the power of “access” as a
term and an imperative, the use of which obscures a neoliberalization process
138 Gareth Barkin

that might otherwise attract more critical scrutiny in the field of international
education.
There are a variety of ways that this idea, which I describe in this context
as the imperative of access, has been approached by scholars in related cases.
Anthropologist Cris Shore, writing on neoliberalization processes at public
universities (2017), focused on the corporate-inflected rhetoric that has
come to the fore in reorienting the mission of higher education, particularly
through the mobilization of terms such as accountable, efficient, effective,
and economical. In a recent discussion about this research, Shore articulated
the ways market forces infiltrate the field of higher education through shifting
its vocabulary toward a corporate frame: “It’s very hard to disagree with, or
challenge the idea that ‘accountability’ is a bad thing. It’s one of those wea-
sel words; no reasonable, self-respecting, rational person could possibly be
opposed to accountability or transparency, or quality. It’d be like saying, ‘I’m
against community’ or ‘I think the family is a bad thing’” (Trembath 2018).
Nearly forty years earlier, McGee (1980) coined the term “ideograph” to
describe words and phrases that act in a discursively similar fashion: abstrac-
tions “representing collective commitment to a particular but equivocal and
ill-defined normative goal” (p. 15). As McGee described them, an ideograph
and the talk surrounding it “guides behavior and belief into channels eas-
ily recognized by a community as acceptable and laudable” (McGee 1980,
p. 15). Some of his examples include “liberty,” “equality,” and “freedom
of speech,” but succeeding generations of scholars have added to this list,
accounting for socio-political shifts, such as the emergence of “family val-
ues” as an ideograph in the 1980s (Cloud 1998) or corporate-political use of
the terms “9/11”and “patriotic” that surfaced in the wake of September 11,
2001 (Amernic and Craig 2004).
In the health and safety talk among study abroad providers, the terms
“accessibility” and “accommodation” have taken on ideographic roles. They
are, as Cloud (1998) noted, “persuasive because they are abstract, easily rec-
ognized, and evoke near-universal and rapid identification,” and, most impor-
tantly, are recognized as laudable within contemporary American educational
culture. And understandably so: as Davis (2016) has pointed out, conceptions
of the normal and juxtapositions between abled and disabled are themselves
products of particular historical moments, and vary culturally in unexpected
ways (Iwakuma et al. 2016). Making deep, intercultural engagements more
accessible to a greater variety of people from different backgrounds is laud-
able not only in the judgment of scholars, such as myself and across a broad
spectrum of academics and practitioners, but, as Shore might point out, just
about any reasonable person.
So the critique here is not that study-abroad providers should be less accom-
modating or that studying abroad should not be accessible but rather that the
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 139

power of these terms creates an imperative that redirects focus toward study
abroad’s “ease of entry,” rather than its ostensible goals and outcomes, includ-
ing the sometimes uncomfortable process of developing intercultural awareness
and understanding (La Brack and Bathurst 2012). The imperative of access
also obscures the rise of a neoliberal, customer-oriented pedagogy that heavily
mediates the cultural encounter in ways that may run counter to central learn-
ing outcomes commonly associated with studying abroad, including the role of
liminality and disconnection (Starr-Glass 2016; Van Tine 2011; Ybarra 1997).
Beyond the interviews that are at the center of this research, in my own
ethnography of FPP-directed programs in Southeast Asia, I found providers
compete to deliver “culture” without cultural difference—an aestheticized
vision of local people and settings that fit comfortably within students’
existing frameworks, or even reinforce them (as with “service learning” that
reinscribes global power relations, for example (Bodinger de Uriarte and
Jacobson 2018; Caton and Santos 2009)). Recently (2018) I discussed these
agencies’ focus on touristic “cultural activities,” including performative vol-
unteering, service learning, itinerancy, destination-centric programming, and
tour-guide pedagogy. Another dimension of this neoliberalization process is
the elevation of focus on risk management to include ostensible health and
safety policies that delimit program scope in pedagogically substantive ways,
as well as services and policies explicitly focused on comfort and connec-
tion, which may distance students from the cultural settings in which they are
spending time.
Between the “discourse of going” and this access imperative, the influence
of which are felt far beyond the world of for-profit providers, students’ expe-
rience of difference, and the potential unpleasantness of having worldviews
challenged or culturally charged assumptions undermined, is not just depri-
oritized, but pathologized. The discourse of going concerns the focus of the
programs themselves, and rendering culture consumable through an educa-
tionally inflected form of touring. This chapter has investigated the other side
of that same coin: how providers act to prevent the local environment and the
disorientation of overseas travel, as well as the more challenging dimensions
of cultural alterity, from rendering that tour uncomfortable. Described in
these terms, this seems a tenuous goal—it comes into relatively unambigu-
ous conflict with commonly cited best practices for study abroad (short-term
or otherwise) (see, e.g. Lewin 2010), and the notion that productive, high-
impact, intercultural education must challenge entrenched worldviews and
hierarchies is sufficiently deep-rooted that contesting it overtly would be to
drop the façade of outcomes-oriented pedagogy all together. This necessitates
mobilizing ideographic terms like access and accommodation, which lend a
powerful and appealing veneer to the agenda of minimizing ambiguity and
challenge.
140 Gareth Barkin

Bourdieu and Wacquant, in discussing the “strange Newspeak” of inequal-

ity-obscuring terms like globalization and multiculturalism, apparently
imposed on the world by the United States and its universities, invoke the
idea of neoliberal commonplaces: “commonplaces in the Aristotelian sense of
notions or theses with which one argues but over which there is no argument”
(2001, p. 2, emphasis in original; cf. Asad 2009). In this formulation, the
power of “access” as a commonplace is drawn from “the prestige of the place
from whence they emanate” (p. 2), which is, in both cases, the American
higher education system. Under the banner of access and accommodation,
“foreignness” can be problematized commercially as a threat to the consum-
ability of abroad experiences. Disconnection from the social networks and
the hierarchies of home, long associated with the liminal period from which
time spent abroad drew much of its impact and capacity to challenge (Amit
2010), is no longer considered a generative core of the practice around which
pedagogical interventions must be constituted, but instead a barrier to access.
And access in this context is not only a commonplace but an imperative.
The broader conclusion here may be that the neoliberalization of higher
education depends, at present, on the exploitation of those fissures in peda-
gogical discourse through which corporate interests may latch on to unchal-
lengeable commonplaces or ideoographs: access, inclusion, “study abroad”
itself. To the extent corporate interests can operate in the shadow of these
powerful imperatives, the conversation rarely seems to turn toward them and
their interests. The more commonplace the goal and the talk surrounding it,
the more cover it provides these interests, allowing them to avoid the scrutiny
that permeates other areas of higher education, particularly where it concerns
cultural difference (Banks 2015).
The data and vignettes discussed above do not present a clear call to action,
nor do I present them to advocate or condemn particular choices related to
study-abroad design or administration. What I do intend to present is a rela-
tively straightforward attribution of motives: the agencies discussed above
were largely focused on pleasing student/parent “customers” and avoiding
bad reviews or incidents that would adversely affect their relationship with
partner universities. With few exceptions (but some variation in tolerance,
particularly between for-profit and NPPs), they were not focused on peda-
gogical goals or long-term outcomes, at least not when those conflicted with
the customer-service ethic. At the same time, I find this subject position
entirely relatable, particularly when it comes to some of the complex intersec-
tions discussed above. Perhaps staff deserved to be sacked in the North Africa
case, particularly if they were themselves behaving in discriminatory ways
toward students. Maybe training instructors on the intricacies of navigating
the American college classroom is beneficial to all involved, particularly
when the training concerns a more interactive, collaborative pedagogy. The
 The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad 141

nuances of such decision-making, which turn on a multitude of factors, are

beyond the scope of this chapter, and I would not presume to second-guess
my collaborators in this study.
What this data can demonstrate is that that decisions and policy
responses to these circumstances were coming largely from the customer-
centric logic of neoliberal institutions, and that is the distinction I seek
to draw here. Pedagogical interventions of one sort or another are an
essential part of study abroad, particularly short-term programs; in no
way am I arguing for “authenticity through hardship” or an unreflexive,
anachronistic “immersion” model, where students are dropped into foreign
environments and where benefits are imagined to accrue from their unas-
sisted struggle to orient themselves (Bennett 2010; Doerr 2012). These are
difficult decisions particularly when one’s primary focus is pedagogical
effectiveness abroad and where student (or parent) complaints must be
measured against an array of competing considerations. But the ability
to weigh student–parent perspectives as part of a broader assessment of
learning goals allows for decision-making that keeps students’ long-term
pedagogical interests at heart, even where those interests demand a mea-
sure of “apprehension, disgust, disappointment, or confusion” (Chisholm
2000, p. 79).
Finally, if disconnection and a willingness to endure liminal ambiguity and
discomfort are central to the negotiation of cultural difference, particularly
where that difference challenges closely held beliefs, another way this data
could be understood is that provider agencies have found a way to outsource
this difficult work to their own staff. These staff members are charged with
negotiating the volatile territory between those threats (bodily, affective, and
cultural) presented to U.S. students by local people and spaces, filtering out
potentially objectionable characteristics to render them palatable. For those
students coming of age in the neoliberal university, engaging with such real-
world challenges has become not just optional—a professionalized and often
silenced chore no longer expected of participants—but increasingly removed
from the study-abroad imaginary.

NOTES

1. I have developed and led nine study abroad programs in the years 2007–2020,
two semester-long and the other seven STFLSA programs in Southeast Asia.
2. All names have been changed to afford anonymity to interviewees and other
participants in the study. The names of agencies and STFLSA providers have likewise
been anonymized, where numbered NPPs and FPPs indicate non-profit and for-profit
providers, respectively.
142 Gareth Barkin

3. At the time of this writing, international data and calling rates are declining
among many U.S. carriers, so this service may soon become redundant, but during
the past fifteen years, during which short-term abroad programs have risen dramati-
cally in popularity (Institute of International Education and Farrugia 2018), it is worth
noting that these rates have been (and in some areas of Southeast Asia remain) pro-
hibitively high for many students, creating a significant barrier to the maintenance of
ambient, online social connections.
4. Center-based or “island programs,” as they are sometimes labeled, are programs
that maintain their own teaching facilities and instructional staff abroad, and whose
classes are populated entirely by students studying abroad. They contrast with tradi-
tional university-based programs, in which students enroll in conventional (or some-
times customized) courses at an established university abroad, and with field-based
programs, which also feature classes populated entirely by study-abroad students but
which are experiential and often ethnographic programs rather than classroom-based.
Center-based programs were developed largely to serve students from U.S. universi-
ties (Hoffa and DePaul 2010).
5. As I have discussed elsewhere (Barkin 2018), the degree of faculty leadership in
what are labeled “faculty-led” programs varies wildly, with some providers allowing
or even requiring faculty to cede their pedagogical authority to staff and guides hired
by the agency. The term “faculty led” as it is generally used by providers indicates
that course credit will come from the faculty member’s host institution (as opposed
the more tedious transfer of credit from the provider and its partner institution) but
not that the faculty member will necessarily exercise more than a ceremonial degree
of leadership in program design or pedagogy.

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 Chapter 5

Forbidden Learning
The Challenge of Dispelling Post-
Colonial Tourist Imaginaries of
Cuba through Study Abroad
Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

INTRODUCTION

“The Cuba Music and Culture Seminar” at Washington College, a private

liberal arts college in Maryland, is a blended course that incorporates pre-
travel online learning with classroom lecture and culminates with a two-week
fieldwork-based experience in Cuba. The course is run by an ethnomusicolo-
gist specialized in Afro-Cuban ritual and an anthropologist specialized in the
cultures of Latin America. By immersing students in contexts dominated by
Afro-Cuban religious music and ritual as well as popular expressive forms
of Cuban music and dance, the manifest goal of the course is to encourage
students to understand how music is part of a complex cultural web and to
discover the interrelatedness of its many parts: music, dance, visual arts,
ritual, beliefs, gender, race, nationalism, and historical events. Like most
study-abroad courses, a latent, but no less important goal of the course, is to
stimulate transformation in student perspectives (e.g., imaginaries) about the
Cuban people and culture, and the changes Cubans face due to the processes
of globalization.
The course is open to all students in the college and attracts majors from
across the curriculum. The advertising materials, developed specifically to
attract or “seduce” (see Salazar 2010) clients to take the course, contain a
kaleidoscope of educational objectives, adventure narratives, and preformed
tourist imaginaries featuring images of pristine beaches, old American cars,
hand rolled Cuban cigars, and peers from previous trips having fun. From
our very first meeting prior to the trip, however, we attempt to complicate,

149
150 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

challenge, and deconstruct these imaginaries, engaging in focused discus-

sions about ever-changing U.S.–Cuba relations, the impact of communism
as an economic model, the outcomes of a one-party form of government,
issues of race, class, and gender, and the impacts of development and tour-
ism. Over the course of several weeks before leaving for Havana, there are
extensive readings designed to teach a broad history of Cuba, changes that
have occurred in the past thirty years, and the specific historical contexts of
Cuban religion, ritual, and music. Students use an online platform to respond
to video selections that are chosen to provoke conversations about race,
religion, and nostalgia, and through online listening exercises they learn to
identify a variety of forms of religious and expressive music styles so that
they are prepared to understand the general form and context of Santería
drumming rituals.
Although the Cuba Music and Culture Seminar offers just eleven days
in the field, our program can be viewed as a form of “anti-tourism,” as
defined in this volume, due to pedagogical approaches that prioritize qual-
ity interactions with the host community. Once on the ground in Havana,
the course deliberately avoids the “traditional tourist pathway” and offers
students a “backstage” experience and an imagined “authentic” engagement
(see MacCannell 1976) by placing them in homestays, avoiding guided
tours, involving them in field-based participant observation, and immersing
them as participants in a multitude of religious and popular performances.
Throughout the field experience, our students find their comfort zones chal-
lenged, and, quite often, the tourist gaze is inverted as the students find them-
selves subject to the critical, and yet appreciative, eyes of Cubans who teach
them the fundamentals of Afro-Cuban religious song and dance. We argue
these approaches provide a more formative educational experience and a
deeper understanding of culture than one would obtain from more traditional
tourist settings and activities.
Part of our exploration of the theme of “anti-tourism” relates to the nature
of immersion as an important element of our short-term study-abroad pro-
gram. Every tourist is immersed in the “Elsewhere” of a foreign geography
and culture, but the level of immersion exists along what we call a continuous
“immersion spectrum.” The traditional tourist experience is often perceived
as a “shallow” form of immersion in which there are few physical, cultural,
or intellectual challenges to existing ways of thinking. We argue that anti-
tourism facilitates “deep immersion” in a place and a culture, raising the
educational stakes for the student-tourist by laying siege to their comfort zone
in ways that challenge pre-existing perspectives, essentialisms, and imaginar-
ies. As one example of “deep immersion,” we explore the power of embodied
learning of Afro-Cuban religious song and dance to more thoroughly con-
nect the student with Cuban ritual and religious meaning. Another example
 Forbidden Learning 151

examines the impact of disengagement from technology on student interac-

tion with the host community, and yet a third example investigates how liv-
ing outside the “tourist bubble” provides opportunities to more thoroughly
engage with local economic and political realities.
Another important goal of the course is to challenge pre-existing tourist
imaginaries. Salazar and Graburn (2014) broadly define the “tourist imagi-
nary” as that which is collectively imagined, or fantasized, about a place
or people. These shared imaginaries, which differ based on historical and
cultural experiences, are created and socially transmitted through discourse
and representations in politics and the media. Imaginaries function as implicit
schemas of interpretation of Otherness that shape worldviews before, during
and after a tour (Strauss 2006: 329). By imposing socially constructed order
on what the tourist sees and understands (Urry 1990), imaginaries influence
the meaning the tourist takes away from the experience.
Picard (2011: 2) argues that the tourist imaginaries for some destinations
are saturated with fantastical and quasi-magical qualities (i.e., exoticism,
magic, ritual, primitivism, and perceptions of disorder and underdevelop-
ment). Western tourists, he suggests, intentionally seek such locations in
order to “maintain and renew that which legitimates the moral and political
order of modern life.” In other words, tourists often confirm pre-existing
beliefs about the “rightfulness” of their own way of life by observing the
“wrongfulness” of other ways of life through a lens constructed by power-
ful cultural, political, and ideological filters (Echtner and Prasad 2003).
Simultaneously, Rosaldo (1989) suggests, such tourist imaginaries are
accompanied by “imperialist nostalgia” or mourning for traditions that were
destroyed through colonial encounters, including tourism. In this chapter,
we discuss some of the fantastical tourist imaginaries of Cuba, including
Cuba as “frozen in time” and Cuba as “forbidden” and explore nostalgia for
an imagined Cuba that is being transformed by tourism. Our data suggest it
is extremely difficult to deconstruct these widely shared and deeply rooted
imaginaries.
Throughout the chapter we critically examine student perceptions of the
efficacy of our pedagogical approaches and identify shortcomings in the abil-
ity of these approaches to stimulate transformation in pre-existing imaginar-
ies about Cuba. Our research is based on thematic analysis of assignments,
travel journals, and post-trip reflection papers of sixty-three students who
participated in The Cuba Music and Culture Seminar between 2015 and
2018. We analyzed assignments that assessed acquired knowledge of the
geopolitical history of Cuba and contemporary issues affecting Cuba, such
as race, gender, sexuality, and the impact of tourism. We examine essays
from pre-trip and in-country ethnographic activities and travel journal entries
that respond to questions about in-field experiences and events. Finally, we
152 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

thoroughly analyzed our own course advertising materials, college marketing

releases, and student blogs about the course.
In order to identify and analyze student perceptions, we systematically
coded these texts while searching for emergent themes (Gibbs 2008; Bernard
et al. 2016). The most prominent themes shared across the texts include
beliefs about Cuban people and society, iconic or embodied learning and
emic understanding of ritual, imperialist nostalgia, breaching of comfort
zones and responses to such breaches, feelings of discomfort and uncertainty,
perceptions of immersion and “being there,” perceptions of privileged access,
indications of liminality and borders, and transformation of pre-existing
stereotyped or romanticized perspectives of Other. We also explored the fre-
quency in which themes overlapped, revealing associations between concepts
that emerged from student journals and reflection papers. Anonymized quota-
tions presented throughout this chapter are directly excerpted from student
papers and transcribed materials. The overall objective was to understand
how our college promotes the benefits of study abroad to students, determine
how students imagine Cuban society and culture, and discover whether they
perceive any post-trip transformation in perspective and worldview.

EDUTOURISM AND THE LOGIC OF

TRANSFORMATION IN PERSPECTIVE

In response to rapid increases in global interconnections over the past several

decades, institutions of higher education have intensified their focus on the
importance of molding students as global citizens (Davis-Salazar 2016; Caton
et al. 2014). The global citizen as imagined by institutions of higher educa-
tion is meant to be open to ethnic, cultural, political, and linguistic difference,
aware of positionality and structural causes of inequality, and be willing and
able to communicate across these boundaries (Pan et al. 2011; Palacios 2004).
Colleges and universities accordingly market the power of study abroad to
actively transform student perspectives through interaction with peoples,
places and cultures, and crossing of borders both geographic and personal
(Bellamy and Weinberg 2006). In addition to broadening intellectual and cul-
tural horizons, educational study-abroad programs are promoted as a way to
enhance the ability of students to link theory with real-word experience, and
groom students to solve real-world problems in global contexts (Kolb 1984).
Study-abroad programs are thus heavily promoted as an important compo-
nent of the enhanced college experience that crafts effective global citizens.
According to the Institute of International Education, the number of U.S.
students studying abroad for credit has increased more than 300 percent since
 Forbidden Learning 153

1990 (IIE Fast Facts 2017). At the undergraduate level, over 10 percent of U.S.
students studied abroad in some form in the academic year 2015–2016, and
this does not include participation in non-credit work, such as international
internships and volunteerism. Simultaneously, there has been a significant
shift away from the “traditional” semester abroad program toward short-term
study abroad (defined as 8 weeks or less). Short-term programs now account
for 63 percent of college-facilitated international experiences (IIE Fast Facts
2017). This massive shift in the way students engage with study abroad has
important implications for the proposed goal of transformation in student
perspectives, especially in the field of anthropology where such experiences
are considered a rite of passage for serious adherents of the field.
Reasons for the recent increase in short-term study-abroad programs are
numerous and complex. Many—if not most—colleges and universities have
highlighted the importance of global competency in their strategic plans
without devoting the necessary resources to support in-depth and long-term
student engagement. As one solution to these shortcomings, individual
professors have been encouraged to develop short-term programs on their
own, without much institutional infrastructure or support. The Cuba Music
and Culture Seminar, for example, is an institutionally cost-neutral way to
increase student participation in study abroad because the student pays for
their own tuition and travel costs, as well as those of the instructors. In many
ways, the short-term program releases the institution from the burden of sup-
porting study abroad while still achieving strategic goals of global participa-
tion outlined in mission statements.
There has also been an explosive proliferation of a private edutourism
industry designed to incentivize short-term programs through commercial-
ized collaboration with individual faculty members. Commercial edutourism
companies design customized travel itineraries, plan and coordinate travel
logistics, and provide insurance and safety nets for a wide variety of higher
education groups traveling abroad. Many such companies market their ser-
vices aggressively, making grand claims that short-term study abroad will
craft global citizens and transform student perspectives. Barkin (2018: 2)
argues the commercialized objective of getting more students to study abroad
often overshadows critical engagement with global issues and tends to pri-
oritize “experiences that more closely match the romanticized, image-based
representations of study abroad.” Dorn et al. (2008), counter that commercial
edutourism groups can be effective when they offer a network of support (i.e.,
cultural brokers) that directly address pre-existing colonial imaginaries rather
than reinforcing stereotypes.
Regardless of the model used, the short-term program can be an institu-
tional solution for some of the challenges that students face when considering
154 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

study abroad. For some students, the proportionally lower costs of short-term
programs make study abroad affordable. For students with little experience
traveling away from home, the short-term program can be less daunting for
both the students and their parents, allowing them to “dip their toes in the
pool” with a group of other students without committing to a full-semester
experience on their own. Finally, as Barkin (2018) indicates, athletes with
rigid schedules and STEM majors with inflexible and scaffolded academic
requirements can take advantage of short courses in a winter or summer term.
For these and other reasons, the number of students enrolling in short-term
study-abroad programs continues to increase.
Although there have been studies that support the effectiveness of both
long-term and short-term study abroad in achieving the goal of education
for global citizenship (Landon et al. 2017; Paige et al. 2009; Anderson et al.
2006; Jackson 2006; Williams 2005), it is difficult to objectively measure
transformation in student perspectives. In theory, taking the student out of
their comfort zone forces them to enter physical, geographic, political, and
psychological liminal spaces. In these personal transition zones between the
familiar and unfamiliar, change in entrenched perspectives can take place.
But several authors challenge the idea that travel leads to transformation in
perspective (Vande Berg et al. 2012). Lean (2012), for example, argues that
while travel leads to changes in physical location and cultural surrounds, it
is a much more complex undertaking to remove pre-existing schemas and
constructed memories about Other people, ideas, and ways of life. Nash
(1977) and Bruner (2005) suggest that rather than challenging pre-existing
stereotypes, beliefs, and ideologies, tourist travel can instead solidify colonial
relations by reinforcing existing ways of seeing and acting in the world.
In order to address the kinds of concerns raised by Lean (2012) and Bruner
(2005), so-called “best practices” in edutourism encourage the use of assign-
ments and focused discussion about social, political, and cultural difference
while in the field, and an on-going critical-reflective portfolio approach to
capture the challenges the traveler has encountered to their perspective,
and whether and how this leads to new perspectives (Landon et al. 2017;
Donnelly-Smith 2009; Dorn et al. 2008; Deloach et al. 2002). Leaders of
short-term study-abroad trips report that crossing borders, both personal and
geographic, does challenge pre-existing ideas about people, governments,
and places (Doerr 2012; Paige et al. 2009; Anderson et al. 2006), but there
is consensus that there is a need for clear pedagogical approaches to guide
uncomfortable experiences toward critical reflection (Tarrant et al. 2014;
Donnelly-Smith 2009; Zemach-Bersin 2007). The Cuba Music and Culture
Seminar at Washington College attempts to facilitate student reflection about
pre-existing stereotypes and imaginaries through a number of pedagogical
approaches discussed in detail below.
 Forbidden Learning 155

“BEING THERE”: TRANSFORMING PERSPECTIVES

THROUGH ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS

David Kolb argues that experiential learning (as opposed to rational–idealist

models of learning) is powerful because it “requires the student to involve
themselves fully, openly and without bias in new experiences and to reflect
on and observe their experiences from many perspectives so that ultimately
they can integrate their observations with theories to make decisions and
solve problems (1984: 31).” According to Kuh (2008), study abroad can be a
powerful form of learning that offers the opportunity for students to explore
cultures and worldviews through a new lens and to examine “difficult differ-
ences” such as race, gender, inequality, and human rights through personal
experience and critical thinking. As Dewey (1938) argued, experiential
learning is greatly enhanced when students engage in inquiry and reflec-
tion on challenges to their pre-existing ideas about the world. We argue that
anthropological method, as a focused way of learning about another culture,
functions as a powerful vehicle for experiential and transformative learning
(see La Brack and Bathurst 2012) when incorporated with a short-term study-
abroad program.
The hallmark of ethnographic methods is participant observation. This
approach emphasizes the power of immersion in the daily life of local
peoples for gaining better understanding of both the emic (insider’s) and
etic (outsider’s) perspective and keeping field notes to sharpen observation
skills. Being surrounded by the flow of language, activity, and symbols can
be disorienting at first and rapidly become fatiguing, but the action of being
attuned and acutely engaged in participating, observing, and taking notes can
provide both broader and deeper perspective. The Cuba Music and Culture
Seminar uses field-based writing assignments which require students to open
their senses to go beyond observing ritual and ask students to be aware of
action and symbol and attempt to be analytical about meaning. When coupled
with readings about Cuban music and culture, and daily discussion meant to
unpack and contextualize fieldwork experiences, this approach supports criti-
cal reflection that leads to integration of theory and experience.
During our field course, participant-observation exercises are assigned
at numerous public and private religious performances in Havana. Many
of these are associated with Santería (also known as Lucumí), the most
pervasive Afro-Cuban religion in Havana. Students report that they were
more prepared to understand these ceremonies, because they learned the
music styles in pre-orientation classes before traveling to the island and read
extensively about the deities and rituals of Santería. We assigned a variety of
systematic participant-observation exercises for each performance. At times
the students were required to observe the interaction between the participants
156 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

(a large gathering of believers who sing, dance, and perform other highly
ritualized behaviors) and the music specialists, which comprise a singer and
three-seated drummers each playing a double-headed hourglass shaped batá
drum. At other times, they observed the musical, gestural, and verbal interac-
tion between the drummers themselves. On one occasion, they were required
to observe a possession trance by one particular orisha (deity) and make note
of garment colors, jewelry design, dance styles, and other behaviors. On yet
another occasion, they focused on the nature and depth of involvement of the
different genders in the ritual.
The goal of these assignments is to involve the student in ritual in a
directed and intentional way. This pedagogical approach may detract from
aesthetic enjoyment of the ritual, but it encourages participatory awareness
and reflection upon the underpinnings of ritual actions, which transforms the
experience into a more informed understanding of the religion. Several of our
students indicate that this approach gave them more of an etic or “insider”
experience of the rituals. For example, one student indicates that he was able
to “step in” to a Cuban ritual, almost as if he were stepping into another
culture:

When I initially began reading about the Lucumí faith it was difficult to grasp
and understand all of the parts. However, once I was in Cuba, I was able to
observe the ceremonies and learn about the faith through personal experience
and reflection. I’ll never forget stepping into the house and observing the drum-
ming, dancing, and possession firsthand. It was like stepping into another world.

Other assignments based on qualitative methods are designed to enhance

engagement with local events and people and critically examine structural
features of political, economic, and cultural difference. For example, students
design, conduct, and analyze semi-structured interviews with Cuban religious
practitioners to learn more about personal histories of Cuban policy toward
the practice of Santería song, dance, and ritual. Observations from these
assignments are tracked and analyzed in daily reflective journals designed
to encourage the student to make sense of what they are learning and search
for larger connections between classroom-based theoretical constructs and
on-the-ground experience. Unfortunately, these assignments created anxiety
about academic accountability and distracted the student from the lived expe-
rience of “being there.” On the other hand, this approach required students to
question what they were seeing, to be more active in their observations, and
to make connections between their learning and their experience.
The power of these methods to transform the experience comes through in
some of the student reflections. Taking a binary stance that traditional tour-
ism is “shallow” or “superficial” (see MacCannell 1973; Di Giovine 2013),
 Forbidden Learning 157

and that ethnographically informed tourism is more educational, one student

notes in her journal,

“The tourist bus trip we took around the island reinforced how grateful I was for the
extensive assignments that we did in Havana. Though I enjoyed seeing more of the
island and doing tourist-themed activities rather than ethnographic ones, it definitely
felt like something was lacking. I did not feel like I was gaining any cultural knowl-
edge, and in some cases I felt like I was not doing anything even remotely related to
Cuban culture.” Another student reflects on the power of “being there” for learning
about ritual, saying, “For me, first-hand experience was the only way to understand
the sense of community and see the rules of the rituals in action.” As discussed in
the next section, this sense of obtaining an insider perspective through first-hand
experience was also enhanced by the structure of the tour experience itself.

HOMESTAYS AS “DEEP IMMERSION”

AND EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Housing provides a visceral experience of the “Elsewhere” that varies quite

dramatically based on setting and location. Hotels in the tourist district of
Havana offer their guests an experience that in no way resembles that of the
average Cuban. These hotels are extravagant and air-conditioned. There are
24-hour services of every kind, and one can access the outside world at any
time through telephone and high-speed Internet. In contrast to the everyday
experience of average Cubans who, according to government reports, earn
$35/month and receive ration tickets for food, in tourist hotels there are
almost never shortages of staples such as meat, cheese, or dairy.
The Cuba Music and Culture Seminar is deliberately designed to disentan-
gle the students from the comfort zone of the tourist district and provide them
with a “behind-the-scenes” (MacCannell 1973) view of the typical working-
class experience. Students were not only placed in the homes of “average”
Cuban families a few blocks outside of the “tourist bubble,” the geographic
area in which tourist-based attractions and services are concentrated (see
Bosley and Brothers 2008), they were also displaced from each other and
placed in four to six homes over a one-block radius. Given that tourist bub-
bles often have social, political, and physical boundaries inhibiting tourist–
resident interactions, this relative isolation in working-class neighborhoods
is meant to facilitate “deep immersion” and more “authentic” interactions
between the student and their Cuban hosts and encourage engagement with
neighborhood residents as they come and go throughout the day. Bringing to
mind the “staged authenticities” that MacCannell (1973) and Urry and Larsen
(2011) engage with, a staff writer for our college alumni magazine opined
158 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

after the trip in 2015, “Rather than staying in hotels, the students stayed and
ate meals with local working-class families, which only deepened their expe-
rience of the culture.”
Unlike many traditional tours to exotic locations that our students have
experienced with friends and family in the past, our Cuban homestays are not
spaces for leisure, and the luxuries and conveniences of home are not present.
Conditions are somewhat spartan, with few of the distractions that one would
typically find when touring. For students with little knowledge of Spanish,
the language barrier intensifies their isolation. This immersion experience
gives students the perception of a more “authentic” and “behind-the-scenes”
experience and deeper learning. As one student reflected in a journal entry,

I think staying in homestays made our experience much richer. The fancy hotels
where most tourists stayed seemed nothing like the rest of Cuba, removed from
the bustle of the streets. However, our homestays were never quiet, and we
could hear stray dogs barking and vendors blowing their whistles early in the
morning. While someone could stay in a hotel and never interact with Cubans
beyond scripted tours, we were able to get to know our hostesses.

An added aspect of immersion is that all of our meals are served in a single
homestay. Food is prepared on a two-burner stove or carried to our location
from other homes by several women who live in the immediate neighbor-
hood. In their journal entries, our students project an imaginary that eating
locally made food in working-class Havana set them apart from other tourists,
offering them deeper insider knowledge of the life of an average Cuban. At
least one student projects “personal imaginings” (Salazar and Graburn 2014)
of transcending Otherness and difference, interpreting homestays and home-
cooked meals to represent a more meaningful and authentic experience, “By
staying in homestays, rather than hotels, I feel we really got a taste of true
Cuban life. They treated us like close relations and no one felt like a stranger
after leaving their homestays. We were able to enjoy Cuba like Cubans, eat-
ing what is traditionally offered and learning customs and having interactions
we would not have had normally if we had stayed somewhere as guests only,
and not guests and ‘friends’ (to an extent).”
The women who cooked for us are home cooks, not trained in catering for
large groups. This informal cooking arrangement is highly unusual, and it
took us months to convince them to cook for our group. Part of their reluc-
tance was that they are extremely limited in the foods that they can obtain.
While fruit, bread, and vegetables can be bought in local corner markets,
quality meats, dairy, and packaged foods are extremely difficult to find out-
side of the tourist bubble. There are no supermarkets, and the local groceries
have a few sparse items on the shelves. Competition for the available items
 Forbidden Learning 159

is strong and long lines are a way of life. For Cuban citizens, most staples
are guaranteed by the state through a ration process. In order to provide food
for our program, however, our hosts must return to stores over and over, they
call friends to ask about food availability in distant neighborhoods, and they
procure food well in advance storing items in their own freezer space as well
as that of friends and family. We also bring limited packaged food such as
peanut butter and pasta from the United States with us on the plane. Our hosts
cook and serve the food on a large, second-floor balcony overlooking the
street, an open space that allows for regular and sustained interaction between
the hosts and our students. Over the course of numerous conversations with
our hosts, the students begin to understand the limitations on the availability
of many foods that they take for granted in the United States. As instructors,
we tie these limitations directly to the U.S. embargo on Cuba, and take the
opportunity to link these restrictions to the history of Cuba–U.S. relations.
As a result of these intimate encounters, students begin to seriously ques-
tion the goals and effectiveness of the U.S. embargo. One student notes,
“Staying in a homestay and eating authentic cuisine increased my knowl-
edge and understanding of the culture as well. For example, our hosts talked
about the realities of how hard it was to get food for our group because
they had rations. These real-world experiences taught me more than a book
ever could, and completely changed my perspective on the country.” While
students clearly appreciate living and eating “like a local,” and gain insight
into the individual hardships posed by political and geopolitical relations, as
discussed below, they also transform their experience in unanticipated ways
to highlight differences between themselves and their hosts.

UNPLUGGED: AUTHENTICITY AND THE

DEPLOYMENT OF STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISMS

The ubiquity of instant access to information and social media in the devel-
oped world creates a sharp contrast with travel in Cuba, where until very
recently, there was no mobile Internet access, and even hardwired access to
Internet was slow, unreliable, and expensive to use. While most study-abroad
programs insist upon having all students use cell phones and be accessible at
all times, this is not possible in Cuba. Disengagement from technology was
not a deliberate part of the course design but, in fact, it played an unantici-
pated and important role in how our students understood Cuban culture and
their own personal experience while traveling. Lack of access to phone and
Internet created a liminal space for our students, who were displaced and
newly located in both space and time perhaps for the first time in their lives.
This was, for them, a radical separation from the norm. Highlighting the
160 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

cognitive dissonance this created, one student titled her post-trip paper “Our
Neighbor That’s Worlds Away.” In this student imaginary, Cubans are living
in an entirely different world.
A key theme that emerged in our data is the imaginary that Cubans are
information deprived, and thus less knowledgeable about the state of the
modern world. While it is true that international news is filtered heavily by
state-owned media, Cubans obtain alternate information from tourists and
friends and family living overseas. Ironically, numerous students interpreted
their own short-term information deprivation as a powerful vehicle for
personal transformation, reporting that being in Cuba offers them a more
“authentic” reality due to the fact that they could not disengage from the
immediate surroundings and could not avoid person-to-person interactions.
For example, one noted, “Without access to technology, especially personal
technology, there is a more rhythmic feeling to the streets. The street vendors
and early morning workers even had a way of chanting their products that
had similarities to the Rumba, Timba and batá singing.” Another student
reported,

I felt that being away from the entire world helped me build a better relation-
ship with Cuba because I was always living in the moment and I never missed
anything. It was different than living in America where everyone has their head
buried in a phone or computer screen. Being away from technology forced me to
take a step back from knowing about what everyone else was doing and forced
me to engulf myself in what was happening in the present.

These notions of information deprivation were extended to the idea of

Otherness as students deployed strategic essentialisms and “imperialist nos-
talgia” (Rosaldo 1989). Students examined Otherness through a modernist
lens, valorizing Cubans for being a more “authentic” people due to their
lack of technology. For example one student says, “Cubans attend perfor-
mances to be moved by the music, not to record it on the smartphone to
make the Twitter world jealous.” And our students appear to imagine that
lack of technology is actually a “key” to interpreting the Cuban culture.
As one student put it, “While their lack of a sense of time and urgency and
their minimal connection to the outside world can be frustrating at times, I
envy the Cubans’ ability to value life for what it is and constantly believe in
their culture.” These preconceived and seemingly nostalgic ideas about an
imagined Cuba that represents a bucolic past were likely preformed through
media exposure, and despite evidence to the contrary, selectively reinforced
during travel. They form an outline of a core tourist imaginary of what Cuba
is to Americans.
 Forbidden Learning 161

TOURIST IMAGINARIES AND FORBIDDEN CUBA

The student narratives we collected over the past four years constitute a set
of complexly patterned pre- and post-images of Cuba and Cuban people. The
narratives convey these patterns through discourse, images, stereotypes, and
cultural and political frameworks that inform students about the Otherness
of Cuba. Like other tourists, our students wanted to go “Elsewhere,” which
Bodinger de Uriarte and Jacobson (2014) describe as the elusive site of true
engagement with an exotic and imagined other, to gain abstract and concrete
experiences of transformation. The key difference from other kinds of tour-
ists is that our students were seeking these experiences within the framework
of an educational course centered on anthropological and ethnomusicologi-
cal methods as a way to gain insider access. As one student noted about this
approach, “Before the trip, I had nothing concrete to which I could tie the
material I was learning and the opinions I was forming; now that I’ve been,
and because I spent so much of my time there documenting as much as I
could, I have a much more solid, sensory, personal anchor for those thoughts.”
Thematic analysis of student assignments indicates that the pre-existing
Cuba imaginary is heavily influenced by exposure to politics and media.
Not surprisingly, the majority of our students began the course with little
or no knowledge of the social, economic, and political realities of Cuba, an
island that is only ninety miles from our geographic and political borders.
Informed by Cold War political rhetoric, sensationalized events covered in
the media such as the Elian Gonzalez story, unsubstantiated “sonic attacks”
on diplomats, films such as Scarface, and a few paragraphs concerning the
Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis in high school history textbooks,
students imagine a heavily surveilled, brutally policed, and economically
destitute populace desperate to escape to the freedom, opportunity, and order
of American society.
The resulting imaginary of Cuba is overwhelmingly influenced by con-
structed memories of communism, dictatorship and its supposed forbidden
status. As evidenced by a steady stream of comments in emails, informal
conversations, and classroom interactions, students were thrilled by the pros-
pect of traveling to a location that, for all intents and purposes, is imagined
as banned by the U.S. government. Thus “being there” with access to the
forbidden would be transformative—forever marking them as different from
their families, friends, and peers due to experience and gained knowledge.
Like Nicaragua in the post-Sandinista period (Babb 2004), Cuba turned
to global tourism in order to adapt to the difficult economic realities it faced
after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, for Americans in particular,
the Cold War political and public narratives swirling around the Cuba–U.S.
relationship create a widely shared perception that Cuba is a hostile and
162 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

dangerous place to travel. As one student noted in his journal, “I was under
the impression that Cubans hated all Americans and because they are under
a dictatorship.” Another student wrote, “Before I left, some of the things
my friends and family asked were ‘isn’t it illegal to travel to Cuba; don’t all
Cubans hate Americans; isn’t Cuba a very dangerous place to travel?’” A
third student commented on his preconceptions of communism and personal
well-being, “I knew they were a communist country, and I have only ever
heard negative things about dictatorships. Because I wasn’t familiar with this
kind of government, I assumed that the people of Cuba would not be very
happy.”
The prospect of privileged access to an imagined “forbidden” location
created conflicting emotions of anxiety and excitement for many of our
students. Excitement was generated, in part, by anticipation of the “true
authentic” of seeing behind what was imagined as the last iron curtain. As
one student pointed out, “Cuba was my first time in a developing country
and a socialist/communist country. My experience quickly went from curi-
ous and nervous to excitement and a gratitude for the opportunity.” Despite
prolonged pre-trip conversations about how safe Cuba is, how open and
friendly Cubans are to American tourists, and the fact that the Cuban state
relies heavily on tourist dollars, students maintained anxiety about the imag-
ined danger of traveling to the stronghold of a communist dictatorship. In
one reflective paper submitted after the trip, a student wrote, “Not only was
I afraid of being treated poorly, but I also feared that we would be watched
by government officials! I was consumed by ‘what ifs’ and the negative per-
spectives of my family and friends.” Another student summed up his feelings
by saying, “I thought about how we would be greeted. Would we be seen as
American pigs?”
These conflicting imaginaries play a role both in personal identity forma-
tion (student as adventurer) and in the imaginary of the place (Cuba as exotic,
monolithically communist, and inaccessible). As reflected in their journals
after the trip, students were emotionally relieved and intellectually challenged
by what they actually experienced on the ground in Cuba. As one student
response indicates, the mere fact of “being there” fundamentally transformed
their image of this forbidding place,

I didn’t realize how uncomfortable I would feel in this “forbidden place” until
I arrived there. I felt an overwhelming sense of unfamiliarity; it was my first
experience of “culture shock.” So the first two days were terrifying for me.
Everything that I did felt uncomfortable. But at the end of eight days I was
somehow sucked into this culture and I was grasping at concepts or new ques-
tions to ask that, at the beginning of the journey, I never would have thought
to ask.
 Forbidden Learning 163

DANCING AND SINGING:

DISCOMFORT AND INVERSION

As we designed The Cuba Music and Culture Seminar, we sought multiple

strategies that would enhance an understanding of cultural familiarity and dif-
ference among the students. Aside from housing, the most effective activity
we developed was a series of ritual song and dance lessons with Cuban reli-
gious practitioners and professional dancers from internationally recognized
cultural ensembles. This approach differs dramatically from the ubiquitous
tourist dance lessons which, Simoni argues, are designed to facilitate exuber-
ant, sensual, seductive, and “festive happenings” (2016: 153) in tourist dance
clubs. Our approach also contrasts with Skinner’s (2008) focus on “social
dance” (i.e., popular couples dancing) and its interplay with sexuality and
gender construction.
Rather than having “natives” perform a welcoming dance or instructors
teach an erotic or sexualized version of a popular dance, such as salsa, our
students are introduced to the sacred songs and movements of orishas, the
supernatural “deities” of Santería religion that were imported and syncretized
over hundreds of years of west African enslavement and isolation on the
island. The students learn highly prescribed ritual steps and the precise con-
text for their ritual application. The dances they learn are difficult, physically
demanding and totally devoid of any “couples” component, as the focus is
on the relationship between the individual dancer and the orisha. Our goal is
for students to better understand the context and meaning of the relationship
between individuals and orishas in an intellectual way, but more importantly
to feel these things in their bodies. The reflexive attempt to embody the
orisha provides the students with a stronger understanding of the connec-
tion between music, movements, and meaning during the ceremonies they
attend. This approach combats the tendency to Other Santería practitioners
and rituals.
Though exhausted from a long day of travel, these lessons began on the
evening we arrived in Cuba. The lessons (in particular, dancing) generated a
great deal of discomfort and anxiety among our students, challenging them
physically, emotionally, socially, and cognitively. Most of the students came
to these lessons with little prior experience as either singers or dancers. It
quickly became apparent to the students that, as a group, they were substan-
tially less familiar with dance than their Cuban counterparts. This distinction
was further exaggerated among our male students who tend to have little or
no training in dance.
Far from the tourist district, and just a short distance from our homestays,
the first round of dance classes were conducted in the permanent rehearsal
space of a well-known Afro-Cuban folkloric dance troupe. The space itself
164 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

made a quick and lasting impression on the students. From the exterior, it
appeared as if the building might be condemned. An abandoned theater, the
rehearsal space is one of the many once-beautiful buildings in Havana that
have fallen into desperate disrepair. There is grandeur in the architecture
of the building and the beautiful artisanry of the woodwork and balconies,
and yet the roof has collapsed and the balconies are sagging and could fall
at any moment. With exposed concrete floor and walls, and a ceiling made
of patchwork of corrugated metal, puddles of rainwater dotted the floor. We
arrived early, and the students grabbed their cameras and captured the room
at every angle, many of these photos appearing in the final project, a multi-
media journal.
Much like our homestays, this rehearsal space served as a form of “back-
stage” (MacCannell 1973), an authenticating device for romanticized views
of the tourist imaginary of Cuban reality. Many of our students report that
the space gave them an “insider’s view” and enhanced the sensation that they
were forever different (i.e., transformed) from their peers back home. As one
student put it, “It was beautiful. It was this raw beauty that had been entirely
untouched by American capitalism. It was fresh and real, unlike anything I
had ever seen before . . . . So, yes, the buildings were falling apart but who
else can say that they learned Afro-Cuban dancing in a crumbling amphithe-
ater in the middle of Havana?”
In Cuba, being a professional dancer or musician is a coveted career path.
Those employed by one of the many internationally recognized ensembles/
troupes enjoy both prestige and financial security. Across the city, indeed
across the island, their approach to teaching is standardized and designed
to be accessible and familiar to “apprentice pilgrims,” the steady stream of
North American and European dancers that travel to Cuba to “access knowl-
edge, cultural capital, and social capital” (Griffith and Marion 2018: 11).
Following standard practices, our instructor began each dance by introducing
the students to the relevant orisha, making reference to the salient attributes
of the deity that are expressed through movement. She then arranged the
students in lines and coordinated their movement in groups of three from
one end of the dance floor to the other. The class was supported with live
music—three batá drummers, a lead singer, and a few additional singers to
provide the chorus. Unlike many of the “apprentice pilgrims” identified and
examined by Griffith and Marion (2018), our students are required to take
these lessons (rather than seeking them out), they knew nothing of the dance
forms being introduced during these classes, and they were not seeking the
cultural or social capital that comes with being a Latin dance aficionado. In
fact, before the students could engage the dance on its own terms, they had
to first come to terms with their own anxiety and discomfort, exemplified
 Forbidden Learning 165

by one student who noted, “As much as I enjoy to dance on my own, the
dance class was completely out of my comfort zone. I struggled a lot during
this class and found myself getting very overwhelmed and stressed out . . .
the dance was not physically tiring for myself, but it took a lot out of me
emotionally.”
The dance classes went beyond simply generating physical and emotional
discomfort. Having previously only traveled as tourists, most of our students
predictably arrived in Cuba expecting to observe the unfamiliar and, as Urry
and Larsen (2011) argue, to “gaze” upon Cubans in their cultural setting. The
dance classes quickly inverted this gaze, putting them in a “liminal” cultural
and intellectual space, as the students became the source of entertainment
for the local community. As the students learned their moves, locals began
to gather in the open doorway of the rehearsal space. They appeared curious,
humored, and appreciative of what they were watching. The students quickly
realized that they had become the object of the Cuban gaze, which of course
increased their own discomfort. At the same time, this spectacle empowered/
transformed the students who experienced their efforts to breach cultural
barriers being met with joy and affirmation from the Cubans. One student
observed that the “locals seemed to enjoy watching us Americans struggle to
learn.” Another noted that “the locals displayed passion that we were trying
to learn instead of viewing them [the Cubans] as a show.”
In this particular instance, the Cuban dance instructor was clearly aware
of the spectacle that she and the students had generated. In a move that the
instructor had never engaged in before and has not done since, she ended the
lesson with a dance procession out to the street where the locals watched,
smiled, and applauded. Initially viewed from a safe distance (locals peering
through an open doorway), the students emerged into a crowded urban street,
inviting everyone to observe and judge their talents. Aside from breaching
cultural barriers between our students and the Cubans, the experience trans-
formed the student’s sense of self. Whereas their initial response was one of
intense discomfort, they also realized that “it didn’t matter if I was the worst
dancer in the room, it’s about having fun and sharing an experience.” Another
student summed up the experience with the observation, “The dance classes
were some of my favorite hours spent in Cuba because I felt like I was physi-
cally feeling what it was like to live in Cuba.” In the student minds, they were
no longer just American tourists who would gaze at and absorb life in Cuba.
Having allowed themselves to become the spectacle, they were in some small
way part of Cuba, insiders themselves. As discussed below, once the students
adjusted to this newly inverted power relationship, they began to write in their
journals about how these dance and song lessons significantly changed their
perspective of Cuban ritual.
166 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

“INSIDER” KNOWLEDGE AND EMBODIED LEARNING

Prior to departing for Cuba, students were exposed to a substantial amount

of literature and recordings designed to give them a basic understanding
of Santería. These sources introduced students to unfamiliar mythologies,
beliefs, symbols, and ritual practices, as well as a host of expressive ele-
ments including songs, drumming, and dance. Though students arrived in
Cuba with substantive book knowledge, they lacked a genuine understand-
ing of the interconnectedness of all these elements and, more importantly,
the significance this religion holds within the daily lives of many Cubans.
This type of knowledge cannot be completely gained through reading, as
much of the meaning within a Santería ritual (indeed, any ritual) is encoded
within the performance and within the body. In his work on ritual, Schieffelin
(1985: 707) assesses the limitations “of a meaning-centered examination of
ritual text.” A textual analysis of ritual and its symbols, much like the book
knowledge that our students bring to Cuba, is necessarily problematic and
incomplete. He argues that, “through performance, meanings are formulated
in a social rather than cognitive space, and the participants are engaged with
the symbols in the interactional creation of a performance reality, rather than
merely being informed by them as knowers” (Schieffelin 1985: 707).
To help lead our students toward a transformational experience, we
employed two interdependent strategies. On one hand, we offered the stu-
dents repeated opportunities to experience Santería rituals as participant
observers, requiring them to observe multiple layers of the ritual and record
their thoughts in field journals. On the other hand, we required them to
engage in a series of song and dance lessons from professional instructors,
where they learned the movements and words that practitioners and special-
ists use to engage the orisha. The goal of these classes within our course was
not to teach the students to become proficient singers and dancers. Rather, we
encouraged the students to supplement their cognitive understanding of the
ritual with an embodied knowledge.
Though the dance and song classes might not qualify as ritual, Catherine
Bell explores the similarities between ritual performance and “ritual-like
activities,” asserting that, “the ritual-like nature of performative activities
appears to lie in the multifaceted sensory experience, in the framing that cre-
ates a sense of condensed totality, and in the ability to shape people’s experi-
ence and cognitive ordering of the world” (1997: 161). One student perfectly
characterized the relationship between cognitive and embodied knowledge
when she observed, “the dance lessons acted as the platform to transition
our exposure of Afro-Cuban music from thought to action. No longer were
we limited to what we had studied, but now we could put our thoughts into
dance moves.”
 Forbidden Learning 167

We argue that in the context of our study-abroad course, the deepest under-
standing of rituals can only come through participation/performance (see
Griffith and Marion 2018; Simoni 2016; Skinner 2008; Schieffelin 1985).
While the students’ participation in the actual rituals is admittedly minimal,
these experiences were perceived by the students as both substantial and real.
One student observed that, “dance class opened up my understanding because
it allowed us outsiders to quickly integrate into the community events.”
Having experienced orisha dance during lessons, the students perceived a
transformation from outsider/observer to insider/participant.
If we take a step back and look at the scene objectively, we see that the
sense of being an insider/participant is fleeting and superficial. In truth, the
students rarely sang or danced during the actual rituals. Most Cubans would
quickly identify them as outsiders, though some may genuinely appreciate
any attempt by our students to dance or sing. As singers the students were
marginalized because they only knew a handful of the several thousand songs
in the repertoire, and as dancers they simply didn’t have enough exposure/
skill. What we observed instead was students simply feeling connected to the
ritual by virtue of their newly embodied knowledge. This is exemplified by
a student who notes, “the dancers performed moves that I could recognize
from lessons. Having listened to the music and tried out the dance routines
allowed me to better appreciate the ritual performance.” Another student
sums up the entire experience by emphasizing that, “taking Santería dance
lessons was one of the most rewarding experiences of being in Cuba because
it allowed me to understand and experience their spiritual rituals instead of
merely watching.” Encouraging this deeper level of engagement is mostly a
positive outcome of the dance and song classes. The potential misstep here is
for students to not realize the limits of their experience and to mistake them-
selves as genuine insiders.
Other seminal studies have explored the primacy of the performative
and other non-discursive aspect of ritual. Becker and Becker (1981), Keil
(1979), and especially Feld (1988) develop the idea that ritual performance
uses metaphor to help illustrate abstract ideas. This is an important concept
for our students, and an effective pedagogical tool to help them embody the
abstract concepts of an unfamiliar belief system. Of course these scholars go
beyond simply looking at performance as a metaphor. They explore “iconic-
ity,” the idea that abstract ideas become iconic as they come to be perceived
as natural or that some metaphors are so pervasive within a cultural system
that they no longer are perceived as a metaphor. Rappaport (1979) argues that
when metaphors become so pervasive that they are “hidden” from conscious
recognition, making them unquestioned and, in a sense, unquestionable, they
are particularly powerful in terms of generating meaning. Within the Santería
religion, iconicity is achieved through the coherence between its mythology,
168 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

dance, drumming, song, and visual components such as clothing, beadwork,

and creation of ritual altars. To understand the importance and relevance of
this religion within the lives of its adherents, which make up a large cross-
section of Havana’s population, we ask students to explore the coherence of
the above metaphors throughout their immersive experience.
Student observations about the metaphors they observed during song and
dance classes help illustrate the effectiveness of our approach. One student
pointed out how it, “was particularly fascinating to see how the traditional
dance reflected the nature of the orisha. The warrior orisha had moves that
were more aggressive, similar to pulling back a crossbow. The moves of
Yemayá were more fluid and reflective of water and love.” A different student
makes a similar observation, this time noting that “the orisha Eleguá’s style
of dance was far more childlike than that of the warlike Changó.” She also
developed personal connection, as do many Cubans, when she noted that,
“as a female, I really enjoyed the dances of Oshún, the orisha of love.” Yet
another student expands his observations to include not only dance but song
as well stating, “the songs and the drumming somehow mimicked the quali-
ties of the orisha.”
One of the ultimate goals of our study-abroad course was not simply to
teach our students about a particular religion but to encourage students to
recognize the interconnectedness of the various pieces of the ritual and the
cultural whole and the importance that this particular belief system plays
within the lives of ordinary Cubans. Some of the students demonstrated
an appreciation for this approach. As one student summarized, the dance
and song classes “presented important information in and of themselves,
but also in the ways in which they fit into the course of daily life. I was
interested to learn, for example, just how many people know the orisha in
some way or other—from the number of people at ceremonies and perfor-
mances, the number who actively sang and danced, the colored bracelets I
learned to start looking for on people’s wrists, and the people walking by
in the street below who called back in response to our song lessons.” The
success of this approach to teaching about ritual and metaphor, however,
does not translate into transformations in all preconceived student-tourist
imaginaries.

“FROZEN IN TIME” AND NOSTALGIC

NEOCOLONIALISM

Numerous authors suggest that one of the core imaginaries of what Di

Giovine (2009) calls the “touristic field of production” is the notion of the
 Forbidden Learning 169

“exotic elsewhere” (Salazar 2010) as somewhere “frozen in time.” Echtner

and Prasad (2003) write about this core imaginary as the “myth of the
unchanged,” and Picard and Di Giovine explore this imaginary as a seduc-
tive promise of renewal through “encounters with the enchanted worlds of
a past golden age” (2014: 2). This enduring touristic narrative implies that
humankind lost something intangible and essential with the advent of indus-
trialization. The myth motivates many tourists to travel to locations that are
imagined as pristine or untouched by modern development in a search for
something that is more authentic. Simultaneously, the tourist is drawn to
the possibility of personal transformation through escape from modern life.
Almost without exception, the glossy travel brochures aimed at attracting
American tourism to Cuba are adorned with nostalgic images of mid-century
American cars and exotic Afro-Cuban people in colorful clothing smoking
hand-rolled cigars. Americans, who have no alternate images of Cuba to
consume, develop a robust conception of the island as unchanged since the
revolution in 1959.
The myth of the unchanged deeply inscribed our students’ experience in
Cuba with specific meaning. They were thrilled to be among the first and the
few Americans to see a formerly forbidden communist country that is imag-
ined as untouched by late twentieth-century progress. These beliefs become
clear in how the students intellectually and emotionally unpacked their
experience of the Cuba Music and Culture Seminar. As one student notes, “I
myself am lucky enough to have had the opportunity to visit Cuba, a nation
where few Americans have even been permitted for decades. It was an adven-
ture of a lifetime” This experience of traveling in Cuba set them apart from
others, marking them as intrepid and knowledgeable of something unique and
mysterious. This tourist imaginary of a place frozen in time, especially at a
historic juncture in which Cuba–U.S. relations were opening for the first time
in nearly sixty years, was a powerful motivator for participation in our pro-
gram. As one student wrote, “The country is aptly described as a time warp
with old features such as cars and Spanish colonial structures mixed into the
semi-modern life of this developing country. All of these features make Cuba
an attraction second to none.”
The myth of Cuba as untouched and frozen in time was often translated
into what Rosaldo (1989) describes as “imperialist nostalgia,” or a longing
for some imagined “traditional culture” that was destroyed through the pro-
cess of conquest and colonization. A common theme in student reflections is
that a new and more open era would lead to inevitable destruction of Cuban
culture due to Westernization. Despite having read extensively about the
colonization of Cuba first by Spain, and later by the United States of America,
an overwhelming majority of student narratives indicate a strong desire to
170 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

maintain Cuba as it is imagined in traditional touristic production, replete

with decaying mansions from the era of king sugar, mob-owned casinos,
old American cars, mojitos, and dance clubs. As one student noted, “Open
relations with the U.S. could lead to some of the historic charm being lost
because of tourism.” Another student delved into the presupposed faults of
capitalism and human nature, suggesting that “Westernization might bring a
selfish aspect to Cuba that could tamper with the deep beauty and spiritual-
ity of its people.” The irony here is that as Western tourists, the students are
implicated for causing the very transformations that they mourn. Perhaps
they come to see themselves not as traditional tourists replete with assumed
destructive attitudes and behaviors but rather “anti-tourists” due to their status
at study-abroad students.
The future of Cuba imagined by our students is, of course, much more
complicated than expressed above, and they show optimism that economic
development could lead to more political freedoms, fewer human rights
abuses, and more access to information and goods. They also expressed fears
that, if open relations with America led to unchecked development, corporate
interests could quickly create monopolies over resources and services, lead-
ing Cuba to become overly Americanized. These latter sentiments reflect a
desire to maintain the very product the tourist is consuming, a specifically
constructed image of Cuba that is created, packaged, and sold by tourist
companies and the media. Despite constant course conversations about these
issues, there is very little concern in our students’ writings about the potential
for political reform and economic development to erode current Cuban rights,
such as the rights to a home, enough food staples to the feed the family, the
right to high-quality health care, and the right to a free education. Very few
of our students express any concerns about the potential for development to
lead to inequality, cultural expropriation, or exploitation of the vulnerable,
choosing instead to focus on an intangible “authentic” that could be lost if
corporate franchises take over the island.
Reflective journals from The Cuba Music and Culture Seminar suggest
that our teaching methodologies did little to challenge the core imaginary
of an island frozen in time. Despite the fact that they are exposed to Cuban
music and religious ritual as a constantly evolving set of cultural practices,
and despite the fact that the Cuban people with whom they interacted are well
aware of current international developments, student reflections indicate the
perception that they were engaging with a people and place that are somehow
outside the normal flow of time. As one student portrayed his experience, “It
was as if I stepped into a time capsule and traveled back to the 1950s, when
the embargo between Cuba and the United States was put into place.” By the
end of our program, pre-existing imaginaries of a more primitive and authen-
tic place remain unchallenged.
 Forbidden Learning 171

CONCLUSIONS

In this chapter we examine and assess ways in which pedagogical approaches

can stimulate transformation in pre-existing student-tourist imaginaries about
Cuba. Citing anonymized student commentary, we identify areas of the stu-
dent experience where transformation in perspectives is effective. Success in
transforming imaginaries appears to correlate to activities that most lay siege
to their comfort zones. We argue that “deep immersion” creates physical,
cultural, and intellectual discomfort, which opens the student to new perspec-
tives. We view deep immersion as one form of anti-tourism which fosters
higher quality relationships between the tourist and the host community.
While deep immersion can take many forms, our specific short-term study-
abroad program focuses on avoiding the “tourist bubble,” participating in the
daily activities of average Cubans, and learning the multiple layers of meta-
phor and meaning found in Afro-Cuban religious song, dance, and ritual. In
practice, our students lived with Cubans, ate exclusively home-cooked Cuban
food, enjoyed informal conversations with our hosts, had no access to televi-
sion, telephone, or Internet, and were greeted every morning by the sights,
sounds, and smells of a bustling, working-class Cuban neighborhood. These
lived experiences resulted in most students expressing that they experienced a
more “behind-the-scenes” and “authentic” side of Cuba than they would have
had they lived in the tourist district or taken a guided tour.
During the homestay experience, many of our students’ imaginaries were
dramatically transformed. Previously perceiving Cuba as a dangerous, unwel-
coming, and forbidden land full of unhappy people, students came away with
the belief that Cuba is one of the least dangerous locations one can travel
to, and that Cuban people are open, warm, and welcoming despite historical
hostility between the governments of the United States and Cuba. They also
came to deeply appreciate and empathize with the challenges that Cuban
people endure to procure food, transportation, and shelter, and they further
understand these issues within the context of geopolitical realities such as the
60-year embargo enforced by the United States.
We further argue that anthropological method can function as a powerful
vehicle for experiential and transformative learning. By engaging in partic-
ipant-observation exercises at daily performance and rituals, our students
deeply immersed themselves within these settings, seeking meaning and
understanding by analyzing visual symbols, participant behavior, context,
music, and dance. Daily class discussions of their individual and collective
experiences further supported critical reflection, leading to the integration of
theory and experience. Student post-trip reflections consistently indicated that
they imagined themselves as participants rather than consumers of the rituals
and that they appreciated gaining a more emic perspective.
172 Aaron M. Lampman and Kenneth Schweitzer

The most powerful pedagogical tool we employed was daily instruction

in Santería song and dance. These approaches require the student to engage
their bodies in ritual performance. As they learned new movements and the
attached meanings, students supplemented their cognitive understanding of
the ritual with an embodied knowledge to allow them to more completely
contextualize the objectives of the rituals. In their texts, students indicate
they came to more fully understand the relationships of Cubans with the
orishas, articulating correctly that Eleguá was childish, Changó was warlike,
Oshún was sensuous, and Yemayá was fluid-like water. They didn’t just read
these ideas in a book, or see them at a ritual performance, but they also felt
(embodied) them while dancing and singing. Indeed their tourist imaginaries
about Santería as an exotic religion known for its portrayals in popular media
as a form of dark witchcraft were dramatically transformed while in Cuba.
At the conclusion of the course, students expressed an understanding that the
religion and its cultural expressions (song, movement, costuming, jewelry,
and other visual artifacts) are an integral part of daily life in Cuba, especially
in Havana.
While the Cuba Music and Culture Seminar was transformative in some
ways, especially in terms of student learning about history, geopolitics,
and ritual and metaphor, it is clear that not all pre-existing imaginaries are
challenged, even when assignments are geared toward breaking down such
perceptions. Thematic analysis of student texts identified areas where the
student-tourist imaginary is so deeply engrained, and so deeply held as part
of their own American identities, that our eleven-day experience in the field
did little to challenge their perspectives.
The mechanisms of student-engagement employed during the Cuba Music
and Culture Seminar were less successful, for example, in dispelling tour-
ist imaginaries of Cuba as pre-modern, frozen-in-time, and unchanged. Our
students held fast to the imaginary that Cubans, less tethered to their mobile
technology than Americans, were able to have more “authentic” experiences/
encounters and live life more fully. For them, this was evidenced by the fact
that Cuban’s were always dancing and singing, were constantly greeting each
other in the streets, and were passionate conversationalists. They also imag-
ined that the Cuban people lacked a “sense of time and urgency,” an observa-
tion that reveals a superficial understanding of many aspects of Cuban life.
Ultimately, reflective journal entries suggest that our students fundamen-
tally view an authentic Cuba as one that is untouched by “modern develop-
ment.” A sense of imperialist nostalgia filled almost every-one of the students
with regret over how expanded access to international trade and tourism
would bring harm to Cuba’s culture and people. In part, this nostalgia is tied
to their identities as modern people who view themselves as removed from
a mythical and bucolic past that is closer to nature and more in touch with
 Forbidden Learning 173

the human spirit. Ironically, this nostalgia also forms as a result of the “deep
immersion” we provide in the course. Through a perceived “behind-the-
scenes” access, the students came to view themselves as “anti-tourists” who,
rather than coming just to gaze upon locals, were engaging in deeper and
more personal encounters with Cubans and who were seeing and interacting
with the “real” Cuba. This perspective, in turn, led them to the same conclu-
sion as the average tourist—that the best Cuba is one that is “pristine” and
“frozen in time.” We believe that in future versions of this course, we can
address these imaginaries through focused discussions about what Cubans,
themselves, want to see in the future.

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 Chapter 6

Weekending Daring
Manufacturing the “Discomfort Zone”
and Making the Study-Away Self
John Bodinger de Uriarte

OVERVIEW

The Oxford English Dictionary defines adventure1 as “[a] course of action

which invites risk; a perilous or audacious undertaking the outcome of
which is unknown; a daring feat or exploit” (accessed March 2, 2019). This
chapter explores student desires and goals in participating in study-away
programs, especially the expectation for self-transformation coupled to
entering the promised “discomfort zone” of study abroad. Breaching the
“comfort zone” is a trope that surfaces almost endlessly in study-abroad
literature and promotional materials; as it is often invoked, it is a practice
worth further investigation. As Anthony Ogden suggests, “The educa-
tion abroad field will need to discover what motivates students to want to
step outside of their comfort zones in spite of perceptions of risk” (2008:
39). In this direction, this chapter also explores the processes of reconcil-
ing risk and non-risk as program (and ancillary program) elements, as a
practice of “managed danger.” I suggest that, while the ideal of adventure
may be unscripted, the delivery of “adventure” is increasingly scripted.
Indeed, this chapter is less focused on adventure tourism, per se, and more
on student perceptions of adventure, risk, and discomfort as anticipated or
expected elements of their study-abroad experiences. Connected to consid-
ering adventure is the discourse of “immersion” and its role in study-away
programming, and the formation of “global citizenship,” promoted as
developed through participating in study abroad. Each of these pivots on
individual experience and self-improvement as key products and outcomes
and as primary measures for program success and each can be connected to

177
178 John Bodinger de Uriarte

projections of “adventure” as a validation for an authentic (“anti-tourist”)

abroad experience. As Robert J. Gordon asserts: “Over the last three
decades, for-profit and not-for-profit agencies have developed adventure
experiences as life-enhancing and identity-transforming” (2006: 6). Short-
term “adventure” programs geared toward study-abroad students capitalize
on such projections and may work in tandem with program providers that
offer shorter weekly course schedules to accommodate travel and outside
programming opportunities. Briefly, this chapter also examines the role of
photographs (of selves and others) as particular kinds of signs that circulate
to confirm or validate study-away experiences, often framed as a validation
of adventure consumed.
I draw my observations from having taught five sections of a general
course designed for post–study-abroad reflection over the last three years, a
component of my university’s embrace of study-away as a requirement for all
students.2 Each study-away program includes one preparatory course, one “in-
country” component, and one reflection course. Students that do a semester-
long study-away program secure them with the help of the home institution’s
study-abroad coordinators or outside providers—including other colleges and
universities—then participate in a general reflection course after returning to
our university. These involve small classes, with a mix of students from a
variety of programs, and they sometimes include international students for
whom their experience in the United States provides their “study abroad.” I
also teach reflective courses for the short programs I lead with a colleague
to Iceland, the Galápagos, and Morocco.3 This experience has increased my
interest in the goal of “personal transformation” as a defining element of study
away, and how such transformation is made through different engagements
with managed risk and challenges to an imagined “comfort zone” (a phrase
invoked far too often in study-abroad literature and practice). Such emphases
shift individual transformation from being one outcome among many—an
outcome many might assume as a fundamental component of studying and
living elsewhere—to its primary goal. Here the rupture of the “comfort zone”
is an end in itself (or the establishment or recognition of a “discomfort zone”
as part of the study-away experience).4 I shaped in-class writing assignments
in the general reflection courses to collect information on how students saw
adventure as an element of their study-away programs; I also administered an
online survey to further collect information from study-away “veterans” on
how they understood “adventure” as part of their experience. Based on my
observations, I suggest that comfort-zone challenges are often understood as
elements of personally or individually measured adventure, an element of
programs and ancillary providers quickly becoming an increasingly com-
modified component of study-away experiences, and one that “stage[s] more
self-directed encounters with difference” (Vrasti 2012: 16).
 Weekending Daring 179

To participate in the theme of this book, the distinctions between tour-

ism and study abroad are fairly fluid. Nearly every student response in my
classes and survey recognizes that they were tourists for at least part of their
experience, and the majority of short-term “weekend adventure” providers
are experienced package tour operators. But study away validates students as
“non-tourists” at the same moment that it works to manage student experience
as smooth and without danger or discomfort: hallmarks of commercial tour-
ism and reflections of alma mater and institutional liability. Understandably,
alleviating discomfort while also participating in a larger discourse about
breaching the comfort zone, or creating opportunities for “disorienting dilem-
mas,” provides for conflicted student experience. And the practice of standard
tourism is seen by students as being marked by the inauthentic. Students rec-
ognize that the tourist often holds things at a distance, engages only superfi-
cially with “others,” and is unwilling to surrender the comforts of predictable
food, anonymous lodgings, and uninterrupted wireless access. To be a student
abroad, however, tempers this distance, providing a kind of antidote to tour-
ism, an “anti-tourism.” To be clear, this is primarily a discursive distinction
that students try to navigate in their understanding of their own experiences
and the goals and aims of study away.
Increasingly, liberal arts colleges and universities are incorporating study-
away experiences as essential to their mission and product. Visit many of
their websites and you will find opportunities for study-abroad programs
touted. In the current atmosphere of neoliberal measures for higher educa-
tion, study-abroad programs are one expected commodity among many
offered by colleges and universities competing for market share. These vary
from shorter, two- to three-week programs run by the university’s faculty (as
are the majority at my institution), to semester-long programs run by host
universities and study-abroad providers.5 The number of American students
studying abroad grew by 2.3 percent in academic year 2016–2017: “IIE [the
Institute of International Education] estimates that about 10.9 percent of all
undergraduate students . . . study abroad at some point in their undergraduate
careers” (Redden 2018). Increasingly among small, liberal arts colleges and
universities, study abroad has increasingly shifted from something that some
students do to something all students are encouraged (or mandated) to do.
Motivations and models for study abroad changed over the course of the
twentieth century, reflecting Cold War and post-Berlin Wall realities as more
(especially European) destinations became viable and formal political ten-
sions eased, but they continue to maintain clear distinctions between those
that visit and those that are visited, those that are subjects and those that are
objects for experiential consumption. Western Europe remains the primary
site for U.S. student study abroad programs, especially those that do not
include a service component. The role of service as an element of higher
180 John Bodinger de Uriarte

education and study abroad, and its distinction between those that do service
and those that are served, is a discussion I am unable to pursue further here.
Many contemporary programs emphasize the study of culture and cultural
difference, and the cultivation of “global citizenship.” Both reflect current
understandings of globalization and its effects. Global citizenship assumes a
unified world hurtling toward the future and a citizenship outside of the state.
Students are able to build their credentials in contributing to this future by first
defining (or making) borders, and then by crossing them (Tsing 2000; Doerr
and Taïeb 2017). The assumption of globalization as both inevitable and
transparent “masks the extremely different ways that people move through
space and perceive the parts of the world they think of as away from home:
as a playground for those in search of adventure” (Doerr and Taïeb 2017:
43). Being “away from home” or “elsewhere” is a key element of measuring
the study-abroad experience, one that both flattens it by making everyplace
equally accessible, while it makes and celebrates the promise of everyplace
being different. An increasingly globalized world is a fundamental premise
in contemporary study-abroad programs, and such a world is asserted in
thinking about adventure as well—some of the borders crossed are between
the everyday and the imagined extraordinary provided by going “elsewhere.”
The emphasis on either asserting challenges met or the mundane overcome
are often expressed through narratives that claim discomfort, hesitations, or
fears conquered. In concert with the growth of neoliberalism, this places even
more emphasis on the development of “the self” as the only possible measure
of experience and the primary goal for study abroad. As my own institution’s
website suggests, not unusually, our study-abroad program “will expose
you to different cultures while teaching you valuable things about yourself”
(Study Abroad at Susquehanna webpage, accessed December 11, 2018).
However, the growth in study-abroad programs and their ever-extending
support apparatuses comes with concomitant standardization, a baseline that
may challenge the delivery of individual experience. As Barkin notes (this
book), many study-abroad program providers “pathologize disconnection”
from home, the familiar, and the internet, as a way to avoid challenging
interactions with other cultures. Greater support networks and carefully man-
aged intercultural interactions are growing markers of offerings provided
by study-abroad programs. As study-abroad programs are connected to
consumer evaluations via feedback by student-customers within university
student course-review platforms, engagements that challenge comfortable
worldviews may be intentionally avoided with this in mind.
The increasing neoliberalization of higher education, with its reduction
of regulatory oversight and its emphasis on market value as a measure of
worth, supports a neoliberal master narrative that sees students as a set of
savvy consumers who navigate their own way through a wealth of potential
 Weekending Daring 181

commodities and predictable dangers—higher education and study abroad

programs being at least two of these—without surrendering significant com-
fort or connectivity (see Urciuoli 2018 for a useful overview). The measuring
self is the locus of the neoliberal economy, with the self as both consumer
and ultimate evaluator as a reflection of “making society congruent with the
logic of market rationality” (Vrasti 2012: 26).
Part of the adventure component of study-abroad depends on some of the
globalist imaginings that Anna Tsing describes in “The Global Situation”
(2000). Here, adventure or the “discomfort zone” asserts a particular kind of
disruption understood as important by students: an unsettling of the mundane
as a way to assert and value certain kinds of difference or “diversity work.”
The “discomfort zone” depends on an imagined set of boundaries that must
be breached. The boundaries surface as a component of the taken-for-granted
assumptions within which students operate, and many programs are articu-
lated to include the idea that crossing boundaries is a key element of study
abroad (and that these boundaries are assumed as being “real” and an element
of a globalist imagination; see Doerr, this book, for example). The emphasis
on the cultivation of global citizenship as a program outcome also works
within a set of predetermined and assumed distinctions between home and
host, between here and there, between subjects and objects. This is also a site
for some muddling of what these distinctions might be—not in a productive
or critical way that questions how they come to be to begin with but more an
affirmation that they must exist through the sheer virtue of difference. If the
host site is not “different” enough, adventure can help to underscore differ-
ence through the introduction or assertion of risk.

The decision to take a class or pursue a course of study in a foreign country is usu-
ally driven by the desire to have a travel adventure, experience exciting new cul-
tures, and accomplish something extraordinary educationally. (Oxford 2005: 12)

In the general reflection courses mentioned above, I was particularly taken

by how many of the students had participated in “adventure weekends,”
three-day (or more) programs that were offered either by the main study-
abroad provider as add-on options or by secondary providers that advertise
in locations recognized as particularly rich in study-abroad student popula-
tions, like Florence or Barcelona. Adventure weekend programs can offer
trips to paraglide in the Swiss Alps, for example, or to bungee-jump in Cape
Town. This area of the student tourist market is very competitive—some of
the major providers are bus2alps, Smart Trip Europe, and Weekend Student
Adventures.
For example, bus2alps advertises a winter trip to Interlaken as a place
where “relaxing beauty and high-octane adrenaline live in perfect harmony!
182 John Bodinger de Uriarte

. . . Scenic mountain walks and calming Alpine Spas collide with adven-
ture activities like Skydiving, Snowboarding, and Night Sledding.” Smart
Trip Europe’s description of its three-day trip to Croatia includes “Feeling
adventurous? Go off the beaten path and explore Croatia’s emerald green
Cetina River on a white-water rafting adventure. If you’re still up for more
adventure, cruise around on our party boat and discover exclusive coves
along the coastline.” Weekend Student Adventures advertises: “Kick-ass
weekend trips for the student abroad in Europe. . . . Make the BEST semester
of your life even better with WSA.” The photo on this poster features a group
of about thirty white college students gesturing happily in a “groupie” with
the Colosseum in the background. One possible message from this photo:
“Go someplace different with people very much like you and use the back-
ground of being elsewhere to verify fairly standard student tourist practices
as exceptional.” Most of the promotional photos for the three sites feature
groups of overwhelmingly white students. Promotional materials for WSA’s
Adventure in Prague state that it “includes the infamous thermal baths, day
trip to Auschwitz, caving expedition beneath the hills of Buda, the iconic
Berlin Wall, panoramic views of Prague’s clock towers, and of course the
most delicious and hearty meals. . . . as well as the best nightlife.” Why the
thermal baths are “infamous” (and Auschwitz is not) or the caving excursion
is an “expedition” merits further consideration.
And, as in the WSA image described above, the photographing of such
experiences is an important element of traveling-student expectations and
observations or, as Noel Salazar suggests, the “meaning-making and world-
shaping” practices of tourist (and traveling student) imaginaries (2012: 864).
Indeed, such photographs function as a semiotics of adventure experience, a
circulation of anticipated signs. One way to think about the photos that are
products of the study-abroad experience is to consider how they establish or
extend student social and cultural capital and to recognize that these measures
exist mostly outside of the assessing machines in place for the study-abroad
experience. It is stepping outside of these machines—through adventure,
in some cases—that builds or confirms necessary capital, in part through a
confirming or extending of tourist imaginaries, to participate in what Gordon
calls “picture capitalism,” as one way “to connect [Benedict] Anderson’s
print capitalism and the imagination of the nation with the way that photog-
raphy worked and works to imagine adventure and being ‘elsewhere’” (2006:
21). Travel photographs—selfies and others—work to confirm individual
experiences by referring to and drawing from established circulations of pho-
tographic meaning-making and evidential properties. To follow Jill Walker
Retterberg, such photographs are evidence of the power of “cultural filters
(norms, expectations, [and] normative discursive strategies” (2014: 22).
Cultural filters shape the consumption of images and are equally as powerful
 Weekending Daring 183

as technological (camera- or platform-based) filters, if not more so. “The

camera . . . provides the visual authentication that one has ‘been there,’ that
indeed, the visual documentarian is often the hero. . . . the immortal eyewit-
ness documenting both triumph and disaster” (Gordon 2006: 18).
As an element of neoliberal framing, where everything is a potential prod-
uct shaped by its own consumption, photographs confirm the consumed expe-
rience by placing it within anticipated and recognized registers of meaning. In
Bonnie Uriciuoli’s terms, they serve as “qualisigns”—potentially meaningful
qualities—or “semiotically complex” (Urciuoli 2011: 61) terms that extend
“the brand” of the study-abroad experience while also potentially leveling
its meaning. The study-abroad measuring self makes a photographic deci-
sion, often from a predetermined or pre-signaled array of outcomes: a selfie
with the Eiffel Tower in the background, for example. Such photographs
resemble a set of words or signs in language. We recognize our ability to
make choices between different words to convey different meanings, but we
may pay less attention to the fact that the language itself is somewhat fixed
and standardized.
Study-abroad selfies and other photographs demonstrate particular cultural
competencies and reaffirm their meaning through a set of recognized signs
and exchanged signals, a range of available vocabularies.6 They work as par-
ticular kinds of signifiers, open to a number of de-coupling and re-coupling
relationships organized around the confirmation of difference (or alterity)
as experience; “photographs are validated through their social biography”
(Edwards 1991: 226). With the explosive rise in selfie exchanges through plat-
forms like Instagram and Snapchat, the lines between validating “the authen-
tic” and what Dean MacCannell might call “the staged authentic” (1976)
blur and shift almost continuously in the context or practice of exchange or
“discursive reiteration” (Urciuoli 2014: 72), where the production of selfies
works as a self-authenticating ritual that depends on reiteration and the prac-
tice of an experience pointing to itself. Thus, it is also a changing element in
imagining the distinction between “authentic” experience and a re-circulation
of existing signs, of individual experience understood and represented as part
of an on-going range of stage sets for photographs that indicate a receptive
audience larger than the self. Indeed, the notion of stage and performance
so important to Goffman and those that build from his theories is echoed in
the tourist body as performative body (Larsen 2005), one that both acts as
tourist and, through such action, co-produces tourist sites and tourist Others.
As Mike Robinson and David Picard observe, “photography is a practice of
identity construction (‘othering’) for both photographee and photographer”
(2009: 19). Photographs taken as an element of study abroad or study-abroad
experiences navigate a hazy distinction between tourist bodies and practices
and student bodies and practices. As one of Ascione’s students notes (in this
184 John Bodinger de Uriarte

book): “it felt like the entire fieldtrip was just a big photoshoot. . . . I wanted
to feel and experience things, and they were obsessed with taking pictures of
themselves doing things.”
In a similar vein, while co-directing a recent short study-abroad program
in Morocco, I was struck by the immediacy of the experience-to-circulated-
photograph process. Students would arrive at a site and begin almost imme-
diately to take selfies and photos of each other, often ignoring the information
being provided by participating faculty or hired guides. The highest currency
claim in this process was that the self-photographer or photo subject had just
gained “a new profile pic.” Students often uploaded their images instantly to
Instagram or a shared group chat. Getting back on the bus or gathering for a
meal was followed by a flurry of AirDropping images between phones, almost
immediately reliving their imaged experience as a site for group review and
shared affirmation. The gap between experience and representation collapses
in such practice, reconfigured as recombinant, shifting between the outward-
facing circulation of Instagram, for example, and the inward-facing dynamics
of the shared group experience.
The transitory nature of selfie/tourist/student photos confirms that their
main value is in circulation, not in materiality. They are not “designed to
last,” in Walter Benjamin’s sense (1931: 17), but to confirm experience and
pass by. We are a long way from the materiality of the photograph, like that
of Roland Barthes’s mother as a young girl, famously in the winter garden,
its corners bent with handling, its hues faded with time (Barthes 1982). The
circulations that currently shape a photograph’s consumption and ontological
journey are now often measured through shared platforms, the accumula-
tions of likes, and the currency of reposting. As Elisa Ascione suggests in
this book: “selfie-taking while studying abroad becomes a validating practice
confirmed through an exchange of anticipated photos.” It is in this space
of exchange that a photograph’s “meta-value of memory construction”
(Edwards 1991: 221) is experienced, where it “construct[s] memory in its
own insistent image” (ibid).
I do not want to critique the WSA program mentioned above in particular
(or its juxtaposition of Auschwitz and “hearty meals” as comparable program
components) but to use it as an example for thinking about adventure and
risk. The risk offered as an element of adventure weekends is part of the
confirmation of the study-abroad experience, one strangely affirmed by step-
ping out of the study-abroad program itself. If the discourse of study abroad
emphasizes a risk-taking move out of the comfort zone, then standardized
programs themselves may present immersive opportunities that are perhaps
too comfortable, including increased emphasis on dormitory or apartment
spaces shared with other study-abroad students, courses taught in English,
and robust and limitless wireless access. The weekends offer a different set
 Weekending Daring 185

of experiences for the study-abroad student. This presents a complication—

“adventure” is a discourse largely connected to the study-abroad experience
writ large—at once seductive and challenging, it realizes value as an experi-
ence of risk in an environment unfamiliar. One question worth asking in this
newer scenario: does “adventure” serve as an authenticator for the experience
of the alter or different? As study abroad becomes a more expected compo-
nent of the private liberal arts college experience, and its support apparatuses
more developed and extensive, how does the student “self” confirm an indi-
vidual experience at once different, risk-taking, uncomfortable, and safely
managed?
Judging from collected responses regarding challenges and discomforts
while studying abroad, many elements of breached comfort zones are familiar
and anticipated: different patterns of “politeness” in public places, differ-
ent gender norms, unfamiliarity with language, navigating transit systems,
negotiating public spaces in cities, encountering poverty or homelessness
for the first time, being the victim of a pickpocket, unwelcome advances or
confrontations, and different concepts of “personal space,” for example. But
as “uncomfortable” elements like this are progressively “managed out” of
study-abroad experiences, the pursuit of challenge or adventure as an add-on
to the study-abroad program may step in to replace them.
The discourse of adventure, and the presentation of adventure as a com-
modity, drives some of the ways that students evaluate their programs, and
may guide some of the structure and market for ancillary providers’ “adven-
ture weekends.” The “adventure” is separated from the overall program
experience at the same time that it is being featured. While this may sound
contradictory, I suggest that as some of the adventurous aspects of study
abroad—food, accommodations, language, foreign course structures, or ped-
agogies—are designed out of programs, things like caving, paragliding, and
bungee-jumping are either written in or made available. Students that go on
study-abroad programs as an adventure or in pursuit of adventure frequently
discover that a number of challenging components have been captured by
attention paid to access, liability, and risk management. One important ques-
tion here may be what constitutes adventure, and how this constitution is
connected to the co-productive practices of tourist and student imaginaries,
where subjects are formed or confirmed through established circulations of
ideas, images, narratives, and desires.
As Shari Jacobson and I discuss elsewhere (2018), managed risk helps
create a predictably unpredictable world. Here student affect at once affirms
“the authentic” of self-measured experience and self-challenge while also
participating in careful orchestrations of “daring” where the experiencing
self is the gravitational (and evaluative) center of program value. In addi-
tion, adventure as an element of study abroad is often projected as occurring
186 John Bodinger de Uriarte

outside the classroom—indeed, as in other movements in contemporary

pedagogy, the classroom becomes potentially the last place one would look
for authentic experience, challenge, and learning. While flipping classrooms,
experiential learning, or service learning (for example) may present valuable
new methods for imagining pedagogy, within the context of study abroad
this can be compared to earlier understandings of such programs as provid-
ing challenging and potentially productive disorientation through immersion
into a foreign or profoundly different set of daily cultural routines. Access
to cultural alterity becomes more elusive (Doerr and Taïeb 2017) within the
context of burgeoning programs and structures to welcome students while
away. Free time in such programs can be cut up and sold, so that out-of-
classroom time may focus on adventure travel rather than immersion in one’s
“home” site as adventure, for example. Indeed, the weekly class schedule
in a number of study-abroad programs—and the weekly course schedules
students create for themselves—help to create three-day weekends for extra
pursuits, sometimes including almost frenetic international traveling. Such
short travel experiences seem profoundly anti-immersive. In contrast, one
might argue that an entire study-abroad program must be seen as an immer-
sive experience in some sort of alterity, regardless of design. But alterity
is becoming a more predictable and homogenized commodity for tourists,
perhaps especially in study-abroad programs.7 This is part of the flattening
of difference mentioned before and the expanding focus on liability and
predictability as both consumable products and a set of safety measures for
study-abroad students.
As Neriko Doerr suggests, study abroad “relies on the very existence of
cultural difference, which it seeks to overcome. It capitalizes on the desire
for adventure while also seeking to contain it” (2012: 1). But commodified
“bubbles” that offer risk as a set of individually oriented experiences or
rites of passage challenge the definition of adventure cited at the beginning
of this chapter. Clearly, study abroad serves as a threshold experience for
an ever-growing number of college students, a passage through liminality
toward the attainment of an imagined global citizenship. A projected out-
come guaranteed through the experience itself, “global citizenship” surfaces
in study-abroad promotional literatures almost as much as “comfort zone.”
If such passage is a projected outcome, packaging it as a set of experiences
ancillary to the main study-abroad program both delivers and limits its impact
as it is caught up in a discourse that oscillates between risk and the recogni-
tion of liability. However, as Ogden suggests, “the unfortunate irony inherent
in education abroad is that instead of dispelling myths or false perceptions
of risk, we may actually be perpetuating them” (2008: 47). For their part,
students may see stepping out of the program as its own measured risk, and
 Weekending Daring 187

perhaps its own set of authentic experiences. Yet even here, students oscillate
between adventure and the parameters of safety. As one discussed her experi-
ences, “Try every new thing. Don’t do anything stupid that I wouldn’t do in
the states.” And another asserted that he was “Safely putting myself out there
in uncomfortable situations.” Navigating the terrain between comfort and
discomfort, safety and risk becomes a key element for students to understand,
and express, their study-abroad experiences.
Participating in a commodified set of risk experiences is one exercise of the
neoliberal subject as “active, free, autonomous, and self-governing, seeking
to ‘enterprise themselves’ and to maximize their quality of life through acts
of choice” (Doerr 2012: 6) These acts of choice are expressed through the
marketplace of both study abroad and adventure weekends, firmly situated
in the discourse of outcome-based learning best realized by individual con-
sumption with an eye on self-improvement and self-transformation (a profile
that also fits contemporary trends in higher education). The discourse of self-
transformation may drive students to measure any experience not immedi-
ately “risky” or “uncomfortable” as non-transformational. For example, one
student in Barcelona for a semester traveled to Dublin over spring break to be
there for St. Patrick’s Eve—in his words, “other than this, there was not much
going on in Ireland.” His emphasis points away from classroom, language,
and immersive work and toward those practices that seem more individually
“transformational” through their “similar difference,” imagined risk, and
contained discovery. Here a street party in Dublin becomes the only thing
“going on” in Ireland. As another student reflected on his recent experience in
Iceland, “Yes, I got drunk with other students in the program. But I got drunk
in Akureyri and that makes all the difference.” In this instance, place accords
the confirmation of difference, regardless of the activities pursued or compan-
ions chosen. Although the last two examples focus on alcohol consumption,
I am not condemning them as sites or experiences devoid of the potential for
cross-cultural value or interchange. Rather, I am examining the frame offered
by students to make sense of their experiences.
On the other hand, students think about acceptable parameters for discom-
fort. For example, the Lake Mývatn area in northern Iceland is notorious for
it swarms of midges in summer. They are the fulcrum point for the entire
area’s ecosystem, serving as fish food, fertilizer, and tourist suppressor. They
are tiny, number in the millions, and are particularly attracted to the exposed
moist areas of humans and other animals—eyes, noses, and mouths. Savvy
travelers invest in nets that cover their heads and necks to minimize the
discomforting annoyance of the insects, and our students in Iceland were no
exception. But the nets are not foolproof, and they make eating and drinking
especially challenging.
188 John Bodinger de Uriarte

My university’s summer program to Iceland features a landscape survey of

an abandoned farm site in the Mývatn area and calls on student group work to
measure and take note of the site’s physical features. Access to the site calls
for a half mile hike across a boggy marshland and includes fording a small
spring-fed stream. Each of these elements supported hordes of midges. For
the summer 2018 program, the farm site experience presented a collective
student low point (and one that haunted us through later student evaluations).
Apparently, there is anticipated and acceptable discomfort as an element of
study abroad, and then there is discomfort.
In this instance of student evaluation, the rise of the measuring self as a com-
ponent of the study-abroad experience is not divorced from other assertions
of neoliberal ideology where, as Henry Giroux recently noted, “the only unit
of agency and analysis that matters is the isolated individual” (2017). While
we can recognize that study abroad has long valued the self-transformational
component of living and studying “elsewhere,” its shift to being the primary
component is notable (as compared to an increased mastery of another lan-
guage, for example, or access to certain archives, faculty, or other resources).
And conflicted. At the same moment that students are encouraged to look
outside of classrooms and programs for “authentic” experience during their
study-abroad, they are also increasingly urged to imagine such programs as
contributing to the formation of both global citizenship and the development
of cultural competence. These concepts remain profoundly under-defined in
most study-abroad promotional literatures; indeed, as Zemach-Bersin notes,
“‘global citizenship’ in study-abroad materials is often an empty signifier”
(see also Streitwieser and Light 2009; Greer and Schweitzer this book).
Global citizenship is often offered as something conferred directly through
the experience of study abroad but experience is not the same thing as learn-
ing, and exposure to difference without some careful consideration of dif-
ference (and the privileged perspective of study abroad to begin with) does
little to build global citizenship. In its simplest gloss, citizenship implies
a negotiated “getting along” with others, understanding different points of
view, an agonistic public sphere (Butcher and Smith 2015: 93), participating
in larger structures of meaning in some sort of formative way, and recogniz-
ing the benefits and responsibilities of being a member of society. Citizenship
is inextricably connected to historical processes and political contests, “a
social construction strategically crafted and historically formed” (Zemach-
Bersin 2011: 94). As Lewin notes in his critique of “global citizenship” as an
assumed outcome of study abroad:

Effective citizenship, whether we define that term primarily with respect to

rights and responsibilities, participation in civil society, or work toward the
common good, requires critical reasoning, empathy toward others, and indi-
vidual action that goes beyond consumption. (xvii)
 Weekending Daring 189

Not only is the concept of a “global society” unwieldy, unreal, and increas-
ingly under attack (consider the rise of international nationalist movements,
for example), but it posits a kind of citizenship that does not fully enable
“the political contestation of ideas and power, [such that] private virtues are
projected onto human problems unmediated by political framing. Without the
potential for politics to transcend or mediate differences, private experiences
(by their very nature differential and varied) dominate” (Butcher and Smith
2015: 93). In this vein, adventure weekends reinforce a focus on the indi-
vidual consuming self, a subject substantially contradictory to the imagined
boundaries of fully responsible citizenship. As Zemach-Berslin notes, “stu-
dents are told that they can purchase not only international travel itself, but
also cross-cultural understanding, global citizenship, personal advancement,
and adventure” (Zemach-Bersin, 305).
“Adventure” thus becomes a more powerful frame for student experience
and a commodity located within the space of the consuming self. As Kathryn
Mathers and Laura Hubbard suggest, travel then provides “the backdrop for
the encounter with the self through adventure” (Mathers and Hubbard 2009:
204, quoted in Feinberg and Edwards, 34). And the discourse of pushing
oneself outside the personal comfort zone, to “do things I wouldn’t otherwise
do,” is increasingly ratified through this individually consumed adventure.
However, the way that students make sense of this—the distinction between
adventure and risk—is more and more complicated, as mentioned above.
As one of my students noted of her study-abroad experiences: “It was really
important to me to go on as many ‘adventures’ as I could . . . . I spent a lot of
time planning the trips I took to ensure there was as little risk as possible.” In
many instances, the background of the country where said adventures takes
place is less a focus. For example, one student in my class prefaced going on
an excursion to Bhopal—where she went zip-lining—as visiting “a place that
no one had heard of, except as an explosion a long time ago.”
One in-class assignment in the reflection class asks students to write
about a moment or series of moments during their study-abroad experience
that made them uncomfortable. Many of them used the assignment to write
about times they felt they had overcome personal challenges; the assignment
called for the inclusion of a photograph from their study-abroad experience.
In some cases, framing experience as overcoming personal challenges was
carried to interesting lengths. For example, one student presented a photo of
herself standing on a rock next to the ocean as proof that she used her study-
abroad experience to overcome her fear of water. Another showed a photo of
herself eating cheesecake as proof that she used her experience to overcome
her dislike of cheesecake. In these examples, it is far too easy to make light,
perhaps, but I would suggest that the students are responding to larger narra-
tives encouraging them to understand their study-abroad experience through
overcoming personal challenge, no matter how mundane or how framed, and
190 John Bodinger de Uriarte

to flatten distinctions between personal challenges, adventure, and perceived

danger and risk.
In this same class, I was struck by how many students connected their trav-
els to overcoming a fear of terrorism, at once both undefined and highlighted
by the attacks in Brussels in March 2017. Traveling through Amsterdam two
days later, one student described the airport security as “poor,” but also saw it
as an opportunity to overcome personal fear. Airport security as a site expected
to be secure and risk-free (indeed, for a number of students air travel is the
first experiential hurdle they need to jump) became a place to assert the daring
self in the face of risk; it is not a place for challenging comfort zones in terms
of procedure and process. What is remarkable is the desire to connect their
travel experiences to other felt moments of danger: all of Europe is potentially
Brussels, all airports are personal and risky challenges to get through. The
student traveler/tourist imaginary here constructs a particular kind of post-9/11
world where international air travel is both seen and constructed as a site of
heightened danger. This is not to minimize student apprehension for interna-
tional travel, or the discomforts and uncertainties of the same, but to question
the urge to frame such travel against a backdrop of recognized “heard about”
danger, which connects to a larger discourse about adventure itself.
The self here is also a performing self for the family “back home” as
they make sense of their shared experience through the lens of adventure
(and their phone cameras). Their instant connectivity further shapes their
own approaches to and understandings of “being abroad.” In describing
their out-of-program experiences, for example, one student offered the
following:

When traveling to other countries we only went to the must-see sights such as
the Eiffel Tower, Mona Lisa, Cliffs of Moher, the Berlin Wall. We only went to
these places so everyone else at home could see that we were being adventurous.

As discussed earlier, these are viewed not only as sites to verify being
“adventurous” or performing “adventurousness” but also site visits veri-
fied through images that people at home “could see.” And the immediacy
of such image reception “at home” is part of “the wider ‘doing’ of tourism”
(Robinson and Picard 2009: 14). In this “doing,” adventure occupies a some-
times uncertain, often conflicting component of study-abroad experiences. In
a pedagogical field where entering and overcoming an imagined “discomfort
zone” is increasingly promoted as a key element of study-abroad programs,
students are participants in a varied marketplace of experiences where the
final assessment and affirmation is rendered at the level of the individual
consumer. This affirmation is often confirmed through the circulation of
anticipated and ratifying signs, or photographs.
 Weekending Daring 191

As study-abroad programs expand their management of the unex-

pected, opportunities for discomfort connected to the study-abroad program
decrease—language, housing, and food, for example, increasingly come
under program management shaped to smooth difference and challenges for
students away from home. Students seek the discomfort (or the promise of
comfort challenged) as an element of their promised study-abroad experience
and look to deliver this through “adventure” weekends or by interpreting their
own actions as besting some sort of challenge, as an element of a hero narra-
tive, a place where the individual self is further confirmed through discomfort
overcome. As Ben Feinberg and Sarah Edwards (2017) suggest, being able
to tell a good story is a primary objective for tourism and study-abroad expe-
riences. If “learning about yourself” is a key outcome, experience must be
framed as learning about the self, a hyper-commodified site and set of expec-
tations, and one that can yield some sort of heroic narrative. As study abroad
becomes increasingly standardized and more populated, the opportunities
for “adventures” that take one out of an ever-more-normalized immersive
experience allow students to consume adventure on their own terms, terms
often in direct conflict with goals of “global citizenship,” however that may
be defined.

NOTES

1. Here “weekending” is a verb that indicates the discrete boundaries of adven-

ture as elements or experiences broken off from the regular schedule of the week.
Adventure or daring then fits into a time both imagined as “the weekend” (a site
fraught with indications/connections to leisure and “non-work”) and as somewhat
consumable—in its borders and boundaries, in its “otherness” from a Monday-
through-Friday schedule.
2. I recognize that mandating study abroad, and including a variety of models,
has a lot of moving parts. The ambitions of such a mandate may exceed its practical
impact, especially as they depend on a variety of different providers and programs.
“Home growing” an array of short programs also means that final outcomes depend
on an array of faculty with different emphases, theoretical approaches to questions of
difference, pedagogical styles and abilities, and different critical knowledges about
the delivery of study abroad—especially parsed as a vehicle to appreciate difference
and develop global citizenship.
3. I have directed five short study-away programs for the university—two to the
Galápagos, two to Iceland, and one to Morocco. I don’t draw from these experi-
ences directly for a few reasons—while the programs give me some considerable
insights into student expectations for study-abroad experiences, they were designed
with fairly tight schedules and specific research goals and projects. The “difference”
of the program sites is a given; the program designs focus on the development of
192 John Bodinger de Uriarte

simple anthropological observational methodologies and theories as one way to

“make sense” of the program’s experience. While there were some “adventurous”
experiences, it was not a program emphasis and the way the programs’ free time was
constructed, they did not allow much time for students to pursue such experiences on
their own.
4. I want to distinguish this “discomfort zone” from “constructive disequilib-
rium” (Lewin 2009) as an element of study abroad: the first reflects a recurring
discursive element of study-abroad promotional materials and the way that student
increasingly articulate their study-abroad expectations, the second recognizes “dis-
equilibrium” as an opportunity to examine taken-for-granted cultural notions of the
everyday.
5. Students taking shorter programs outnumber those on semester-long programs
by almost 2 to 1.
6. Self-portraiture is as old as the medium of photography itself, and it is beyond
the scope of this chapter to engage more deeply with contemporary literatures on self-
ies, Instagram practices, or the use of Snapchat or any other platforms that allow for
the instantaneous exchange and circulation of digital images. My concern here is to
recognize the selfie’s role as participating in a discourse of experience validation, and
one where stakes are often raised to include an element of adventure or danger, and
how such images work as elements of imaginaries, that is, how they work to construct
the sites they simultaneously represent.
7. See also edutourism and voluntourism sites discussed in this volume’s introduction.

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 Chapter 7

I Go to Cleanse My Head and Heart

Katharine Serio

Short-term mission work is a popular method that church members utilize to

take part in service projects that go beyond secular tourism. They expect to
travel to poverty-ridden destinations where they will live like the locals for
a brief time. While the official goal of these trips is to help the community
in some manner, such as handing out medicine, many participants expect
and desire a kind of inner religious transformation. In this chapter, I argue
that mission work is a form of pilgrimage, drawing on pilgrimage studies to
examine how a United Methodist medical mission team to Mexico fostered a
sense of self reflexivity—members leave behind the monotony of daily life at
home and strengthen their relationship with God while away.
Following Jesus ministry to the poor, mission sites and experiences are
often sacralized by their association with the perceived poverty and suffering
of those being served. Mission participants expect to share in this suffering,
to live the discomfort of poverty as Jesus did before them. In addition, the
mission team communes over scripture and discusses their missions, past
and present, each constructing narratives to illustrate how their spiritual lives
have benefitted. From their brief period of suffering and intense focus on
spiritual matters, mission workers often return home with a renewed connec-
tion to God. At times, however, this self-transformative experience can come
at the expense of the community receiving aid whose own experiences after
the trip are ignored. Participants’ stories reveal a master narrative of “mis-
sion as pilgrimage,” wherein a focus on inner growth is primary—an ultimate
means to a transformative end.

195
196 Katharine Serio

A NOTE ON STUDY ABROAD

While the short-term mission work I discuss in this chapter was not part
of a study-abroad program, and most of the group was closer to retirement
age than university age, there are many parallels between these different
forms of travel.1 In general, traveling abroad is seen as beneficial in and
of itself, “that travel abroad is synonymous with (experiential) education,
and more fundamentally that travel is itself—before practice and peda-
gogy are even considered—educative” (Barkin 2018:301). Additionally,
according to anthropologist Gareth Barkin in his study on short-term
study abroad, higher education administration are often not as concerned
with the outcomes of travel, as they are that students just go somewhere
abroad, to attain an “experiential awareness” that is learned through travel
(2018: 301–302). Students and older adults alike can foster a sense of
identity through international travel. Like short-term mission work, short-
term study abroad tends to focus on students’ experiences of the planned
activities and less on local contexts or connections beyond those structured
activities; there is little critical analysis on the kecak dance in Bali, for
example, no explanation of its history or the impact of the colonial powers
to prepare students for the performance (Barkin 2018: 308) just as there
is no preparation or discussion of the history of Reynosa or the context
of poverty within Mexico. Before embarking on a short-term mission
trip, there is little focus on the local community. Instead, focus is on the
students; students need to visit other cultures, to be near other cultures, in
order to learn something and grow as people. This experiential learning is
acquired through study abroad in a similar way that growth is achieved by
short-term mission work, through concrete experiences, reflection on those
experiences, and conceptualizing the ideas discovered through reflection
to feel an impact in one’s life and worldview (Barkin 2018: 302). They do
not need to have in-depth expertise on their destination in order to grow
and change. There is an element of “hyperreality” to these trips, as in mis-
sion work, a feeling of “genuineness” from the experiences even if they
are highly produced for the audience, “meaning spaces [. . . ] are produced
in dialog with the exotic, neocolonial imaginary of the tourist gaze [. . . a]
s tourism industries throughout the world become increasingly insular and
specialized toward different interests and taste-cultures” (Barkin 2018:
309–310).2 As I will demonstrate, reflection comes out of the perceived
authenticity of tourism encounters, the feeling of being part of something
and expanding one’s horizons, whether it be through study abroad, volun-
tourism, mission work, pilgrimage, or vacation.
 I Go to Cleanse My Head and Heart 197

PILGRIMAGE AND TOURISM

Victor and Edith Turner famously said, “A tourist is half a pilgrim, if a pil-
grim is half a tourist” (1978: 20). Tourism is very similar to pilgrimage, and
the distinction between them usually comes down to the perceived beliefs and
motivations of travelers; the religious believer traveling to a sacred shrine is
seen as a pilgrim, while the secular traveler is often seen as merely a tourist
(Badone and Roseman 2004: 2). However, motivations can be tricky to pin
down; secular “tourists” may have a profound, powerful experience, border-
ing on the sacred; people can have “religious” experiences without being
religious. Likewise, pilgrims often experience “touristy” things in between
visiting the sacred sites (Badone and Roseman 2004: 2–4). The mission team
I worked with in Mexico would admit that they participate in a “tourist” day,
spending it in a nearby shopping district where they pick up their souvenirs
and anti-wrinkle medication that is banned in the United States, but otherwise
they stress the “anti-touristic” nature of their travel, some insisting they are
not on vacation. As I will illustrate, their focus on deprivations and becoming
closer to God sets them apart from their secular, “vacationing” counterparts.
Their language and behavior, instead, aligns them with other pilgrimages
around the world—without the relics and shrines.
According to Saint Augustine, humans are born “guilty” and must spend
their lives working for redemption—“a journey, laden with suffering and
temptation, from the earthly city (civitas terrena) to the city of God (civi-
tas Dei)” —a pilgrimage (Picard and Di Giovine [citing Markus 1989 and
Walsh et al. 1958: 191] 2014: 10–11). During the Middle Ages, these types
of pilgrimages were seen as transactional for the mostly Catholic devotees
who would receive indulgences for their strenuous journeys—these indul-
gences would then lessen their punishment for sin and aid in their salvation
(Coleman and Elsner 1995: 109). By the Reformation, the focus of pilgrim-
ages shifted to religious renewal and the curing of the soul (Coleman and
Elsner 1995: 128). The destination for pilgrimages was always a physical
site to visit the image or relic of a saint or Virgin—material manifestations of
God that could be touched in order to receive healing, protection, or salvation
(Coleman and Elsner 1995: 108).
By the nineteenth century, when “play” and group travel became a growing
part of American culture along with the rise of the middle class, Protestant
religious leaders, though “ambivalent” about tourism, developed their own
forms of religious travel, like Christian vacation camps and pilgrimages to
holy sites (Kaell 2014: 5–6). Religious trips, like those to the Holy Lands,
have become essential to the practice of Christian faith, taking people back
198 Katharine Serio

to the source of their faith, allowing them to “walk where Jesus walked”
(Kaell 2014: 3). It forces them to confront who they are in their everyday
lives and what it means to be Christian and, when successful, “reaffirms and
strengthens . . . [their] own relationship with God” (Kaell 2014: 5). Though
mediated by religious officials, pilgrimage sites allow for a diversity of per-
ceptions, meanings, and discourses to be brought by visitors so that each may
get the most out of their visit (Eade and Sallnow 1991: 10–12). The power of
pilgrimage sites “derives in large part from its character almost as a religious
void, a ritual space capable of accommodating diverse meanings and prac-
tices . . . a vessel into which pilgrims devoutly pour their hopes, prayers, and
aspirations” (Eade and Sallnow 1991: 15).

SHORT-TERM MISSIONS AS PILGRIMAGE

Pilgrimage can expand beyond the traditional shrines and relics that many
scholars cover (see Coleman and Elsner 1995; Dubisch and Winkleman
2005; Eade and Sallnow 1991; Kaell 2014; Turner and Turner 1978). From
service learning to study abroad to mission trips, many travelers feel the need
to get out of their “daily lives” for an experience that feels more real and
authentic than regular “tourism.” Service-oriented projects and educational
pilgrimages in the form of “gap years” or study-abroad opportunities give
volunteers and young people the chance to participate not only in touristic
activities but in another layer of meaningful travel, to gain knowledge and
perspective of the world (Di Giovine 2013: 75). For anthropologist Hillary
Kaell, the defining characteristic of pilgrimages seems to be its relation to
home, freeing “the journeying pilgrim from the localized, static traditions of
home” in order to have the meaningful experience (2014: 14). As stated by
anthropologists Michael Winkleman and Jill Dubisch, “almost any journey
may be termed a ‘pilgrimage’ these days, its meaning defined by inner feel-
ings and motivations rather than by external institutionalized forms” (2005:
xvii). Anthropologist Michael Di Giovine adds that in this “hyper-meaningful
voyage” it does not matter how outside observers (guides, managers, or even
researchers) define the travel but how the participants view their pilgrimage
experiences (Di Giovine 2013: 87). According to anthropologist Wayne Fife,
pilgrimage is something to be done; it is a practice; it is not a place that is
merely seen but rather a site of action (2004: 142). Like their service-oriented
and educational counterparts, people partaking in short-term mission trips
through contemporary Protestant churches and organizations feel the need
to get outside of their “comfort zones.” Participants often choose their des-
tinations based upon the perceived level of suffering of the people who live
there. They often travel to so-called “third-world” communities, or if they are
 I Go to Cleanse My Head and Heart 199

unable to travel abroad to inner cities in order to confront poverty and feel
the spiritual power of the people there, they adhere to Jesus proclamation,
“Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen the poor in the
world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised
to those who love him?” (James 2:5 NRSV).
According to Victor and Edith Turner (following Saint Augustine),
Christian pilgrimage is focused on “the inward movement of the heart” and
of an individual arriving at a deeper level of existence that cannot be attained
in normal, daily life (1978: 8). Going on pilgrimage gives participants an
opportunity to focus on themselves and their spiritual needs, which is dif-
ficult to do with the demands of daily life. Mission workers can experience
this “sacred time” (time devoted solely to spiritual matters) during their trip,
which is impossible to experience when dealing with the secular pressures
and the expectations of their lives back home. As a group, the mission team
can come together, have discussions, and process the experiences of the
mission with each other. They spend their down time sharing their newly
constructed stories (about the events of the day, often comparing the suffer-
ing they witnessed to their own), or repeating stories from previous missions
(relating to the suffering seen in the past and remembering humorous events,
both during former mission trips and at the home church). Every day begins
and ends with the reading of a devotional which is a short, religious anecdote
usually accompanied by a passage in the Bible and a discussion of its themes.
Mission participants view devotional times as vital for realizing their spiri-
tual growth, not just, as anthropologist Edward Bruner states when discuss-
ing secular tourism, “a reaffirmation of their current status, but a statement
about the future—that life can go on, that their world can expand, that they
can acquire yet more knowledge and experience” (2005: 15). Along with
new ideas that can manifest, participants are able to refine and expand on
previous events as well as look to the future as they imagine how their lives
will be enriched through this mission trip. Where mission work leads to some
sort of “spiritual growth,” an inner transformation that results in a closer
relationship with God, Bruner’s tourists find “self-development” through
their trips (Bruner 2005: 15). Religious travel is seen as a special, spiritual
“hyper-meaningful” experience “despite the meaningfulness and transforma-
tive nature of most (if not all) touristic experiences as a whole” (Di Giovine
2013: 87). Religious participants set themselves apart from secular tourists,
believing that they get more meaning out of their experiences than other
travelers do.
During the summer 2012, I joined a United Methodist short-term mis-
sion group from their home church in south Louisiana to travel to Reynosa,
Mexico, where we spent a week handing out medicine to the local commu-
nity. One man on the mission team, Steve, an older member of the church
200 Katharine Serio

who owns his own business, stated a few times throughout the trip that he
needed to go on a mission trip, admitting that he is “an obnoxious, egotisti-
cal, selfish man” who needs “to cleanse my head and heart.” The mission
team leader, Ellen, an active member of the church who works regularly at
the church’s food bank and organizes many of the events for the church, had
originally cancelled the mission trip for that year because her husband would
not be able to join her; she only changed her mind when Steve asked her
about it. He goes on mission trips every year or two, whenever he feels that
he needs spiritual renewal. Donna and Rose emphasized that they joined the
mission, because they both felt that had special skills to offer the team; Donna
works for the Red Cross and Rose is a registered nurse.
A common theme in short-term mission work is balancing the goals of
spiritual growth and effective service. Both the desire of pilgrims to more
actively participate in their religion and the multitude of opportunities for
the exploration of identity reflect this theme. While meaning in short-term
mission work is ultimately found through inner feelings and motivations, it is
the physical activities that often spur on the greatest spiritual growth in pil-
grimages, inconveniences like “arduous activities, deprivations, troublesome
engagements and tribulations . . . provide many mechanisms for self-trans-
formation” (Dubisch and Winkleman 2005: xxxiii). During the early years of
Christian pilgrimage, many travelers have believed that the more difficult or
dangerous a journey, the more spiritually rewarding it would be (Coleman
and Elsner 1995: 106). Without the difficulties of travel or the deprivations
of accommodation, the experience could be seen as too secular or “touristy.”
Pilgrims want an intense, multi-sensory experience beyond the “sight-seeing”
that mass touristic sites attract (Di Giovine 2015a: 35). Pilgrims set them-
selves apart from tourists, not just through their inner transformation but
through the experiences that make it possible.

DISCOMFORT

Reynosa fieldnotes, May 2012

It was hot and humid; the smell, a mix of rotten trash and a nearby
outhouse, wafted with the warm breeze into the large, creaky but tidy one
room building set up as a medical clinic for the day. A few fans were placed
throughout to provide some relief to the mission team. A dozen patients were
allowed in at a time, watching the doctor examine those who came before
them. The rest of the patients waited to be called in, some for hours, outside
in the hot sun. To the volunteers, it was an endless stream of people, mostly
women and children, with similar concerns: high blood pressure and diabe-
tes, lice and malnutrition. Everyone received vitamins and a toothbrush along
 I Go to Cleanse My Head and Heart 201

with their medicine. Ingredients that required refrigeration were assumed

unproblematic. Very few patients stood out, like the man whose crushed foot
would surely be amputated eventually and the woman with a missing eye, an
unsettling void in her face where it should be.
For contemporary Christians, mission work, especially international mis-
sion work, involves getting out of one’s “comfort zone.” According to anthro-
pologist Omri Elisha, for evangelical Christians, this involves cross-cultural
exchanges, overcoming fears and prejudices in order to witness people in
unfamiliar settings (2011: 129). Elisha’s informants critique materialism,
using outreach to transcend the impulses and pressures of consumer culture
and to embrace the virtues of sacrifice and benevolence (Elisha 2011: 122).
When people are able to give up material comforts in order to work as mis-
sionaries or in another field of ministry, their perceived Christian virtue
increases (Elisha 2011: 143–144). From the experiences of Jesus and Paul
and the early Christian pilgrimages, suffering and difficulty has always been
essential to the “journey” of Christianity; Saint Augustine declared that this
suffering comes from the leaving behind of “earthly things” (Di Giovine
2015b: 189–190). However, pilgrimage travel is a type of commodity, the
entire experience—plane tickets, accommodations, meals, souvenirs, sup-
plies paid for by participants—blurring the line between sacred and profane
(Kaell 2014: 11). This struggle between leaving behind “earthly things” and
in doing so, investing in a series of commodities is demonstrated by the
mission group’s interaction with the larger congregation. Members of the
home congregation who were unfamiliar with mission trips accused Donna
of “going on vacation,” when she asked for their financial support. She was
frustrated by their lack of understanding about what goes on during mission
trips. Embracing sacrifice and discomfort in their travel can be a way to cir-
cumvent the perceived commoditization of religious travel, making it “less
fun” and less of a vacation. The risks and sacrifices associated with mission
trips are perceived as fostering much greater spiritual growth than the safety
of religious services and small church groups, which can result in compla-
cency and being stuck, spiritually (Elisha 2011: 128).
In addition to these motivations and critiques, there is another element
to “getting out of our comfort zone.” The mission group expected that, in
Mexico, we would not experience the comforts of our life back home. We
were all going to be sleeping in one large room filled with bunk beds and
no air conditioning; we would have to walk to a nearby building to use the
bathroom and take cold showers. We would eat the same food that the local
people ate. There would need to be a higher tolerance for the sticky heat
that would linger in the schools and churches where we worked, the smells
floating in from the outhouses with every breeze we were lucky to receive,
and the dangerous van that had no air conditioning and whose unbolted seats
202 Katharine Serio

threatened to toss their passengers back and forth and up and down with every
bump and turn. Of course, there was some grumbling and complaining by
all, but everyone worked through her or his discomfort and focused on our
tasks—providing medicine. There will always be a level of discomfort with
aid work, whether it is physical, emotional, spiritual, or social and this is what
helps keep the faithful away from “frivolous things” (Elisha 2011: 127–128).
Everyone expected that during this relief work, the conditions would not be
ideal. Some mission workers, such as the team I traveled with, even expressed
disappointment when the conditions were “too good” (which would probably
be just “okay” or “unimpressive” in the United States). For example, the
accommodations were different than expected; we were spread across three
(of about seven) air-conditioned rooms, each with two sets of bunk beds and
an attached bathroom. They would probably not be considered luxury accom-
modations in the United States, but they were much nicer that what the team
was used to. They felt that the trip needed to be set apart from the indulgences
of a relaxing, restful break. This was a different type of journey than that
experienced through secular tourism and it was important for participants to
feel that separation and be recognized as spiritual, sacrificing travelers. Since
it was not a vacation, enjoying certain amenities made some team members
feel like they were on a frivolous holiday instead of the serious volunteer
work they were involved in, “their discourses purposefully distinguish them-
selves from what they perceive as a baser form of travel, morally elevating
themselves above the tourist track. ‘This is a pilgrimage, not tourism’” (Di
Giovine 2016: 11). They aim to be “Christ-like,” or at least closer to Christ,
and the mission-pilgrimage is their perfect opportunity to rise above material-
ity for a “higher order” (Di Giovine 2016: 18–19).
Donna wanted to use pictures of the updated accommodations we were
staying in to attract more mission workers the next year, but the other partici-
pants disagreed with her for two reasons. First, they were disappointed that
we were not staying in the “normal” housing. They were disappointed that
they would not be “living like the local community” and did not think it was
something to advertise. It was less real, less “authentic” for the group to be
staying in nicer accommodations. They were taken out of the uncomfortable
experience and put back into their “comfort zone” while enjoying the warm
showers and air conditioning. Instead of closing the gap between themselves
and the locals as they imagined it, they were kept separated from that true
experience and the more personal understanding of the discomforts of their
third-world host community. Second, short-term mission work is, again, seen,
as anthropologist Mary Hancock states, as a “critique of the consumerist val-
ues of secular travel, frequently by contrasting the poverty encountered in the
mission field with the comfort of home” (Hancock 2014: 157). Those who
would be attracted to nice accommodations are not the kinds of missionaries
 I Go to Cleanse My Head and Heart 203

they want on the trip—people who would complain about clinic sites which
were not air conditioned and tended to smell and people who might not be
comfortable with the level of sickness seen in the patients we interacted with.
They laughed about people on previous mission trips who insisted on doing
their hair nicely every day and who wore lots of jewelry. The team thought
that they had a more difficult time achieving inner growth which hinges on
pushing themselves physically as well as mentally. Deprivations are expected
in order to reinforce the inner transformation, releasing the pilgrim from their
sins and the guilt that they may be experiencing (Winkleman and Dubisch
2005: xxxiii). Being too comfortable, staying in a “comfort zone” prevents
many participants, including most of the group I traveled with, from being
challenged in a way that would cause the spiritual growth they expect. Of
course, many would agree with Donna; that is why the facility was built. A
United Methodist congregation in Oklahoma that also has a long history with
the Mexican organization, Manos de Ayuda, designed and financed the mod-
ern Americanized complex. Not every participant wants to lose the comforts
of home, or perhaps, for many, it is enough to travel to a foreign country and
interact with the poverty and suffering during the day and retreat back to
comfort and safety at night.
Still, for many, it is a vital part of the experience to live as the locals do—
even if the mission workers do not really know how the locals live. As with
many mission trips, there was no attempt to learn Spanish and there is little
attempt to learn about the lives, the history, and the culture of the people of
Reynosa before the trip or even during the trip (Howell 2009: 209). Each
person has a fantasy of how the locals live and it is not comparable to their
American lives “at home.” Experiencing difficulty fosters a sense of grateful-
ness (for what one has) among the mission members. Often, people who vol-
unteer are looking for an “experience,” one that stands out, disrupts from the
normal, everyday routine, that is selfless, and needs to be shared (Bornstein
2012: 113). Mission workers want an authentic Mexican experience or what
they believe is an authentic Mexican experience.
Each person goes on a short-term mission trip for their own reasons, but
they are often looking for a strengthening of their relationship with God—as
Donna remarked, to go on missions is to continue God’s work and she knows
that it, along with her work with the Red Cross, is what God calls her to do.
Steve reiterated that doing good works and giving back is a part of mission
work but that we were the most impacted and affected spiritually during our
time in missions. Suffering and being near this authentic, third-world experi-
ence enable this strengthening; God becomes more potent and closer in these
contexts. Catholic historian Robert Orsi describes how this spiritual goal can
be problematic. In his work on urban religion in the Bronx, he talks with a
Franciscan nun, Sister Marty, who works with prostitutes, ministering to their
204 Katharine Serio

spiritual and physical needs. She finds God’s presence stronger in these types
of places, sites of devastation and decay, “Something in me comes alive when
I come into this area. I feel God’s presence more strongly here than anywhere
else” (Orsi 1999: 1). Like Sister Marty, mission groups who travel to third-
world countries, seek out the worst areas “where they would re-create the
ancient spirit of Christian monasticism in its purest forms of prayer, sacrifice,
and service . . . for their own purposes and pleasure” (Orsi 1999: 2). There is
often a search for meaning and authenticity in the suffering of others; Dean
MacCannell studied the pattern of tourists engaging in “negative sightsee-
ing” in order to find authenticity, “to see if [they] can catch a glimpse of it
reflected in the simplicity, poverty, chastity, or purity of others” (MacCannell
1976: 40–41). Tour groups go to places like the Appalachians or inner-city
areas where a local guide will focus on the strife of the area, complaining
about things like failed crops, junkies, and flood damage; abandoned build-
ings, polluted rivers, and uncontrollable garbage heaps serve as the flip side
to respectable tourist destinations with nice attractions and well-curated
museums (MacCannell 1976: 40). Religious travelers, through service, hope
to find their own transcendence, since God is found most potently amid suf-
fering, but it risks turning the suffering of others into a feeling of authenticity
and holiness for the nun or mission worker, utilizing suffering for their own
personal gain (Orsi 1999: 2–3). Participants travel to impoverished places
for a certain reason, because they need something and to feel like they are
contributing in some small way to the community but, as Steve concluded,
we (the mission team) gain the most out of these trips. Individuals emphasize
how they benefit from mission trips more than how the local community
might benefit.
These mission workers can take the search for meaning and authentic-
ity a step further by professing to want to share in the suffering for a short
time and to a certain extent. The group did not necessarily want to be in
danger, but they did want to be in discomfort. Finding authenticity through
a form of “danger” tourism, as Florence Babb explains it, is the ultimate
goal. The experience is authentic because the volunteers believe in the
truth of the suffering and hardship—yet the experience was constructed
for them by the negotiation between the mission organizers and the groups
who visit year after year (Babb 2011: 42; McCannell 1976; Bruner 2005).
The authentic Reynosa that everyone wanted does not exist—a place whose
modest casitas lacked air conditioning, had barely running cold water and
unreliable electricity, but were also full of warm, hospitable hosts and won-
derful Mexican cooking—even in past years when they were welcomed
into a family’s home and sat down at their host’s table in her large, hot
dining room eating her freshly made tamales along with her husband and
children. Real Mexican people did not live exactly as the group imagined.
 I Go to Cleanse My Head and Heart 205

No one in the group had lived with Mexican families long-term or sought
to learn about their experiences; they had brief glimpses into the lives of
one family whose job is to host groups of foreign volunteers. As Edward
Bruner states, “there is no original;” there is no “real Mexican experience”
that can be captured. It is imagined and created, produced by locals and
visitors (2005: 5).
Anthropologists Salazar and Graburn write about the “tourism imaginary”
and how this process is worked out through the dialogue between hosts,
local workers, and tourists, through stories and ideas shared about the place,
and through pictures taken and souvenirs bought which can be “signs and
symbols of imaginaries, which could be banal stereotypes or could be highly
modified and personalized by their experiences” (2014: 11–12). All of this
enables travelers to prove their tourism “imaginaries” and create their version
of a real Mexican mission trip (Salazar and Graburn 2014: 12). The authentic-
ity was only threatened when the mission organizers, pushed by another mis-
sion group, made the trip more comfortable, but less believable, less authentic
in the eyes of my group. Even the tamales, now made by a mere employee
(versus the welcoming “friend” in the past), did not taste the same.
Focusing too much on their own spiritual growth with less attention to ser-
vice undermines the official purpose of the mission, especially for any local
organization run by community members who do have a vested interest in the
health of their community. Steve was the most enthusiastic team member on
the mission trip but, in actuality, he did not participate very much during the
work period. He was sick for a couple of days when it came time to hand out
medicine, having had an allergic reaction to his own medicine, and he took
frequent breaks, disappearing from time to time, even when he was feeling
better. Steve was, nevertheless, very adamant that he was having a spiritual
experience due to his proximity to the patients and, when he was feeling well
enough, he would try to interact with them, greeting them and giving children
candy and coloring sheets with crayons.

FORMING BONDS

The system we set up for the daily health clinics addressed as many people
as possible in a short time. We, the volunteers, would arrive by 9:00 or 10:00
a.m., set up for an hour, eat lunch at noon, and work until 2:00 or 3:00 p.m.
before packing up and leaving. Pastor Sam and Donna briefly signed people
in, taking a few vitals and sending them to wait for the doctor. Rose filled
prescriptions while Sarah wrote instructions down. As the only volunteer who
spoke any Spanish, I translated the instructions from English to Spanish and
later, handed them out to people, verifying they were the correct patient and
206 Katharine Serio

telling them what they needed to do with each type of medicine. Ellen took
pictures to show the church back home the work we did.
There was only one doctor, a local Mexican physician who spent her days
volunteering and her nights working at a local hospital; she saw almost 100
people each day at our clinics. It had been over a month since anyone had
visited the community and it was unknown when another group would come
again. The medicine we gave out would last a few weeks. Two years prior,
the community could count on medicine and volunteers every week, some-
times they were even forced to turn mission groups away. According to Juan,
the man who ran the organization, violence in the area scared off most volun-
teer groups and their much-needed money and resources. As Florence Babb
points out, many people, even those interested in “dark tourism,” do not want
to be in any real danger but want the danger to be something from the more
distance past, left in the last century (Babb 2011: 57–58).3
Just as there is no research about the lives of the people in Reynosa prior
to traveling; there is little attempt to get to know these people or their cul-
ture while there. Mission workers are moved to act, to do something when
they hear about suffering or when they see suffering, but the Mexicans are
“Othered,” and their “cultural and political particularity—their difference is
collapsed into a ‘not us’ category” as Ellen Moodie states, “We wanted to
show them we cared” without really interacting with them (2013: 149). We
checked patients in to the clinic and handed them their medicine when they
were ready to leave, but there was no time to get to know them. Similarly,
there was little chitchatting with the men and women who worked for Manos
de Ayuda; they had to rush about making sure we had everything we needed
and never stayed around “after hours.” The relationship between the mission
workers and the patients or the employees of Manos de Ayuda extended only
as far as it needs to, “integrating Other people, territories and time-spaces to
its specific touristic realms, scripts and narratives, tourism purposely creates
these Others in the specific terms of its liturgical needs . . . the perceived
effervescence of an exotic human life context are not objective qualities
inherent to a given site or society, but stem from the socially framed subjec-
tive mind-set and culture of the respective tourists” (Picard and Di Giovine
2014: 3–5).
Maintaining relationships with “those in need” is one of the major dis-
courses surrounding this type of work. The volunteers imagine the bonds
that will be created as they prepare for their trip; they speak about the people
they will encounter and how they will help them. However, the group had
very little interaction with the patients, just enough to get their medical
information at the front end of the process, and to provide medicine to them
at the end. None of the participants spoke Spanish fluently, most had only
some very basic terms memorized. Even Ellen and Sarah, who have gone
 I Go to Cleanse My Head and Heart 207

on the mission trips to this community for about ten years, had little Spanish
knowledge and never considered it a priority when preparing for mission
trips. Anthropologist Ellen Moodie, while studying short-term mission work
in El Salvador, had a similar experience with the participants; even when the
mission group and hosts sat down to have a meal together, they segregated
themselves physically and linguistically (2013: 154).
In my more recent research in coastal Belize (fall 2017 to summer 2018),
I found myself observing missions briefly from the other side.4 The mission
group provided eye care for the community and surrounding areas for four
days. A few members of the congregation agreed to check people in daily.
When I asked these congregants about the mission team, they shrugged and
said they brought much-needed supplies and medical care but nothing else.
While they are grateful for the material aid, they did not get to know the
people providing care.
In Reynosa, Juan, the leader of Manos de Ayuda, knows what he wants
for his community and how he can accomplish his goals. Juan’s ultimate
vision for his Mexican ministry is of a completely integrated group, with
Americans and Mexicans working side by side, building construction projects
and handing out medicine in the community. He is trying to combat the idea
that Americans are the givers and Mexicans are the receivers. He has had
problems recruiting local community members because of this idea; they do
not always believe that they are supposed to do the volunteer work. Juan is
looking for both sides to cultivate affective bonds of attachment so that the
want to give and help each other remains strong; so that one side will not just
stop giving their time, energy, and money which this community desperately
needs. He is rapidly losing groups of foreign volunteers (most do not have
a long history with the community) and is searching for an alternative. His
relationship with Ellen keeps the connection between his organization and her
church alive; he needs more connections like this so that foreign groups will
brave the potential violence to bring resources. It is easier to just send money
to places in need but continued, long-term support relies on volunteer work
so those bringing their money, and whatever material goods are needed, feel
like they are contributing and making a difference (Bornstein 2012: 124).
However, according to Moodie, the separation between the groups is nec-
essary for the success of short-term mission trips. Foreign mission teams need
to feel like they are helping—that they are “giving back.” The construction
work and the medical work can be done without mission teams, sometimes
more efficiently, with better quality and cheaper results, Moodie says

the disparities between the visitors and visited—economic, geographic, cultural,

political—is not something to overcome, a gap to be filled (even if in sticky,
awkward, friction-generating ways). Rather, these differences are necessary
208 Katharine Serio

for the relationship. The relationship would not exist without the existence of
those differences, without the inequality. Indeed, the money that brings short-
term mission trips to far-flung locations is also what differentiates participants:
“Money allows proximity, even as it establishes distance.” (2013: 149–150)

Inequality is necessary, and when the locals get too close or demand too
much, the relationship could fall apart. Mission members have a desire to feel
and experience “being there”; again they want that authentic experience but
in order to achieve that feeling of connection and contribution, there needs to
be a separation between them and those being helped, “the gap is necessary”
(Moodie 2013: 159–160). Bridging the gap, bringing more volunteers from
the local community, is risky. If the mission team no longer feels like they
are needed to actively do something, they might not return, and their money
and resources would leave with them.

INNER GROWTH/TRANSFORMATION

The participants take their roles in this short-term mission trip very seriously.
They understand that they are providing a service for people who do not
have easy access to transportation or the funds to maintain their health. In her
discussion of the “humanitarian gaze,” anthropologist Mary Mostafanezhad
describes how humanitarian efforts began in the eighteenth century as a way
for people from England and the United States to reconcile a “sense of moral
responsibility toward the impoverished parts of the world and their threatened
inhabitants” (2014 [citing Tester 2010]: 113). Tourism has intersected with
this to create “voluntourism,” which attracts people who are searching for
meaning or purpose in their lives (Mostafanezhad 2014: 113). The volunteers
Mostafanezhad worked with were empowered through their service. Who
else would help the starving babies or spread awareness of their situation if
not them and their social media posts? (2014: 115). The mission volunteers
in Mexico want to help people who are suffering and make a difference in
their lives. Throughout the mission trip, volunteers remarked that they hoped
that the people who came through our clinic felt our love for them, God’s
love for them. This particular group understood that many of the people were
Christians themselves, and we did not need to witness explicitly to them.5
While none of them had stories of any of the patients’ relationship with God,
each of the mission workers felt their own renewed faith and commitment to
God through their service.
The pastor on this trip, Sam, recounted a time when he was in Mexico
years before. His hosts had him go door-to-door with a translator. While
there, he offered to pray with or for them if they wanted him to. It was not a
 I Go to Cleanse My Head and Heart 209

chance for him to evangelize to them but to make connections with the com-
munity, while his church group was constructing a casita for a local family,
and to show that God cares. We did the same thing through our medical aid;
attempting to heal the sick in order to illustrate the love of God without the
use of words. The leader of our mission, Ellen, said that the sign of a success-
ful mission trip to her was not the alleviation of illness or poverty but if one
person felt the love of God in their lives and turned toward Him or renewed
their faith in Him. Like Mostafanezhad’s volunteers in Thailand, the impact
of volunteer work on the local people is often vague and difficult, if not
impossible, to measure, “‘I just feel like if I can make a difference in one kid
I have been successful. That is what it is all about. Reaching out to that one
person who will take what we have taught them and making a difference in
their lives” (2014: 116). It is unclear what that difference will entail, just as
Ellen is never told by any of the patients that they themselves were renewed
by our presence.
By going on mission trips, participants want to help those in need, but they
also feel “called” to do so and want to feel that closeness to God when they
do it. A dual goal in short-term mission work, and often the more important
one for participants, is their own spiritual relationship with God. Personal
motivation can be seen in both religious and nonreligious voluntourism, the
desire to serve can be linked with the desire for benefits to participants like
having access to travel, receiving marketable skills, developing cross-cultural
skills, and achieving greater spiritual depth (Zehrer 2013: 132). Many vol-
untourists feel that they get more out of their experiences than they give
(Mostafanezhad 2014: 116) Religious voluntourists’ need to support those
who are suffering is rooted in their belief in God; Steve goes because he felt
called by God to participate, to cleanse himself of his most recent sins, sins
he has been accumulating since his last trip. Rose and Donna have time and/
or skills that they can use in missions. They turn inward as there is nothing
to do to significantly change the lives of the patients. There is nothing to be
done about malnourishment, the side effects of diabetes, or easily preventable
infections except to give this month’s medicine and hope that someone comes
to give them medicine for next month.
Sociologists Jenny Trinitapoli and Stephen Vaisey (2009) have stated that
those who received aid from mission teams had similar experiences as those
who received aid from other nonreligious groups. It was mission groups who
experienced long-term positive changes in their own lives as a result of their
trips; reporting “increases in their level of interest in ‘poor countries,’ prayer
and financial giving, though actual evidence of any increase in charitable giv-
ing was scant” (Trinitapoli and Vaisey 2009: 123–124). They feel more chari-
table and empathetic; it does not matter if they actually are, or not. Short-term
mission trips are usually oriented toward service, and participants often focus
210 Katharine Serio

on their own transformations and enlightenments over the changes the local
community could experience (Trinitapoli and Vaisey 2009: 133). Steve felt
renewed, as he always does, at the end of the trip; he was reinvigorated and
ready to resume daily life. Sarah, after moving thirty minutes away from her
hometown months previously, was ready to find a new congregation and
resume regular church attendance.

NARRATIVES

Once the trip is over, but also during the trip itself, mission workers need to
make sense of it; Edward Bruner describes this need, that “in itself experi-
ence is inchoate without an ordering narrative, for it is the story, the telling
that makes sense of it all, and the story is how people interpret their journey
and their lives” (Bruner 2005: 20). As psychologist Jerome Bruner argues,
certain scripts can be employed in particular situations, such as the boy-
meets-girl narrative or the mission narrative, in order to make sense of them
and find meaning in them (1991: 6–7). As individuals tell each other narra-
tives of their trips, patterns begin to emerge and eventually form “scripts.”
“Mission as pilgrimage” narratives can be seen as a kind of master narra-
tive which provide a “pre-existing structure but they are not determinative,
nor can they possibly encompass the many possible . . . responses” (Bruner
2005: 26). As Edward Schieffelin explains, each participant experiences
reality in her or his own way and finds meaning individually, but meaning is
“objectively (and socially) validated by the participants when they share its
action and intensity no matter what each person may individually think about
it” (Schieffelin 1985: 722). Individuals may come up with personal mean-
ings for performances and events, but the larger meanings of symbols and
events are created through collaboration between those involved (Schieffelin
1985: 722). By performing short-term mission work and constructing stories
together, the meaning of these trips (for the mission workers) can emerge.
The recipients (the medical patients) of their work (mission work) are present
for the performance (providing medical care and medicine) but their absence
in the discussions prevents them from shaping the narrative and the meanings
with the volunteers later.
Mission work narrative scripts tend to begin with the desire for change,
doing a service project, and seeing and experiencing suffering with the
foreign community, so that the workers may return transformed. The mis-
sion participants feel more charitable and empathetic; it does not matter if
they actually are. While short-term mission trips are usually oriented toward
some sort of service project versus proselytizing, participants often focus
on their own transformations and enlightenments over the changes the local
 I Go to Cleanse My Head and Heart 211

community could experience (Trinitapoli and Vaisey 2009: 133). There is

little way for the mission workers to measure the change in the receiving
community, so the effects on the local people often do not make it into the
narratives of mission trips. According to Edward Bruner, these post-trip nar-
ratives are never ending but can be, and are, told and retold as the stories
are refined and worked through and the self is constructed and reconstructed
(2005: 27). This allows for repeated trips as the narratives and the self are
always in need of renewal.

CONCLUSION

The mission team acknowledges that most of what they do has no lasting
effects. During our 2012 trip, Rose kept commenting on how dirty all the
patients were, especially the children. Not a critique as much as an observa-
tion, a comment on the poorer health she observed this year as opposed to the
last year she attended the trip when they tended to clean themselves up a little
bit more before visiting the clinic. Rose stated, some years they are better,
other years they are worse, and it is up to their own government and institu-
tions to truly change the situation long-term. In general, medical missions,
which seem to bring in needed resources and expertise, rarely can do more
than apply proverbial and literal Band-Aids and perhaps create more depen-
dence on outsiders (Moodie 2013: 149). It can be frustrating to recognize that
the problem is larger than one person or one mission trip (Mostafanezhad
2014: 116). But my group would argue that a Band-Aid is better than noth-
ing; this kind of triage is necessary until the government, and the other power
structures in Mexico, can address the larger structural problems6—which
have resulted in the mass poverty Rose was referring to and gang violence
that keeps many mission groups from Reynosa. It would never occur to them
to attempt to address structural inequalities and in fact, according to Mary
Mostafanezhad, this kind of humanitarian mission “discourages the volunteer
tourist from examining how her or his everyday life is intertwined in the real-
ity of struggle and poverty of the communities that he or she seeks to benefit”
(2014: 117).
This mission group often focuses on their own authentic, uncomfortable
experiences and spiritual renewal instead of the poverty of the local commu-
nity. This allows the trip—the pilgrimage—to be successful. Even though no
one ever referred to the trip as a pilgrimage and, unlike most pilgrimages, there
was no sacred object or holy site to be visited, it was nevertheless “an inten-
tional journey . . . to locations where it is believed to be easier to obtain access
to the divine” (Kaell 2014: 20). The mission team members wanted to give
back and make a difference in the world, but perhaps what they really desired
212 Katharine Serio

was to feel better about themselves through the renewal or reaffirmation of

their relationship with God. This also helped them distance themselves from
“tourism,” a label they were adamantly against, an identity they explicitly
rejected when sharing their trip with the church. They did not crave a vacation
but rather sought an opportunity for a spiritually profound, arduous journey.

NOTES

1. Short-term mission work can be carried out by people of all ages, including
groups of teens and young adults. Besides Sarah and I, who were in our twenties, the
rest of the group I traveled with were in their fifties and sixties.
2. For an explanation of “hyperreality,” see Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra
and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. See also Eco, Umberto.
1995. Faith in Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality. New York: Random House.
3. For an overview of dark tourism, see Stone, Philip and Richard Sharpley. 2008.
“Consuming dark tourism: A Thanatological Perspective.” In Annals of Tourism
Research, 35 (2). pp. 574–595.
4. While I am not currently focused on short-term mission work, there was a team
that spent a week here. I followed up by asking a few in the receiving congregation
for their thoughts on short-term mission work.
5. Christian Witnessing is the sharing of one’s faith in God, spreading the love of
Christ and his teachings. According to the United Methodist Church, to witness is to
“live out their vows publicly. Churches need to discern locally how they are going to
do that in a specific way and a specific place… Leading a Christian life by example is
a form of witness, whether it’s acting with integrity in the workplace, showing com-
passion to neighbors, or helping others embody the love of Christ through advocacy
and outreach” (Dwyer 2017).
6. Larger structural problems that Mexico struggles with include land loss and
disenfranchisement, corporatization of agriculture, political corruption, violence
stemming from the drug trade. However, the group I was with did not discuss these
issues, besides the gang violence, and might not have been aware of them.

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 Chapter 8

Schooling Taste
Culinary Tourism, Study Abroad, and Food
Melissa Biggs

I hold the bowl of pancita—soup made from beef stomach and lining—in
my lap. Preparing pancita requires hours of labor, which makes it a dish
usually served for special occasions and family celebrations. We have just
participated in the harvest of the host family’s corn plots; in return, the fam-
ily serves all of us a meal, intended to celebrate the crop, and thank us for
our work. Recipes vary according to family preferences. Sometimes the meat
is chopped finely, sometimes left in larger pieces. The deep red broth in my
bowl is filled with large strips of dark, roughly textured meat, and a few
smaller bits that look like honeycomb. Since I am a guest, my bowl has been
piled with extra meat. I squeeze in as much lime juice as I can, and add a
healthy dose of serrano chiles. “Provecho,” says the host family’s son, and he
and the others gulp huge spoonfuls of soup. Everyone exclaims how delicious
it is, pulling the large pieces of meat out and wrapping them into tortillas. I
take timid sips of broth, working my way up to eating some of the meat. I
want badly to be able to eat at least half of my serving, but even the sips of
broth test my ability to overcome my aversion to its aroma. “Melissa, you’re
not eating anything,” one of the daughters-in-law exclaims. I respond that I’m
not very hungry, then choke down a spoonful of broth and a bit of tripe. One
of the other guests, perhaps sensing my discomfiture, offers to take some of
the meat from my bowl. I am embarrassed: I’m an ungrateful guest, a prime
example of the squeamish American who won’t eat “real” Mexican food.
Food is often presented as an enjoyable and immediate form of cultural
exchange and education. As Bonnekessen (2010) notes, food seems an inno-
cent and safe way to experience cultural diversity. Travel centered on culinary
experiences in particular —visits to small-scale producers, shopping at local
markets, and cooking classes, for example—attracts consumers interested in
a more “in-depth” travel experience (see Ascione this book, for example).

215
216 Melissa Biggs

Richards (2003) points out that “authenticity has always been viewed as an
important aspect of tourist consumption, and seeking out ‘authentic’ local
and regional foods can become a motive for visiting a particular destina-
tion.” While food is not the primary focus of every study-abroad program,
it is part of study-abroad experiences. Students in home stays often eat with
their host families, and some programs include opportunities for students to
participate in food-related activities, such as cooking classes. For students,
however, exposure to new foods and eating habits is not necessarily pleasur-
able. Adjusting to unfamiliar ingredients or preparations can be a difficult and
distressing part of studying abroad (Brown et al. 2010), even when—as in the
opening vignette—the student or traveler genuinely wants to partake.
Considering the role of food in study-abroad programs includes more than
whether a particular dish is palatable to the visitor. Students also navigate
new conventions about when and where it is considered appropriate to eat,
and how to eat. Even familiar foods or ingredients might taste different or be
considered of inferior quality, as Lorraine Brown and her colleagues found
when they interviewed international graduate students studying in southern
England about their food habits (2010). The participants came from a variety
of countries, including Taiwan, France, Grenada, and Malaysia. Students
complained that produce did not seem as fresh and worried about pesticides
used to grow it. They characterized their diets in their home countries as
“healthier,” with fewer sweets and a wider variety of fresh products.
This chapter explores culinary learning undertaken by tourists seeking to
engage with local culture in ways that are unavailable to the everyday tour-
ist and students participating in study-abroad programs in Mexico. It draws
from interviews, participant observation, publicly available student blogs,
and literature on homestays, commensality, and culinary tourism. Much of
the current research that discusses food in a study-abroad context focuses on
international students who plan to complete degrees or significant portions
of their degrees outside of their home countries (Brown et al. 2010; Brown
2009). In study-abroad literature, food surfaces in research about homestays
(Sheng‐Hsun Lee et al. 2017; Kinginger 2009; Schmidt-Rinehart and Knight
2004; Knight and Schmidt-Rinehart 2002; Wilkinson 1998), primarily with
regard to shared meals as a site of language acquisition (Cook 2006; Iino
1996), although DuFon (2006) focuses on the socialization of taste.
According to the World Tourism Organization, food accounts for approxi-
mately one-fourth of the money spent by tourists worldwide (UNWTO
Report 2012). Of course, a percentage of that is spent by tourists solely fulfill-
ing daily sustenance needs, but a growing amount is dedicated toward tour-
ism specifically focused on food-related experiences: food festivals, market
tours, walking tours of neighborhood restaurants and bars, cooking classes,
and farm visits. As the market for culinary tourism grows, it has linked to
 Schooling Taste 217

other forms of tourism that accentuate local production, sustainability, and

cultural heritage. This emphasis on the local contributes to the accumulation
of cultural capital that “can be used immediately within the destination, be
used on return to home, and even in future travel situations, which serves as
an indication of the cultural sophistication of the tourist, e.g., be competent
to appreciate and enjoy foreign food, and are sophisticated enough to be able
to order it and eat it with proper manners” (Mak et al. 2012; citing Chang
et al. 2010 and Cohen and Avieli 2004). Activities sought out by these tour-
ists resemble those planned to enhance the cultural learning of study-abroad
students, especially in short-term programs.
Promoted as “one of Mexico’s most culturally rich and diverse regions” in
2017 by Fodor’s, the southern state of Oaxaca attracts tourists drawn to the
“special magic” of its “vibrant crafts and art scene . . . outstandingly colorful
and extroverted festivities . . . uniquely savory cuisine and diverse natural
riches” (Lonely Planet 2018). As Brulotte and Sparkman observe, many of
the international tourists who come to Oaxaca do so precisely because of its
reputation as “a repository of ‘genuine’ indigenous culture, past and present”
(2016: 118). The historic center of Oaxaca City and the nearby archeological
site of Monte Alban were inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage list
in 1987; the caves of Yagul and the archeological site of Mitla, both eas-
ily accessible as day-trips from Oaxaca City, entered the list in 2010. After
the 2010 designation of “Traditional Mexican cuisine—ancestral, ongo-
ing community culture, the Michoacán paradigm” as UNESCO Intangible
World Heritage, a nascent culinary tourism scene boomed. Many travelers
now come specifically for culinary experiences; there are dozens of cooking
schools, market tours, and specialty excursions from which to choose.
In late spring of 2018, I spent several days in Oaxaca City, speaking with
cooking school instructors, tour leaders, and tourists participating in food-
related activities. I joined six other visitors for a cooking class in the nearby
town of Teotitlán del Valle at El Sabor Zapoteco, the cooking school oper-
ated by Reyna Mendoza Ruiz. A driver with a well-outfitted van met us on a
street corner near the city’s ethnobotanical garden. The other cooking class
students were a retired couple from the United States, Linda and Jerry, and
two Canadian couples in their late twenties to early thirties, Jane and Rob and
Justin and Catherine.1 Linda and Jerry spend several weeks a year in Mexico
and were staying in an apartment in Oaxaca City owned by Linda’s sister.
Jane and Rob were soon to leave after a two week stay in Oaxaca; Justin and
Catherine had arrived a few days before for a three-week stay. None of the
group except me spoke more than rudimentary Spanish. All had learned of
El Sabor Zapoteco through Internet research. Ms. Mendoza later told me that
she invests nothing in publicity; students find her through Internet searches
and word of mouth. The school’s website—presented only in English—is
218 Melissa Biggs

colorful and well-organized, studded with photographs of Teotitlán’s market,

Mendoza and her family, students preparing food with traditional kitchen
tools, and, of course, luscious fruits, vegetables, and finished dishes. Visitors
who prefer not to cook can contract Mendoza to prepare and host a meal for
their group.
The cooking school meets in the Mendoza family home. The kitchen used
by students is spacious and open air, traditional in style but equipped with
a Vitamix blender and professional stove as well as a wood-burning brick
stove, basalt grinding stones (the metate and its mano), and clay griddles
(comales). Speakers play music typical of Oaxacan fiestas and parades in
the background. A long table covered by a colorful woven cloth occupies
one corner; we gather at the brick-and-tile work station at the other end of
the kitchen. Mendoza conducts the class in English; she completed an inten-
sive course in Canada, and followed that with a year-long course in Oaxaca
City. “But I only speak kitchen English,” she laughs. She opened El Sabor
Zapoteco in 2009, after working in a guest house operated by another mem-
ber of her family, and teaching classes as part of other ventures. Many of her
students are repeat visitors to the school, coming year after year to learn new
dishes.
Claudia Bell, writing about home-based cooking schools in Bali, suggests
that “these cooking classes might be positioned as one of the few ways tour-
ists can engage with authentic local domestic culture” (2015: 92). Earlier
work I did in Tlaxcala, Mexico (Biggs 2015), with a chef who organizes and
leads Slow Food2 tours to farming communities indicates that this position-
ing pertains whether the tourists are foreigners or urban Mexicans unfamiliar
with life in the country. Unlike some of the classes Bell describes, which take
place in home kitchens susceptible to regular domestic interruptions such as
children arriving home from school, the Mexican examples discussed here
present a more managed version of domesticity. In the case of the Tlaxacala
tours, communities must first decide whether or not they want to welcome
strangers into their homes and farm plots. Once the choice to accept visitors
is made, other decisions follow.
While community members understand the economic opportunity offered
by receiving visitors, and might participate and share in some of the practical
goals of Slow Food, they don’t necessarily subscribe to all of the implications
of its philosophies. Community expressions of hospitality sometimes clash
with Slow Food values. In many Mexican working class homes, whether
rural or urban, Coca-Cola and other brand-name sodas are the preferred
beverages for special occasion meals. Visitors complained to the chef that
they had expected to be served traditional aguas de sabor (agua fresca). The
chef relayed the expectation to the hosting communities. “I didn’t tell them
they had to serve aguas de sabor, but I did tell them that the visitors expected
 Schooling Taste 219

‘traditional’ drinks. They want the visitors to have a good experience so that
they will come back.” For practical reasons, the hosts of some of the first
communal meals used disposable plates and silverware. This is also a mark
that a host is wealthy enough to purchase disposable goods for his guests to
use. But to many of the Slow Food tourists, this contradicted the Slow Food
Movement’s emphasis on ecologically sound practices. Again, the chef went
back to the hosting communities and communicated the expectation. “It isn’t
just a traditional meal” that is offered to the visitors, he told me; “we are sell-
ing them an experience.” The promise of seeing backstage (Goffman [1959]
1990) involves a co-creation of that backstage, a tourist imaginary (Salazar
2011; Gravari-Barbas and Graburn 2012) actively constructed by the expecta-
tions of the tour goers, the facilitation of the chef, and the accommodation of
the receiving communities.3
Mendoza hosts her students within her family home but in a kitchen space
designed to receive students or other guests. Other domestic kitchens in which
I have worked in Teotitlán are neither as spacious nor as well-equipped. Nor
does Mendoza make claims to be nothing more than a home cook. The biog-
raphy on the school’s website describes her as someone who “offers partici-
pants first-hand knowledge into Teotitlán del Valle’s rich culinary history,”
and also lists the well-known chefs and culinary researchers with whom she
has studied or collaborated, including the Mexican Ricardo Muñoz Zurita and
famed U.S. chef and television personality Rick Bayless. In the months that
followed the cooking class, Mendoza participated in the “Festival of Oaxaca”
hosted in Muñoz’s Azul restaurants in Mexico City, and as an invited chef in
the celebration “The Best of Mexico’s Culinary Traditions—Riviera Maya,”
organized by the Grand Velas Riviera Maya Resort.
Mendoza’s professional skills are evident as the class progresses. After
a brief greeting, she presents the day’s menu to us. One of the ingredients,
tunas, causes momentary confusion, until she clarifies for the non-Spanish
speakers that tunas are prickly pears, not fish. She then distributes market
baskets, and we follow her to the town marketplace. The baskets aren’t
just for show; the market in Teotitlán has been waste-free for many years,
so consumers must bring their own containers and bags or baskets. As we
walk, Mendoza points out details of the town: the blooming pitahaya cactus;
Picacho, the sacred mountain top that juts above the town.
The market visit is an essential part of the class for first-time visitors. It
serves to present not only the ingredients used to prepare the day’s meal
but also other common ingredients and kitchen utensils. Mendoza calls our
attention to the tiny red plums called “cerezas” and explains how to use the
wooden molinillos to froth hot chocolate. We learn about local cheeses and
choose pan dulce (sweet bread) for a mid-morning snack. In addition to the
pedagogic value for students, Mendoza sees the market trips as one way to
220 Melissa Biggs

contribute to the town’s economy. While some guides for market excursions
connected to cooking classes discourage students from making purchases of
their own during the tour, she does not. Tourist purchases of kitchen utensils,
tablets of chocolate, or dried chiles add to the vendors’ earnings. Similarly,
for small groups, rather than sending the van to Oaxaca City to pick up stu-
dents, she hires a local collective taxi. Purchasing goods in the market and
using local forms of transport also contribute to a visitor’s sense of genuine
participation in Teotilán life. Mingling with residents there to do a week’s
marketing provides us with the sense that we are participating in an everyday
aspect of Teotitlán’s life. At the same time, Mendoza’s presence assures us
that we are selecting the highest quality ingredients and objects. Not only are
we peeking at the backstage of culinary practice in Teotitlán, we are doing it
with expert insider guidance.
Cooking instructors I interviewed, including Mendoza, described carefully
selecting the menu for each class based on seasonality and the time limitations
of a three to four-hour class. Part of their work is managing the expectations
of the students, many of whom are eager to prepare time-consuming dishes
such as tamales or the elaborate mole negro, a sauce famous for its complex
blend of flavors. Even very experienced Oaxacan cooks cannot make a mole
negro in four hours. On the day I visited the cooking school, we prepared zeg-
ueza, a chicken and chile soup thickened with toasted ground corn; a nopal
(cactus paddle) salad with an avocado dressing; a salsa made from the chile
pasilla oaxaqueña, a variety grown only in a very small area of the state; and
the tuna sorbet. The latter required little effort, as after the tunas were pureed,
they were simply put into an ice cream maker. We were also served tamales,
but we didn’t directly participate in the preparation of those dishes.
Another factor cooking instructors consider when planning the menu is
student skill levels. Most of the dishes we prepared require simple chopping
skills, but we also learned to use two kitchen tools that might be unfamiliar,
the metate and its mano and the molcajete (basalt mortar) and tejolote (basalt
pestle). All of the cooking instructors with whom I spoke teach hands-on
classes, so most food preparation occurs in the class itself. Aside from the
tamales, the only food prepared ahead of time for our class was the chicken
stock and chicken, and the hot chocolate that we drank with our pan dulce.
When we return to the Mendoza home, we unload the baskets and sort
ingredients according to the recipes. While we eat pan dulce and sip hot
chocolate, Mendoza explains how the day’s work will be divided. Rather than
working at stations, each of us participates in the preparation of each dish.
First, we each select an apron from an assortment Mendoza offers, ranging
from beautifully embroidered ones like those typically worn by women in
Teotilán to less ornate chef-style aprons patterned with chiles. She begins
the class by showing us how to use the molcajete to grind the ingredients
 Schooling Taste 221

for the salsa. However, when she offers the chance for someone else to step
up and grind, no one volunteers. “Really? No one wants to try?” she laughs,
and hands the molcajete off to an assistant. She later tells me it’s unusual for
no one to volunteer and speculates that maybe because the class was small,
people felt shy.
The next recipe we prepare is the nopal salad. Perhaps because the tools
and techniques are familiar to everyone, we all set to work chopping the
nopales and onions, and mashing the avocado for the dressing. Mendoza
follows this by showing us how to toast the corn kernels for the zegueza on
the comal, gently stirring to prevent them from burning, then demonstrates
the push/pull action used to crack the corn on the metate. By now, the group
is joking and encouraging one another. One of the men asks whether men
in Teotitlán typically use the metate, and Mendoza answers no, but that she
thinks everyone who wants to should take a turn. Each of us takes a turn,
with one of the men earning special notice from Mendoza for his technique.
Traditionally, the metate is placed on the ground, and women kneel while
they grind.4 Mendoza placed the metate we used for the corn on a counter
next to the wood stove on which we had toasted the kernels. Our next step
was to grind the chiles that would flavor the zegueza. The chiles, first toasted
on a comal, then briefly soaked to make them pliable, require much more
grinding effort than cracking the toasted corn, and we spatter the floor and
ourselves with the resulting paste. A couple of the students complain that
their hands burn a bit from the chile oil.
While we wait for the flavors of the zegueza to meld, Reyna teaches us to
fold cornhusks into small boats to hold the nopal salad. Soon after that, we
move to the table. To accompany our meal, we are offered hibiscus agua
fresca (a fruit or plant-based beverage), beer, and mezcal in traditional gourd
cups. Over the meal, Jane and Rob share that they regularly attend cooking
classes as part of their travel. Jane works with a social justice NGO in their
home city of Toronto, and both of them are interested in the idea of food jus-
tice. They travel internationally at least once a year and had most recently vis-
ited Kenya, where they attended a cooking class; they also mentioned taking
classes in Indonesia. They both believe that participating in the sort of culi-
nary tourism they prefer—shopping in local markets, learning from locally
based teachers—provides benefits to the communities they visit. While Justin
and Catherine do not travel as frequently as Jane and Rob, they also expressed
a preference for experiences that they understood as “local” and more con-
nected to community. They selected a class at El Sabor Zapoteco because
the website and online reviews depicted an “authentic” Oaxacan experience.
Linda also viewed the class as a way to engage more deeply with local cul-
ture. Though she and Jerry visit Oaxaca often, and own a beach home on the
west coast of Mexico, she hoped to learn more about shopping in the market
222 Melissa Biggs

and how to prepare some of the ingredients with which she was unfamil-
iar. On a previous trip Linda and Jerry made to Oaxaca, Linda’s sister had
arranged for a group to eat a meal hosted at Mendoza’s home; Linda decided
then that she would like to attend one of the cooking classes.
In our interview, Mendoza mentioned that she tries to provide a mix of
recipes with familiar and unfamiliar ingredients and to teach a technique with
which participants might not be acquainted. She prints out and distributes
copies of the recipes each class prepares. I asked whether anyone thought she
or he would prepare any of the recipes in their own home kitchens. Everyone
responded that they would like to try to prepare the simpler recipes, such as
the nopal salad or the salsa. Jane thought she knew where in Toronto she
might find some of the less familiar ingredients, like the cactus paddles. Justin
and Catherine also thought they would be able to find chiles and maybe the
nopal in Vancouver. Linda and Jerry agreed that the salad would be a dish
they could make at home. None of the participants had used the technique
of toasting and rehydrating dried chiles before, and all thought that the salsa
was something they could replicate, replacing the molcajete with a blender.
Participants in Mendoza’s cooking class could be considered examples of
what Richards (2011) terms “skilled consumers,” actively searching out and
creating the sort of tourist experience they prefer to have. The two young
Canadian couples especially exemplified this, as they each described plan-
ning their travels, using Internet resources and personal contacts to construct
particular itineraries. Though Linda and Jerry do not fit that description
quite as neatly as the other two couples, they still wanted to reach out of
their immediate comfort zones and have a more personalized experience
of Oaxaca. As in the home cooking schools visited by Bell, at El Sabor
Zapoteco “the lessons that took place felt less like a professional exchange
and more like friends cooking together, with the local person in charge”
(2015: 95). Mendoza’s easy yet practiced manner invites class participants
to feel “at home” in her home. The professional training she received away
from home—in Oaxaca, Mexico City, and abroad—enables her to commu-
nicate instructions and information in ways that her largely foreign clientele
understand and appreciate.
While none of the group specifically eschewed standard tourist offerings
available in Oaxaca—they shared restaurant recommendations and discussed
visits to nearby archeological sites—they did express the desire to see
“more” and to understand what they were seeing differently. They sought
out an experience that allowed them to “step into” an unfamiliar every day
in a less-touristed space and “perform tourism differently” (Edensor 2007:
213). Carrying a basket, leaning over to examine produce displayed on
mats on the floor rather than in waist-level bins, learning the rhythm of the
mano transformed the quotidian actions of shopping for and preparing food
 Schooling Taste 223

into an active engagement with people and places imagined as “other” and
“elsewhere.”
Sammells describes what she calls “haute traditional” cuisines, cuisines that
act as a “bridge between a geographic localism and a globalizing cosmopoli-
tanism” (2016: 142). Haute traditional cuisines arise when cuisines oscillate
between “an idealized division—local/native/ancestral/feminine vs. cosmo​
polit​an/tr​ansna​tiona​l/inn​ovati​ve/ma​sculi​ne” (Sammells 2016: 143). In her
analysis, nomination for and inscription onto the UNESCO List for Intangible
World Heritage plays a role in processes that create haute traditional cuisines.
She identifies “Mexican cuisine”—as recognized by UNESCO and promoted
by Mexican federal and state tourism boards and other official entities—as
an example of a haute traditional cuisine. In Mexico, there persists an idea of
the rural domestic kitchen as representing the purest expression of Mexican
food culture: tortillas patted out by hand and cooked on a comal, salsas made
by combining ingredients in the molcajete, stews cooked in clay pots, all
presided over by a woman wearing an embroidered blouse and braided hair.
As Sammells points out, materials that accompanied the successful UNESCO
nomination bid included extensive photographs of traditional women cooks,
provided by the Michoacán state tourism board. In fact, the photos on Reyna
Mendoza’s website portray similar images, featuring Reyna and her kitchen.
But heritigization and tourism engender new possibilities, opening new
spaces for different kinds of social interactions that “change how participants
think about what constitutes the local, and what the importance of being
local—and being recognized as local—is” (Sammells 2016: 155; see also
Hafstein 2019). The space in which Mendoza holds her classes, equipped
with a Vitamix blender and metates, and the self she presents when teaching
offer examples of these reconfigurations.5 She refuses the definition of local
that rests in immobility (Salazar 2014) and does not hide that she spends time
away from Teotitlán. By blending her “first-hand knowledge of Teotitlán del
Valle” with expertise gained through travel and working with internationally
recognized chefs, Mendoza positions herself as simultaneously local and
well-traveled and professionally accomplished. Unlike the tourism work-
ers Salazar portrays, she freely discusses her travels, the time she spent in
Canada learning English, and uses modern equipment as well as traditional
when teaching. As new ways of “being a local” open, tourist perceptions shift
as well. This is especially true in Oaxaca, where income from remittances
is the primary source of income in the state. Even casual tourist encounters
can result in learning that your waiter spent five years driving a taxi in Los
Angeles or that the woman from whom you are buying tortillas spends three
months a year with her grandchildren in Chicago. Of course, forced mobility
out of economic need is not the same as the mobility of leisure but the reali-
ties of migration alter tourism imaginaries for both locals and tourists.
224 Melissa Biggs

According to the Institute of International Education’s 2018 Open Doors

Report on U.S. study abroad, 66 percent of students who participated in
study-abroad programs in 2016–2017 participated in short-term programs,
either eight weeks or less during the academic year, or one summer term.
The IIE lists 4, 422 short-term programs on its website. In June of 2018, I
interviewed Jorge Cortés, who coordinated a seven-day study-abroad trip
to Mexico City for students from Loyola Marymount University in Los
Angeles.6 The summer 2018 program included primarily political science
students, some from a course on megacities, and some from a class called
Engaged L.A. Twenty-eight students in total participated, mostly under-
graduate students, though there were six graduate students as well. Six staff
members accompanied the group. The students’ stay included a variety
of academic activities: events at the Universidad Iberoamericana, talks at
the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and a panel discussion
including journalists from the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and
National Public Radio. Cultural components of the trip included a visit to the
archeological site at Teotihuacán, the Templo Mayor, a tour of some of the
murals by Diego Rivera and others, and a performance of the Baile Folclórico
Nacional. The group stayed at the Hotel Majestic, which is near the Zócalo,
the main plaza of Mexico City.
Though the Loyola Marymount program has been running for several
years, this was Cortés’s first time to coordinate it. He received suggestions
and support from the faculty on the trip and experienced administrators. One
person recommended three restaurants the group should visit: El Cardenal,
Café de Tacuba, and the Sanborns Azulejos7; they were recommended as
much for historical significance as for culinary excellence. Because the group
was large, visiting restaurants required planning ahead. At Café Tacuba, for
example, he arranged for the group to be served a standard plate that included
four traditional specialties, including a tamal and a chile relleno (stuffed
chile).
For some of the students, just the fact that they were traveling and eating
abroad triggered worries about getting sick. Cortés encouraged them to try
foods with which they might be unfamiliar: “Be adventurous!” He explained
that about half of the students on the trip were Latinx, many Mexican
Americans, but also students of Central American and South American heri-
tage, which gave them some familiarity with the flavors of the food. Also,
since the university is located in Los Angeles, “Mexican food is an easy one.”
Not all of the meals were planned ahead; sometimes the group divided into
three smaller groups, each led by faculty and/or staff, and found places to eat
on their own. This allowed for some spontaneity; one afternoon, Cortés led
a group to a restaurant serving foods typical of the state of Jalisco, where his
grandparents lived; another time, the groups ate hamburgers.
 Schooling Taste 225

For Cortés, the culinary highlight of the trip was a meal prepared by the
chefs of the restaurant Masala y Maíz, Norma Listman, and Saqib Keval. The
tagline on the restaurant’s website reads “At the intersection of Mexico and
India.” The chefs describe their food as a “mestizaje,” mixing, of Mexican
and Indian flavors and ingredients; they both research food migration. At the
time of the group’s visit, the restaurant was involved in a dispute with one
of the city code compliance offices, so the meal was prepared and served by
the chefs at a private home. For Cortés, the quality of the food and the chefs’
mission and presentation made the meal especially memorable.
Special dietary needs and considerations can be challenging in study-
abroad settings. This trip included one vegetarian, one pescatarian, and one
student who said she only liked her mother’s cooking. “Some did get adven-
turous, some did try new things,” Cortés said. The students completed online
tutorials through Loyola Marymount’s study-abroad division, which included
information about allergies and other health concerns. A few students did get
sick, but Cortés felt that it was “normal” for students traveling abroad. “You
do have to be more nitpicky when you travel,” regardless of whether you are
in Mexico City or Madrid. The group spent one afternoon in the neighbor-
hood around Frida Kahlo’s house, where some chose to eat in the market.
Cortés encouraged them to be “adventurous,” while also respecting personal
taste: “Some people just don’t like spice.” Some new foods—like squash
blossom quesadillas—were more appealing than others, such as tongue tacos
or tacos de cabeza.8 He also noted that although there is “good Mexican food
in Los Angeles, it’s different.” Students remarked “I don’t see any burritos”
or commented on the lack of cheddar cheese. Even some of the students who
came from Mexican American homes found “a different side of Mexican
food, different flavors.”
Much of what Cortés portrays echoes Cohen and Avieli’s work on “culi-
nary dilemmas” encountered when traveling (2004). Their work considers
local food as both “an attraction and an impediment” for tourists; the insights
can be expanded to include study-abroad students as well. As they point out,
culinary differences refer not only to actual foodstuffs but also to “culinary
habits and mores”: how people eat, when and where they eat, and at what
point a food is considered inedible. Even a familiar and liked ingredient can
be perceived as something not to be eaten, as illustrated by a conversation
I had with Sabine, a student studying toward a master’s in archeology. She
works at a field site in the Yucatán but first came to Mexico to do volunteer
work and improve her Spanish. As part of her program, Sabine lived with a
host family. “I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, but sometimes the food . . .
sometimes there would be tomatoes that I thought we shouldn’t eat, that were
past time when we should eat them. But they would just throw them into the
pot.” Many vegetable vendors in Mexican markets sell two categories of the
226 Melissa Biggs

fruit: “normal,” and “salsero,” suitable for making salsa, but not for chopping
up into a salad. Salsero tomatoes cost less. They are bruised and blemished,
sometimes leaking a bit of juice, fruit that might not be considered saleable
in other venues. In the weekly market in my neighborhood, salsero tomatoes
typically cost half to one-third the price per kilo that normal tomatoes cost;
many thrifty shoppers request them. To Sabine, they looked like compost.
“But I never got sick, so I guess it was all right,” she concluded.
Cohen and Avieli describe the tension most of us experience between
“neophobia”—fear of the new—and “neophylia”—embracing of the new
(2004: 759), particularly when heightened by the situation of being in a new
place with possibly unfamiliar foods and eating practices. Like the tourists
presented by Cohen and Avieli, study-abroad students “are frequently eager
for new experiences and willing to take greater risks than in their ordinary
life” (2004: 760). Over the last three years, I have observed more foreign-
ers expressing interest in Mexico’s extensive catalog of edible insects, from
the well-known chapulines (grasshoppers) and maguey worms to the lesser
known escamoles (ant larvae) and chicatanas (a sort of ant eaten in Oaxaca).
Television programs such as Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods and the late
Anthony Bourdain’s less sensationalistic No Reservations, as well as recent
mainstream media coverage of insects as food sources perhaps contribute to
this curiosity.9 Sometimes, however, the difference proves to be too much.
I shared breakfast in Oaxaca City with Mark, a participant in the ten-month
Fulbright Binational Internship Program. We were at a small restaurant that
served regional specialties, including seasonal dishes such as omelets with
either chapulines or a medium-sized beetle called a chinche. I ordered an
unadventurous plate of huevos a la Mexicana (eggs scrambled with onions,
tomatoes, and chiles), while Mark opted for the chinche omelet. “I feel like I
should try them,” he said. When the omelet arrived, it was stuffed with cheese
and a very generous serving of the chinches, which had been toasted on the
comal but were otherwise intact, complete with feelers and legs. He ate about
a third of the omelet before admitting it “looked a lot more like bugs than I
expected.”
Food scholar Lucy Long’s framing of “the crux of otherness” (2004: 32)
proves useful when considering risk-taking in food choice. She posits three
categories or “realms”: the exotic, the edible, and the palatable. The realms
are dynamic and shifting, and though individually expressed are culturally
structured. While the edible and the palatable might seem to be the same
thing, she clarifies that the palatable is what is considered desirable to eat
as opposed to what can be eaten. In Mark’s case, the omelet proved edible,
but unpalatable. We might typically think of the actual ingestion of exotic or
unpalatable foods as the action that pushes a visitor out of his or her comfort
zone, but the refusal or inability to do so can also cause discomfort. Sabine
 Schooling Taste 227

chose the discomfort of eating food she considered unpalatable rather than
the discomfort of hurting her host family’s feelings. My inability to render
the pancita palatable provoked shame and violated my own notions of what
appropriate guest (and anthropologist) behavior should be.
While students in homestays are unlikely to encounter chinche omelets,
food and meals can still be a point of anxiety. This is true not only for the
students but also for the families that host them, as Knight and Schmidt-
Reinhart’s research in Spain and Mexico reveals. Host families struggle
at times with special dietary needs: “A number of Mexican señoras men-
tioned that the number of vegetarian students seems to be increasing and
that many of them do not cook this way. In addition, the purchase of some
products (e.g., soy milk) can be costly” (2002: 196). Culinary dilemmas
include expectations around timing and the quantity of food served at
meals. Other difficulties mentioned by homestay families include students
snacking between meals and eating food in areas of the home considered
inappropriate, such as the bedroom. In Mexico, the main meal is usually
taken in the mid-to-late afternoon, between 2:30 and 4:00 PM, with a
lighter supper, cena, eaten later in the evening. Students in homestays com-
plained at times of “not enough food” in the evening or that “dinners were
scarce.”10 Typically, Mexican home cooking includes few green salads or
raw vegetables, and some native vegetables, such as nopales or chayote (an
edible gourd also known as mirliton squash), might not be recognized as
such by students, who commented that they would like to be served more
vegetables.
Study-abroad imaginaries function much like tourist imaginaries, structur-
ing student expectations and experiences (Härkönen and Dervin 2015). Like
the Loyola Marymount students whose Los Angeles experiences shaped their
expectations of Mexican food, a number of students expressed surprise or even
dismay at the food they were served in homes or restaurants in Mexico. Some
participants in a short-term program assessed by Carley and Tudor compared
the Mexican food they ate while in Mexico unfavorably to Mexican food
they eat in the United States: “Interestingly, food was an area where many
participants came away with less favorable impressions than they had prior
to their visit: ‘I do not like the food in Mexico—but I love Mexican food in
the U.S.;' ‘Their Mexican food is a lot different than the Mexican food here.
The margaritas are the same,’ and ‘I thought the food would be better than it
was’ were frequent responses” (2006: 162, emphasis in the original). Those
comments seem directly related to students’ experience of Mexican restau-
rants in the United States. Cohen and Avieli raise the question of “whether
and to what extent the presence of ethnic restaurants in the tourists’ countries
of origin prepare them to deal with the local culinary situation at the destina-
tion” (2004: 764). Though beyond the scope of this chapter, it does seem that
228 Melissa Biggs

prior experience with “Mexican” food in the United States at least sets some
expectations for what the student will find in Mexico.11
Student expectations can also lead to disappointment of a different sort,
such as the blogger who wrote “I was sad to see processed food in Oaxaca,”
and another who commented that he would have liked to have been served
“more cultural food” at his homestay. Both of these statements bring to mind
Wilk’s 1999 essay referenced earlier in the chapter. The first blogger felt
dismayed to discover that not all food in Oaxaca is made from fresh, easily
pronounceable ingredients. Though it is unclear precisely what the second
blogger meant by “more cultural food,” I assume he was served foods he did
not think of as specifically “Mexican.” Whether—as in Wilk’s example—his
hosts chose food they believed to be more familiar to him or whether the
foods they served were the foods the family itself preferred is also unknown.
Study-abroad students who choose a homestay often do so anticipating that
living with a host family will provide them with special access into the host
culture, access not available to a regular tourist. But as these two examples
illustrate, a more close-up engagement with the host cultures sometimes dis-
rupts the student’s imagined experience. People in Oaxaca eat Doritos and
Lucky Charms; your host family’s favorite dinner might be pizza. Similarly,
students’ reactions might challenge their perceptions of their imagined study
abroad self. Härkönen and Dervin (2015) identify self-transformation as a
key part of study-abroad imaginaries. Discovering a culinary limit can call
into question a self-image as “adventurous,” a characteristic also encouraged
by study-abroad literature and coordinators like Cortés, as evidenced in the
above examples.
Food and meal-taking are understudied aspects of the study-abroad experi-
ence. If mentioned at all, they are generally glossed as a positive aspect of
the time abroad or as primary sites for language acquisition and practice. It
might seem trivial to attend to food and eating when determining desired out-
comes for students participating in study-abroad programs. However, as Wilk
points out, “consumption is more than a simple matter of choice; as Bourdieu
effectively argued, it is embodied through what he called hexis, the daily
habitus which tells us what tastes and feels right” (n.d.: 17). I am not argu-
ing here that students should be deemed successes or failures based on their
desire or ability to eat or enjoy particular foods. Rather, I posit that including
reflections about food, food preparation, and meals could serve as valuable
points for student reflection and self-assessment both during and after their
study-abroad period, even for those programs that do not emphasize culinary
experiences. Though this might seem more obvious when the student chooses
a homestay, I believe that students who choose dormitory or apartment
settings would also benefit. Reflecting on my own culinary “failure,” my
inability to eat the pancita served to me as an act of hospitality caused me to
 Schooling Taste 229

reconsider my understandings of gratitude and community in my fieldwork.

For students, such reflection could lead to an enriched understanding of their
study-abroad experience.
“Culinary tourism creates opportunities to find, test, and push thresholds
of the unfamiliar,” writes Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. “Newness arises
from unpredictability, and culinary tourism, to the degree that it constitutes a
break with one’s daily routine and even with the predictability of the tourism
industry, affords innumerable occasions for new experiences. New experi-
ences expand the ways we create and know ourselves because they dehabitu-
ate and estrange much that we take for granted” (2004: xii). Substitute “study
abroad” for “culinary tourism” in Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s formulation, and
it could be the promotional text from any number of study-abroad websites
or brochures. Removed from their everyday lives, study-abroad students are
promised experiences that will transform them, opportunities to meet new
friends, and enhanced self-knowledge. Culinary tourists seek more profound
engagement with people than a typical tourist might experience, and a more
intimate knowledge of place through the purchase and consumption of partic-
ular foods and dishes; many culinary tourists see investing in local food as a
means to travel “sustainably” and support local economies. For students, one
of the draws of study abroad can be promise of authentic connection through
“giving back” by participating in service projects or volunteering with local
organizations. I am curious about the transformation culinary tourists and
study-abroad participants imagine and experience and how this transforma-
tion connects to imaginings of “responsible travel” and the possibility for, as
Salazar states, “tourism creating positive relations in a world hitherto uncon-
nected” (2014: 16).

NOTES

1. The names of the other class participants are pseudonyms. I introduced myself
in the van on the way to Teotitlán as an anthropologist and asked permission to use
observations and conversations during class time as part of my research. All of the
participants agreed. Before enrolling in the class, I contacted Reyna Mendoza and
explained my interest in the class and asked her permission to be present as a partici-
pant observer. Information about the cooking school and her history comes from an
interview conducted with her on the day of the class, May 1, 2018.
2. The Slow Food Movement emerged officially in Italy in 1989, founded by
Carlo Petrini in response to the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in the Piazza
di Spagna, Rome. Delegates from fifteen countries met in Paris and signed the Slow
Food Manifesto. The three founding principles of Slow Food are “good, clean, and
fair: good: quality, flavorsome and healthy food clean: production that does not harm
the environment fair: accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay
230 Melissa Biggs

for producers” (Slow Food International website). Since its founding, Slow Food
International has grown to over 100,000 members in 153 countries.
3. Richard Wilk describes similar disjunctures and adaptations between hosts
and visitors in his essay, “‘Real Belizean Food’”: Building Local Identity in the
Transnational Caribbean” (1999).
4. In February 2018, I took a one-day class on cacao at the Escuela de
Gastronomía Mexicana in Mexico City, where we learned to grind cacao into choco-
late in the metate. Our instructor told us that kneeling was part of the ritual aspect
of Mexican cooking. While I first learned to grind corn in the kneeling position, my
observations in home kitchens in various parts of Mexico is that in kitchens where a
metate is in use, many women prefer to stand when grinding, and set it on a counter
or table. If she uses a metate for grinding, a cook will usually have at least three: one
for corn, one for chiles, and one for chocolate.
5. Brulotte and Starkman’s (2016) analysis of the dispute between two Oaxaca
restaurateurs—César Gachupín Velasco, from the Chinanteco town of San Felipe
Usila, and Óscar Carillo, from Oaxaca City—over the right to serve a particular
preparation of soup provides an example of tensions that these possibilities can
provoke.
6. I interviewed Cortés via Skype on June 25, 2018 from my home in
Guadalajara.
7. All three are iconic restaurants located in Mexico City’s historical center.
Lonely Planet describes El Cardenal as “possibly the finest place in town for a tradi-
tional meal” and Café de Tacuba as “[a]fantasy of colored tiles, brass lamps and oil
paintings this Mexican icon has served antojitos (snacks such as tacos and sopes –
corn tortillas layered with beans, cheese and other ingredients) since 1912.” Sanborns
Azulejos is famous for the exterior tiles that give it its name, and for the mural by José
Clemente Orozco that decorates the staircase.
8. Meat taken from the beef head, usually cut directly from a cooked, displayed
head while the customer watches.
9. For example, the New York Times printed “Why Aren’t We Eating More
Insects,” by Ligaya Mishan in the September 7, 2018 issue; the BBC website
published “Edible Insects: our verdict on crunchy roasted crickets” on November
19, 2018.
10. Unless otherwise identified, these quotes were taken from blog posts pub-
lished on the Abroad 101 Study Abroad Reviews website https​:/​/ww​​w​.stu​​dyabr​​
oad10​​1​.com​​/coun​​tries​​​/mexi​​co, written by students who participated in study away
programs in different areas of Mexico, and reviewed in December of 2018. I read
approximately 300 reviews. Though the site includes reviews from other English-
speaking countries, I used only reviews completed by students from the U.S.A. and
only reviews that specifically mentioned a homestay. Most of the reviews dated from
2016-2017.
11. For more about shifting tourist expectations of Mexican cuisine, see Jeffrey
M. Pilcher “From ‘Montezuma’s Revenge; to ‘Mexican Truffles’: Culinary Tourism
Across the Rio Grande” in Culinary Tourism, edited by Lucy Long.
 Schooling Taste 231

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 Chapter 9

Teaching and Learning Food

and Sustainability in Italy
Betwixt and Beyond Touristic Consumption
Elisa Ascione

INTRODUCTION

Fall 2013 was my first semester as a faculty member and coordinator of the
Food and Sustainability Studies Program (FSSP), a curriculum concentra-
tion of an American study-abroad program in Perugia, Central Italy. As an
Italian cultural anthropologist trained in Italy and in the United Kingdom,
teaching to a Northern American student body was a new experience for me.
For example, I learned how to incorporate hands-on, interactive activities
in conventional lectures, in striking difference to the prevalent “sage on the
stage” Italian style of teaching. Together with the acquisition of new teaching
methods and dialogical interaction with students, I also started to see myself
as a sort of cultural guide for my students, both in class and during fieldtrips.
American undergraduate students travel abroad to study and fulfill their
university credits, but also to “experience Italy” and to be exposed to Italian
culture, history, and foods. I have often considered myself as not only their
professor but also as a sort of native guide to the new world they were experi-
encing, acting as a translator between worldviews, languages, and across cul-
tures. In my relationship with students as college learners and as Americans,
I have at times considered myself as a “representative of Italianess in place”
(Minca and Oakes 2006: 6), concerned with showing students what “real”
Italians do, distinguishing tourist behaviors from local, more “authentic”
ways of life. In reinterpreting “my” places for “outsiders” (Minca and Oakes
2006: 4), I have also discovered and learned new things about my own senses
of belonging and identification processes, looking at my city and my region
with renewed eyes.

235
236 Elisa Ascione

As I was trained for the job, I was advised to choose fieldtrips that were
educational but also “fun,” that it would be better to avoid the discomforts
of public transports and long waiting, that daytrips had to be educational but
also “memorable.” With time, I have learned that the fieldtrips that worked
the best were those that provided academic depth but that were also well-
organized tours, where students did not experience delays, discomforts, or
non-cooperative local people. More than one time, as I tried to organize
activities and planned fieldtrips, I said to potential partners that the events
needed to have the depth of academic enquiry and the excitement of a
touristic experience. For example, I did not return to farms, producers, and
restaurants that were too slow, that did not anticipate the needs of my group,
that failed to show cordiality or that did not make enough effort to turn my
fieldtrip into a fun and well-organized event, showing warmth but also great
service. I decided to delete from my syllabus the visit to a lab in a department
of the Università degli Studi di Perugia because it “looked bad,” even though
we had the chance to talk to Italian professors that offered expertise in their
fields. The most successful fieldtrips with students are, in fact, usually those
located in beautiful agriturismi and picturesque wineries, where producers
are able to communicate effectively their work and their philosophies to an
international audience.
The choice of beautiful places and picturesque Umbrian sites are of course
a tool used to attract students-as-tourists, as the seductive images that are used
are typical of tourism marketing. Touristic imaginary is often present in study-
abroad promotional material, sometimes in ways that tend to essentialize and
exoticize hosts, for example, emphasizing natural landscapes and antiquity
rather than modernity and technology (Caton and Santos 2009). As Salazar
and Graburn (2014) argue, seductive images and discourses about people and
places are predominant in tourist settings. The authors define imaginaries as
“socially transmitted representational assemblages that interact with people’s
personal imaginings and that are used as meaning-making and world-shaping
devices” (1). These imaginaries legitimize travelers’ daydreams of overcom-
ing the monotony of everyday life with more satisfying experiences and of
the possibility of improving their own personality through the accumulation
of symbolic capital (4). These images are also often used to “seduce” students
by promising “encounters with enchanted worlds” in picturesque Italy (Picard
and Di Giovine 2014: 2). In study-abroad settings, marketing materials offer
“imaginative reconstructions” (Leite 2005: 290) of local cultures, feeding on
the myths and fantasies associated with Italy. Images of food, life outdoors,
fun moments, smiling students taking selfies in front of ancient buildings, car-
nivals, old Fiat 500 cars, and countless (sometimes out of context) references
to “La Dolce Vita” are often juxtaposed to more academic information in
 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy 237

many websites of Italian study-abroad programs. On the one hand, activities

proposed to students overlap with touristic consumption: wine tastings, visits
to agritourisms, cooking classes, and encounters with Italian producers are
mediated and staged experiences which are also available as touristic options.
On the other hand, lessons, fieldtrips, workshops, and hands-on activities
become laboratories of discussion where conflicts and contradictions are also
revealed and analyzed. Lectures and activities can become key opportunities
for students’ critical appraisal of how their participation in the program is
part of a larger tourist-informed orbit that can be productively unpacked and
engaged.
While the influences of touristic goals are especially evident in short-term
programs, since often providers are drawn from an existing touristic market
to help arrange such experience (Barkin, this volume), here I show that in
longer-term semester-abroad programs, students are able to acquire a more
complex sense of the host culture and society. Semester-long study-abroad
students move across multiple positionalities, oscillating between engage-
ments with local settings, touristic activities, and “post-touristic” reflections
and self-awareness (Urry and Larsen 2006), partly feeding on touristic
imaginaries and events while analyzing their meanings inside and outside the
classroom.
In particular, I will show how the study of food and sustainability exposes
students to different practices and values, helping them to denaturalize their
points of view, questioning their own food habits and beliefs as culturally
specific and not universal. The encounter with the materiality of food, the
act of eating and sharing unknown recipes, the exposure to different value
systems and production techniques can facilitate renegotiation of cultural
assumptions. As Lucy Long (2004) notes, because of food’s commonality
to all cultures, it allows one to experience diversity within that commonal-
ity (15) encountering not only the Italian other but also the American self
(Dolby 2004). The data presented in this chapter are drawn from five years
of teaching and working in a FSSP; from semi-structured focus groups and
interviews with five students of my Anthropology of Food class; and from
many informal talks with students, professors, and study-abroad advisors in
person and through social media.

FEELING “LIKE A LOCAL” IN AN

“AUTHENTIC” DESTINATION

Each semester, the study-abroad program hosts between 70 and 100 students,
15–20 percent of whom are Italian or international students from the local
238 Elisa Ascione

university. The website for the institute, which will be left anonymous in this
chapter, explains that size is one of their best assets: large enough to support
a diverse student body and an ambitious academic program, yet small enough
to provide an unparalleled level of personal attention.

Perugia has a true “Italian feel” and boasts endless opportunities for language
and cultural immersion. The city provides an incredible backdrop for study
abroad: charming character, beautiful panoramas, and the distinguished status
of being Italy’s “university city.”

During meetings with study-abroad advisors and visitors, staff and profes-
sors often stress the difference between students that prefer a smaller town
from students that choose bigger cities in Italy. The first typology of students
wants to mingle with the local population and prefers to stay in a smaller
town in order to have a deeper immersion in the setting, becoming “like a
local.” They like being greeted and recognized at coffee places and mini-
markets of the small historic city center, having to speak mostly Italian with
restaurant owners and shopkeepers. “The true Italian feel” implies what they
define as “authentic” experience, and for students, it is related to the condi-
tion of being at the margins of mass tourism settings. They value the dif-
ference of a smaller center like Perugia from places like Florence or Rome,
where mass tourism has transformed the social composition of the city and
where many people are able to speak English. After traveling to Florence
and Rome, many students comment they are actually happy to be back to a
smaller center that they now call “home,” where street vendors are not try-
ing to sell them souvenirs, and restaurants do not offer fettuccine Alfredo
on their menus, a quintessential Italian–American dish. Students are often
shocked at the discovery that the Italian–American dishes that they know
are not “really” Italian, and they prefer to live in a place like Perugia where
these dishes cannot be found.
Within the student population of the institute, about twenty students per
semester enroll in the FSSP with classes, activities, and workshops designed
to explore this fundamental aspect of Italian culture, through global and local
perspectives. The program includes courses that range from the history and
culture of Italian food, sustainability and food production, wine and olive oil
marketing, the anthropology of food, food and literature, water preservation
and management. Some students enroll in the FSSP with a vague idea of the
reasons why they chose this path, writing in their initial statements “I love
food, and I love Italian food” or “My grandmother always cooked Italian
food.” The majority of them, however, come from food and environmental
studies majors and minors: they want to study food not only for its pleasur-
able aspects but also as a tool to understand the complexity of food systems
 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy 239

with an interdisciplinary perspective in a new setting. However, when they

arrive, they are usually not familiar with Italian economic, political, and cul-
tural history.
The reasons for enrolling in the FSSP in Perugia are manifold, fluctuating
between academic motivations and the desire to experience something new,
leaving the old behind. Kate, a FSSP student, for example said, “I chose the
FSSP because coming here I could continue my academic path. I did not think
of Italy in particular at the beginning, but I was looking for Food Studies. I
also thought that if I didn’t have the chance to experience a different culture I
would regret it for the rest of my life.” Rachel wanted to experience life in a
new cultural setting, as her mother did before her studying abroad in Vienna,
“If I had chosen just based on cities, I would have not chosen Italy maybe. I
really chose it for the classes. Perugia is a small city I had never even heard
about it. The location was more of a coincidence. Also, I needed to have a
break from the heavy workload of my school.” Even if students are already
interested in food and environmental studies, they also view their semester
abroad as a way to “disconnect” and to discover new aspects of themselves.
Rob for example said, “I needed to leave; I didn’t know what I wanted, but I
wanted to leave the USA. I was excited at the idea of being uncomfortable,
but maybe naive to think that I would always love it. I just wanted to be else-
where, and then it came the choice of Italy.” Here Rob articulates the concept
of “elsewhere” as an undetermined point of desire in the student-as-tourist
imaginary: places can be almost interchangeable insofar as they represent a
difference from the daily routine. In a similar vein, for Peter, traveling means
a rupture of the structures of daily life:

I saw it as an opportunity to travel. I saw my future as mostly structured already,

working long hours, and I just wanted to get away. Most jobs would not offer
vacations as soon as you begin to work, so I did not want to miss this opportu-
nity. I did not think of it in academic terms at first, I just wanted to go. In addi-
tion, I checked it in terms of academics; it wasn’t just a semester off.

For George, studying food actually meant a break from his major, studying
something that he was very passionate about, “I felt overwhelmed and burned
out with computer science. It was my opportunity to study something else,
and to get away from the competitiveness involved in my school.” Study-
abroad, just like tourism, can be a break from the everyday to feel renewed
and rejuvenated (Graburn 1977), and just like much contemporary tourism,
where experiences and “must-see” places are filtered by books and guides,
it does not really represent a journey into the unknown, since students are
presented with a menu of options from which they must choose, carefully
designed by academic institutions.
240 Elisa Ascione

Italy is sometimes chosen for its “convenient location” in Europe, and

students often engage in extensive traveling throughout the semester during
the weekends, often staying for only one or two days in major European cit-
ies. Some of the Italian faculty of the Institute perceives this fast-paced travel
through Europe as a superficial way of visiting places, encouraging instead
the discovery of local surroundings providing guidance to smaller towns and
villages in Umbria. As time passes, some students start to develop a different
approach to traveling. Rob says:
I chose Italy also because it gave me the opportunity to travel across Europe.
At the beginning, I wanted to do food studies in New Zealand, but I was afraid
of the isolation. It’s funny because in the end I spent most of my time in this
country, I visited a few others, but I focused on Umbria, and Central Italy. So
much more fulfilling than travelling only for a day all over. At the beginning
of the year, I did go to Budapest, Spain, Portugal, but then I started to have this
desire to know more about my neighborhood, and this area.

Students’ engagement with their surroundings shifts as time passes, as they

consider Perugia their temporary home, and as their vision of Italian culture
and history becomes more nuanced. When they initially reach Perugia, they
usually have not previously researched the history of the city and they often
cannot speak the language. The language barrier is, however, not a major
problem since at their arrival students are picked up at the airport, brought
to their apartments, shown where the shops are and how to weigh fruits and
vegetables before reaching the cash register, given an emergency number that
they can call 24 hours, and many more services.
One of the main desired outcome for engaging in study-abroad programs
is that students, by traveling and getting out of their comfort zone into new
and unfamiliar territories, acquire global competences and become culturally
responsive global citizens (Santoro and Major 2012; Doerr 2012). At the
same time, study-abroad institutes must guarantee that students will be safe,
and not left to negotiate by themselves bureaucratic and practical aspects of
their experience in Italy: while marketing the experience of cultural diversity,
they actually tend to standardize such diversity in order to offer predictable
outcomes and achieve desired results (Kirshbenblatt-Gimblett 1998; Di
Giovine 2009). Although institutes are there to respond to needs and prob-
lems, students still have to face unexpected situations. When this happens,
they perceive their incapacity of “knowing what to do” as something that
encourages growth. Rachel says:
I am more independent here. I’m so far away from my safety net. Here even a
small thing like getting off at the wrong train station, at 12.00 in the morning,
as it happened to me, can become a big deal. We didn’t know what to do, who
to call, we couldn’t speak the language. It was transformative.
 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy 241

Students perceive their direct engagement with the unknown as part of their
growing process, and they say that they want “to adapt” and engage with the
local culture.

I wanted to adapt to the local culture, more than the program needs to adapt to
me. I was aware of this even before I came, because I really wanted to respect
the culture. We watched a video in my Italian class in the USA, about things
we should and should not do in Italy, for example, “Italians don’t wear white
socks.” I really wanted to fit in, so I never wore them. Even if this example is
silly, I really wanted to respect the culture; I’ve learned to not expect that things
should be the way I imagine. (Gerry)

Some of the aspects mentioned about their process of adaptation and discov-
ery are: stores are usually closed during lunch break; they cannot have a meal
in a restaurant in the afternoon; they cannot easily find food of other nation-
alities; there are fewer options for breakfast; Italians have a different sense
of how to behave in public spaces, and they do not jog in the historical city
center (as it is a place for people watching) but it is acceptable for couples to
kiss in public showing too much “PDA” (public display of affection); there
is a more formal dressing code, and many others. Kate adds that she realized
how “the concept of time is not as strict as in the USA, but it’s easy to adjust
to this,” referring to the tendency to be more flexible in following pre-decided
schedules or being late to meetings. When asked what changed their initial
idea of Italian culture during their time abroad, they all stressed that they
developed a deeper connection with Italian history and that they reformulated
some romantic ideas that they had before coming. Since Perugia becomes
students’ temporary home for four months, the extraordinariness of a shorter
touristic experience is partially transformed into the ordinariness of everyday
life, creating a continuum between behaviors that students may have as tour-
ists and as residents.

In the USA, we have a romanticized vision of the country, the culture and the
food. There are dangers about this narrow viewpoint, we imagine everyone
happy just eating all the time. It is true that there is a deep connection between
people and their culture, and how proud Italians are of their food. But I see it in
a more complex way, as a fruit of history and not just because Italians inherently
are in a certain way. (Peter)

Many aspects changed. My view of Rome, for example, was very romantic.
In the USA, we forget that a lot of stuff has happened between the fall of the
Roman Empire and now, so for example my view changed about that city, real-
izing that there is also a contemporary Rome, and different neighborhoods, that I
never thought of. Another thing is that for example today is the 25 April, which
242 Elisa Ascione

is National Liberation Day from the fascist regime that is something I did not
know at all, that completely was out of my mind. Usually American institutes
abroad do not follow Italian national holidays: we found out yesterday that
today it was a national holiday. In terms of immersion, I think that it is great to
experience certain important dates. Instead, if we did not know about it, then for
us it is only an inconvenience because we do not realize that shops were going
to be closed today. (George)

Many of the students that learn enough Italian language are then able to com-
municate with people and have first-hand, independent experiences of Italian
social life in different settings. For example, the students involved in the focus
groups went to the stadium to watch matches of the local football team, real-
izing that the official drink of Perugia’s football fans is a coffee-based spirit
called Caffè Borghetti. They were excited to discover that there are songs
linked to its collective consumption during games, and that football teams in
Italy are often associated with different political affiliations and sympathies.
On another occasion they reported to the class their discovery of Cynar, an
artichoke-infused liqueur that people in Italy associate with good digestion.
By doing so, they sparked interesting in-class debates on the cultural construc-
tion of health and sickness in relation to alcohol in Italy and the United States.
Because of their receptivity and curiosity, they have gained deeper insights
on the social use of certain foods and drinks, grasping cultural meanings that
would usually be precluded to tourists. “In the beginning I looked for aran-
cini, which are Sicilian, or tortellini in brodo like in Bologna, and in Perugia
I couldn’t find them,” says Peter, explaining how he has learned to think of
Italian culture not as a monolith but as a set of diversified local practices.
Since discovering new foods in Italy represents for this group of students
more than a touristic consumption, the people I interviewed almost never
posted on social media the extraordinariness of their meals as discoveries.
Students agreed on the fact that they would never post a gelato picture as
many of their study-abroad peers often do, because they want to differenti-
ate themselves from other kinds of students that “remain on the surface of
things,” that only “show off” their consumption of Italian iconic products
without asking deeper questions. They reflect on the optics of selfies and
the recording of “brag posting” images that circulate landmarks as touristic
photo sets.

Rob: I have not posted at all. I have not taken pictures of my pretty meals. I just
did it to send to my mom to reassure her.
George: Social media is interesting, but many come abroad to post about as many
places as they can, traveling only one day. Their Instagram feed is a picture of
them in every city: Prague check, Paris check. I have seen this so many times. I
 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy 243

do not want that. For me there is a difference between traveling and staying in
a place to really get to know it.
Kate: I also avoided pictures, I want food to have an academic sense for me, I
don’t want to give it the sense only of showing off.
Peter: I hate social media. I have it, but one of the reasons that I hate it is that
people use it as a means to brag. I do not like that. It detaches the cultural
meaning of the food from the setting. You guys have seen me with a camera
taking pictures, but for me is trying to become a good photographer, using the
aesthetics of food but not to brag about it.
Rachel: I went together with some people travelling through Europe, they were
not part of the FSSP, and it felt like the entire fieldtrip was just a big photoshoot.
Instead, I wanted to feel and experience things, and they were obsessed with
taking pictures of themselves doing things.

Some study-abroad students want to differentiate themselves from the ste-

reotypical image of tourists taking pictures of all that they encounter. The
relationship between photography and tourists has been debated within the
tourism literature (Palmer and Lester 2005; Robinson and Picard 2009) and it
has been stated that travel could be summed up as a search for the photogenic
(Urry 1990: 139) and as a strategy for accumulating photographs. The rea-
sons behind touristic photographs are varied and, among others, pictures can
serve as a protection against time, as communication with others, as expres-
sion of feelings, as self-realization, as social prestige, and as a distraction or
escape from the routines of everyday life (Palmer and Lester 2005: 19):

Consumption as a sign of status and the use of photographs to construct a

person’s exclusive visual biography may go some way towards explaining the
‘photo-mania’ behavior of some tourists; reflecting the accepted creed that tak-
ing photographs is part of what being a tourist means. It is almost unthinkable
not to take photographs while on holiday.

Through time, I have been able to see numerous students’ posts on social
media about their Italian experience, observing different modes of representa-
tion of Italian food. Even if some study-abroad students want to differentiate
themselves from ordinary tourists by having a different approach to photo-
graphs, many construct their own visual biography of their time abroad. On
their social media pictures Italy appears, at times, as the background, rather
than the subject, of their experiences. Pictures include portraits of themselves
sipping glasses of wine with friends, close-ups of hands holding gelatos and
pizzas against the backdrop of an historical site, sipping a beer and socializing
in the main piazza. While usually food and drink pictures are very casual,
wine is often portrayed more formally and pictures seem more carefully
244 Elisa Ascione

staged. Students seem to communicate that in Italy they have learned how to
“properly” consume wine, showing that wine drinking has become a routine
activity. Pictures with wine glasses become a symbol of their passage into a
more adult world and as cosmopolitan consumers with newly acquired “culi-
nary capital” (Naccarato and LeBesco 2012).
Photography is a ritualized “theatre” that people enact to produce their
desired and expected self-image of togetherness, wholeness, and intimacy
with partners, family, and friends (Urry and Larsen 2006: 208). The processes
of selfie-taking while studying abroad becomes a validating practice that is
confirmed through an exchange of anticipated photos: here photographs seem
both “evidential and evocative” (Bodinger de Uriarte 2007: 192), serving as
badges and validations of experience. Seen from an Italian perspective, these
pictures at times contain “cultural mistakes” such as the use of fette biscottate
(an industrial crisp toast) for bruschetta, which in Italy are only used for break-
fast and are not associated with the message of relaxed sophistication that
the pictures want to portray. However, the pictures are not meant to simply
represent aspects of Italian culture and heritage, but American students engag-
ing with new experiences. The “staged authenticity” (cf. MacCannell 1973)
of these pictures wants to celebrate the extraordinary of their time abroad, as
well as the new culinary capital that they have acquired as global consumers
that have now the capacity to recognize and appreciate Italian wine culture.
These pictures seem to tell tales of “personal transgression, self-discovery,
and redemption in which the host country serves as a passive foil for the
construction of an active, American self” (Feinberg and Edwards 2018: 27.)
In the next section, I will provide an analysis of the courses and experi-
ences designed by the FSSP, and I will argue that while some of the activities
align with tourism, they also differ from it by allowing students to analyze
contemporary food practices as outcomes of economic, historical, and socio-
cultural transformations rather than essential qualities of places and people,
creating space for more critical reflections than is usually possible with
shorter term programs.

BETWIXT AND BEYOND TOURISTIC CONSUMPTION

The courses, fieldtrips, and workshops of the FSSP expose students to differ-
ent aspects of Italian and global food cultures. The core course, “Sustainability
and Food Production in Italy,” for example,

explores what modes of food production and consumption may be viable

responses to the problems that a growing world population and ever-higher
 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy 245

food production are contributing to faster use of non-renewable fossil fuels and
environmental degradation. Through a combination of lectures, fieldtrips, and
service-learning activities, students learn about alternative models of food pro-
duction and the ways in which people are responding to increasing inequalities
relating to food availability.

Among other topics, in the sustainability class, students become familiar

with the work of local farms and environmentally friendly agricultural
practices. They learn about the coexistence of different models of agricul-
ture throughout the Italian peninsula: from industrial management of farms
and plants (where some reforms toward more sustainable practices are tak-
ing place) to alternative systems such as organic and biodynamic farming.
Students learn how the EU Common Agricultural Policy shapes Italian food-
ways, and how policies are contested arenas along the political spectrum,
such as the organic agriculture sector where different interest groups lobby
for tighter or more relaxed regulations. As students engage with the plural-
ity of voices and groups that make up the varied mosaic of agricultural and
production practices in Italy, they develop a more nuanced understanding of
Italian culture and society. With time, they are able to go beyond a superfi-
cial description of Italy where everything is “local and fresh” (as they often
state at the beginning of the course) to a more complex understanding of
how land is used in different parts of the country, including issues of social
justice around food production. They study, for example, the exploitation
of migrant labor and how associations are fighting organized crime through
organic agriculture on land confiscated from Mafia bosses once they are
arrested (cf. Libera 2019).
Students engage with readings and discussions on the sharecropping sys-
tems, learning that until the 1960s farmers in Umbria and Tuscany grew food
in polyculture systems (today considered more sustainable than monocul-
tures), because they had to be self-sufficient and give half of their produce to
their landlords (Nowak 2011; Gaggio 2016). Students therefore realize that
the acres of orderly vineyards that compose part of Umbrian and Tuscan land-
scapes are often contemporary, extensive monoculture cultivation, rather than
timeless natural features of those regions. Thanks to readings and discussions,
even when we visit wineries and engage in wine-tasting activities, study-
abroad students are actually pushed to go beyond their immediate sensory
experience by looking at historical, cultural, and economic developments,
and by producing papers and discussions that show their engagement with
this complexity, thus differentiating themselves from touristic consumers.
Part of the appeal of study-abroad programs is the possibility of participat-
ing in community engagement projects, and many courses at the institute
246 Elisa Ascione

have, in fact, a service-learning component. Rachel, for example, has chosen

this program because it got her out of the classroom:

My favorite thing about my home school is that we do a lot of projects outside,

so I loved here the fieldtrips, excursions, also I read a review on a study abroad
website and the review said they were meeting locals, while other programs
actually were reviewed as less immersive, and that students spent most of their
time in clubs, and I wouldn’t have fit in that kind of programs.

The Sustainability and Food Production class offers a service-learning com-

ponent as part of students’ final grade. On the first day of class, students are
given documents that describe it as a type of experiential education:

Students engage in an organized activity or project aimed to address a com-

munity need that is identified in collaboration with the community partner;
students critically reflect on the link between the experience in the community,
course content, and the learning goals; and there is reciprocal learning both by
the students and by the community partners.

The voluntary work takes place in a residency for individuals with mental
health disorders and conditions where horticulture therapy is used to enhance
their quality of life and generate positive emotions and social interac-
tions. Students work at the synergistic garden, a type of organic gardening,
which uses plants that naturally protect and nourish each other. They help
with seasonal tasks, including tilling the soil; planting herbs, vegetables, and
flowers; and harvesting. The learning outcomes for such an activity are:

Discover how to apply sustainable gardening in a community setting. Develop

awareness and skills in intercultural communication and the Italian language.
Improve teamwork and multitasking skills, and gain a better understanding of
the host culture and community.

Performing manual labor as a form of “service” has been analyzed in a vari-

ety of educational settings (Bodinger de Uriarte and Jacobson 2018). Students
get physically and symbolically “dirty” by performing activities often associ-
ated with lower income classes rather than with university elites, which could
probably more successfully provide volunteer work in “cleaner” environment
such as tutoring and teaching. Providing service through “getting dirty” is
often a response of the university elites to the increasing inequalities that rest
on neoliberal policies and ideologies: people “give back” physical labor from
their privileged position as a form of personal penitence (Bodinger de Uriarte
 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy 247

and Jacobson 2018: 81). In the case of the synergistic garden, together with a
vaguer sense of “giving back to the community,” students need to get dirty to
actually learn how to grow vegetables following alternative, no-till, “natural”
agricultural methods, being part of a course on sustainable food production.
Together with free labor, the cooperative that hosts our program receives a
yearly donation covering the costs of materials and the costs associated to the
person in charge of the garden. Together with cash and labor flows that help
the garden to sustain itself, the encounters are transformative for both students
and patients. Patients act as mentors, showing students how to perform tasks,
leading students in the right direction when they do not know how to prune
an olive tree or plant vegetables. The resident social worker of the project told
us that patients experience a reverse of their social status by becoming helpers
rather than needy recipients, as they are usually considered. This can enhance
patients’ self-esteem and have positive therapeutic outcomes.
There are many critical accounts on the rhetoric of “helping needy com-
munities” in short-term “volunteer tourism” (Sin 2009). For example, the
FSSP has received, and refused, requests from U.S. colleges that looked for
volunteering opportunities at a local soup kitchen for their summer students.
Staff of the FSSP and the manager of the soup kitchen decided that it was not
possible to accommodate this request. The idea that a group of young students
with no knowledge of Italian language, staying for just a few weeks, could
work with vulnerable people without any significant training and continuity,
seemed unfeasible. The colleges that proposed it never problematized this
request, probably asserting a non-tourist goal for their projected program: by
virtue of their provenance and higher social class, American students were
seen as able to help others of which they ignored problems and concerns just
because of their “good will.” The anthropologist Mary Mostafenazhad (2014)
in her book Volunteer Tourism: Popular Humanitarianism in Neoliberal
Times problematizes humanitarianism and “voluntourism” as more than just
alternative ways of travel, analyzing them instead as cultural commentaries
to responses to global economic inequalities (2). Volunteer tourism reframes
questions of structural inequality as questions of individual morality, and by
appealing to sentimentality, tends to engage with the outcome, rather than
the causes of underdevelopment (4). Activism and social resistance are thus
transformed into experiences that can be bought and sold in the market, where
the consumer-cum-volunteer tourist can “make a difference.” They appeal to
a “cosmopolitan empathy” (10) in a growing transnational moral landscape
where good-willing individuals can act in benign ways toward places and
people in the periphery without questioning power and political structures.
A few students of the FSSP program have had past experiences of shorter
term volunteer projects abroad and, as the student George reflected during the
248 Elisa Ascione

focus group, these kind of short-term experiences can be a “selfish pursuit”

but also have positive outcomes:

I’m not blind to the idea that it is a selfish pursuit. I went to Nicaragua for an
agricultural project for a short program about rural community development.
We did a fair amount of work, and the money that we paid went to the irrigation
system and tools. So it had a positive effect, I think.

More than focusing on helping “needy communities,” longer term activities

of the FSSP, such as the work in the synergistic garden, are designed as tools
of action and reflection inside and outside the classroom. During their first
visit to the garden, for example, students learn about the history of psychiatry
and anti-psychiatry movements in Umbria, a region at the forefront of democ-
ratization of therapeutic practices and de-institutionalization of patients from
the 1960s (Giacanelli 2014) becoming aware of the historical background and
complex social formations that structure the lived experiences of the people
that they encounter. Service-learning thus becomes a way to connect with
and empower local associations and institutions: this is what Anthony Ogden
(2008) calls stepping down from the colonial veranda, which he defines as
the safe and privileged space of American study-abroad institutes, too often
constructed as American bubbles on foreign soil where no meaningful rela-
tionship with other people and cultures are made.
Together with service-learning projects, other hands-on activities consist
of fieldtrips and workshops linked to the core class “History and Culture of
Food in Italy.” The focus of the course is explained in the syllabus:

The history of food in Italy is a gateway to understanding contemporary Italian

culture. This course examines the factors of change that have shaped Italian
food ways, the wide variations in eating habits of different socio-economic
classes, and the fundamental role played by food in shaping Italian identities.

The fieldtrips include truffle hunting in Northern Umbria; a visit to the fac-
tories of Prosciutto di Parma, Parmigiano Reggiano, and Aceto Balsamico
di Modena Tradizionale; cooking classes in two agriturismi; a field trip
to Florence’s main covered market and a seventeenth-century pharmacy,
exploring the use of spices, liquors, and unguents as medicine; followed by
a historic cooking class in which they recreate and eat an ancient Roman
meal. When I asked students if any of the fieldtrips made them feel like a
tourist, they drew a clear boundary between tourism and study abroad. For
George, some cooking classes in the agriturismi could easily overlap with
the activity of tourists; however, he thought that it was important to know
first what an agriturismo is. Although he enjoyed it, he wished he could
 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy 249

have an even deeper intimate contact with Italian culture by having a lunch
with an Italian family, which is of course hard to organize with a class of
twenty students.

The trips were not touristy. They are not things that I would do as a tourist,
although they are available as touristic options. It would have been nice to have
a meal in someone’s’ home, I know it’s not feasible, but we would have learned
a lot in seeing an Italian home kitchen from the inside.

Peter, too, valued intimacy over performance and enjoyed the cooking classes
organized inside the didactic kitchen of the school. This allowed him to have
a backstage interaction with the young chef that was teaching them how to
make fresh pasta, as if the ability to access a space beyond the staging of the
event could provide a more “authentic” insight (Goffman 1959; MacCannell
1976).

Whereas most of the other experiences, like the agriturismi, are already designed
for tourists, meeting Elia the chef, who is a 24-year-old guy from Perugia, gave
us an insight on the life of a young man near our age, I didn’t have the chance
to engage so much with other Italians my age. All the informal talks we had as
we cooked and eat, about his life, for example, were an important part of my
intercultural experience.

The possibility of exploring aspects of food production and preparation that

are not visible to everybody made students feel as if they were not simply
tourists. Kate, for example, valued the connection she made with the truffle
hunter:

I know that he does this activity with many tourists, but taking time to talk to the
man is what gave me the connection with him. He told us he’s writing a book on
agriculture, I saw his engagement with the environment, listened to the history
of his family, saw the interaction he had with his father as we walked inside the
woods for hours. It gave me a deeper perspective into his culture and values.

For an experience to be “less touristy” it must involve some form of non-

staged, intimate contact with the producers and people encountered: students
must “forget” that they’re actually engaged in an economic activity. George
calls it “the gift shop syndrome,” when the illusion of cultural intimacy col-
lapses because of an economic exchange:

Somebody should do an ethnography of what people feel when reaching gift

shops. If I think about authenticity, the experience that I really want is one for
250 Elisa Ascione

which not everybody can sign up for, and we had many of those experiences,
I think. However, talking about the first farm that we visited, it was awesome,
it felt like I could see things behind closed doors, but then the owner showed
us the shop where we could buy things, and it felt like a pitch. I felt a sudden
distance. When the commercial aspect stepped in, the bond that I had with this
family felt ruined. I know it’s naive to say this, and that part of my money for
studying abroad went to pay for this experience, but we like to forget and pre-
tend that it was all real.

This sort of suspension of disbelief that the experience is both an adventure

but also carefully scripted (or at least scripted enough to ensure safety and
a somewhat predictable set of student outcomes) is a key component within
the student experience. Students consider themselves as more than simply
tourists: just like George, they are aware that parts of their experiences are
included in a pre-organized setting within market relations, but at the same
time, they yearn for authentic relationships, unmediated by money. Students
need to believe that their presence represents more than cold commercial
transactions and that they really “visit” places rather than simply purchasing
educational and entertainment products (Oakes 2006: 235). However, just
like tourists, students are not simply guests but also customers, and hosts
are providers of experiences (Aramberri 2001: 746). In popular sites such as
the production facilities of Prosciutto di Parma, Parmigiano Reggiano, and
Aceto Balsamico di Modena, students come into contact with tourist groups,
but they perceive themselves as a distinct group by virtue of their longer pro-
gram and their developed knowledge about the site before and after the visit,
exploring, for example, cultural and technical attributes linked to notions of
quality, artisanship, and the heritage industry (West 2016).
Alongside discussions and reflections, embodiment and the sense of the
visceral emerge as important elements of students’ experience, actively
unsettling predetermined notions of palatability and edibility. In the pro-
sciutto factory, for example, seeing pork legs and perceiving new smells
causes strong reactions in many students. The sight and smell of raw meat is
usually not considered “repulsive” in Italian culture, and students test their
ability to overcome their disgust and their cultural assumptions of what is
“good” and what is “bad,” sometimes unsuccessfully, and deciding to walk
out the premises. As their instructor, I usually warn them before entering the
prosciutto factory that, while it is possible to leave the premises if they are
uncomfortable, it is disrespectful to openly show disgust in front of people
who are working there and that consider prosciutto curing an important local
practice and economic activity. By actively preventing students’ negative
reactions at the sight and smell of raw materials in a semi-industrial meat cur-
ing operation I engage with the prevention or compensation of disappointment
 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy 251

of students-as-visitors in what has been called in tourism studies as manage-

ment of the “expectations gap,” the dissatisfaction with an experience that
occurs when one’s perceptions do not live up to expectations (Di Giovine
2009: 177). In tourism contexts, just like in study-abroad settings, disap-
pointment can be generated by aggrandized illusions created in relation to
places and services generated by media hype, advertising campaigns, and the
experiences of others (Michalkò et al. 2015: 85): expectations can greatly
differ from brochures and websites to the lived experiences of visiting food
producers. However, differently than tourist settings, in a pedagogical study-
abroad context strong reactions are not just managed and avoided but openly
addressed and discussed. This generates reflections on the cultural construc-
tions of likes and dislikes and on the symbolic consumption of animals in dif-
ferent cultural settings, allowing students to become more self-reflexive and
aware of cultural diversity, critically engaging with the different worldviews
that students and producers may embody. During the focus group, all of the
students, including the vegetarians, wanted to differentiate themselves from
peers with biased cultural assumptions.

Kate: some of the people in our group were actually saying during Parma and
Modena that rather than seeing meat and cheese preparation in an artisanal
setting as we did, they preferred an industrial food system removed from sight,
they didn’t want to associate prosciutto with real meat and animals, or cheese
with the smell of fermenting milk. The sight of the real thing puts them off.
Peter: some said that seeing the Parma ham factory wanted them to turn vegetar-
ian. But that made me angry, because the act of seeing should actually educate
you, and make you feel more connected to the food that you are eating. I think
that people that come here should respect the culture; it is rude to act that way.
George: it is a physical reaction but it is a form of disrespect, people just went off
on their own while the worker was explaining the process of making prosciutto.
The anatomical description put people off, but they should be respectful.
Rachel: we need to be sympathetic to both sides, to the people that are working
with prosciutto, and to the students that are not used to seeing raw meat. On the
American side, people often feel disgusted at things; they can’t control it, while
Italians deserve respect for their tradition.

The young prosciutto maker that guides the tour always smiles with tolerance
at the way in which some American students cover their noses and eyes when
they see the prosciutti hanging from the ceiling, a sight actually enjoyed by
the many Italians that visit the premises. Service providers, in fact, also con-
struct expectations and stereotypes of “gli americani,” the Americans. Locals
sometimes look back at “students-as-tourists” who can occasionally appear
relatively ignorant of local conditions, and thus perceived as incompetent
252 Elisa Ascione

and even ridiculous (Stronza 2001: 273.) This is also evident during some
cooking classes when students are not able not chop fruit and vegetable
“properly”: chefs and demonstrators have sometimes infantilized students
comparing them to little kids handling food “like play dough,” showing no
cooking competence that Italians consider basic adult culinary operations.
This is what Maoz (2006) calls the “mutual gaze” between guests and hosts, a
multitude of intersecting, responsive gazes between tourists and brokers, and
even between the tourists and the students themselves. This mutual gaze is
never fixed, as students acquire more culinary knowledge and language skills
and meet some chefs and producers multiple times.
Through activities that contextualize local practices and knowledge, stu-
dents are given tools to become more self-reflexive, participating in the local
culture also as ethnographic researchers and not only as tourists. Students
of the Anthropology of Food class, for example, engage in fieldwork with
restaurant and food shops that prepare “local” and “traditional” Umbrian
food, studying restaurants as sites of cultural transmission that relocalize food
economies in order to empower small farmers and artisans and as sites for
dissent toward industrial agriculture, not selling mainstream food and soda
brands as an act of resistance toward what they define as corporate globaliza-
tion. The use of ethnography with long-term study-abroad students is well-
documented (Jurasek et al. 2002; Roberts et al. 2001) as they are exposed to
the methods of ethnographic exploration and engage in a form of experiential
learning that helps them to gain access to local meanings and practices, with-
out the intention to transform them into specialists in cultural anthropology
(Jackson 2010). According to the syllabus, the class

Addresses food-related issues from an anthropological perspective examin-

ing the role that food plays in shaping: group and personal identities, ethnic
affiliations in a global world, religious boundaries through rituals, taboos and
avoidances, revitalization of local and global communities. Through readings,
assignments, and ethnographic research in different settings, students explore
how “food traditions” and “local food” are maintained and transformed over
time and space, and how culinary knowledge is used by people to mark cultural
differences.

The course has been running since spring 2016, and it is often the first cul-
tural anthropology class for the majority of my students. The semester-long
project consists of doing participant observation and conducting interviews in
five restaurants, collecting data for a final essay titled “Unpacking the ‘local’:
Food as cultural heritage in the city of Perugia, Italy.” We have dinners in
restaurants that are popular with both locals and tourists, and students must
critically assess how restaurants are not only commercial venues but also gen-
erators of ideas, beliefs, behaviors, and practices (Beriss and Sutton 2007). In
 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy 253

order to do that, they must answer different questions as we have our meals.
What meanings and values are given to foods in the places explored? Does
“local” mean the same thing for everybody? How are identity and memory
“emplaced” and performed in the venues? They focus on the material prac-
tices, the symbolic elaboration of food service, the artifacts, and what the staff
and owner tells us during interviews. They must also compare this meal with
other “eating out” cultures in the United States or other restaurants visited in
Italy or abroad. What is similar and what is different? How is the décor? How
do people behave? What is the food like? What is the overall impression of
the message that restaurants want to send?
This exercise helps them to problematize notions of authenticity and
the search for “cultural purity,” focusing instead on the multiple meanings
behind people’s choices, interpretations, and performances of their own
tradition and heritage (Di Giovine and Brulotte 2014). We begin by visiting
a restaurant that has had the same menu since 1984 and that celebrates the
“Sunday traditional farmers’ lunch.” Before the 1960s, meals, especially, in
the countryside were actually very frugal, in contrast with the abundance of
festive days. During the interview, the owner tells us that customers should
feel like “when your mother cooks for the family and wants you to eat a lot.”
There is a fixed menu that changes with the season; there is no wine list but
a simple house-wine that comes from a nearby social cooperative. By analyz-
ing the culture of that restaurant, students notice that people do not receive
individual portions but that the food is placed on bigger trays in the middle of
the table, encouraging sharing rather than individuality. They also understand
that, in this context, wine means conviviality and unity rather than cultural
and economic capital since there is no special wine glass and no long wine
list from which to choose.
Students notice that at the back of the menu there is an old picture of a
farmer family threshing harvested grain: I explain that in the past, families
would offer a very important meal to everybody helping them out in the
fields and how that meal would be in striking contrast to their daily regime
of scarcity. The décor of the restaurant is very simple, there are many ears
of wheat scattered around on the walls, and the menu is written in the local
dialect. Comparing this restaurant with others that we visit, students realize
that this is only one way of performing and reproducing traditions, namely
reconstructing a fictitious family meal of an Umbrian family of rural origins.
We also visit other restaurants in which the notion of “local” and “typical” are
instead embedded in more political discourses, as restaurant owners describes
how they want to oppose “global neoliberal market practices” through the
re-localization of the food system. For other restaurants instead, the “local”
functions as a marker of sophistication, as they serve Slow Food presidia and
niche artisanal products, intelligible only to real foodies and connoisseurs (see
Petrini 2019). Thanks to this ethnographic exercise, students are given the
254 Elisa Ascione

tools to produce papers that show a deeper, more sophisticated understand-

ing of “local food cultures,” engaging with different practices and narratives
around a shared past. Students become aware of the fact that in order to carry
out ethnographic work, they have to try to look at the world with an unbiased
framework. Curiosity and self-awareness are, however, also personal skills
that not every student is willing or able to cultivate. Kate, for example said:

Some people remained very superficial about their understanding of cultural dif-
ferences. For some people the stereotypes remained, because some people don’t
want to feel decentered. Some just complained, or they constantly asked that
their food was changed during our ethnography of the restaurants. They never
try anything unfamiliar. I’m usually a vegetarian, but I tried coppa di testa once
the panino maker we were interviewing explained that this cold-cut has always
been a very important preparation in order to use all the parts of the pig, includ-
ing the muzzle and the ears. I remember somebody in the anthropology of food
class saying instead “I don’t eat weird food,” and that sums up the difference
between different kinds of study-abroad students for me.

Peter wanted to challenge his tastes and distastes, being open to the food and
preparation that he encountered. During participant observation in one of the
restaurants, the waiter served crostini with liver patè, a traditional specialty.
While many students refused to taste them, Peter wanted to show to the res-
taurant owner, that we just interviewed, that he valued his food. He ate all of
the liver patè crostini that his fellow students had left untouched, to the point
of almost feeling sick. He wanted to conform to perceived Italian cultural
rules of hospitality, feeling sorry that other students did not want to engage
with unknown foods.

Peter: I had six liver patè crostini; I felt pressured to do it. I did not want to offend
the waiter, I wanted to show respect. We couldn’t give back a full tray and let
waste all that. Other people didn’t want them just because it’s liver.
George: I felt frustrated when I compared my reasons for being here compared
to other students, like they didn’t eat some of the food that was served just for
their cultural prejudice.

Throughout the semesters, I have observed that adventurous eating has gen-
dered connotations. I regularly ask which new foods students have tried dur-
ing the previous week, and usually more males than females share their food
adventures, causing reactions of disgusts and admiration from their peers as
they describe fried brains, spleen sandwiches, or pasta with veal intestines.
At the end of their semester in Italy, students explained changes of their
vision of Italy, Umbria, and Perugia after their time abroad.
 Teaching and Learning Food and Sustainability in Italy 255

Rachel: my experience here changed my definition of authenticity, now it’s more

nuanced. There can be a food culture in a place, and it’s not the same for every-
body, but there is a common history, although it’s very ambiguous.
Peter: I confirmed the importance of how regional identity is maybe more strong
here than in other countries compared to the USA. I learned the intensity of
attachments to products with appellations of origins, of food products from
certain towns, and how strict they are. I saw how all these foods contribute to
the sense of a specific place, that if they don’t come from a certain place they’re
not even worth eating. I expected it beforehand, but here I really lived it.
Kate: I learned most about regionalism and Perugian food culture. I was very
interested in the simplicity that I encountered, for example the ways in which a
panino, a simple sandwich, could be so indicative of a place and its attachments.
Rob: I was surprised how people express their identity through food, and made
me think how I can bring that back to the States. There are food cultures every-
where you go, but Italy is a great case-study to see the connections that people
feel with it. How certain foods are linked to saints, to folklore. One cake can be
found only in one city, in one particular day of the year, like the San Costanzo
cake that is linked to the Saint Patron of Perugia on January 29.

In conclusion, study-abroad institutes offer services in a global market, and

they attract students relying on some touristic narratives and activities that
must reach high-quality standards of organization. As services in a competi-
tive international education market, study-abroad programs rely, for market-
ing reasons, on the simplification and commodification of certain aspects
of the local culture and on the selection of certain performances of the Self
over others, proposing activities and imaginaries that are also common to
the tourist industry. At the same time, students are provided with intellec-
tual and theoretical tools that can be used to engage in critical, historically
informed ways with their surroundings. Together with the “romantic gaze”
and the “spectatorial gaze” that usually define touristic experiences, students
also acquire an “anthropological gaze,” which describes how visitors scan a
variety of sights/sites and are able to locate them interpretatively within a his-
torical array of meanings and symbols (Urry and Larsen 2006: 20). Semester-
long study-abroad students cross multiple positionalities, engaging with local
settings, at times participating in tourism activities and, thanks to the longer
time of residence abroad and to courses offered by the institute, acquiring the
awareness of inhabiting a “post-tourism” space:

The post-tourist knows they are a tourist and tourism is a series of games with
multiple texts and no single, authentic tourist experience. The post-tourist thus
knows that he or she will have to queue time and time again, that the glossy bro-
chure is a piece of pop culture, that the apparently authentic local entertainment
256 Elisa Ascione

is as socially contrived as the ethnic bar, and that the supposedly quaint and
traditional fishing village could not survive without the income from tourism.
(Urry and Larsen 2006: 214)

They oscillate between insider and outsider positions, trying to “live like
locals” while feeding on some touristic imaginaries and activities, acquiring
tools to frame and analyze what they are experiencing in the classroom and in
the world around them, navigating betwixt and beyond touristic consumption.

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 Chapter 10

Finding Home, Identity, and

Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs
Targeted to Heritage Students
Annie Nguyen

“WHERE ARE YOU FROM?”

These days, living in Seattle, a city where transplants may outnumber natives,
I no longer pause when I hear this question. Rather, I discuss being most
recently from Baltimore, but before that D.C. and Alabama. Sometimes I add
my short stint in Vietnam and Montana. I interpret this question as an earnest
one to seek a better understanding of what experiences may have led me to
Seattle. I hear: “So you’re not from here, but it’s good you are now.”
It hasn’t always been this way, and that question hasn’t always implied
that. Growing up, those four words were enough to make me question my
identity, my notions of home, and whether or not I belonged. By asking where
I was from, the questioners were pointing out, I couldn’t possibly be from
the place where we were standing. In their tone and how they eyed me, they
imparted that they were entitled to that place and were granting me space. I
didn’t belong.
I’d shoot back, “Alabama” or some witty retort about how I was from “just
down the street,” so as to shut down the conversation and its implications. I’m
from the United States, my responses said, and this is the only home I know.
Perhaps my strong feelings about this question are what have directed
so much of my professional career—understanding where we are from,
what connects us, and what makes a place home (as much in a physical as
a socio-emotional sense). I have led or helped lead six short-term study-
abroad programs in Thailand, China, England, and Central Europe; before
that, I worked on the Department of State’s International Visitor Program,
an effort to increase professional understanding and connections between the
United States and other countries. Most recently, as a writing professor at the
259
260 Annie Nguyen

University of Washington Tacoma, I designed a short-term study-away pro-

gram to Hawaii focused on multiculturalism and identity in Creative Writing.
It was designed intentionally as a study away so students unable to leave
the country for visa/passport reasons could experience something like study
abroad, and because many of my university’s students—veterans themselves
or children of servicemen—were born in or had spent significant portions of
their lives in U.S. military island bases.
When I saw self-identified Pacific Islanders enrolled, I invited artists and
scholars to meet the students who spoke on Hawaii’s history before U.S.
colonization and statehood and the current attempts to reassert independence
today. The students reveled in learning about the Hawaiian monarchy and
linked the loss of ancestral homelands to capitalistic development with the
gentrification happening around our university. I watched as they discon-
nected the Hawaii built up by pop culture—a land of magical honeymoons
and surfers—from what Hawaii is—a former nation rich in its own unique
cultural background.
I wanted students to consider how place and belonging shape ideas of
identity, and after ten days of travel, utilizing daily journals that were part of
my writing course, I had students reflect on that part of their experience. One
student of Pacific Islander descent said: “Just taking in the air and water has
made me feel like I am being brought back to myself.” Another of Filipino
descent said that he was now considering graduate studies at the University
of Hawaii to feel closer to home. Several minority students discussed feeling
ostracized on beaches because their skin color placed them closer to native
Hawaiians than with business and land developers and expressed frustration
for Hawaiians who may be forced to feel like strangers on their own lands.
Even those without Asian Pacific Islander roots or another discernable con-
nection to Hawaii commented on how they had developed a better under-
standing of our country (“the history that no one wanted you to know,” wrote
one student) and themselves by learning how other states have struggled with
multicultural identity and nativity. (Our own Washington state and Puget
Sound community has faced challenges trying to negotiate how to honor and
recognize displaced Native American peoples, previously interned Japanese
communities, and largely ignored African American and Latinx families
[see Shimabukuru 2001]). These students seemed to develop more respect
for their classmates’ hyphenated American experience (see Trinh 1991: 159)
which has since informed how they interact with other students on campus
(according to my colleagues who have had my program alumni in their
classes).
Their ideas on multiculturalism, heritage, and home made me reflect
on my experiences studying abroad in my native home country and how
they connected me to the larger Vietnamese diaspora. Their reflections
 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs 261

reaffirmed for me how studying abroad truly can impact the rest of one’s
life.

FACTORS IMPACTING IMMIGRANT AND FIRST-

GENERATION STUDENTS IN STUDY ABROAD

Like many college students, I entered my senior year anxious about the
future. What would I do after graduation? Where would I go? Who would I
become? Most of my friends senior year were being recruited for consulting
and accounting jobs, applying to grad programs or year-long service pro-
grams like Teach for America and Americorps, and securing internships that
would lead them to a stable, 9–5 job. We contemplated moving home, staying
where we were in D.C., or seeking jobs in another major city like New York
or Chicago. Everything seemed to say those first steps out of college would
shape our lives and future success. The pressure overwhelmed me when all I
wanted was the freedom and inspiration to study and write.
Particularly, my recent coursework on Asian American literature and
the role of the media during the Vietnam War had me thinking and writing
about my identity and heritage more than I had before. Most of my life, I
had focused on assimilating and surviving, ignoring much of my family’s
history before immigrating to Alabama or what it meant that I was a hyphen-
ated, Vietnamese-American.1 If there was an identity to be had growing up
in the Deep South, it was that of the Asian model minority (Wong 1998),
and to avoid ridicule and make Alabama as much my home as it was for my
native-born peers, I tried hard to be as “American” as I could. I was the only
one in my family born in America after all, with an American nickname as
my birth name (Goldstein 2016). To live up to my destiny in my family’s
story, I embraced all things Southern American. I loved traditions and fried
chicken, the way old oak trees laced with Spanish moss would droop over the
sidewalks, how people said, “yes, ma’am” and “yes, sir” as they curtseyed
and bowed. I joined a high school (and later, a college) sorority and made
the varsity soccer and cross-country teams. I took on minor roles in school
and community theater and won offices in a statewide youth government
program. My parents, who had no understanding of social clubs and believed
girls shouldn’t play sports, never came to any mother–daughter teas or
watched any meets or plays. When I told my parents I had been elected as the
first Asian Youth Governor of Alabama under a YMCA leadership program,
my father responded that politicians got killed, and he didn’t want me in a life
of public service. Then he walked away.
It was an adolescence of conflict: one in which to be the model American
girl, I went against everything that my parents believed was a model
262 Annie Nguyen

Vietnamese one. Researchers have referenced this as living on the hyphen,

where immigrant children wrestle with conflicting identities (see Choi 2010;
Sharobeem 2003), but I didn’t feel I lived on the hyphen between Vietnamese
and American at all. I thought I had observed plenty of what it meant to be
Vietnamese from my family and their expectations for my behaviors—doc-
ile, obedient, and studious—and I chose to be a well-rounded and outspoken
American.
But entering my senior year at The George Washington University (GW)
and wondering about my future, I started thinking more about the past and
the experiences I wished I’d had. I regretted not studying abroad when friends
returned to tell their stories of hiking in the Serengeti or eating sushi in Japan,
but the option had never existed for me. I had sometimes worked three jobs
while going to school full-time, and I wasn’t going to ask for time off from
an hourly job that could easily replace me. My parents had barely been able to
help me pay for a portion of college so I couldn’t bother them to support any
additional study-abroad expenses. As war refugees, they were also fearful of
me leaving the United States. If there is some connection between refugees,
it is the shared knowledge of how wicked the world can be. They had spent
their lives working to give me a safe place and the opportunity to make their
sacrifices worth it: how did an expensive study-abroad trip translate to a well-
paid career?
Whenever I passed a university ad for study abroad, it was clear: studying
abroad was a luxury for those who could afford the time and expense, not
meant for scholarship students with refugee parents who waitressed to pay
the rent.
What changed everything for me was learning about the Fulbright pro-
gram, an all-expenses-paid opportunity to pursue research abroad for a year. I
could plan my trip wherever I wanted, I wouldn’t have to worry about money,
I’d be studying under the auspices of the government, and the associated pres-
tige seemed to offset any possible drawback of “taking time off.” A road less
ordinary, which connected me to research on my identity, which would also
win consent from my refugee parents—a Fulbright checked all of the boxes.
I spent the fall of my senior year preparing an application. And just as my
twenty-one-year-old self had imagined, that step wound up determining the
shape of my life.

FULBRIGHT STUDY ABROAD

The Fulbright U.S. Student program stands unique among study-abroad

opportunities for students. Under the research and teaching program,
Fulbrights are awarded to graduates and graduate students to study abroad
 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs 263

in over 140 countries and allow recipient scholars to continue their research
interests. Further, while most undergraduate study-away programs are
designed by specific faculty or universities, Fulbright research grants are
developed by the student proposing the trip and are competitively selected
to ensure that the research being conducted is in line with the host country’s
interests. Since 2011, the Fulbright has had an annual average acceptance rate
of 20 percent of all applicants, though this varies on available funds and the
individual country, as countries like the United Kingdom receive hundreds of
applications a year while other countries like Norway may receive a fraction
of that (“Eight Essential Fulbright U.S. Student Statistics” 2019). Sometimes,
countries will indicate that only certain projects will be funded in any
given year. Other times, fluency in the native language is required and thus
eliminates many potential applicants. Still, sometimes applicants are simply
weighed against each other: a country may want an even balance between
various disciplines (“Fulbright U.S. Student Program” 2019).
The year I applied was only the second in which the Fulbright was being
offered in Vietnam, compared to some other countries where Fulbright
scholars had been studying since the program began in 1946. Since Vietnam
was still a nascent program comparatively, there were both less restrictions
on focus areas as well as less support for program development. Thus, no
one advised or helped guide my Creative Writing proposal, but I understood
enough from the application’s questions that a Fulbright did not mean a tour
of a country’s highlights for a year. It meant immersing myself in a foreign
culture, and through my own research, finding and building connections to
the United States.
My application rattled off a wish-list of ideas about reading texts in
Vietnamese (though I could barely speak the language, much less read it),
meeting local poets and writers (though I didn’t know of any), and traveling
the country to capture descriptions and experiences in my own words (though
I had never published anything outside a few articles in the student paper and
yearbook). I was able to draw on my undergraduate studies and talked about
how many Asian American writers had found their voice after traveling back
to their heritage country (Hu 2017) and how I wanted to shed light on the
experience of a child of refugees returning to view sites of war. Though I had
never left the United States before and had no idea how I would survive on
my own in Vietnam, I waxed on about the Fulbright jumpstarting my writing
career.
The application process involved several steps, from language certifica-
tion to assembling a proposal with a partnership letter from a university in
Vietnam, to getting appropriate recommendations and interviewing before a
committee of GW faculty. After GW greenlighted it, my proposal went on
to the Institute for International Education (IIE), which housed the Fulbright
264 Annie Nguyen

as part of its mission to make “the world a more interconnected place” and
as a research-supporting arm of U.S. Departments of State and Defense
(IIE 2019). From there, my proposal was presented to representatives from
Vietnam, who were given the ultimate say. It was a long process followed by
a long waiting period, during which I forgot I was being considered at all. I
had instead secured an internship that eventually did lead to a stable, 9–5 job
offer when I graduated in May.
Then, two weeks later, IIE called and told me to pack my bags.

SEARCHING FOR IDENTITY IN THE UNKNOWN

Growing up, I knew I was different from other American-born friends, but I
didn’t consider this in the context of being a refugee or even as the child of
immigrants. We simply lacked roots and ties to the Civil War, and the extent
of my heritage was limited to what I had immediately before me: my mother
and father, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I was never given the details of
my family’s evacuation, and there was never discussion of return, which I’ve
come to learn is common among children of immigrants and refugees escap-
ing trauma or war. According to Alice Bloch of the University of Manchester,
“Where there are on-going conflicts, human rights abuses and a lack of
democratic representation there can be fear and uncertainty and these influ-
ence aspirations for return” (2018: 2). My parents, who had fought against
communism in Vietnam (which was now the accepted form of government)
and who knew many who had been tortured in re-education camps, had no
interest in returning or inspiring me to return.
I had heard that my family was sponsored into a military base in Arkansas,
where my parents did the grueling work of sexing chickens for two years,
before they saved enough for a car with help from the local church. My
parents relocated our extended family to Mobile, Alabama, because a former
colleague told my dad that there were job opportunities with the U.S. Navy
and that the weather was similar to South Vietnam’s.
Besides those minor details, what I knew about that time in my family’s
history I learned from my own academic research in college, the evidence I
found in my parents’ room, and from the pieced-together accounts of fam-
ily members who didn’t want to talk about anything, but sometimes let their
regrets slip. While my family’s story could be considered tragic, compared to
the refugee stories I have heard since working with refugee communities as
an adult, our story is one marked by luck. After all, we escaped.
We had left in the fiery fallout of the war, from a beach outside Saigon
in 1975.2 My aunt, who was seven at the time, told me she remembered
 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs 265

losing a sandal on the beach as she ran to a helicopter. My father said this
was impossible because there was no helicopter. My grandmother claimed
that when we were in Vietnam, my mother and father had servants and
security detail. What I knew was that my mother was a schoolteacher,
and my father, a naval officer. Security guards seemed possible, if my
father was really a military target, but somehow in my mind, an entourage
of servants seemed to undermine whatever security guards would have
provided.
My grandmother, aunts, and uncles were full of stories about the country
and family we had been forced to leave behind. Stories of family celebra-
tions, of beaches, of markets, of holidays, and festivals, that sounded fantasti-
cal compared to the small homes and strip malls that made up our American
lives. What would have happened had we won the war? My father would
have been exalted as a naval officer, and my family would have risen to
societal power as heroes against communism and China. Instead of barely
making ends meet and my grandmother and grandfather subjected to back-
breaking work even in their old age, we would have been honored by family
and our community every Lunar New Year. Instead of my parents struggling
to earn respect with their limited English, we could have held our heads high,
knowing we had been on the right side of history, with all the glory in front
of us a result of my father’s valiant efforts. But history wasn’t on our side,
and every story wove the unimaginable—war! famine! escape!—with loss
and regret.
During the quiet Southern nights, my family would whisper, Who knows?
If we’d stayed in Vietnam, maybe my brother wouldn’t have died of an
aneurism at 9 years old because we would have had the best medical care
at the earliest possible point of intervention, or my aunt wouldn’t have
died of pneumonia because she would never have been waiting tables and
overworking herself with such labor. Somehow my sister might not have
been a juvenile diabetic; certainly, it had something to do with our adjusted
American diets. I spent another lifetime wondering about the possibilities.
Every other outcome seemed so different than the reality of our struggles
in Alabama.
I listened to my mother lament the quality of fruits and vegetables available
in our local grocery, felt my grandmother’s sadness when she felt she didn’t
have one neighbor she trusted, and tried to make my father proud by standing
tall, lest people not know that my family line mattered. All of these ideas built
upon themselves and reinforced each other: the United States was not really
ours; we were not natives. Without my family ever directly telling me and
with strangers constantly asking me where I was from, I understood America
was not home. Vietnam was.
266 Annie Nguyen

DEFINING HOME AND “IMAGINED HOME”

AS PART OF A DISPLACED DIASPORA

What is home? I’ve discovered, as I’ve met others like me, that many first-
generation Americans eventually ask themselves this question. Is home where
your family is at this moment? Or where your family had always been before?
If I were to reconcile the two parts of my hyphenated identity, then in
Vietnamese culture, the notion of where my family had always been, where
the graves of my ancestors laid, would define home. Growing up, my fam-
ily made it a part of our weekly practice to visit the graves of my aunt and
brother, to pay our respects and stay close to their memories. As additional
members of my family have passed, my parents have bought plots close to
those we’ve already lost and have often said they would never leave Mobile
because who would tend to our family graves? As a culture that reveres and
prays to ancestors who may have left land or property to be managed by their
descendants, home does not just embody a mental state but also a very physi-
cal place defined by visible markers.
In American culture, if you were to believe that art reflects society, then
the question of home as connected to identity seems to reflect the fact we are
a nation of immigrants, a nation founded by opportunists seeking religious or
economic freedom and practically exiled from our native lands. The idea of
home—which is forsaken when one leaves, even if leaving for opportunity
and then returning—seems embedded in our subconscious. Many literary
works, such as Joan Didion’s essay “On Going Home” (1968) and Thomas
Wolfe’s novel You Can’t Go Home Again (1940), famously fixate on notions
of returning home in the American psyche, though in neither work is the
protagonist able to comfortably return to the place their family raised them.
Such works often depict the prodigal child who, after finding their identity
as an adult elsewhere, tries to come home but cannot as they are no longer
accepted (or perhaps because they no longer accept that life) and because
the ideas, places, and memories associated with home have morphed beyond
their recognition. It is notable that both of these American works illustrate
that home is a place where one is not only born but where one stays, and those
who leave feel discomfort upon return.
While in these works home is to return to the home of one’s birthplace,
it is arguable that returning to a heritage home for the immigrant amplifies
these same desires for an accepting home. In literary iterations of immigrants
returning home, we see examples of hyphenated Americans who return to the
home of their parents and ancestors to find the roots of their own identity and
upbringing, and maybe with the conscious intent or not, to reconcile feelings
of guilt, sadness, obligation, and sometimes, even redemption. For example,
in Vaddey Ratner’s novel Music of the Ghosts (2018), Suteera Aung returns
 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs 267

to Cambodia and is pained by memories. She’s confused that, while she left
as a child refugee, she no longer recognizes Cambodia as home and instead
is forced to acknowledge secrets her family kept. Comedian Ali Wong,
in her memoir-like work “Dear Girls” (2019), admits that she journeys to
Vietnam as a student at UCLA because she doesn’t know enough about the
Vietnamese side of her identity, her mother’s side. When her mom comes to
visit, she discovers her mother is a “beaming extrovert,” one that is “confident
and funny” and not made to “feel primitive” (95), as she imagines her mom
feels in the United States. Seeing this side of her mother helps her understand
her own life and upbringing more.
These family secrets and altered identities seem to loom large in many
first- and second-generation immigrant and refugee’s hearts, obscuring what
is real and what is illusory. The kind of home that such immigrants of various
diaspora return to is the imagined home, much like the home I imagined when
growing up in Alabama which I had constructed from tidbits of stories from
my family. My family had regaled me with these tidbits in such nostalgic
terms that Vietnam could never be a real place.
Imagined home exists in the “storied life,” a term Anastasia Christou dis-
cusses in Narratives of Place, Culture and Identity, which helps to reassess
one’s “lived life.” In other words, what we imagine our ancestral home to
be influences how we live our lives, and when we confront the realities of
our ancestral homes, we reassess how we are living our lives and whether
our lived lives are true to our roots. Christou’s work, which collects oral and
written re-evaluations of home when second-generation Greek-Americans
embark on heritage travel, sees return migrations “as much a political event
as . . . a socio-cultural and personal activity” (Christou 2006: 66). She follows
several heritage travelers who feel strongly connected to Greece, remaining
connected to culture through food and dance, and return to find a “cultural
anxiety” in which their very real connection to Greece in their lived lives
makes returning to a storied life problematic. Suddenly, they feel as if they
are strangers in a land that should feel familiar. (I felt even my limited under-
standing of my native language betrayed me. Certain words/phrases that were
common in my family had become outdated in Vietnam in the 25 years since
my family had lived there, and people laughed when I used them.)
Christou’s work should be considered when designing programs meant to
target those of refugee or first-generation background returning to a heritage
home not only in how a person may not recognize the food and culture of
their homeland as they expect to but also in how she problematizes the idea
that the American immigrant story equals a story of survival that ends in suc-
cess. America is infamously regarded as a land of gold-paved streets, but in
reality, how many immigrants return to their heritage homes as successes or
are even able to address the questions posed to them about their families and
268 Annie Nguyen

the paths they’ve taken? If they are not successes, then the question of why
their family left at all can further isolate students completing study-abroad
programs in their heritage countries.
To address this disconnect or reservation that immigrants may feel in
completing diasporic travel, Paul Basu, who studied Scottish-Americans who
returned to Scotland, writes that the most significant part of diasporic tourism
was seeing an ancestral home or graveyard and cited that they felt they were
completing “a circle of life” (Basu 2007: 56). Basu claimed that members of
a diaspora often cling to their roots more than even native people may in the
ancestral lands. While the importance of an ancestral home may not be lost
on Scots themselves, this importance is not one that they feel missing and
must therefore seek. Basu’s work shows that by connecting students to places
particularly significant to their families when constructing heritage travel or
diasporic tourism, we may be able to supersede the feelings of regret or inad-
equacy that Christou alludes to.

WHEN STUDY ABROAD CREATES DISCOMFORT

In my own experiences, I understood what both Christou and Basu’s research

subjects felt and argue students should prepare for study abroad by consider-
ing these situations and possibilities. I was surrounded by cousins, uncles,
and more who wanted to know how my family had fared and wondered why
no one had come back sooner.
I spent my first few months in Vietnam living with my father’s closest
brother Bac Dư, who was what I always imagined an uncle should be. He
joked that his name meant “excess,” that as the eleventh child, he was really
“dư,” “one more than needed.” He told me folk stories intended to impart
some gem of wisdom and led me around proudly as his niece. “She got a
scholarship to come here to study,” he’d say. “Didn’t speak any Vietnamese
when she arrived and listen to her now!”
Bac Dư felt that a lifetime of being separated from the Vietnamese side of
my family meant that I didn’t have a clear understanding of the importance of
family. He went through pains to bring me to every relative I had who lived in
or passed through Saigon. Each week, he would say, “Are you ready to meet
relative number x?” or “Would you like to visit cousin blank?”
Outside of the relatives I met at the airport when I first arrived or the ones
who regularly came by to visit or take me out, other more distant relatives
remained a mystery to me. Most of them, I didn’t meet enough times to
remember their names, much less understand how they were related to me.
Others made me uncomfortable as they asked about my family’s success in
America and implied that because we were successful (at least in the sense
 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs 269

that we were Americans and not living in poverty in Vietnam), we needed to

help them more financially.
When I had first arrived at Bac Dư’s house, I had felt disoriented. My
uncle’s house was the first one inside a community separated from the alley
by a metal gate that was bike-locked at night. It looked more like a cave
than a house, with a small opening that led to a bleak interior. Opposite the
doorway stood wire chicken cages stacked on sheets of plywood and cinder
blocks. The piles that built up to the shabby tin roof and pressed along the
outside wall of his house rivaled my grandfather’s piles of junk back in
Mobile. Within the mishmash beside his door, I could make out a table, some
buckets and cardboard, maybe bricks and wondered how the objects were
stacked so as not to come tumbling into the alley.
My uncle didn’t have a shower or flushing toilet (so we bathed and flushed
using water from a bucket) and while he had electricity, it often went out
during the monsoon season. He didn’t have a refrigerator. We rarely ate meat
and never wasted food; leftovers were preserved or eaten room-temperature
within a day of preparation. There were also five of us crammed into 500
square feet of living space and sharing one queen bed and a concrete floor
covered with mats. I became used to living without warm water or privacy.
One day, Bac Dư asked me if I knew how often my father spoke with him.
I shook my head; I couldn’t begin to guess how often they communicated.
He pulled out a wooden box and thumbed through a stack of letters inside
that I assumed were from my father. Bac Dư separated three envelopes and
laid them before me. I recognized my father’s scrawl, the all capital, non-
cursive letters he used because he always worried about being misunderstood.
I handled the letters with care, thinking that they must have detailed the sig-
nificant events my parents had undergone after making it to the States. That
must have been the reason Bac Dư had singled out these three.
“That is all your father wrote in 27 years. Three letters.”
The first letter, I was told, announced my birth in 1978.
The second relayed my brother’s death in 1981.
And the last letter, postmarked in 2001, told my uncle to pick me up at the
airport.
I imagined my own sister and our relationship. Even when I was in college
and she was still living in Alabama, we spoke every couple of weeks. I cried
when I first heard her voice from the university’s office phone in Saigon. My
uncle and father hadn’t heard each other’s voice in nearly thirty years, and
letters did not fill the silence.
I imagined why my father didn’t write more. He couldn’t save his siblings
or their families when Saigon fell in 1975, and he continued to be powerless
to save them from reeducation and losing all of their lands in the aftermath of
the War. My family in America had neither power nor wealth. There were too
270 Annie Nguyen

many to sponsor all of them to America on visas, and even though I remem-
bered a childhood of sending “home” money, it had never been enough to
reclaim lost homes, cover medical expenses, or pay for books and tuition.
My father didn’t write more because he didn’t have more to give. I suddenly
understood why my parents didn’t want me to return.
The months I lived with my uncle challenged how I viewed myself and
considered poverty in terms of my own identity. I had always thought of
my family in Alabama as poor—we didn’t have namebrand clothing and ate
Spam regularly—but to see poverty in a different context, the way David
Shipler discusses in The Working Poor (2005), forever altered how I view
poverty. Shipler states: “By global or historical standards, much of what
America considers poverty is luxury” (8). He goes on to discuss sewer sys-
tems, electricity, and access to various kinds of foods, which are American
standards that were absent in the poverty my uncle experienced. This is not
to say that others around our house didn’t have access to showers and toilets
and refrigerators and less people and more space but simply that my uncle’s
level of poverty didn’t allow it.
I had sought a “real” experience as a student, but I hadn’t expected the
months of gastrointestinal problems, and had I not been living with my own
family, I wonder if I wouldn’t have flinched more or otherwise insulted
my hosts. As naïve as I was, I was ill-prepared mentally for what it would
be like to spend months without air-conditioning in temperatures over 100
degrees, and I often complained about these circumstances when I wrote. I
also felt terribly guilt each time I ate away from the house and spent more on
a Western-style pizza than what my uncle and aunt earned in a week. Often,
I hid how much I spent.
Had I been prepared properly—perhaps understanding the conditions in
which my relatives lived before arriving—could I have been more open-
minded and seen more? If the stay with my uncle had been shorter—a few
days or weeks versus a few months—would I have understood their hardships
or way of life?
As a practitioner, I’m uncertain about these answers, but I now recognize
that homestays in less affluent or less private circumstances can present vari-
ous challenges for students. Western society is rife with luxuries we take for
granted, so to expect anyone to adjust willingly and joyfully to a life of rustic
challenges would be its own kind of naiveté. Rather, by choosing the right
duration and framing homestays in the context of Shipler’s work, students
may not only have a better sense of daily life but also “get woke” and be able
to recognize that our view of poverty comes from a place of privilege. Those
in poverty abroad may not even see themselves in poverty, and we should not
assume their lives are lacking in any way.
 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs 271

RECONCILING REAL AND IMAGINED “HOME”

After living with my uncle, I began traveling as a backpacker and jumped

hostels from Saigon to Hanoi and back, then moved in with a Belgian expat
who had extra rooms to spare. He had dropped me off at my uncle’s home one
day and upon seeing its squalor, said, “This simply won’t do. You must come
live with me.” I spent four months learning Vietnamese at the University of
Social Sciences and Humanities in Saigon, a month writing on the beaches
of Nha Trang, and five months teaching English at both an international high
school for Korean expats’ children and at a community school for working
Vietnamese adults. I found time to write, frequented places enough so that
the locals started to invite me to their homes for dinner, and eventually broke
into a circle of high-rolling expats who would invite me for weekends in
Singapore or golfing in Phan Thiet.
These experiences were ones I could not have foreseen, while other
unplanned ones helped shape my understanding of Vietnamese culture and
where I fit. Once, a man who sat beside me was introduced as a soldier who
had tricked servicemen into believing he was their ally before killing them.
He smiled and lit a cigarette, and in the hatred I felt in that moment, I knew
I was American. Another time, my uncle led me back to our ancestral grave-
yard to honor the death date of my great grandfather, and a great-aunt grabbed
my hands and told me the blood that ran in her body ran through mine. In
the love I felt in that moment, I knew I would always be Vietnamese. These
experiences I would consider as my authentic ones that happened not because
I wanted them to but because I was given the freedom, time, and space to live
them as a person with dual identities.
At the end of my year in Vietnam, I returned to the alley where my uncle
lived.
“Con bé!” my aunt said. “Con bé trở về nhà!”
I smiled, embarrassed by her repeated term of endearment, “baby” and
feeling guilty that it had been so long since I had “returned home,” as she
said. My uncle ducked out of the house and welcomed me with a squeeze
of both shoulders. He repeated my aunt’s words: The little one is back
home.
My aunt grabbed a bottled Coke from an ice chest by the push-cart and
flicked off the cap. She stuck a straw in it, and I traded her for my bag of gifts.
I sipped my Coke as I watched my aunt and uncle pull out item after item,
their eyes smiling as they recognized one thing then the next.
“The water pitcher,” my uncle nodded. He pulled the lid off and inspected
the replaceable plastic tube of carbon that took out chlorine and lead. It was
the more advanced model that was supposed to take out the microbes that
272 Annie Nguyen

caused giardia, though I never had the faith to test it. I only drank bottled
water.
“You have to replace the filter every three months,” I explained and gave
them a package of additional filters.
“And where are we supposed to buy extra filters when these run out?” my
uncle asked.
I hadn’t thought of that. If they really started to use the pitchers, was it fair
for me to make them go back to boiling water when the filters stopped work-
ing? I rubbed my forehead.
“I’ll mail you extras from the States when you need them,” I said. I held
up a blouse to my aunt. My uncle looked over her shoulder as she held the
shirt up to the sunlight.
“But these clothes are too big for us,” my uncle said.
“Give them to someone who can wear them, then.” I tried to smile. I
noticed the hole in the shirt he was wearing, and recognizing it as one of
his good shirts, I pushed more clothes into my uncle and aunt’s open arms.
They folded the articles softly in their hands, considering them like curios. I
watched as my uncle held up a pair of my pants to his hipbones.
The rest of the gifts began to feel useless. All the clothes were too big,
and the flashlight would need batteries they couldn’t afford. The bike lock
implied that someone might actually take one of their creaky, one-speed
bikes when all around them, most households had mopeds. I felt better think-
ing at least the moped I had bought and used the past year would wind up in
their hands.
“Follow me,” my aunt said when the bag was empty. Inside the house, I
watched as she opened the doors of a rusting, turquoise wardrobe. Whenever
I pulled on those doors, I had to brace against the frame of the wardrobe to
keep it from toppling onto me. My aunt didn’t seem to have this problem.
The doors gave with ease, and I watched her tanned sinewy hands disappear
beneath her four sets of good rayon clothes, reappearing with a wooden chest
the length of a business size envelope. My aunt had pulled out the chest once
or twice before, and I knew it protected such important items as letters from
family members, government documents, and a silver and gold watch she had
been given in 1974.
She set aside these very few protected possessions and drew a 24-karat
gold chain that she held like thread in her fingers. Her mother had given it to
her, she explained, and then cupped her hand over mine. I uncurled fingers
to find a charm with two scalloped rows portraying ocean waves along the
bottom, a sailboat rocking in the center, and a thin rim of gold—the sun set-
ting on the horizon—making up the background. I ran a thumb over to feel
the textured relief of the sail, then squeezed my fingers to sense its weight.
Twenty-four karats and too weak for the story I wanted it to hold. Even the
 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs 273

background sun did nothing but serve as a reminder of the day and night
separating my family on either side of the Pacific.
“But, Aunt, I never wear gold,” I said and pushed the necklace back
toward her. She had already given me too much. After welcoming me on her
chicken-feathered paveway, she and my uncle had fed me and given me a
place to stay for five months; they had loved me as their own daughter from
the moment we’d met. I didn’t want anything else from her, and I knew the
necklace was worth more than anything else they owned. Certainly, her gift
was not an equal trade for the unwanted things that had not made the cut from
my possessions.
My aunt shook her head. In the dry heat, with her hands clasped over mine,
my aunt flashed me an ear-to-ear grin that always seemed more appropriate
on a jack-o-lantern than on her withered 68-pound frame. She had greeted
me with that grin each morning I lived with her, and it had become as much
a part of my wake-up as the clucking chickens outside the house. After I’d
moved out on my own, I came to visit to find her grin assuring me that home
was really with her and my uncle. Both almost sixty, she and my uncle were
childless, and there was little hope another niece would materialize from a
war-filled past to be the daughter in their lives. She and my uncle were more
likely to end their days alone in a city that seemed to be leaving them in dust
as well. The smile pulled her chin up and compressed her weathered face into
two halves.
She patted the charm closed into my hands. “Cho tình cảm.”
Tình cảm was the hardest word for me to understand when I was learning
Vietnamese. In the bare classroom of the Ho Chi Minh University of Arts and
Humanities, I had learned that by English translation, it most closely means
“affection,” “concern,” “sincerity,” or “love,” depending on the context.
(Recently, I also learned that paired with the name of a relative, it can also
mean the relationship between those relatives.)
However, from what I gleaned from the dense and smog-filled streets of
Saigon, in the salty air of Nha Trang, and on the marshy rice fields of Qui
Nhon, tinh cảm had many more connotations. It was the devotion children
celebrated when worshiping the death anniversaries of their parents, the kin-
ship that connected families separated by wars and continents. It was what
Southern Vietnamese felt separated them from their Northern brethren. In
turn, Northerners seemed to believe that the separation was more like igno-
rance and slothfulness.
“Tình cảm,” she said again, and I abandoned her standing in her doorframe,
dust settling on the concrete floor. I watched my aunt and my uncle wave
farewell to me through the rearview glass. They followed the car a few steps
before stopping in its wake of dust to let me out of sight. As I watched them
becoming smaller and smaller, I noticed something peculiar in their smiles,
274 Annie Nguyen

something I had misread at first. Their slightly pursed lips were filled not
with loss but, instead, hope. My hand relaxed around the necklace as I began
to understand the meaning of the gesture. She wanted to make me feel better
about leaving her in Vietnam to return to the States.

REFLECTING ON THE STUDY-ABROAD EXPERIENCE

As a writer, similar to an anthropologist, I knew the importance of keep-

ing meticulous records so I saved stories: of my uncle teaching me how to
ride a moped through the congested, monsoon-flooded streets of Saigon. Of
learning to do a traditional dance with teacups for International Women’s
Day. Of getting certified as a SCUBA diver, though I still don’t know how
to swim. Of children who watched me as a curious novelty and my aunt-in-
law’s mother who spat curses at me because she couldn’t see me through her
blinding cataracts. This led to my work in graduate school, where I wrote a
memoir capturing my experiences and discussing the ways my mind moved
from confusion and skepticism to understanding and wonder, and my heart
changed from reacting with fear to embracing love. One of the friends I
made in Vietnam, a German American expat, told me over a beer one day
that, “People are motivated by only two things: fear and love.” At the time, I
smiled at the sage-like way he delivered the line, but I discovered his words
to be true again and again in Vietnam, and in the twenty years since I’ve
returned home to America.
We can list so many reasons for the important decisions we make in life –
which college to attend if any, where to live or move to, what job to seek or
not—but ultimately, every decision can be distilled as one driven by love or
running from fear. As Americans, we tend to think of money as the driving
force for so many decisions, but even then, it’s the fear of not having money
that is the motivation. In studying abroad, in going back to the home of one’s
ancestors, there could be the love of adventure or family or the fear of never
knowing who you could have been or understanding fully who you are. It was
such a simple concept, an idea I may never have come across if I hadn’t lived
abroad, but one, like other revelations I discovered abroad, that I come back
to again across cultures and experiences.
I also understood after my year abroad that America would always be
home. I realized this in the way I seized up when 9/11 happened (I was cel-
ebrating someone’s return to their home country when the news hit Saigon) or
when I found myself seeking turkey on Thanksgiving or befriending anyone
near me speaking English. But home was also Vietnam. I left able to speak
the language, understanding my own sense of humor and superstitions better,
realizing that family—not money or success—was the love that propelled
 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs 275

me, and that, as my father always alluded to, one day I would have to return
to Alabama to take care of my parents when they could no longer care for
themselves.
Because I was not a traditional study-abroad student, worried about grades
for a class perhaps or unsure of a major, I was studying for studying’s sake
and already knew what I was most interested in researching—art, current
events and history, and literature. Much of my planning and advising for
students now involves whether the courses they are pursuing abroad align
with their majors, and to this end, I try to offer multiple writing courses (like
Creative Nonfiction and Research Writing) on one-study abroad program to
fit students’ ever-tightening course credit needs. For students who are unsure
of their studies or have no interest in studying and simply want to experience
a different culture and foreign environment, I find myself coaching ideas of
cultural respect more, that their time abroad is a time to study and learn, not
just party and become Instagram influencers. In both circumstances, I always
emphasize the privilege students have to be able to engage in the experience
of study abroad at all.
I wanted to learn and absorb as much as I could in my own year abroad. I
wanted to come back saying that it had been the best experience of my life,
that without it I wouldn’t be who I would later become. I knew I would have
to return to the States and somehow be able to explain how much my year
in Vietnam after graduating had been a wiser decision than, say, taking the
job offer extended to me after my college internship ended. For that reason
and because I was alone, I probably took more risks and pushed harder to
find the unique, authentic experience, but as I consider these thoughts, every
student who travels abroad wants to feel that their time abroad was time well
spent, that without it, they wouldn’t have had a complete college experience.
Reading the journals I filled about these experiences helps me remember what
the young student experience can be—full of wonder, joy, fear, and guilt.

A HOME IN TWO PLACES

Since 2001, I have returned to Vietnam several times, at times taking family
members and friends in America with me. My mother and father have recon-
nected with their lost relatives and have even journeyed back without me.
This is a far cry from when I had first told my family I was going to study
abroad for a year in Vietnam, when my mother told me that if she had a say
in it, she would not let me go.
When I came back from Vietnam, I mentored a Vietnamese American girl
for three years in D.C. through an at-risk youth organization called Asian
American LEAD, and later served as the Maryland manager for BPSOS
276 Annie Nguyen

(formerly Boat People SOS), a nonprofit that furthers social programs for
Vietnamese both in America and abroad. My understanding of poverty and
global impacts have changed (n.b. it is called the American War in Vietnam),
and I have dedicated much of my career to address the inequities that fos-
ter poverty here and abroad. Now that my husband and I have relocated to
Seattle, where there is a much larger Vietnamese population, I work with a
refugee organization that was founded by successfully resettled Vietnamese
women and often visit Vietnamese grocers and cafes. My daughter, at three,
is as comfortable eating phở with chopsticks as she is eating macaroni and
cheese with a fork. She knows that she was born in the year of the goat, and
next summer, during my next study-abroad program, I plan to take my hus-
band and daughter to Vietnam for a few weeks. It’s important to me that she
experiences her roots as a lived life, not a storied or imagined one. I’ll take
her to where her grandfather graduated from the Naval Academy and her
mother studied Vietnamese.
That year of studying abroad in Vietnam helped me understand how I
could live a hyphenated existence. I could be proud of the roots that gave
me strength—my parents’ sacrifices and resilience, their morals, and their
hopes and fears—while embracing all of the things like activism and voting,
freedom of speech and freedom of religion, handshakes and sarcasm, that I
valued as an American. Neither identity is any less real nor imagined. At this
point in my life and career, I very much consider myself part of the growing
Vietnamese diaspora, which, as a result of the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the
mass exodus of South Vietnamese refugees in the following decade, has bur-
geoned from Europe to Australia to the United States. My year abroad meet-
ing other Vietnamese and Việt Kiều—foreign Vietnamese like me who had
grown up elsewhere like France, Germany, and the United States—made my
world larger than I could have ever imagined; the stories we shared helped
me build a better interconnected understanding of my family and my place.
Home had become much more than the street I grew up on in Alabama.

THE LASTING IMPACTS OF STUDY ABROAD

In the almost 20 years since my year in Vietnam, I have traveled to more

than thirty-five countries and am designing short-term study-abroad programs
at UWT, after previously serving as the Study-Abroad Coordinator at the
Community College of Baltimore County. My current project is designing a
quarter program to Vietnam, where students under a statistics class taught by
my Vietnamese-born colleague and in my writing course will collect and ana-
lyze research for PeaceTrees Vietnam, an organization that seeks to remedy
 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs 277

the aftermath of the war, still, more than four decades later. We intend to
couple our courses by co-teaching an Art, Film, and Literature course on
Vietnam that will explore the country from both a native and American lens.
While I have already heard interest from students in the Vietnamese Student
Association, I have also generated interest among other students who are
interested in learning more about U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War or are
otherwise interested in learning more about Vietnam and her people.
I want students to understand that our world is interconnected and that we
study other cultures and travel abroad to cultivate a better understanding of
these connections. I am privileged to be able to teach students from a wide
variety of backgrounds, including first-generation students who are Latina,
Vietnamese, Filipino, Native American, Pacific Islander, and more. My work
focuses mostly on first-year students and students interested in writing, global
education, and studying abroad. In my writing courses, I make every effort to
include voices that examine multicultural and multiethnic issues and consider
concepts like bilingualism and immigration. I push students in my writing
courses to reflect on identity and what home means to them. I have them
consider language and its relevance to culture and how your use of language
may impact how others perceive you. On travel programs, I have students
journal on what differences they perceive and why they may be noticing these
differences. What does it say about what they expect in a home? I ask them
to consider daily experiences that challenge their beliefs or make them more
comfortable or not. I have them consider what makes a place home.
The notion of belonging and one’s authentic home or true identity is one
that I see many students still considering and obsessing over, like I did. I have
helped students apply for Fulbrights, and in those applications and the ones
I review for my own study-abroad programs, I ask students again and again,
why you, why this country, why your expectations? I hope that by helping
them ask the hard questions before they go, I’m also putting a check on the
idea of studying abroad as merely an escape.
Sometimes they look at me in the same pained way I imagine I must have
looked at my own professors. What do you mean? they plead.
And then I draw from my own travels and let them know that no one can
tell you where you belong or a heritage country may not offer anything more
than a current one, but by studying abroad and opening their world to travel,
they have the chance to discover and sometimes create the home they want
for themselves. I recognize that their trips may be shorter, that they may not
have family waiting for them or have a way to genuinely connect with the
country they wish to explore. Authentic experiences can rarely be predicted
or planned, and I warn them that their expectations may not be in line with
reality.
278 Annie Nguyen

This is particularly true among children of refugees, asylees, or immigrants

who come to the United States under persecution or economic tragedy. In
these cases, like my family, students have not had the opportunity to return
to the ancestral home because of the guilt their family may have from leaving
or the way their family no longer identifies with the native land as “home”
(because being persecuted and then fleeing dissolves notions of home, and
because in the U.S. naturalization process we ask immigrants to give up prior
identities). Further, while some immigrants may become successful once they
have transitioned to the United States, the vast majority of immigrants, and
by extension their children, struggle to make ends meet, and returning home
can be read as a sign of success attained in the new country. If that success
has not materialized, the pressure or disappointment students feel in the home
country can be palpable.
Thus, a well-crafted study-abroad program goes beyond connecting
students to a place they’ve imagined, to also emphasize identity, voice,
self-advocacy, and inclusion. As universities and colleges focus more on
intersectionality and diversity initiatives, we need to seek more ways to cre-
ate study-abroad opportunities that recognize identities students may share
with host countries while creating environments where students without that
heritage background are able to immerse themselves in the culture in mean-
ingful ways. In fact, study abroad focused on connecting diasporic students
with their homelands alongside students without that cultural background
provides the unique opportunity to help students better understand the mean-
ing of home and identity and see their potential as advocates and diplomats
for hyphenated experiences, and for the lands left that have become part of
our American fabric. In this way, we have the opportunity to create global
citizens with a humane understanding of the world while giving students an
experience that could lead to a lifelong connection to a place and to a life full
of experiences beyond what they may have grown up imagining or believing
they could have.
As educators, we do not always know the circumstances from which our
students come, the sacrifices they may have made to study abroad, the indi-
vidual motivations for a certain country at that certain time, whether they
have ever felt at home in their own skin or in the physical surroundings of
their community. All we can do is consider what identities a student already
claims and appreciate that a student chose our program over another or chose
a program at all. We can foreground their experience so that their expecta-
tions are tempered with reality, and they are better prepared to welcome dif-
ferent, new experiences and learn from them.
If we’re lucky, they’ll come home understanding themselves and their
place in this world better.
 Finding Home, Identity, and Meaning in Study-Abroad Programs 279

NOTE

1. Author’s linguistic note: Denoting bicultural identity in this chapter consists of

using a hyphen between cultures, in line with scholarship at the time of the author’s
own understanding of identity. Recent challenges to this denotation centers on the
notion that hyphens should not be used and that by incorporating a hyphen, the
emphasis is on “America” rather than the initial culture named. That is not the intent
of the author, as both identities are seen as equal.
2. Saigon, or Sài Gòn in Vietnamese, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976,
after the fall of South Vietnam. The renaming is commonly cited as a tribute to the
revolutionary communist leader Ho Chi Minh, as well as a way to recognize the
North’s success in the Vietnam War. As the author’s family fled South Vietnam in
1975, the author and her family refer to this city by its original name of Saigon, which
the author continues to use throughout this chapter as a nod to her own positionality as
the daughter of refugees who fled a country that also no longer exists (South Vietnam
identified as its own country from 1954-1975). It should be noted that members
of the Vietnamese diaspora as well as residents of Vietnam today use the original
name interchangeably with its current name, but officially, the city is now Ho Chi
Minh City.

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Chou, Julie. 2010. “Chapter 8: Living on the Hyphen.” In Language and Culture:
Reflective Narratives and the Emergence of Identity, 66–71. London: Routledge.
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Didion, Joan. 1968. Slouching Towards Bethlehem. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux.
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 Chapter 11

Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism

The Ethical Implications of Study Abroad
Michael A. Di Giovine

INTRODUCTION: THE ANTI-TOURISM CONTEXT

In the hot summer sun of 2017, protests against the unsustainable nature of
modern mass tourism erupted in major tourist destinations—first Barcelona
and other Spanish towns, then spreading across the Mediterranean to Venice
and Dubrovnik. Teens slashed tourists’ bike tires. Medieval walls were spray
painted in English with hostile messages such as “Tourists are the Terrorists,”
“Mass Tourism = Human Pollution,” and “Tourists: Your Luxury Trip is My
Misery.” Banners were unfurled from Baroque balconies condemning AirBnB
and tourists’ complicity in the “tourism gentrification” it fosters (see Gotham
2018); one of the most prominent to emerge in Google image searches is quite
articulate in its explanation of the problem: “Welcome Tourist: Your rental
of this holiday apartment in this neighbourhood destroys the socio-cultural
fabric and promotes speculation. Many local residents are forced to move
out. Enjoy your stay.” Marching in the streets, locals demanded that “tourists
go home” and that their historic centers and beaches were “closed” and “only
for locals.” While most of these messages were in the international tourism
language of English, Venetians emphasized their local-ness and its precarity
by carrying banners written in the largely extinct dialect: “Mi no vado mi
resto. So Venexian no so in vendita voio viver qua” (I’m not leaving, I’m
staying. I’m Venetian; I’m not for sale. I want to live here). What started
with frustration over the unsustainability of tourism among small but vocal
groups of disenfranchised locals (and, in the case of Barcelona, mobilized by
left-wing political parties [Hughes 2018])—particularly the crush of tourists
inundating narrow cobblestoned streets as they were unloaded daily from
mega-cruise ships, the destabilizing effect of AirBnB that prices locals out
of their own neighborhoods, and unfulfilled promises of social and economic

281
282 Michael A. Di Giovine

benefit stemming from tourism development schemes—snowballed into a

veritable movement that continues to inform critics of tourism today. To
wit, anonymous graffiti artist Banksy made headlines with an uninvited and
unauthorized art installation at the 2019 Venice Biennale: evoking the work
of eighteenth-century Baroque artist Canaletto, it was an installation of elabo-
rately framed landscape paintings of Venice, which, when put together, reveal
an enormous cruise ship marring the traditional romantic view of St. Mark’s
Square. The commentary was clear: Venice, like other iconic tourist cities,
is in trouble; it suffers from “over-tourism”—that is, too much tourism, too
fast, too destabilizing, and too superficial to foster and maintain local well-
being. Milano, Novelli, and Cheer point out that over-tourism involves “the
excessive growth of visitors leading to overcrowding in areas where residents
suffer the consequences of temporary and seasonal tourism peaks, which have
caused permanent changes to their lifestyles, denied access to amenities and
damaged their general well-being” (2019: 354; see also Milano et al. 2018,
2019). Such pressures on, and marginalization of, the local community then
produce, they contend, a sensation of “tourismphobia”—a somewhat xeno-
phobic aversion and hostility to tourists and the tourism industry (Milano
2017; Milano et al. 2019a, 2019b; see also Delgado 2008; cf. Turner and
Ash 1975). Yet tourismphobia could also be considered a direct and perhaps
exaggerated reaction to the “tourismphilia” that some industry professionals
and even interdisciplinary tourism scholars embrace, particularly when the
benefits of tourism do not seem to pan out as promised (Zerva et al. 2019).
While most of the protesters may have been unaware of it, the timing was
important: it had been announced by the United Nations World Tourism
Organization (UNWTO) earlier that 2017 was the International Year of
Sustainable Development for Tourism. Based in Madrid, the UNWTO is the
United Nations’ arm for promoting tourism economically and politically.
Unlike the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), whose flagship initiative is the World Heritage program that is
intended to safeguard natural and cultural sites (see Cameron and Meltzer
2013: 244), and which notably has held an ambivalent stance on tourism
despite (unintentionally) contributing to its growth (Di Giovine 2014: 7898),
the UNWTO is more business-oriented, occupied with the promotion of
tourism destinations as well as favorable policies for tourism development.
Telling of its business bent, the UNWTO’s slogan in 2017 was “1 billion
tourists, 1 billion opportunities” and featured graphs of how much money can
be produced for the nation-state by adopting tourism development schemes.
Unprecedentedly, these two organizations, which traditionally had not col-
laborated with each other, had just ratified the 2015 Siem Reap Agreement to
foster a partnership to develop more sustainable tourism; 2017’s International
Year of Sustainable Development for Tourism was their first public foray into
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 283

collaboration. The anti-tourism movement thus simultaneously criticized and

bolstered the year’s theme: on the one hand, it indicated how seemingly out
of touch (or uninformed, or greedy) some policy makers and industry profes-
sionals could be in their unabashed support for, and promotion of, increased
mass tourism; on the other hand, it emphasized the very need for greater
attention toward sustainability in the sector.
But although the anti-tourism movement purports to be a new phenome-
non—a spontaneous bubbling up of frustration with the unsustainability of
mass tourism in specific, heavily touristed areas, or yet another reason to
critique the current unsustainability of our market-based, neoliberal capitalist
system in general, as sustainability activists might see it (see Hughes 2018
for the case of Barcelona)—the sentiments of anti-tourism are not new. It is
not a movement as much as it is a historically situated set of ethical forms
of visitation, an oppositional category defined against all that seems to be
wrong or unsustainable with modern mass tourism. And it has been around
for a long time, beginning at least in the mid-nineteenth century when upper-
classes engaged in “tourist-bashing” to assert their cultural capital amid an
increasingly mobile working classes, drawn en masse to seaside resorts by
Thomas Cook’s affordable travel packages (Welk 2004: 84), and continuing
to the present day—most notably among young, upwardly mobile backpack-
ers who symbolically, discursively, and performatively “reject everything
that is assumed to be typically ‘touristy.’ As anti-tourists, they claim to have
more ‘authentic’ experiences . . . and to be ‘closer to the real people’” (83).
Eschewing mass tourism, these backpackers travel “off the beaten path” and
cheaply “on a shoestring” (as Lonely Planet guidebooks say) in search of an
elusive paradise, which “serves as the antithesis of modern civilization (i.e.,
to its negative excesses) and, in this way, it is a projection of our own roman-
tic yearning for virgin innocence and originality . . . the touristic ‘return’ to
paradise” (81–82). Yet criticizing this “tourist angst,” which he sees as par-
ticularly class-related (after all, these backpackers are often the children of
the wealthy middle- and upper-class tourists who are also loathe to call them-
selves mass tourists), Paul Fussell famously states, “the anti-tourist deludes
only himself. We are all tourists now” (1980: 49).
Yet imbued with these rather class-based anti-touristic assertions are strong
moralizing discourses about how visitation ought to be managed, how visi-
tors ought to behave, what outcomes ought to occur, and even who ought to
travel. Indeed, Jim Butcher points out that such discourses developed around
the 1980s, when travel become increasingly associated with wider moral,
social, and political projects of “ethical selfhood,” the “forging of an ethi-
cal sense of self in a world in which that import of older political and moral
parameters has diminished” (2017: 127). Tourism in general has been con-
nected to modern travelers’ self-fashioning as cosmopolitan, of being in and
284 Michael A. Di Giovine

of the world (Shepherd 2018; Picard and Buchberger 2013), and anti-touristic
processes such as volunteering, traveling off the beaten path to experience
the authentic, studying and engaging in educational activities, and otherwise
bodily engaging with locals seems to enhance a sense of cosmopolitanism
(see Butcher 2017).
While there are different definitions of cosmopolitanism, many focus on
the idea that one is inherently worldly and world-wise, comfortable with
diversity, morally unified with people outside of their own ethnic group or
nationality. They are, as universities like to call it today, global citizens—the
cultivation of which is a prime formational objective of many study-abroad
programs (see Feinberg and Edwards 2018). While the two terms are roughly
the same thing, the concept of citizenship connotes a sense of contractual
belonging that cosmopolitanism does not, of rights and concomitant obliga-
tions, duties, and expectations. Ethically, as a citizen, we should actively
participate in the process; we must likewise behave in a just manner to other
citizens. But unlike the kinds of social contracts associated with citizenship
in the modern-era (see, for example, the Enlightenment writers Hobbes,
Locke, and Rousseau), global citizens transcend the geographic entity of a
nation-state (Butcher and Smith 2015: 89–90) and take on a more ecological
understanding of the interconnectedness of the world system and the trav-
eler’s place in it. Consequently, the actions associated with global citizen-
ship are more holistic, focusing on issues that transcend the problems of one
nation-state, such as global poverty and development, health and inequality,
environmentalism and climate change (Dower 2003). It also should culti-
vate reflexivity concerning the policies of one’s own country, an interest in
international affairs, and a commitment to just action, states Bhikhu Parekh
(2003: 12–13). “Global citizenship does not come with its own passport, or
legal/political rights. It is, however, an important reference point for people’s
moral, social and political ambitions, connoting a cosmopolitan view of the
world and a desire to act in support of others,” Butcher writes (2017: 127).
As the contributions in this book reveal, study abroad falls into this cat-
egory of anti-tourism. Study abroad is a form of mobility that encapsulates
anti-touristic values: traditionally slow and immersive, based on education
and quality local interaction, purporting to be work and not a holiday or a
party, and aimed at breaking down ethnocentrism and creating cosmopolitan
“global citizens” rather than transient visitors, it positions itself against the
stereotypically fast, superficial, uninformed, socially destabilizing leisure
pursuits that are often perceived to occur within the tourist bubble. This
book’s purpose, then, has been to examine the ways in which study-abroad
programs are perceived to stand in opposition to the stereotypical forms of
mass tourism; how they are conceived of, marketed, and carried out to both
capitalize on tourist imaginaries yet transcend them and how the program
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 285

creators and directors—most of whom are anthropologists here in the vol-

ume—consciously or unconsciously engage with the ethics of visitation as
they lead their students abroad. It is important to emphasize that neither I
nor the volume as a whole argue that tourism is necessarily and universally
unsustainable or that study abroad is definitively the antidote to the perceived
ills of mass tourism. Indeed, many (if not all) of the authors here critically
engage with study-abroad practices, even as they embrace, participate in, and
promote them. Rather, the book points out that study abroad is often pre-
sented in opposition to mass tourism as an antidote or form of anti-tourism
by study-abroad marketers, the university, faculty directors, and even the
students themselves. Furthermore, while the contemporary anti-tourism
movement is clearly a product of distinctive socio-economic and political
ideologies, and has been critiqued (sometimes rightly) as “touristphobic” if
not xenophobic, this book decouples the term from its current political usage,
considering it a discursive and performative means of presenting certain
forms of mobile travelers and processes of visitation as a perceived antidote
to (stereo)typical tourism.
This chapter unpacks the common claim that study abroad is “anti-
touristic” in nature—particularly emphasizing the ethical dimension of both
interrelated phenomena. Based on over two decades working in and study-
ing the travel sector (including a short career as an educational tour opera-
tor for university alumni organizations and museum docents), ethnographic
research, and a lifetime of study abroad (having first participated as a child
(Di Giovine 2009: 1), then as a college student (Di Giovine 2010: 181–182),
and later as a professor/director), this chapter theorizes study abroad as exist-
ing on a spectrum between traditional tourism processes and historically
situated anti-tourism initiatives and provides some ethical considerations of
student engagement in study-abroad programs, particularly those—such as
many here—that utilize an ethnographic component.

STUDY ABROAD AS A HISTORICALLY

SITUATED FORM OF ANTI-TOURISM

As anti-tourism is an oppositional category, placed in juxtaposition to tour-

ism, it is opportune to first briefly examine what tourism is. The United
Nations broadly defines tourism as “the activities of persons traveling to and
staying in places outside their usual environment for no more than one con-
secutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exer-
cise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited” (United Nations
2010: 10). Interdisciplinary tourism scholars typically view it through the
lens of business and management, pointing out that it is an industry (really
286 Michael A. Di Giovine

a collection of hospitality-related industries), and, when done correctly, one

that can lead to economic development, individual and community empow-
erment, the conservation of cultural resources, and even better integration
into global markets and world political systems. Through the years, social
scientists have deepened the definition of tourism pointing to its voluntary,
temporary, and perspectival nature (Di Giovine 2013); they point out that it is
a ritual inversion of workaday life (Graburn 1977), a seeking out of authen-
ticity that may be performed or staged by hosts (MacCannell 1976), a way
of seeing difference informed by one’s worldview (Urry 2002), and travel to
engage with Otherness (Picard and Di Giovine 2014)—an act of contact that
allows hosts, guests, and others to negotiate identities and self-representations
(Bruner 2005; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998; Leite et al. 2019). Yet as Nash
(1977) famously argued, it is predicated on unequal power relations that
translate into the marginalization of hosts to such an extent that it can be con-
sidered a modern form of imperialism, often benefiting foreign institutions
more than host countries despite the promise of “tourism development” (de
Kadt 1979). It is thus complex and paradoxical; as an encapsulation of global
political, economic, and social relations (see Nogues Pedregal 2019), it can
be a powerful tool for self-expression by all stakeholders in the touristic field,
of economic development and the improvement of well-being, and even has
the potential to foster intercultural understanding and peace (Carbone 2017;
Var and Ap 1998), but it also simultaneously produces a number of pressures
on different communities because of these same processes (Di Giovine 2017).
As the name suggests, anti-tourism practices, in theory, should thus be
placed in opposition to these central stereotypical tropes: Instead of fast and
short, they should be slow and longer-term. Rather than being superficial
and “staged,” they should be deeper and authentic. Instead of separating or
gentrifying tourists and the toured through the imposition of a tourist bubble
(Cohen 1972: 166), they should be immersive and interactive (cf. Cortini and
Converso 2018). Rather than being purely commodities, they should tran-
scend profit-based interests in favor of loftier aims, even if they are costly.
Instead of being a voluntary leisure activity—an escape, as Graburn (1977)
famously pointed out, from the typical work-a-day routine—they should
require effort and dedication, even hard work or challenging study; they
may be considered an extension of one’s obligations in daily life even if still
undertaken willfully, unremunerated, and without coercion.1
In the course of human history, and especially since the advent of modern
mass tourism, there have emerged a number of non-coerced forms of mobility
undertaken in periods reserved for rest (such as school or work breaks) that
are nevertheless considered by the practitioners to meet such an anti-tourism
ethos. Some of these have emerged well before modern tourism, while oth-
ers in response to it. Likewise, despite often stated objectives differentiating
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 287

Figure 11.1  Spectrum of Anti-Tourism Forms of Travel.

themselves from modern mass tourism, most—if not all—of these anti-tourism
forms of mobility utilize the same infrastructure, imaginaries, and cultural dis-
tinctions as tourism. Study abroad, then, can be seen as existing on a spectrum
of historically situated ethical approaches to visitation that predate the current
anti-tourism movement, and which exist in opposition to the kinds of mass
tourism from the post–World War II era onward. There are, of course, other
forms of niche tourism promoted on the supply side that attempt to mitigate
some of the same problems—such as ecotourism, community-based tourism,
indigenous tourism, and the nebulous sustainable tourism (see UNWTO 2019
for an attempt to define these different terms)—but while consumers do exer-
cise ethical decision-making in choosing these forms, I argue that they never-
theless consider themselves as tourists. Contrarily, I argue here that visitors
participating in the anti-tourism types of visitation on this spectrum frequently
see themselves as something different than tourists altogether, based on the
ethical forms of engagement they perceive as an antidote to modern tourism
pressures; the spectrum proposes service as an antidote to inequality, educa-
tion as an antidote to superficiality, and relationship-building as an antidote
to staged authenticity and the separation between stakeholders in the tourism
field. Uniquely, study abroad not only falls at the center of this continuum but
also frequently integrates other anti-touristic forms on this spectrum as well.
As Figure 11.1 shows, study abroad thus rests at the center of a spectrum of
anti-touristic travel forms, which provide antidotes to typical touristic stereotypes
through service, heightening education, and forging relationships with locals.
Study abroad also may incorporate other anti-touristic forms on this spectrum.

Pilgrimage and Mission Work

At the far end of this spectrum is pilgrimage, the first and possibly the oldest
form of human mobility outside of warfare (Di Giovine and Elsner 2016).
288 Michael A. Di Giovine

While some scholars of pilgrimage and religious studies argue that pilgrim-
age is a separate category from tourism altogether (see Di Giovine 2013),
much of the mobilities literature recognizes a shared structure and core
behaviors between the two (see, for example, Badone and Roseman 2004).
While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to enumerate all of these, suffice
it to say that pilgrims patronize the same commercial infrastructures as tour-
ists (hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops, historic buildings and sites, but also
transportation infrastructures like trains, buses, roadways and bridges); they
often entertain similar “tourist imaginaries” (Salazar and Graburn 2014) of
the land and the people; and base (if not share) their expectations of comfort
and security on those in tourism—even if they explicitly attempt to negotiate
levels of comfort with an intent to suffer (Di Giovine 2015). In short, “a pil-
grim is half a tourist if a tourist is half a pilgrim” (Turner and Turner 1978),
and they can be conceived as parallel lanes in the same roadway across which
such travelers constantly change (Smith 1992).
Yet the perceived outcomes are decidedly, and markedly, opposed to that of
tourism even if scholars approach tourism, as Graburn did, as a “sacred jour-
ney” (1977) or a “secular pilgrimage” (2001). Indeed, pilgrims who often see
themselves as existing “above and beyond” secular tourism, often in discourse
utilize the term pilgrimage as an oppositional category— vaguely consider-
ing their journeys and behaviors as “pilgrimage not tourism” something more
meaningful—hyper-meaningful even—for themselves, at least (Di Giovine
2013: 64). While still short-term and temporary, the goal of pilgrimage is
often to obtain a transformative experience with Otherness (often conceived
of as the sacred or supernatural [Di Giovine and Choe 2019]): this can be
physical, as in the case of seeking miraculous interventions for health or good
fortune (for the latter, see O’Regan et al. 2019); spiritual, as in the case of
earning merit that will liberate the suffering soul in the afterlife; or existential
and informational, as in obtaining a better understanding of a saint’s life that
can be a better model for how to live out their religious values more effec-
tively. Thus, even the mass-produced souvenir trinkets, which tourists may
also purchase, have a formative purpose: “they help me pray” as pilgrims
have said to me (Di Giovine 2013: 82), or, gifted to others back at home, they
bring the sacred’s “contagious magic” (Frazier 1994[1890]) to others, or at
least provide concrete evidence that their friends and relatives who could not
make the journey were nevertheless thought about as subjects of prayer at the
sacred site (Kaell 2012).
Thus, pilgrimage is classically anti-touristic not because it remediates the
common pressures on host communities—the hajj to Mecca, the Kumbha
Mela at the Ganges, and the Shiite Arbae’en attract tens of millions of visitors
at a time, and generate the same commercial interests that lead to economic
and political pressures among different stakeholders and the local population
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 289

(for example, the government of Saudi Arabia has been critiqued for this as it
profits off of hajj pilgrimage through the use of indentured workers [see Butt
2013]). In fact, it often necessitates great expenditures on the host community
that do not economically pay-off: my field site of Pietrelcina, the birthplace
of the popular Catholic saint Padre Pio, does not earn much economic benefit
from the some half-million pilgrims who visit annually because pilgrims’
major expenditures occur at Pio’s shrine some 135 km away, yet they gener-
ate so much trash that it is the most accurate way to count annual visitation
to the town. Pilgrimage also does not necessarily provide instances of deep
interpersonal interaction with locals, as the goal is rather to build connec-
tions with the unseen divine, often embedded in saints’ tombs, landforms,
and other sacred sites (Di Giovine and Elsner 2016). Furthermore, it might
not even foster the sense of unity among pilgrims that sponsoring churches
and religious organizations hope to produce; Eade and Sallnow (2000[1991])
famously argued that, rather than fostering a unifying sense of “communitas”
as Turner (1974) proposed, pilgrimage is predicated on contestation and the
negotiation of difference. Rather, similar to study abroad, it is directed at the
formation of the individual visitor, shaping them intellectually, psychologi-
cally, and morally. Also similar to study abroad, the individual’s social status
may change; those who return from the hajj, for example, enjoy the status
of a hajji which is accompanied by elevated roles in the society just as we
might consider students who complete study-abroad opportunities to be more
“global citizens” that can better open doors for jobs in the business world
when they put their experience on a resume.
Pilgrimage as such might not be frequently integrated into study-abroad
programming at North American liberal arts institutions that attempt to
remain religiously neutral, though often study-abroad students may visit the
same sites and are even encouraged to observe or participate in religious
activities as a method of education and engagement; one theology professor
at a Franciscan university builds Mass attendance into his program: “I encour-
age them to come but I don’t push,” he said to me (fieldnotes 5/25/2019). Yet
for some religious institutions, short-term mission work is indeed built in.
For example, though unaffiliated with a university, Mormon (male) teenag-
ers must go on a gap year mission domestically or internationally in order to
enjoy the full member status in the Church (see McIntyre and Olsen (2019)
for a discussion of the similarities between pilgrimage and Mormon mission
trips). Similarly, in this book, Katharine Serio accompanied several short-
term mission trips through the United Methodist Church and points out that
it is decidedly anti-touristic in its rhetoric and approach, partially resembling
pilgrimage in its goal of making students moral members of the Church and
strengthening their individual relationship to God, while at the same time
resembling study abroad in its targeting of college-age students, its focus on
290 Michael A. Di Giovine

personal education concerning the land and culture of the destination, and its
emphasis on deeper, more meaningful interaction with locals. What possibly
sets this type of experience apart from the classic Mormon mission is the ser-
vice component: rather than strictly visiting historic sites like tourists do, or
going door-to-door as Mormon youths often do, student-age missionaries also
conduct volunteer service projects aimed at bettering the local community
by helping to provide medical (and perhaps spiritual) outreach. Students are
explicitly made to reflect on their experiences, their interactions with locals
and their discomfort in being elsewhere. This ultimately helps forge more
tolerant and educated church members, strengthens their sense of community
identity, and provides them with the life skills of a missionary who is able
to “witness” (publicly model Christian values with the intent of conversion)
to people in unfamiliar settings. Thus, short-term mission work plays on the
traditional missionizing goal as well as the standard anti-tourism ethic of
“doing good” for the host community through service, to use Coffman and
Prazak’s term in this volume. “Focusing too much on their own spiritual
growth with less attention to service undermines the official purpose of the
mission, especially for any local organization run by community members
who do have a vested interest in the health of their community,” Serio writes
(p. 205, this volume).

Voluntourism and Service

Service is often seen as a key anti-tourism ethic in study-abroad programs,
as many chapters in this volume reveal (see, in particular, chapters by
Coffman and Prazak; Serio; and Ascione); and indeed, volunteer tourism, or
“voluntourism” itself is a growing anti-touristic form of tourism. The senti-
ment is shared by voluntourists themselves—who, Harng Luh Sin argues
(2009: 482), often consider themselves students of “service learning.” Sin
also shows that tourism scholars tend to regard voluntourism as a sort of
anti-touristic practice as well: “Voluntourism is frequently seen as an alter-
native to the ills observed in other forms of tourism (Gray and Campbell
2007), or at least assumed to bring about positive changes in either volunteer
tourists (McGehee and Santos 2004; Zahra and McIntosh 2007) or their
communities” (Scheyvens 2002; Uriely et al. 2003). Vrasti (2012: 2) argues
the increase in voluntourism’s popularity likely stems first and foremostly
from its positioning “as an alternative to and critique of mass tourism and its
notoriously destructive effects”—that is, its positioning as an anti-touristic
practice. Furthermore, she continues (2012: 2), the emphasis on profes-
sionalization and institutionalization has likewise “turned volunteer tourism
into a ‘standard requirement for higher education and career development’”
(Simpson 2005: 448).
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 291

Like mission work, voluntourism is intended to provide more meaning-

ful interactions with locals, help those perceived to be less fortunate than
the comparatively wealthier student travelers, and engage with discomfort
so as to deliver a more “authentic” in-country experience. Proponents of
voluntourism (Wearing 2001) as a perceived antidote to the unsustainability
of modern tourism argue that it also provides economic benefits to the host
community; it captures a demographic of relatively wealthy travelers and
keeps them at a site for an extended period of time and provides expensive
services to the host communities ostensibly at little or no economic cost
to them. Particularly when coupled with study-abroad programming, it is
further conceived of as educational—important for sensitizing students that
people live in different ways and with different (and often seemingly more
serious) problems than they do, and, particularly for “pre-medical” under-
graduate voluntourism experiences like the organization Medlife provides,
hands-on, “high impact” learning (Kuh 2008) of medical practices usually
reserved for traditional internships in-country. This, in turn, might allow the
student to be more competitive when applying to medical school (McGloin
and Georgeou 2016)—a primary motivation for my advisees in the Medlife
Club. (I became a very reluctant advisor to the club when the original advisor
left the university.) In short, it is conceived of by practitioners as “traveling
with a purpose” (Brown 2005), as opposed to the perceived superficiality of
mass tourism (despite the fact that tourism still is purposeful travel).
However, there are a number of ethical considerations concerning vol-
untourism in general, and particularly with utilizing undergraduates. While
voluntourism advocates argue that it can monetarily help the host community,
McCall and Iltis (2014) point out that this is not necessarily the case. On
the one hand, undergraduate students are not skilled laborers and are often
unprepared for the tasks at hand, leading to wasting the recipient’s resources
and ineffective, and sometimes negative, impacts. On the other hand, the
same sort of economic “leakage” (de Kadt 1979) occurs in voluntourism
situations as it does in broader tourism development schemes for develop-
ing countries; instead of staying in the developing country as promised,
the majority of profits benefit larger, Euro-American-based companies that
facilitate the services—one of the earliest critiques of modern mass tourism
(see de Kadt 1979; Di Giovine 2009b). As McGloin and Georgiou (2016:
405) remind readers, “Voluntourism is an economic activity driven by profit
occurring within an unregulated industry and operating without any accredi-
tation process. Monies are paid to a tour operator whose business is based in
the Global North and who profits from sending others to developing countries
and communities.”
Arguably, there are qualitative differences among the various types of
voluntourism experiences that impact the host community differently, as
292 Michael A. Di Giovine

evidenced by their program’s goals. For Tucson-based Borderlinks, which

takes students on migrant trails at the U.S.–Mexican border to help refill
giant water canisters left for undocumented migrants and to collect clothing,
backpacks, documents, and other discarded “trash” (or artifacts) left behind
during their difficult journeys—some of which are then donated to museums
and organizations (such as my own university museum; see www​.wcupa​.edu​
/museum) or cleaned and resold to help their work—the objective is to sensi-
tize the student to the plight of the migrant, to break common stereotypes pro-
duced by politicians and the media concerning legality and illegality and the
purpose of border walls, and, they hope, to create new activists. Borderlinks
does not seek to cultivate interactions with migrants or locals (many of their
travelers do not speak Spanish anyway!) but rather with migrants’ artifactual
material culture, with the environment that claims so many of their lives, and
with the United States–based humanitarian activists working on the ground
to change policy for them. Similarly, the aforementioned theology profes-
sor had conducted a service project in Italy wherein his students joined new
immigrant youths from North Africa on a day’s work on the farm; while
he admitted that the experience probably did not help out the farmer, it did
sensitize the students to the plight of these refugee youths and humanize the
migrants living in a social context where they face increasing hostility (field-
notes 13/6/2019).
But many other non-profit organizations do cater specifically to voluntour-
ists’ interest in temporarily lending a hand with tasks that directly engage
them with locals, such as working for a day at Southeast Asian orphanages,
building homes and wells in Africa, helping farmers plant and harvest their
crops, and, yes, providing basic medical outreach despite a lack of true pro-
fessional knowledge of the subject on the part of the students. The latter form
brings up deeper ethical issues: Can the student-cum-voluntourist really make
a difference given their length of time working and their lack of professional
knowledge? Do they do more harm than good?
Certainly, any work of charity can have a positive impact at the material
level, but as Wallace (2012) points out, the use of unskilled laborers may
provide more pressures on the host than benefits. This seems to be par-
ticularly evident the shorter the voluntour is (Bailey and Russell 2012: 123;
Guttentag 2009). First, undergraduates are often unqualified for the work they
are undertaking; Wallace cites scenes from the voluntourism documentary
First, Do No Harm, in which pre-med students are made to deliver babies
unsupervised, or to complete several highly specific medical procedures for
understaffed physicians despite never learning how to do them (Wallace
2012: 1). While most Western institutions have a rigorous process put into
place that includes a background check and evaluation of skills, host com-
munities do not (2); such negligence is further deemed acceptable because
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 293

students’ Western education and wealth seem to outweigh the risks, given the
imaginaries of the host’s extreme need and lack of (Western-style) education
(see Sin 2010: 986–987).2 Second, short-term student volunteers often lack
cultural and linguistic competency that is essential for sensitive interactions
with locals. On the one hand, language barriers may prevent the volunteers
from being able to effectively explain procedures, diagnoses, or prescriptions.
This, coupled with a lack of cultural understanding, on the other hand, can
lead to miscommunication, offense, or mistrust—such as recommending con-
doms or birth control in some countries where this is taboo (Pinto and Upshur
2009; McCall and Iltis 2014: 288). Furthermore, as I have argued (futilely) to
my Medlife students who do not study anthropology, different cultures have
different worldviews that both foster “culture bound syndromes”—illnesses
that are only experienced in a particular culture—as well as culturally specific
ways of resolving them, and that well-meaning attempts to impose Western-
style remedies often exacerbate the illnesses, as Ong’s (1987) classic study
of psychotherapy on outbreaks of spirit possession among female Malaysian
sweat shop workers shows. (The outbreak itself was a result of imposing
Western-style sanitary rules regulating how menstrual fluids were to be
disposed of.) Without cultural competency, this reality might foster serious
misdiagnoses, and even create more problems; in turn, students’ reactions to
this might also lead to the very ethnocentrism that study-abroad practitioners
wish to break by engaging them in service activities.
Third and possibly most germane for study-abroad practitioners beyond
the medical field is that economic costs incurred by the host community often
outweigh the positive work done by unskilled students, despite their ostensi-
bly free labor and good intent. Indeed, it is a misunderstanding to think that
their labor is free. Those accepting service from students often take time out
of their schedules to provide basic training concerning the job at hand—time
that could be better spent doing the tasks themselves, given the fact that the
students are only volunteering for a brief period. In business terms, it might
not be a good investment of their time to keep training unskilled workers with
extraordinarily high turn-over. Additionally, students might not work hard or
be as motivated, particularly if they are being made to volunteer through the
study-abroad class, rather than choosing to do so on their own. Coffman and
Prazak’s study in this book also shows that students can get disheartened by
the unexpected difficulty of the work and their lack of prowess in this regard,
as well as by the ridicule more professional volunteers (and perhaps even
some locals) extended to them.
Locals accepting the service also may incur the costs of feeding the students
and providing for their well-being; in certain countries like Italy, the organi-
zation receiving a service must also carry insurance for the students, which
can be expensive. For example, a close friend of mine who owns a vineyard
294 Michael A. Di Giovine

near Perugia will not take my students who want to volunteer because of the
time and economic cost necessary to obtain insurance to cover them, though
he does invest in insurance annually to take in one semester-long, skilled
student from the EU. Another one does take my students for three half-days
of work over the course of the five-week program on his didactic farm, and
charges a fee to cover the insurance, time, and food costs: students learn to
feed animals or plant some beans for a few hours, then are treated to a big
meal with the owners. The farmer does this not because he needs help (though
he could use a hand) but because he sees education of traditional, sustainable
forms of living as the mission of his enterprise. Rather than perceiving the
students as providing service to him and his family, he really sees himself as
providing a service to my students.
Furthermore, students’ touristic imaginaries of working on a farm or with
the needy may not live up to expectations, and, as Trundle (2014) shows in
her study of American expat volunteers at a Florentine soup kitchen (who
stayed in the city after studying abroad), might actually generate negative ste-
reotypes about the perceived ungratefulness of locals who become frustrated
with the lack of competency, or seek to obtain more benefits from the percep-
tibly wealthier volunteers. But this also occurs on the service provider’s side,
as the didactic farm’s example reveals. Ascione, too, in this volume, reveals
that such a lack of competency in doing even simple tasks that are taken-
for-granted in the host culture, such as knowing basic cooking methods that
Italian children have witnessed their parents and grandparents doing all their
lives, translates into the service recipient talking about, and treating students
as helpless little babies. Thus, it might foster or solidify ethnocentric ideas
about the Other on both sides of the service activity.
On the broader level, like other forms of tourism, voluntourism, service,
and charitable missionary work impacts locals’ well-being in more ways
than just the material. It serves to perpetuate colonial-era narratives of the
“white man’s burden” (Kipling 1907) in civilizing the native Other, expand-
ing Western neoliberal moral economies as it reinscribes a “‘geography of
compassion’ that maps onto the ‘Third World’ and the children who live
there” (Mostafanezhad 2012: 318)—much like mass tourism in general
often does, particularly as it plays out in developing countries (Picard and Di
Giovine 2014). Indeed, while voluntourists loathe to use the term, and, just
as pilgrims and missionaries see themselves and their behaviors as existing
beyond the superficial touristic encounter (Mostafanezhad 2014a; see Serio
this volume), critics point out that their motivations are ultimately egocentric
and their behaviors are touristic: in search of the perfect selfie with poor
African children to post on social media, voluntourists temporarily play out
“popular humanitarianism” (Mostafanezhad 2014b) fantasies as modeled by
celebrity spokespeople such as actress and Special Envoy for the U.N. High
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 295

Commissioner for Refugees Angelina Jolie, who famously visited, donated to,
and ultimately adopted children from orphanages in Cambodia, Vietnam, and
Ethiopia (and intentionally gave birth to her first biological child in Namibia).
This “Angelina Effect,” as Mostafanezhad terms it (2013a; see Fitzgerald
2007), naturalizes a colonial aesthetic of the host community’s poverty as
authentic and cultural (Mostafanezhad 2013b: 150) much like the more-
criticized slum tourism does (Frenzel 2012, 2016); those locals who embrace
it thus must paradoxically negotiate tensions in perpetuating negative colonial
stereotypes for the purpose of trying to transcend them (Di Giovine 2009b).
Furthermore, Mostafanezhad argues, voluntourism “perpetuates an aesthetic
structure that systematically depoliticizes the global economic inequality
on which the experience is based” (Mostafanezhad 2013b: 150)—that is, it
serves the interest of the global neoliberal market by obscuring the political
and economic inequalities fostered by the same neoliberal policies that pro-
duce and exacerbate the poverty in the first place (see also Vrasti 2012: 4).
At best, then, it is a venue for the “cleansing of developed world middle-class
guilt” (Kwa 2007; qtd. in Sin 2009: 480) while simultaneously achieving the
cosmopolitanism so desired by middle-class travelers through these (anti-)
touristic experiences (Nelson 2018). Ultimately, then, while service and
volunteerism inside and outside the study-abroad endeavor purport to be a
powerful and meaningful antidote to the typical tourist experience, it often
creates the same seen and unseen pressures on the host community that typi-
cal tourism is accused of doing.

Educational Tourism and Study Abroad

While service-oriented forms of mobility propose an antidote to the superfi-
ciality of traditional mass tourism ostensibly through doing good to the host
community (and more importantly, to the tourist) through perceived impact-
ful and “authentic” engagement with locals, educational tourism (including
study abroad) approaches anti-tourism from a knowledge-based standpoint.
One of the hallmarks of an anti-touristic ethos is that mass tourism is predi-
cated more on convenience and site-seeing (see Urry 2002), a collection of
relatively quick experiences with a place that often lacks deep understand-
ing of the history and culture of the place. To wit, at an ICOMOS meeting I
attended in 2017, one Croatian art historian expressed her frustration with the
ignorance of cruise ship travelers on a day-trip to Dubrovnik, one of the set-
tings for the immensely popular HBO series Game of Thrones, by recounting
a comment overheard by travelers taking pictures at the site of an important
scene in the show: “Wow! How did HBO construct this set so quickly?”
And in a survey of anthropologists from the American Anthropological
Association’s Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group that I used to prepare
296 Michael A. Di Giovine

my speech at that ICOMOS meeting, members urged that, to be sustainable,

tourism providers should dedicate more time to educating the tourists on local
culture—rather than locals on the benefits of accepting tourism development
projects (Di Giovine 2017).
As John Bodinger de Uriarte and I discuss in this book’s introduction,
there have been several iterations of educational travel in the modern age,
especially the Grand Tour upon which the present form of long-term study
abroad is based. Popularized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the
Grand Tour was a rite of passage for wealthy, educated Northern European
young men who would travel to Italy, Greece, Egypt, and the Ottoman world
to supplement their studies of classical language and history. Informed by
notions of unilinear cultural evolution—that all cultures were on a universal
trajectory toward “Civilization” defined as whatever Northern culture from
which they came—they embraced an Orientalist meta-narrative that pro-
posed that civilization began in the Mediterranean world (the Middle East,
Egypt, Greece and Rome) yet moved west (and north), such that French,
German, and British were the heirs of this civilizing “light from the East”
that left these Southerners behind in their original primitive state (see Said
1979). Living for extended periods of time in the Mediterranean world,
communing with (and sleeping with!) the natives, and experiencing the
Romantic ruins that belied the rich and formative history of the land, Grand
Tour participants felt as if they were traveling back in time, gaining a fuller
understanding of their European ancestors. And it was an enlightening,
inspirational experience: Shelley and Keats produced their great Romantic-
era poetry while living near the Spanish Steps in Rome; Lord Byron lived
and wrote in Venice and Ravenna (and frequently visited Shelley in Rome);
Goethe wrote in Sicily; and even the American memoirs of Mark Twain,
novels of Hemmingway and short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald were pro-
duced in Spain and elsewhere in Southern Europe as they replicated the
Grand Tour. Today, many (wealthy) youths from the Anglo-Saxon world
(Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand) continue this process by taking a
“gap year” between high school and university to travel the world, sometimes
even coupling it with service activities; the U.K.’s Prince William and his
eventual wife Kate Middleton both volunteered with Raleigh International
in Chile, where he painted houses and she worked with underprivileged chil-
dren; and William’s younger brother, Prince Harry, volunteered with AIDS
victims in Lesotho and worked on a cattle ranch in Australia.
Traditional study abroad was informed by such “gap year” processes,
founded on the premise that experiential learning outside of one’s host envi-
ronment was integral to the formation of a well-rounded liberal arts education
(for those who could afford it). This is particularly the case for those study-
ing art history or archaeology; early twentieth-century scholars believed in
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 297

“object-based epistemology” (Conn 1998)—that seeing the authentic artifact

was qualitatively more educational than viewing its image or plaster cast;
that by employing a well-trained gaze onto a piece of art or an artifact, one
could unlock a fixed set of knowledge about the history and culture of the
people who produced it. Furthermore, linguistics instructors believe, rightly,
that while language acquisition is complex and varies among individual
students (Dewey 2007; Segalowitz and Freed 2004), the best way to learn a
language is through immersion that study-abroad experiences often provide
(Carroll 1967; Dyson 1988; Freed 1995)—by listening, reading, and speak-
ing it in daily life. Consequently, like the Grand Tour youths of ages past,
a pre-#MeToo joke among study-abroad students was to find a “sleeping
dictionary,” that is, a lover with whom one would practice the language in
the most intimate of settings (see Spurr 1993: 170–183). Indeed, as Trundle
(2014) again shows in her book, Americans in Tuscany, this was not just an
option open to American males; female art history and Italian language stu-
dents would often study abroad in Florence with the hope of finding a native
lover—and the darker, more Mediterranean-looking, the more authentic.
And several would marry, only to realize that their romantic imaginaries did
not live up to expectations in day-to-day married life. Aside from the ethical
implications of, and some similarity to, current-day sex tourism, these young
women would often find themselves trapped—expats never truly accepted by
locals, who could not leave unhappy marriages with mammone husbands (the
stereotypical devotion of an Italian male to his mother over everyone else)
because their children identified with, and had their lives in, the host culture
(Trundle 2014). While of course current-day study-abroad directors may take
great strides to prevent irresponsible activities (not only sex, but excessive
alcohol or drug use) and, as Barkin argues in this book, need to balance safety
concerns with encouraging students to viscerally engage with the cultural
Other (see also Bodinger de Uriarte, this volume), I know some of my own
students have forged non-platonic relationships with those they met during
their study-abroad experience: one male student even married a foreigner he
met in Perugia and now lives in Europe with her; he has yet to return to finish
his degree because of his wife’s visa issues.
Beyond (or outside of) dating, forging relationships with locals is often a
key formative experience that is encouraged by study-abroad practitioners.
Service opportunities, but also behind-the-scenes tours of farms and produc-
tion facilities, cooking lessons and meals at locals’ homes, and meetings
with local students who study the same subjects as ours, are built into much
of the study-abroad programming discussed in this book because they are
high-impact; as embodied experiences, they can help language acquisition
and provide deeper knowledge of the culture and local life when they are
veritably experienced in an ostensibly authentic setting. At the least, provided
298 Michael A. Di Giovine

that students are in a safe environment (see Doerr and Barkin, both in this
volume), we may encourage them to eschew spending nights in American or
tourist bars in favor of local venues, such as a club featuring live music or
sitting on the cathedral steps among locals. Yet this is easier said than done;
as both Bodinger de Uriarte and Biggs in this book show, there is a delicate
balance between fostering comfort and discomfort, adventure and safety, for
students. One study-abroad professor in a medium-sized Italian city said to
me, “I hate [the American-owned bar in the central piazza]; they capture the
students on the first day and then the students just do exactly what they do at
home. I guess it’s a factor of feeling comfortable, but I wish they would be
more adventurous and meet some real people, not other American students
studying abroad” (6/11/2019).
As it is clear from many of the chapters that focus on shorter term study-
abroad (and domestic study-away) programs, the development of the neo-
liberal university has significantly transformed the traditional study-abroad
experience from its Grand Tour roots. The privileging of pre-professional
and business studies, the specificity of General Education requirements,
and intense departmental competition to retain students that cause rigidity
in major requirements, all make it more difficult to get away for a whole
year or even a semester to study traditional art and culture-based liberal
arts courses. Many of the students in my own five-week summer course
lament that they cannot spend more time abroad, either because of rigid
course requirements, or because—contrary to the original idea of molding
Renaissance men or women—that taking a semester full of study-abroad
courses outside their major would not be looked on kindly by their major
advisors, employers, or graduate school. Furthermore, as the shift toward
“internationalization” and creating “global citizens” has charged universi-
ties such as my own to admirably work toward maximizing the number
of students who study abroad, universities must provide incentives, small
grants, and financial aid; cheaper, shorter term travels thus may be preferred
in this environment. Another unintended consequence becomes the very
real dilemma for those who really cannot afford to travel, but who are told
by their institution or their peers that they should; many incur more debt,
or have to work longer hours, to see this to fruition—another reason my
students have told me they prefer short-term travels that nevertheless give
them college credit. Thus, short-term study-abroad programs have taken
on the model of edu-tourism (Keith and Keith 2010), a form of education-
cum-tourism in which students are taken on thematically focused tourist
trips with a professor; often short service experiences and behind-the-
scenes tours are embedded to make the trip more hands-on and meaningful.
Many times these trips include pre- and post-departure coursework and
on-campus classes; some models at my own university tack a week-long
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 299

spring break trip onto a spring semester class where students can earn an
extra credit for participating.
In this way, edu-tourism or short-term study abroad takes on the model
employed by many university alumni associations of educational travel,
another long-standing type of touristic mobility predicated on an anti-tourism
ethos. Educational travel is a form of niche tourism that promises more
in-depth, formative engagement with the people, history, and culture of a
destination. Tailored to university alumni associations, museum docents, and
members of other non-profit organizations, it is often more highly focused
on a particular theme germane to the sponsoring organization’s member-
ship (such as Palladian architecture around Venice for the National Trust
for Historic Preservation, Jesuit sites in Spain for Georgetown University,
Japanese contemporary art for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Persian
gardens in Iran for adventurous garden groups), and its cost usually includes
the presence of a representative from the sponsoring organization as a “study
leader”—a university’s professor, priest or theologian, curator, architectural
historian, or landscape designer, for example. Hallmarks of higher end edu-
cational travel also include curator-led tours, an on-site lecture either by the
study leader or a colleague, and private luncheons at often opulent estates
with their owners. Even when they do not include such “privates,” as the
industry calls it (Di Giovine 2009a: 163–165), a set of readings—usually a
good travel article and/or an academic paper suitable for undergraduates—is
mailed out to these mostly retirement-age travelers along with a suggested
reading list a few weeks prior to departure as a way to help them intellectually
prepare for the journey. In short, educational tourism factors into universities’
initiatives to provide “lifelong learning” or “continuing education” opportu-
nities to often retired, economically mobile alumni and community members.
Attempting to transcend the typical tourist experience, then, educational
tourism (of which study abroad is a part) usually attempts to foster meaning-
ful, “backstage” interactions with locals. Forging deeper relationships with
locals, particularly those the same age of the students who are in similar life
situations, is key to humanizing local people and breaking stereotypes and
inaccurate imaginaries—to show that, ultimately, “they” are just like “us”
(see Picard and Di Giovine 2014). This, of course, is another anti-touristic
ethos, an antidote to the superficiality and separation promoted through the
tourist bubble that often seems to perpetuate misinformation, ignorance,
stereotypes, or harmful meaning-making processes of local life and culture
(Di Giovine 2017). It also helps forge better understandings of Westerners
to the locals as well. For example, although students in a colleague’s study-
abroad program in Rwanda are largely barricaded inside their field station
at the edge of town—causing young children in the village to peer curiously
at the largely white foreigners and to shout out “hello” in continuum to get
300 Michael A. Di Giovine

their attention—at night the professors will allow their students to leave
the compound and play children’s games like duck-duck-goose or soccer
with the teens. This might be perceived of as a magnanimous act of “public
diplomacy,” breaking stereotypes of the wealthy and aloof Westerner, to at
least show at some superficial level that we are just like them. But it also
helps break students’ perceptions of the poor and unintelligible local as well.
Sharing in an activity understood and enjoyed by both host and guest—this
is what Geertz would consider engaging in “deep play” (2000[1973]: 435–
475); students attest that such interactions taught them so much more about
a country and a people, their norms and values, their commonalities and
differences in a perceptively more “authentic” and revelatory way.

VFR Tourism, Networked Hospitality, and Homestays

In the most extreme embrace of such an ethos, study-abroad practitioners
may also place their students in homestays (such as in the programs described
in this book by Lampman and Schweitzer, Doerr, and Nguyen)—a way to
veritably break the “staged authenticity” of tourism (MacCannell 1976) by
living in a local’s personal home. This most closely resembles what the tour-
ism sector calls VFR tourism—“Visiting Friends and Relatives”—which is
seen by the traveler, at least, to be a more authentic and anti-touristic form
of mobility (see, for example, Seaton and Palmer 1997). VFR travelers often
regard themselves not as tourists but as a kind of liminal local, or at least
someone who has qualitatively different roots or connections with the loca-
tion. They may stay in the hometown of their ancestors (Boyne et al. 2002;
see Nguyen, this volume) rather than in major tourist cities, with people with
whom they have (through kinship, friendship, or romantic links) some sort of
deeper bonds. As Doerr intimates in this book, and as Picard and Buchberger
(2013) argue in Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanisms, even those tourists who do
not have friends and family may engage in forms of “network hospitality”
(Molz 2012) such as couchsurfing to gain a seemingly authentic experience
of living like, and with, a local. Indeed, particularly on the study-abroad side,
sharing in the intimacies of everyday life with locals in ways living in hotels
or even apartments cannot do, students’ embodied experiences in the mun-
dane aspects of local life may add depth to their understanding of the culture
and authenticity to their experience. Seasoned homestay families, for their
part, may go to great lengths to nevertheless meet students’ touristic expecta-
tions, such as cooking quintessentially local meals, taking them on trips to
tourist sites, and even accompanying them to stores and markets.
But some do not. For example, studies point out that homestays may not
enhance language acquisition among study-abroad students, since many
homestay students have been found to isolate themselves in their rooms and
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 301

actually have fewer interactions using the local language than if they were
placed in dorms (Rivers 1998). Frank (1997; qtd. Dewey 2007) further points
out that even when there are interactions in homestay situations, they may
be limited, mundane, and centered on television watching. This could limit
language acquisition, but, as Doerr shows in this book, it also may not live
up to the desired expectations of a study-abroad experience. Indeed, Doerr
recounts a particularly poignant story in her contribution to this volume of
“Suarez” who opted to stay with extended family in Spain, only to remain
frustrated and disappointed by the mundanity of life with family: babysitting
his young cousin and sitting at home watching TV—things he does at his own
home in the United States—made him feel that he was not getting an “authen-
tic” experience. Consequently, he left, opting for a couchsurfing opportunity
in which the host, a German expat who understood what constituted the
“authentic” in the tourist imaginary, took him out to local venues and sight-
seeing trips. For my own part, while writing this chapter, I paid a visit to my
own cousins in Southern Italy during a weekend break in my study-abroad
program. My family lives mostly on self-sufficient farms in one of the most
impoverished parts of Southern Italy, though like elsewhere in Italy, their
children (my cousins) have abandoned this rural way of life. The first thing
we did was go to McDonald’s; my cousin’s young son apparently loves the
McCrispy bacon cheeseburger there! We then played with his young children
before contemplating going out for sushi. However, unlike Suarez, I have had
a lifetime of experiences with my family there—and as a youth engaged with
such practices of Otherness as slaughtering pigs, making wine, collecting
sacred water from Roman fonts, doing pilgrimages, and gorging on too much
home-grown food—that I saw it more as a funny happenstance and a learn-
ing opportunity, even as I craved some good Neapolitan cuisine over Italian-
American celebrity chef Joe Bastianich’s special BBQ hamburger (there are
some glocal differences even in the McDonaldized world!).
At the other extreme, experiencing too much difference in how a relative
or friend lives their mundane life might also cause great tension or depres-
sion for the homestay student/VFR tourist, particularly in the long-term. In
this book, Annie Nguyen reflects on her experience as a Fulbright scholar
in Saigon, where she stayed with her uncle for several months. Because her
father was a prominent officer in the South Vietnamese army, her family was
airlifted to America during the fall of Saigon; that uncle had to remain, how-
ever—forced to endure reeducation camps, a ban on telephones and a salaried
job, and had to live in a mud-floored, tin-roof hut. They went out of their way
to be hospitable to their niece, cooking constantly what they believed to be
her favorite meal, which included meat they could hardly afford. The guilt
of having to accept such hospitality, as well as in contemplating her arbitrary
luck in being born in America, ultimately seemed to prove too much for
302 Michael A. Di Giovine

her—she moved out, staying with Western expats in their luxurious villa,
out of sight of the poverty which painfully reminded her of her good fortune.

Ethnography
At the other far end of this anti-tourism spectrum can be added anthro-
pologists’ own rite of passage travels, ethnography. Just as scholars may
sometimes place pilgrimage in an entirely separate category from tourism,
anthropologists—particularly in the twentieth century—placed the classic
ethnographic method of living and participating in mundane daily life with
locals in a completely different category of tourism (Leite and Graburn
2009: 38). Consequently, anthropologists have held a notoriously ambiva-
lent stance, if not hostile, toward tourism and tourism studies because our
activities closely resemble those of tourists: we temporarily visit a place,
fixing our gaze on supposedly authentic objects, artifacts, and cultural per-
formances, particularly those that seem “native” or “indigenous”; we record
our observations in writing and photography and videography; and we
promulgate imaginaries of people and places through evocative narratives
categorized by “thick description” (Geertz 1973: 3–32) that closely resemble
other travel texts. Levi-Strauss’ Tristes Tropiques (1973)—which begins
with the sentence “I hate traveling and travelers”—is more akin to Twain’s
(1869) travel memoirs than to an academic monograph. Furthermore, we
benefit, as do tourists, on global economic and political inequalities that have
traditionally afforded Western travelers the resources, mobility, education,
and power to be there in the first place; like voluntourism does, most of the
classic ethnographies that normalize the “primitive” obscure their very pres-
ence as indicative of the root of geopolitical political-economic inequalities.
Indeed, as Bruner points out in a recent interview (Di Giovine 2019), early
anthropologists constructed imaginaries of the primitive “Other” while eras-
ing or denying the presence and impacts of tourists on these communities, and
some, such as the Geertzes, would ignore Bruner and his students/tourists in
Bali until they needed something from them. In short, though, ethnography
captures well the total ethos of anti-tourism: while the processes remain the
same, the key is to construct substantive, meaningful relationships by living
with locals like homestays and VFR tourism does; to enter into the experi-
ence in an educated manner and to learn from the experience as educational
tourism purports; and, increasingly, to engage in “action anthropology” (Tax
1975) or “activist anthropology” (Hale 2006)—entering into the service of
our informants as their more powerful advocates (Gonzalez 2010). In a word,
it emphasizes close engagement with the Other (see Low and Merry 2010).
Because it condenses so many anti-touristic qualities for which study abroad
aims, and also is a key component in anthropological practice, when done
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 303

correctly, ethnography can be a powerful tool for fostering the kinds of “high
impact” learning experiences (Kuh 2008) that we strive to deliver through
study-abroad programming. Kuh (2008) argues that higher ed institutions
should move toward providing students with “high impact educational prac-
tices”—highly participatory experiences that provide deep learning, practical
experiences, encounters with alterity and diversity, and personal gains by
“demand[ing] that students devote considerable time and effort to purposeful
tasks; most require daily decisions that deepen students’ investment in the
activity as well as their commitment to their academic program and the col-
lege” (2008: 14). Drawing on a report by the Association of American Colleges
and Universities, Kuh lists a number of such types of experiences, especially
“study-abroad opportunities” and “student-faculty research.” He argues that
while the former provides venues to experience diversity through intercultural
contact (15), the latter fosters first-hand learning of how a faculty member or
mentor deals with challenges in a critical and creative fashion (14)—essentially
humanizing the professor and personalizing the student–professor relationship.
This, in turn, could create a better understanding and appreciation of the prac-
tice of the discipline, which ultimately could be a more effective way to deliver
topical course content. Indeed, as Bodinger de Uriate points out (personal com-
munication 6/30/2019), when undertaken in a study-abroad context, students
often have the opportunity to engage in extended, reciprocal conversations
with the professor and among themselves that could connect the professor’s
knowledge and research with student questions and interests.
In this scenario, students are instructed in basic ethnographic methods,
such as participant observation, ethnographic interviewing, and visual anthro-
pological methods, and asked to conduct research projects often in line with
that of the professors. As Greer and Schweitzer, Barkin, and Lampman and
Schweizer all show in their contributions to this book, integrating ethno-
graphic methods is intended to enhance the educational component of the
experience, focusing students’ gaze on substantive “social facts” (Durkheim
1982[1895]: 74) like gender, class, religion and ritual, and providing a
very embodied way of understanding and interacting with the people and
place. Topical readings and discussions inside and outside of the classroom
complement the research, providing the undergraduate student with keys to
understanding and analyzing what they are experiencing. Thus, the research
is not completely independent; the topic and focus of the ethnographic gaze
is constructed through the structure of the program and the choice of field
sites and visits; Lampman and Schweizer take students to local Cuban music
and dance performances and teach students about Cuban history and culture,
ethnomusicology, and theories of ritual.
In organizing an ethnographic field school in Italy, I also utilize this anti-
tourism component for study abroad because I feel that ethnographic methods
304 Michael A. Di Giovine

training itself is a high- impact learning experience, as it is embodied and

fosters critical thinking and learning and requires students to go out of their
comfort zone and interact with locals. But I also do it because I found that it
meets the increasingly pre-professionalizing, high-impact learning require-
ments of the neoliberal university and the expectations of students to engage
in practice-oriented endeavors that they can put on a resume to show they
made the most of their free time. Furthermore, almost counter-intuitively, it
can translate well in marketing the trip to anthropology and non- anthropol-
ogy majors. That is, I specifically make the case that demand for graduates
knowledgeable in ethnographic and qualitative methods is increasingly
growing in the business world (Baer 2014) but is not rigorously (or even cor-
rectly) taught in other disciplines (my business, nutrition, communications,
and psychology students may come into the class with some knowledge of
qualitative research as entailing focus groups or open-ended interviews, and
perhaps with some experience in reflexive journaling of their observations).
Indeed, when I began inviting my friend and colleague—a registered dieti-
cian who teaches in the Department of Nutrition—to co-teach the course with
me, I offered to change the emphasis on ethnographic methodologies, but
she specifically wanted to keep the pedagogy the same because she saw it as
a valuable skill for professionalization that nutrition majors should master.
Consequently, one of our nutrition graduate students, who was the dietician
for a leading grocery store chain, was able to convince her employer to sup-
port her participation as professional development, and, upon her return, even
published an article in our town’s local magazine on the training she received.
Although a hallmark of classic ethnography is to live alone (or in one’s
small family group) among locals for the long-term so as to “grasp and
render” the intricacies of daily life (Geertz 1973: 10), paradoxically, integrat-
ing an ethnographic component could actually work well for the shortest of
group edu-touristic experiences, such Greer and Schweizer’s two-week eth-
nography trip to Trinidad. Specifically requiring students to hone their gaze,
observing and participating in daily life, and trying to make sense of these
fleeting encounters with alterity all come with the territory of ethnography
regardless of the length of time. Indeed, we anthropologists often take short
research trips to unfamiliar locations outside of our primary field site—some-
times even guided by a so-called “native informant”—either to complement
the research or as follow-up. Multi-sited or “global” ethnography also may
involve short stays at different locations, and I have argued elsewhere (2011)
that this is particularly a useful method for anthropological research into
tourism practices. Finally, there is a long tradition in applied anthropology
of utilizing Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) and other “quick-and-dirty” short-
term, directed ethnographic research, particularly in developing countries—
though critics point out that this procedure is sometimes abused, particularly
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 305

in development projects that pay but lip service to trying to understand and
integrate into the development plan locals’ lived experiences (Ferguson 1994;
Mosse 2005).
But as one applied anthropologist co-owner of an ethnographic consult-
ing business said during a workshop we led for Princeton anthropology
and religious studies students some time ago, the length of time might not
the issue; rather, the key issue to effective applied ethnographic research,
however long, is that it is being conducted properly by those trained in
anthropological analysis—that is, with a deep understanding of not only the
culture that is being studied but also with the proper tool kit of sophisticated
anthropological knowledge of theories of how culture and society work.
This, of course, is something that undergraduate students do not yet possess.
However, this constraint might be transcended in study abroad if time can be
divided between theoretical study, methods training, and (semi-)independent
research. Furthermore, as Kuh intimates, it can also be effective if it can take
part in the professor’s broader research project; that is, students are treated as
a team of co-PIs in an on-going research project with which they are familiar-
ized beforehand, and who are “managed” and given direction by the professor
who possesses this unique set of knowledge and skills.
In addition to having led students abroad to directly assist in research
outside of a formal course structure, I also approach this through traditional
study abroad (the 5-week “field school”) that teaches ethnography. Prior
to departure, students must complete the federally mandated ethics train-
ing and their certificates of completion are added to the IRB proposal for
continuing review. All read the proposal and we have two informal pre-
departure meetings to not only discuss the nuts-and-bolts of the trip and
what to expect but also to go over the main research project and where they,
as student-researchers, fit in. In-country, the course syllabus is front-loaded,
such that, in the first two weeks, we meet every day (often twice a day)
including the weekends, where one session will be devoted to theoretical
and culture-based lecture and discussion complemented by readings and
the other will be either guided tours or excursions where they interact with
locals. In many of these experiences, I model the traditional ethnographer,
interviewing locals who are my longstanding research subjects in front of
the students (rather than have the local deliver a canned presentation), and
as I translate for them (if the locals do not speak English, since most of the
students have only a basic understanding of Italian), I provide side com-
mentary on what would be useful to write down in their first-order notes.
Then as the weeks progress, I increasingly give them more free time to
return to many of these venues with which they now have been familiarized,
such as public markets, restaurants and shops, or help place them in service-
like experiences (such as doing menial labor with farmers, though I realize
306 Michael A. Di Giovine

that the service is really provided to the student and her research), before
meeting up in the classroom or in a café to collectively “workshop” their
notes in a focus-group setting. By the fourth week, the meetings become
less frequent and more individualized as students engage in their own inde-
pendent research within the bounds of the pre-existing research project; the
end assessment involves a presentation of their research to the class and a
final research paper.
As they forge more substantive relationships with certain research subjects,
many will create their own networks and experiences that I did not plan;
they have been asked to work as English-proficient vendors in markets, to
help bottle wine at a small-scale vineyard, or are taken on meetings with the
subjects’ friends and contacts. Some have kept in contact with these locals
well after the field school and their graduation. The perceived benefit to the
students is that they have been strongly encouraged to interact meaningfully
with people and places, to gain deeper insights into the culture as well as the
topic of the research project (in this case, sustainable food systems as cultural
heritage) and to produce a project that they can use as a basis for their majors’
capstone project, present at undergraduate research conferences, or to put on
a resume as an attestation of having engaged in professional anthropological
training. The benefit for the professor, it should be said, is—like in other
field schools (such as in archaeology) where students are essentially work-
ing in service to the professor’s research project—that I often gain helpful
insights (and sometimes some new data) for my own project, as they increase
exponentially the number of perspectives, research subjects, and venues in
the short amount of time I have to conduct my research. In certain cases, the
opportunities uncovered by the student-researcher have been integrated into
subsequent iterations of the course (such as bottling the wine), as well as
made its way into my own research.
There are obvious and significant ethical considerations here, some of
which have been brought up in the context of other promised anti-touristic
experiences in study abroad. First and foremost is proper, ethical engage-
ment with locals. While prior to departure the students have undergone the
federal CITI training course (Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative,
www​.citiprogram​.org), it is quite tedious (even for the professor, as many
have complained to my colleagues and I who sit on my institution’s IRB
committee) and students may not connect its applicability to their work on
site. And although their research is largely innocuous—we are not working
with marginalized populations, for example—their every action is not always
supervised when conducting independent research, and so trust must be built
not only between the professor and the student, and the student and the sub-
ject, but also between the subject and the professor and the institution (s)he
represents. This is not always easy, and the first year I had a student working
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 307

with a truffle vendor sign a contract to emphasize that he should take his work
and the ethics of his engagement seriously.
Second, similar to all educational tourism practices—and as Greer and
Schweitzer ask in this book—what is the extent to which we should promise,
and hold students accountable for, substantive research and the knowledge
gleaned? This is particularly an important consideration given that my own
program draws students from across many very different disciplines, from
the social sciences to Italian language studies to health sciences such as nutri-
tion, kinesiology, and exercise science. A multidisciplinary research team can
be considered a boon to the study— everyone brings their own disciplinary
knowledge to bear on the specific subject of the research, the object of their
gazes, and the analysis. But these are mostly third-year undergraduates, many
of whom do not have any substantive research experience or experience with
Italy. Not all have even taken an anthropology class before, let alone are
anthropology majors who are comfortable with the style and jargon of anthro-
pological readings or with qualitative research. (After discussing meaning-
making processes surrounding foodways, one nutrition major said to me,
“I thought anthropology of food was just about what countries eat what.”)
This lack of a common knowledge base can be overwhelming to the student.
I have had some in pre-professional majors like business and nutrition vis-
ibly exhibit anxiety about having to conduct a qualitative research project,
and then write about it in narrative form; they were familiar with grasping
and rendering quantitative and “scientific” papers with numbers, graphs, and
charts, were taught not to write in first person, and were not sure what would
constitute data if it did not involve a statistical sample. In the end, these also
are opportunities to teach about disciplinary differences, anthropological
methods and the complementary nature of qualitative research, and the value
of effective self-expression—but this might do little to allay their insecurities.
Third is the aspect of free labor and the ethics of acknowledgment. Like
the use of research assistants in the home university, interns at a business,
or even the classic “native informant” (or the early twentieth-century male
anthropologist’s wife or female partner), the intellectual work that the student
provides is not only often unpaid but can go unacknowledged. Indeed, like
in voluntourism, students actually pay to do this work. As professors, we
may justify this by saying that they are compensated in other ways—enjoy-
ing a deep and meaningful “anti-touristic” experience abroad, earning credit
toward graduation, and gaining potentially marketable research and life
skills. But is that not expected, or promised, in any study-abroad experience?
Erasing their presence in the final research product, no matter how mini-
mal, once again obscures and perpetuates differential power relationships.
Consequently, some anthropologists specifically discuss the ways in which
their study-abroad ethnography students contributed, as Schiller (2016) does
308 Michael A. Di Giovine

in the introduction to her monograph on the famous San Lorenzo market in

Florence. This is not always as easy as it seems; during the blind peer review
process of a recent article based on research during my field school, reviewers
were divided about how to handle this: one skeptical reviewer asked for more
detailed justification of using students while the other suggested that I delete
any mention of it because it raised too many questions and obscured the
research I did myself. Consequently, I encourage students to use their final
papers for other means—the capstone thesis for their major, presentations at
our university’s undergraduate research day or at international conferences,
or to co-write an article with me (something that has never come to fruition).
Some of the students have been successful; one psychology major won a
monetary prize for best paper examining PTSD among Umbrian earthquake
victims, some have written about their experiences in the university news-
paper and local magazines, and some presented posters and papers at the
American Anthropological Association’s annual meetings, the Sorbonne, and
other international conferences.

THE DIFFICULT POSITION OF THE PROFESSOR

All of the contributions to this book were written by professors facilitating

study-abroad programs for their students and have focused on one or more of
the ways in which they utilize these various anti-tourism forms of tourism to
create a high-impact, formative experience for the students in their charge.
Many of their trips, like mine, are informed by their own study-abroad and
tourism experiences (see in particular Nguyen, this book), or professional
and personal connections to the culture; all bring their specific academic
expertise, interests, needs, desires, and expectations to bear through their
choice of pedagogy. Some take a more hands-off approach, utilizing the
expertise of professional tourism and study-abroad service providers; others
are more hands-on, attempting to personally guide their students through the
land and culture, introducing them to their friends and contacts, and involv-
ing them in their research. Latent, then, in all of the chapters in this book
is the often multifarious and difficult positionality of the professor and the
ethical decisions that they make and model for their students. In short, we
study-abroad providers must simultaneously wear multiple hats and assume
multiple personalities, throughout our students’ study-abroad experience—
and negotiate different and often competing moral actions.
Based on my own experiences, as well as on the chapters in this book, I
would argue that study-abroad leaders see themselves first and foremost as
professors teaching a course abroad. Though requirements are different for
every institution, and some trips are pre-packaged by third-party suppliers,
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 309

the professor ultimately should have the power to construct and teach the
syllabus in the way that makes most sense for them. Each chooses different
touristic and anti-touristic activities to meet their course learning objectives
as well as the broader institutional goals for fostering study abroad. Yet com-
plicating this, as Lampman and Schweizer discuss in this book, the professor
also has to be the recruiter and marketer of a study-abroad program—often
perpetuating common, romanticized touristic imaginaries of the venue to
“seduce” students into participating; encouraging students that they can
indeed afford the program without knowing their family’s particular financial
situation; promising high-impact learning experiences that may not pan out;
and perhaps even promoting one program (theirs, or their colleagues’) over
another.
The professor also has to be the program director, ultimately responsible
for the well-being of the students and therefore must make risk-benefit deci-
sions on the ground. Does (s)he allow students the freedom to roam the streets
at night or give them curfews and keep them under lock and key? Does the
professor know enough of the language and infrastructure to provide real
help at a doctor or pharmacy, or does (s)he require the assistance of a study-
abroad service provider, guide, or local? Is the professor properly trained to
undertake this responsibility, and is (s)he equipped to deal (legally, psycho-
logically, emotionally) with this kind of liability, this kind of responsibility?
Should the professor really be required to serve as counselor, student life
administrator, even provost and concierge?
Facilitating touristic visits and “backstage” interactions—or at least pro-
viding the visible face of these visits to students even if they were set up by
an in-country provider—the professor also takes on the intellectual capacity
of a tour guide, and may be looked on to answer questions or solve problems
that are generally outside of their academic training. They may also slip into
a kind of tour guide mode, employing what Salazar (2014) calls the method
of “seducation”: education through the delivery of seductive narratives and
imaginaries that serve to both foster a better sense of appreciation for the land
and people, as well as make people remember the information better. Indeed,
tour guiding is an art; one has to be “all things for all people” (see Katriel
1997); a good guide knows how to read the audience and present information
in different ways than one would inside the classroom and is subject to a dif-
ferent set of criteria by the student/visitor. It is a different sort of knowledge-
and-service delivery for which one may not always be fully equipped; as
Israeli-American anthropologist and pilgrimage tour guide Jackie Feldman
writes (2015: 71):

Shortly after I switched from guiding pilgrims to lecturing in anthropology, my

wife remarked, “As a lecturer, your first responsibility is to instruct; as a guide
310 Michael A. Di Giovine

it is to seduce.” She was referring to the role of tour guides to convey the proper
appearance, to ferret out the desires and beliefs of the pilgrims and “play the
game” in ways that would win their confidence, satisfy their expectations, and
yield compliments, requests for future services, and generous tips.

While I doubt students have tipped any of the contributors in this book, the
point remains that the professor-cum-tour guide must not only deliver infor-
mation in a satisfactory manner but (s)he must also satisfy touristic expecta-
tions of the place and the experience to deliver an overall positive experience
for the trip—which, in turn, can itself turn into positive word-of-mouth for
recruiting students the following years.
Yet on the flip side, by participating with students in their touristic
activities, and particularly in high-impact experiences such as missionary
work, service, or ethnography, the professor might also veritably become
one with the group as they work side-by-side to complete a task. Indeed,
as several scholars have argued (Turner 1974; Graburn 1977; Di Giovine
2009a) tourism and its associated forms are rituals, which may also foster
what Turner called “communitas,” a temporary “anti-structural” sensation
of the unity among all participants, wherein they shed the divisive social
distinctions they entertain in everyday society and recognize each other
as co-equal humans. While this is clearly utopian (Graburn [2011] points
out that Turner developed this notion fully while in 1960s Palo Alto dur-
ing the height of the hippie movement)— and scholars such as Eade and
Sallnow (1991) have argued that the anti-touristic form of pilgrimage might
be predicated on the construction of difference, rather than unity (see also
Eade 2011)—institutions from churches to universities employ tourism to
foster a sense of shared identity and solidarity (see Di Giovine 2009a) by
capturing and routinizing such sensations into what Turner calls “normative
communitas” (Turner 1969: 131–140). Thus, within the touristic ritual in
study-abroad experiences, professors might be looked on as equals by the
students, which in certain situations can be beneficial—after all, human-
izing the professor is one of Kuh’s outcomes of high-impact study abroad
and faculty-led research. But what implications does that have for fostering
the kind of authority that is also necessary as a professor and/or tour direc-
tor? For example, recently I had a professor bring his small group truffle
hunting with my class; his students would call him by his first name—and
then also did that to me. While I am not at all one who balks at informal-
ity, and indeed I sign my first name on my emails, my students emitted an
audible gasp at the breaking of their traditional norms of address (fieldnotes
6/11/2019). Likewise, in carrying out her research, Doerr (this book) talks
of how students spontaneously called her by her first name, since the study-
abroad experience, coupled with her ethnographic research, rendered their
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 311

relationship palpably different than the professor–student relationship inside

the classroom.
Yet it is not only the students who might see the professor as their co-
equal, a member of the group on this challenging experience together. Often
the locals themselves make little distinction between professor and student,
particularly when they are the service provider (see Doerr, this book)—in the
end, all are paying tourists. This palpably denies the professor’s attempt at
presenting an antidote to typical tourism, both to herself and to her students.
With the exception, perhaps, of Ascione, who is native to the city in which
she operates her study-abroad classes, we have all been treated as, and acted
like, tourists. How do we negotiate our desires to sight-see, our comforts
and discomforts, our satisfaction and dissatisfaction, our economic interests?
How do we try to overcome our own stereotyping of the people, our own pre-
conceived notions, our own tourist imaginaries that we receive and perpetuate
especially to our students?
This also gets complicated when being the long-term ethnographer, or
repeat study abroad leader, who also may be treated as a sort of tour guide
to the students by locals—a sort of intermediary that is not quite a tourist
(defined by a short, fleeting, and temporary presence) but also not quite a
local (whose presence is regular and normal and has cultivated enduring
relationships with locals and research subjects that extend beyond the end
of the summer session). Every year when I return, my presence is like a cel-
ebrated homecoming, much like VFR travel to my family’s farms; like the
Gospel story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15: 11-32), my return is marked in a
rather celebratory way. It certainly feels nice, to be sure, but since it is often
done when I arrive with my students, it also serves to perform to my own
students that I have deep and authentic local ties; that they will receive an
anti-touristic treatment when they are with me. Yet I realize that were I liv-
ing here full time, seeing and being seen regularly and participating regularly
in daily work like the prodigal son’s brother, my presence would be normal
and unnoteworthy. Indeed, Ascione, who is a friend and collaborator (and
native of Perugia), jokes to me every time she witnesses this treatment: “I
take my students to the market and instead of greeting me, they say “‘Where’s
Michael Di Giovine?’ Michael Di Giovine—why are they asking? I’m here
all the time!” But this also plays out in complicated ways. As a tour guide
or operator we pay for visits—often not too much, a few dollars for a tasting
here, a couple for a meal there. But because of my long-term personal rela-
tionships with these providers, many of the providers with whom I have tran-
scended the typical tourism relationship feel odd about accepting money for
their “services.” This is particularly the case of a well-respected winemaker in
the region, who has been a good friend of mine since our youth the 1990s, and
whom I have hosted in my home and I in his. I have been bringing students
312 Michael A. Di Giovine

(and before that, educational tourists) for visits and tastings for free, but in
the last few years, for the purpose of research, I have been volunteering at his
vineyard at wine festivals, and he has thrown parties for my students at his
place. He will not accept economic reimbursement for these expenses, despite
the time and money on food, wine, and free rides to and from Perugia. I used
to insist, but it makes the relationship a bit odd; these kinds of exchanges are
clearly gifts in the Maussian sense (1966), an exchange of indebtedness used
to create and reinforce social bonds, and it is paid back through nominal help
at his farm, hosting him and his family in America, supporting his endeavors,
and other ways that friends stay in touch through the decades. Nevertheless, I
do feel with him, as well as with my other close contacts in the marketplace,
that I have an obligation to “help out” how I can, whether it is by being a
spokesperson for their business even with the students, or jumping behind
the market counter to explain truffles to British tourists. When I provide
tastes of their products, even to the students, I find myself often saying “this
is the best” and encouraging everyone to purchase the meats, cheeses, and
vegetables from them rather than in the supermarket or at other vendors. Of
course, patronizing local, organic farms is also in line with our goal of teach-
ing sustainable food practices, but other professors, such as my colleague in
nutrition, do it in other ways; she tells them it is simply healthier, better, and
more ethical to buy from them, and that they should not go to the industrial
supermarket if they can avoid it. But are these tactics much different, given
the intent is largely the same? Again, where is the line? Is it so different from
the role of the tour guide, who helps support vendors with whom they have
relationships, and receive benefits in return? These benefits may not be mon-
etary kick-backs (like I witnessed with my tour guides in Japan, for example),
but they could be free or highly discounted food or meals; or, as professional
tour guides who live out of suitcases do, a free room on off days in hotels to
which they bring business.
Tied to this is the liminal position of the ethnographer-as-mentor to study-
abroad students. Like the friend/tour guide, ethnographers must walk a fine
line between cultivating relationships with locals that are intended to last well
after the students return home and to ensure the well- being and contentment
of the student under her care. What happens if it seems that a local is taking
advantage of the student? In a recent trip to Pompeii, this happened to one of
my students when he was clearly overcharged for his purchase, and in typi-
cal Neapolitan fashion, I argued loudly with the vendor until he gave back
some of the money and publically prohibited my other students from buying
from him; but what if this occurred in Perugia where I do my research and
count on good relationships with these vendors? Would I have been so vocal?
Another common problem, which Ascione also identifies in her chapter, is
when an informant/service provider does not deliver a satisfactory experience
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 313

to the students. Despite the ethnographer’s interest in returning to conduct

research with the person, one might decide to forego future visits to the site.
Furthermore, the cultivation of longstanding relationships with “key infor-
mants,” particularly when they provide positive experiences for the students,
might compete with the ethnographer’s desire to branch out and explore other
similar vendors and farmers. Indeed, I bring students to the same market stalls
in the large Thursday market and eschew visits to their competitors because
“my” informants treat us well and deliver solid educational experiences to
the students, but I am aware that by doing so, I am potentially limiting the
breadth of my own research by not engaging with other vendors who might
be able to give me new and different data and produce new and different
insights.
Indeed, the ethnographer/mentor must thus negotiate what I call “ethno-
graphic proximity”—that is, a cultivation of a sense of closeness with dif-
ferent stakeholders in the ethnographic process. One must be careful to be
close, but not too close, to her informants so as to remain objective. This is
particularly an issue in autoethnographic practices but is common in all forms
of participant observation. As Black (2012) points out in her excellent eth-
nography of Turin’s Porta Palazzo market, where she gathered data by work-
ing with different types of vendors over time, key informants may not truly
understand the nature of the research or the ethnographer–informant relation-
ship, particularly when the ethnographer has broken through the superficial
touristic interactivity and entered into personal or work relationships with the
person. When, after working with one vendor’s stall at length, and earning
their trust, Black decided she needed to branch out and work at a different
stall, her key informants were taken aback; they viewed her patronage of,
and help working with, other vendors as an affront or a reaction to something
they did wrong, and, she said, it was difficult to get them to understand the
dispassionate aspects of ethnography.
I, too, have been forced to negotiate ethnographic proximity while also
serving as a mentor. In the most striking example, I took five students to
conduct ethnographic research on St. Padre Pio’s cult by traveling on a
Catholic pilgrimage to Rome and his shrines of Pietrelcina and San Giovanni
Rotondo. None identified as Catholic, though one was raised Catholic in an
Italian-American family. As is common, a priest accompanied the group, and
led the pilgrims in prayers and devotional activities. While at first some of
the students were ambivalent about participating fully in devotional practices
that were not their own (and which they did not really know how to do, like
Mass), they eventually became quite enthusiastic participant-observers—
praying rosaries on the bus, keeling and standing at Mass, even climbing up
the Scala Sancta on their knees with the predominantly elderly American pil-
grims. They astutely attested that this ethnographic proximity was useful for
314 Michael A. Di Giovine

understanding the embodied, lived experiences of these devotees, and helped

inform their questioning and analysis. It also built trust and created oppor-
tunities to interact with the pilgrims. My Italian-American student found he
was from the same suburban Philadelphia town as the priest, and they knew
many of the same people. Consequently, he would talk in great lengths with
the priest; the priest was his key informant, but for the priest, the student
was a seeker, one who could use a little encouragement to come back to the
Church. When the priest was called away halfway through the pilgrimage, he
came to me and asked that I encourage my student to go to Confession. I took
a step back, and told him that I was his professor (in a public university, no
less!) and that I did not feel right with such proselytization despite also being
a practicing Catholic myself. It was clear that he did not understand the nature
of my presence there as a professor and ethnography mentor.

CONCLUSION: THE ETHICS OF STUDY ABROAD

Study abroad occupies a special place in the tourism literature; it is a form

of anti-tourism itself, which also may simultaneously integrate other anti-
touristic forms such as mission work and pilgrimage, service, edu-tourism,
homestays, and ethnography (among others). At its essence, anti-tourism is
less a movement than a set of discourses and ethical approaches to remediat-
ing some of the perceived unsustainable aspects of modern mass tourism.
As all of the chapters in this book reveal, those involved in study abroad,
as with other forms of tourism and anti-tourism processes, are confronted
with different and often competing moral behaviors, and thus are required to
think ethically about their position as leaders, as well as the impact that their
programs have on different stakeholders—from personal relations to locals to
the students themselves.
Ethics is different from morality. While morality is situational and rela-
tional—a cultural product that is learned and passed on formally and infor-
mally through institutions, the media, norms, and values (Zigon 2008; Zigon
and Throop 2014), and therefore may vary from culture to culture—ethics
involves the weighing of these oft-conflicting moral decisions for the purpose
of doing what is “right, fair, just or good” (Preston 2007: 16). Such moral
questioning has a future-oriented bent: “Ethics,” states McCabe, “is not about
simply how to talk about being good, but intended to make people good as
well” (2005: 49). As Sidgwick argues, “it is a rational procedure by which
we determine what human beings ‘ought’—or what is right for them—to do
or see to realize by voluntary action” (1981: 1). Morals are about the here
and now—they are the decisions one enacts on the ground, in full context;
ethics are about the overarching governing principles of just behavior and
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 315

are intended to not only guide actions in the here and now but also to shape
future decisions. It is about doing what is right, just, and good, producing a
future that is just.
This fits in with study abroad not only because anti-tourism practices are,
in essence, ethical stances, but because our own intentions as study-abroad
leaders are future-oriented in and of themselves. We sponsor study-abroad
programs not (only) for the benefit of the professor—after all, we do get
financial compensation to teach a class abroad, to engage in touristic activi-
ties, to conduct research—but also, and more importantly, for the benefit
of our students and their formation. Ideally, we do this because we want to
educate—to impart knowledge in a highly impactful way—knowledge that
students can call upon later in life that can stay with them in everyday life
and inform the way they approach alterity.
And there are examples where it seems to be working. There is a professor
who leads a study-abroad program through the Umbra Institute in Perugia
who, when he was an undergraduate student, participated at the same institu-
tion; he said it was his goal to bring a new generation of students to have the
same positive experience he did. The Bologna Cooperative Studies Program
(BCSP), a consortium of universities in the United States that organizes a
year-long, direct-matriculation program to the University of Bologna, regu-
larly posts Facebook stories of former students—some from many decades
ago—who come back to visit and attest to how that year impacted their life; in
2016, the program celebrated its first half-century at a gala that drew a range
of past participants, from retirees to recent graduates (fieldnotes 5/5/2016).
I, too, conduct my study-abroad program and student-faculty research trips
with strong positive memories of the programs I participated in as a child in
Urbino (Di Giovine 2009: 1), and then as an undergraduate with BCSP, and
aim to provide a similarly impactful, immersive experience. Those programs
have definitely made me who I am, have inculcated in me an appreciation for
art, history, food, and heritage, and have helped pave the way for my career
in anthropology.
And is this not the main, ethical goal of so many study-abroad initia-
tives—to create “global citizens” (see Stearns 2009)? Cosmopolitan citizens
who feel a part of (not apart from) the world, who might see the “unity in
diversity” of humanity (Di Giovine 2009a), who can successfully negotiate
different ways of being and living in the world? Members of humanity who
can look critically and holistically at the impacts of national policies and
engage in “systems-thinking” concerning broad issues of global import, such
as global poverty, sustainability and climate change, economic development,
and inequality (Benson 2007; see also Winter-Simat et al. 2017)? While
most study-abroad programs may not live up to such lofty goals, as Greer
and Schweitzer suggest in this book, the very endeavor of creating global
316 Michael A. Di Giovine

citizens itself is an ethical stance; it is intended to make good, just people for
the future. “Caring, embracing cultural diversity, promoting social justice
and environmental sustainability,” student participants in study-abroad pro-
grams are themselves supposed to become people with “a sense of responsi-
bility to act for the betterment of the world” (Reysen et al. 2014: 5). In short,
as Coffman and Prazak state in their contribution to this book, study abroad
is ultimately about “doing good”—to our students, and to others.
Tourism can be seen as a “total social fact” (Mauss 1966: 76–77), a
microcosm of a type of globally instantiated cultural forms that implicates all
important aspects of human life—from our well-being and embodied sensa-
tions with the environment to our language and discourses, from structural
aspects, such as race, class and gender, to economic and political stratifica-
tions. Study abroad, as part tourism, and part ethical response to tourism,
equally calls upon considerations of how to address these basic aspects of
human culture and society and proposes to craft a more just engagement with
the Other. Our charge, then, as study-abroad leaders and advocates, seems
to be exceptionally ethical—it is future-oriented, designed to make fair, just,
and good adults. A study-abroad leader is more than simply a tour guide,
a program director, a marketer, a student life coordinator, a professor, or a
mentor—(s)he must be the embodiment of right and just action, of being a
global citizen. Modeling what we want students to do is, of course, easier
said than done (see Biggs, this book), particularly as we move across differ-
ent identities and different positions during the course of the study-abroad
process (see Nguyen, this book). Yet despite its difficulty, despite the range
of moral actions that we must enact on the ground, if our goal is to create
global citizens, we should keep such higher ethical imperatives in mind. How
we model that for them, in our own actions and dispositions as their teachers,
leaders, guides, traveling companions, and mentors, is therefore of the utmost
importance.

NOTES

1. In this chapter, I am not discussing involuntary mobility, such as that which is

forced upon a person or group; immigration, diaspora, forced marches, or seeking
refuge from warfare or persecution are qualitatively different than anti-tourism expe-
riences. However, certain forms of anti-tourism—including study abroad, but also
ethnographic research and VFR tourism—may be considered an obligation.
2. See, for example, the satirical Instagram account of Barbie Savior (http​​s:/​/w​​ww​
.in​​stagr​​am​.co​​m​/bar​​​biesa​​vior)​, which mocks selfie-taking Western volunteers in devel-
oping countries; it presents images of white Barbie dolls hugging little dark-skinned
dolls, posing in front of slums while supposedly doing volunteer work, or writing on
 Between Tourism and Anti-Tourism 317

blackboards with taglines such as “Who needs a formal education to teach in Africa?
Not me! All I need is some chalk and a dose of optimism. It’s so sad that they don’t
have enough trained teachers here. I’m not trained either, but I’m from the West, so it
all works out. Good morning class!” See Zane 2016 for a discussion of this. My thanks
to John Bodinger de Uriarte for directing me to this Instagram account.

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 Epilogue
Questioning the Future of Study
Abroad in a Post-COVID-19 World
Michael A. Di Giovine and
John Bodinger de Uriarte

We began this book with a series of questions posed to examine how study
abroad—as a discourse and a phenomenon—worked to distinguish itself from
mass tourism in terms of attitudes, imaginaries, ethics, and practices. We
focused on components such as education, service, and internationalization
as key areas in which study abroad qualitatively positioned itself as an anti-
touristic process, despite its utilization of the same structures, imaginaries,
and forms of mobility. And we questioned the promise and problematics of
such programs to foster, or even guarantee, global citizenship. Informed by
scholarly research as well as practice in executing and administering student
travel, the volume’s contributors have teased these components out, focusing
on different pedagogical practices, volunteering and service learning, affect,
and cultivating embodied sensory experiences, safety, and risk.
As this volume entered the production phase, the world suddenly changed
in unforeseen ways. The novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, swept across the
world, its spread facilitated by the relatively free movement of people. A
highly contagious severe acute respiratory (SARS) illness, the virus is trans-
mitted through droplets released in the air when a person sneezes, coughs,
or speaks, and attacks one’s breathing, sometimes resulting in death. As of
July 1, 2020, the COVID-19 virus has infected over 10.5 million people and
killed over half a million (WHO 2020), with many epidemiologists predict-
ing another wave around the time that this book comes out in print. To limit
its spread, quarantines and socio-physical distancing measures have been
enacted around the world, to varying degrees of success. Students studying
abroad suddenly were recalled to their home countries, and future trips were

325
326 Epilogue

put on hold. Schools switched to online learning and are continuing to grapple
with pedagogically sound and safe methods to instruct students. Destination
countries with some of the largest numbers of tourists and study-abroad stu-
dents—such as Italy, China, and France (not to mention the United States)—
were locked down, often severely restricting movement.
Many of these changes are felt in questions of mobility—where is it now
safe to travel and, indeed, is travel itself no longer safe? What will happen—
both long and short term—to institutional infrastructures built to promote and
expand study abroad as a “value-added” experience for undergraduate liberal
arts programs? What will happen to our “on-the-ground” providers, many of
whom look forward to the income generated by hosting or partnering with
study-abroad programs, and many of whom are elements of personal and
professional relationships carefully built over time? Will the current dip in
study-abroad experiences continue in institutional practice or be reflected in
institutional funding and support, especially during a time of economic crisis?
Will study abroad, as a global phenomenon, fully recover (and how)? While
many of these questions and effects are still unfolding, we would be remiss
if we didn’t recognize their current urgency. With that in mind, we worked
with the volume contributors and asked them to speak to some of the effects
of the global pandemic on their own programs, extended study-abroad net-
works, and institutional futures. We also talked with several administrators
in different higher education institutions, as well as representatives for some
study-abroad providers.1

HOW DOES COVID REVEAL THE RELATIONSHIP

BETWEEN TOURISM AND STUDY ABROAD?

The central tenet of this book has been that study abroad is both a tourism and
anti-tourism experience. It is touristic, in that it shares the same infrastruc-
tures as typical tourism: from the planes, trains, and automobiles (and buses
and cruise ships) that move travelers from place to place, to the myriad hos-
pitality entities, such as hotels and AirBnBs, restaurants, guides, and sites that
welcome them. Study abroad also shares many of the same phenomenologi-
cal attributes as tourism—from its preoccupation with authenticity and expe-
riential embodiment to its utilization and negotiation of seductive imaginaries
of otherness, and of the transformative potential of being elsewhere. Even the
rate of expansion of study abroad mirrors that of global tourism. Yet at the
same time, we have argued that study-abroad positions itself to be something
more than—or something qualitatively different from—the so-called “typi-
cal” tourism experience, such that it is often considered an antidote to the
perceived ills and excesses of modern mass tourism. The recent COVID-19
 Epilogue 327

pandemic, and the unprecedented quarantined closures around the world,

highlight this contradictory quality of study abroad.
On the one hand, COVID-19 affected, and was affected by, both forms of
travel in similar ways. Indeed, the novel coronavirus outbreak evolved into a
full-fledged pandemic thanks in no small part to global mobility, particularly
tourism. It is not coincidental that the most heavily affected countries during
the height of the pandemic in spring 2020 are also the most-visited countries
in the world (France, Spain, U.S., China, and Italy, according to the UNWTO
(2020)). As discussed in the Introduction to this volume, these countries—as
well as the United Kingdom and Germany, which also were on the top-ten
for number of COVID-19 cases, also account for the most popular student
travel destinations, with the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain topping the
list (Martel 2020: 5). Occurring around the Western and Chinese New Year
celebrations, when domestic tourism would peak in China, COVID-19 spread
quickly to Europe and the Middle East. For example, although recent studies
of wastewater indicate that the novel coronavirus was already present in Italy
by December and Spain during January (Amante and Pollina 2020), the first
documented cases of coronavirus in Italy were among two Chinese tourists in
Milan, quickly followed by an Italian returning home from a trip to Wuhan,
China (Seckin 2020). Likewise, Cuba’s first reported coronavirus death was
an Italian tourist (Gámez Torres 2020). The chart below compares the top 5
non-U.S. study-abroad destinations with their overall tourism numbers and
COVID-19 cases.
Some of the most highly publicized cases involved cruise liners, the icons
of mass tourism; in several instances, the staff contracted the virus, spread-
ing it to the tourists and, it is feared, to those at other ports of call. When

Figure E.1  Comparison of Inbound U.S. Study Abroad Students, Inbound Tourists, and
COVID-19 Cases in Top 7 Study-Abroad Destinations Among U.S. Students. Sources:
Study abroad: IIE 2020; Tourism arrivals: UNWTO 2020a; COVID-19 cases: WHO 2020.
Data compiled by Lena Morella.
328 Epilogue

quarantines began, many countries refused to allow the ships to dock, and
they remained sometimes for months offshore, the coronavirus festering and
spreading to the rest of the passengers—sometimes leading to casualties. Just
as cruises and their patrons were affected—some severely—by quarantine
and the closure of ports, so too were some 540 Semester at Sea students, who
pay upward of $34,000 to earn 15 college credits by visiting 11 countries on
4 continents in 104 days. Ports were closed to students in Indonesia and India,
the ship skipped China and other affected destinations, accelerated their
classes, and finally ended the trip in South Africa amid news of U.S. travel
bans—two months into the semester (Kragen 2020). Semester at Sea can-
celled its fall 2020 program, but plans to run a spring program, touting their
flexibility in avoiding ports of call with outbreaks (Semester at Sea 2020).
In addition, the most highly affected businesses have been those in the
tourism and hospitality sector. Based on first quarter 2020 reporting, in which
the tourism sector lost 67 million estimated international arrivals and $80
billion in receipts, the World Health Organization projects a 60–80 percent
decline in global tourism for the year (UNWTO 2020b). Italy, where tour-
ism accounts for over 13 percent of its GDP, estimates a loss of nearly $75
million for the summer alone (Netti 2020), and 180,000 tourism workers are
estimated to be unemployed (Carli 2020).
If we were to pinpoint the most radical and lasting changes in the college
experience due to COVID-19, study abroad would top the list. According to a
2020 Institute for International Education COVID-19 survey, 285 institutions
reported a total of 22,041 students studying abroad in spring 2020; 253 of
these institutions evacuated some 17,787 students (81% of the total). Students
sent home from their programs early lost those embodied engagements in
host countries—such as site visits, hands-on internships, cooking lessons and
food tastings, volunteering and service activities, and faculty-student research
projects. Elisa Ascione, who was actively teaching U.S. students in Perugia
when the coronavirus sent them home, stated that students said that they “felt
robbed of a life-changing event.”
On the other hand, there were pedagogical and interactive aspects of study
abroad that allowed some programs to be effectively continued even during
quarantines—unlike mass tourism. Although many study-abroad programs
were cancelled (as were tourist vacations), several could be completed by
shifting to the virtual realm; 38 percent of the institutions surveyed by IIE
developed virtual classes to correspond with the study-abroad program,
as Ascione did, while 46 percent simply integrated students into current
classes to finish their studies (Martel 2020: 7). Since Gareth Barkin’s trip to
Indonesia was tied to a spring semester preparatory course, he had to reimag-
ine the learning outcomes and exercises to meet the reality that they would
 Epilogue 329

not be traveling abroad; he also took the time to set up a corresponding virtual
study-abroad session for the summer.
Except for three sets of contributors to the volume (Aaron Lampman and
Kenneth Schweitzer, and Aaron Greer and Don Schweitzer, who completed
their most recent Caribbean programs in January 2020; and Catherine Serio,
who did not run a program), the contributors were constrained to cancel their
planned spring break and summer trips. In several cases, such as Michael Di
Giovine’s, the decision was made to “postpone” or “roll over” registrations
for 2021 as many of the students were eager to travel the following year. As
Jennifer Coffman similarly tells us, “Of the original thirty [registered for
the trip], every one of them expressed interest in participating next summer
(2021), and indeed we all hope they can.” Unfortunately, Di Giovine’s uni-
versity later decided to cancel all 2021 trips as well out of an abundance of
caution, as Annie Nguyen’s did, too.

WHAT WAS THE FALLOUT FROM COVID-

19 ON STUDY-ABROAD PROGRAMS
FEATURED IN THIS VOLUME?

As of this writing, all contributors are addressing the fallout from the coro-
navirus pandemic and the need to cancel and/or reconceptualize their pro-
grams. First, our contributors have been dealing with programmatic effects
of COVID-19, that is, how the cancellations affected the universities’ course
and program offerings. This is particularly an issue with universities such
as John Bodinger de Uriarte’s, where studying off-campus is a requirement.
Second, they have been dealing with fallout at the student level. Many of
those registered for trips in the summer expressed frustration and disappoint-
ment, as well as disbelief, at the prospect of not traveling. Although several
like Barkin and Coffman thoughtfully reconfigured their trips to be online
experiences, several students were understandably reluctant to participate,
citing the value added of the actual travel component. Coffman states:

One-third of students withdrew immediately and understandably from the pro-

gram. While they were kind about it, many of those students spoke about not
being willing to shift from plans to learn in a wide variety of places in Kenya
and Tanzania to being parked in front of a computer in one’s childhood bedroom
or university town apartment that would not forgive their leases. Credit hours
still cost money, and, as it turns out, many students explained they are already
tired of online learning and will hold onto their hopes for place-based learning
later.
330 Epilogue

Last and perhaps most pertinent to this volume, our contributors dealt
with the fallout at individual program and provider levels, contemplating the
plight of those on-site providers who have come to rely on their study-abroad
programs. Jennifer Coffman and Miroslava Prazak’s homestay hosts faced a
“particularly difficult” time because they “come from rural areas in which our
presence—as exciting and challenging as it can be—is also a direct source
of revenue that helps support less advantaged households.” All our contribu-
tors have been cognizant of the challenges that their providers faced during
the pandemic, let alone how the lack of American students’ presence would
impact them. Melissa Biggs tells us that the travel shutdowns provoked by
COVID-19 “sent the Mexican tourism industry reeling,” negatively impact-
ing 3–5 percent of the country’s GDP (Sáez 2020). As in other countries,
these shutdowns have particularly affected the informal sector and individu-
als and family who are set apart from the large, and officially sanctioned,
tourist enterprises (see Breglia 2006), which would not be eligible for any
state-sponsored unemployment assistance. For example, Biggs’s program
includes cooking lessons by cocineras tradicionales who receive visitors in
their private homes. “Not only do they rely on the income that receiving visi-
tors bring, these visits also provide them with an opportunity to sell products
they grow or make.” Likewise, Italy’s extremely strict quarantines—in which
citizens could only leave their house with a note explaining that they were
purchasing essential groceries—hit right around Eastertime, when Ascione
and Di Giovine’s market vendors make their biggest sales and domestic tour-
ism is high. Cheesemakers talked of “pumping and dumping” their animals’
milk, for there was not enough of a market to even produce their cheeses.
Summer tourists would have been a saving grace to recuperate some of
these losses, since they are most predisposed to purchasing artisanal honey,
chocolate, wine, and truffles; but tourism in Italy was one-third the level it
usually is, and the hundreds of American and Chinese students in Perugia
who used to frequent their market stands are absent. Consequently, vendors
in both countries have been forced to shift the focus of their efforts on two
opposing communities: the local surroundings and the virtual, international
community. “Some cocineras located in or near metropolitan areas have
begun marketing prepared meals to the local community,” said Biggs of
her Mexican collaborators, while vendors in Perugia promoted door-to-door
sales of luxury goods such as wine and truffles. Some Italian winemakers and
agriculturalists with significant international patronage directly emailed their
American and Northern European patrons, offering discounts on shipping
abroad. Likewise, in Mexico, Biggs reports that

others have turned to social media, giving cooking lessons on Facebook Live
or Instagram, either independently or with the help of promoters. Some have
 Epilogue 331

been able to reach a wider market for non-perishable goods such as mole paste
or embroidered linens via social media. . . . These efforts provide needed finan-
cial resources now and allow them to promote their offerings for when travel
eventually resumes.

The cancellation of programs also created stress and psychological hard-

ship. Many of our contributors collaborate with universities, guides, and other
on-site instructors. Some, such as professors and guides working for study-
abroad providers, were furloughed, as were workers at study-abroad opera-
tors. “Every single one of our affiliate partners have had furloughs,” said one
university administrator; “all of the different vendors who have depended
on study abroad are hurting.” The loss of income, as well as the feeling of
abandonment by American universities, was psychologically taxing. There
was also a feeling of gratefulness when program directors tried to help their
providers. In talking to one on-site collaborator, Di Giovine was told, “We
know and appreciate who’ve helped us when we’re down, and we won’t
forget it.” In addition, without diminishing the plight of local providers, we
should note that our contributors themselves have felt “significant amounts
of stress” (as one wrote) at the thought of how their decisions, and those of
their institutions, are affecting long-term friends and collaborators. This inti-
macy, perhaps, is an indication of how many study-abroad programs differ
from mass tourism: “Because we work directly with our hosts in East Africa,”
Coffman tells us, “we know personally who is affected and can estimate the
ways in which our NOT being there negatively impact livelihoods.”
Consequently, our contributors were sensitive to involving their on-site
partners in the necessary redesigns of their study-abroad trips, if they were
not altogether cancelled or postponed. Ascione, Coffman and Prazak, Biggs,
and Barkin have all seen or worked on the transformation of materials and
experiences to online platforms; they were all conscious to integrate their
local providers wherever they could. Coffman and Prazak “changed the
syllabi significantly to accommodate this new context, while still covering
our primary learning objectives. We have integrated tutoring in Swahili via
WhatsApp with native speakers of Swahili who would normally travel with
our program, and for the human–environment interactions course, we have
arranged for real-time conversations with some of our overseas partners so
students can communicate with people they were meant to meet in person.
Further, we have guaranteed admission to our future overseas program to all
students who successfully complete the online coursework. Thus, in some
ways, we have adapted to these circumstances rapidly and are still delivering
a rigorous academic program.” Ascione, who is an on-site “provider” herself,
offered her course digitally to Americans—even concluding with a virtual
cooking lesson (one of Di Giovine’s West Chester University students, who
332 Epilogue

took the class, Zoomed afterward to show him the tagliatelle pasta and zuc-
chini pesto she made for her family’s dinner that night).
This integration of local voices online is mutually beneficial, as locals
continue to be supported (at least marginally), while also attempting to retain
some of the experiential integrity of study abroad for American students: “As
it became clear the travel portion of the program would be cancelled, I began
thinking through ways we could all still make something of these connections
we had worked hard to establish, in the hopes everyone could still experience
some elements of a cultural exchange program, even if it was online,” said
Barkin. Consequently, his students began corresponding with Indonesian
students applying to the U.S. Embassy’s Young Southeast Asian Leaders
Initiative (YSEALI).

WHAT WAS THE EFFECT ON

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS?

Although our volume deals primarily with U.S. student educational trips
abroad, it is important to remember that some of those most affected by
COVID-19 are foreign students studying abroad in American universities,
and an examination of the complexities of the coronavirus impact on this
segment sheds light on the unique circumstances of study abroad in general.
Increasingly, internationalization efforts at U.S. universities are reliant on
international students. Since the number of college-age students is no longer
growing as it used to, international students help keep classes full and gen-
erate significant revenue, especially for public institutions that charge more
for out-of-state and out-of-country students (Krislov 2019). They also are
estimated to generate $39 billion to the U. S. national economy and support
more than 400,000 jobs (NAFSA 2018). The COVID-19 crisis affected all
aspects of the study-abroad process for these students—from recruitment to
visa applications to actual travel and return home. When the coronavirus pan-
demic hit the United States, some 441 institutions reported a total of 251,385
international students. Because travel restrictions had already been in place
in Europe and Asia, only 18,551 were able to return home; 92 percent were
stranded in the United States, causing the universities to scramble to provide
housing, food, and other services (Martel 2020: 6). By the summer 2020,
travel restrictions and quarantines have eased, and some have been able to
return home. But it is uncertain whether they can return to the United States
or how a new cohort can be generated amid such uncertainty. Exacerbating
this, over 63 percent of universities cancelled most face-to-face recruitment
travel and events, preferring to conduct virtual campus tours, online events,
and outreach through third-party agents (Martel 2020: 8–9). To further attract
 Epilogue 333

students who might be wary of traveling to the United States—which, as

of this writing, continues to see significant increases in coronavirus infec-
tions—84 percent of IIE’s survey respondents indicated that they have put
new measures in place for international students, such as deferred enroll-
ments, extension of deadlines, online application submissions, waiving
transcripts, SATS and other credentials and tests, and allowing online testing
(10). Yet there are still hurdles for study abroad that are out of institutions’
hands. Many embassies and consulates continue to be closed or are operating
at minimum capacities, making visas difficult or lengthy to process. COVID-
19 travel restrictions are currently in place as well. And in early July 2020,
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s Student and Exchange
Visitor Program (SEVP) announced that non-immigrant students will not be
allowed visas to remain in the country if they take a fully online course load,
as many U.S. universities were proposing for the coming academic year. ICE
recommended returning to the home country or transferring to a different
university if their U.S. institution could not provide them with at least one
face-to-face or hybrid course (ICE 2020). This would penalize the student,
who often has no choice in the matter, and professors, who may feel pres-
sured to teach face-to-face despite their own misgivings; but it also would
penalize the university, forcing administrators to weigh its financial interest
in retaining international students with safety procedures. In response, some
universities who were going online nevertheless planned on implementing
a face-to-face class only for international students in order to retain them.
Fortunately, ICE backed down amid pressure from some twenty states and
several university and Silicon Valley lawsuits (see Jordan and Hartocollis
2020). Nevertheless, 88 percent of IIE’s respondents anticipate a drop in
international student enrollment for the academic year 2020–2021 (Martel
2020: 11).
It is important to note that a similar percentage of universities foresee
declines in their U.S. students traveling abroad in the academic year as
well. “With global travel advisories in effect, a pandemic that may still be
ongoing throughout regions globally, and concerns from students, parents,
faculty and staff, approximately 85% of institutions anticipate a decline in
the interest of students to go abroad in the coming academic year. These
potential declines could be exacerbated by a global recession, which would
make study abroad more financially difficult for students,” says the IIE
report (Martel 2020: 12). Yet it also begs other questions about the future
of study abroad: Will there be new and on-going travel restrictions set in
place? What will happen to the longevity of the program that professors
have often spent years to establish? What will happen to on-site provid-
ers, such as guides and instructors? What are the financial implications for
universities?
334 Epilogue

HOW WILL STUDY ABROAD

CHANGE IN THE FUTURE?

A major concern is how study abroad will look in the future. Aaron Greer
and Don Schweitzer believe that their 2022 course to Trinidad and Tobago
“will likely have to be radically reimagined. What lies nearly two years in
advance is, of course, impossible to foresee, but that the usual norms and
forms of travel will be affected is almost certain.” Yet Barkin muses that “it
is difficult to apprehend the extent to which this experience might be refram-
ing faculty and staff attitudes across the U.S. and around the world in relation
to study abroad.” And in discussing the situation with providers, one dean
said that these companies are looking at this “limbo” period as a year-long
opportunity to reimagine and redesign the study-abroad experience from the
ground up. “I think it’s fair to suggest that, with the exponential growth of
study-abroad programs, many providers and universities have been galloping
in place to keep up with the demand and innovation for years, and, while I
hate to suggest a total ‘reset button’ being deployed, the pandemic does pro-
vide an opportunity for some structural and delivery rethinking,” Bodinger
de Uriarte says.
Indeed, according to administrators and providers who monitor study-
abroad listservs, there are two broad responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the one hand, while none project a simple return to pre-COVID programs
and structures, many are optimistic that necessary changes to study abroad
will not completely overturn some semblance of “business as usual.” They
propose modifications in destination choice, safety procedures, and length of
time, for example, but not a fundamental reworking of the system. On the
other hand, many urge a radical rethinking of study abroad, arguing that the
entire practice, as we currently know it, will have to change fundamentally.
They envision extreme transformations in what constitutes international
education, including eschewing the necessity of travel. This polarization
between, essentially, rebounding and transformation corresponds with a simi-
lar tack that interdisciplinary tourism scholars take on their listservs, such as
the Tourism Research Information Network (TRINET), which Di Giovine
monitors for broad trends in the industry. During the quarantines, debates
raged between the tourism practitioners and business school instructors who
were seeking practical advice from experts on how to reopen successfully and
many social scientists and critical tourism scholars who advanced more theo-
retical and ethical notions on how tourism could be transformed. Because,
perhaps, those on study-abroad listservs were primarily practitioners, these
debates were not reported to be so heated, but there nevertheless were two
camps—those who sought fundamental transformation and those who want
to keep study abroad fundamentally the way it has been.
 Epilogue 335

“The unexpectedly sudden and radical changes wrought by the novel

coronavirus outbreak is clearly impressive, and gives one pause to think
about how life would be like at a slower, less globalized pace,” Di Giovine
states. Presenting a sweeping—and scathing—review of mass tourism and
the immediate aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, The Guardian asked if
this was “The End of Tourism?” (de Bellaigue 2020). For this reason, much
of the earliest tourism literature to be published on COVID-19 was rather
speculatively utopian in nature (see, for example, Cheer 2020; Ioannides
and Gyimothy 2020; Sigala 2020). Sustainability was particularly key in
the tourism literature and media (Arora et al. 2020; Crossley 2020; Higgins-
Desboilles 2020a). Struck by images of pristine beaches filled with sea life
(Liberatore 2020), clear vistas of mountains previously obscured by smog
(though social media posts that the Himalayas were visible from Delhi for
the first time in 30 years were a bit overblown [Evon 2020; cf. Anon 2020]),
“overtouristed” cities suddenly free from throngs of tourists and cruise ships
(Momigliano 2020), lions lounging on abandoned highways in South Africa
(Brito 2020), and even dolphins in Venetian canals (this turned out to be “fake
news” [Daly 2020]), many saw the pandemic as a vehicle for re-imagining
a more environmentally sustainable and socially ethical practice (Higgins-
Desbiolles 2020b). This was not lost on study-abroad practitioners, many of
whom who realized that the pause in international travel would help meet
sustainability benchmarks that they would not have otherwise met. “People
are talking about sustainability as ‘oh look, we’re being more sustainable’
as an effect of the crisis,” said one administrator. “But I haven’t heard a lot
of study-abroad program providers talking in an intentional way. They talk
about it more as a positive impact” or unintended consequence. Even univer-
sity sustainability directors have taken an ambivalent stance; one writes “I’m
sad to think that study abroad won’t happen for our students . . . Not the way
any of us would have wanted study-abroad emissions to drop to zero, but it
gives us a pause to consider how we can address them more effectively once
study-abroad travel becomes possible again.” Indeed, it is too soon, and tour-
ism processes are too complex and individually instantiated, to tell if radical
reformulations of tourism or study abroad would be the case (Hall 2000), and
Biggs in particular remains skeptical with some of the more utopian ideas
that the pandemic represents a time to re-think the ethics of travel, fearing
that “without sufficient financial support for and investment in the people and
communities most affected by the current loss of tourism [and study abroad]
income, opportunism will drive the re-opening of tourist spaces.”
Where there have been debates is in pedagogy and meeting planned student
outcomes. How can we replicate the study-abroad experience, predicated as
it is on deep and high-impact learning experiences and embodied interactions
with locals? Barkin has been an especially vocal proponent of focusing “on
336 Epilogue

pedagogical outcomes (associated with intentionally curated experiences in

culturally varied contexts) rather than going abroad for its own sake,” for
quite some time (2015, 2016, 2018), and recently (in press) advocated for
the virtues of virtual study abroad. Telling us how “disappointed” he was “to
see the rest of our international programs simply cancelled, largely without
thought as to whether any of their goals might still be salvaged,” he stated:

The coronavirus experience compelled me (and, I imagine, many others

involved in this field) to approach the same discussion from a juxtaposed per-
spective, focusing on what pedagogical goals and outcomes associated with
study abroad might be achieved (or at least approached) through other means—
means that remain available to us when travel is no longer an option.

In this, Barkin differentiates this “historically travel-centered approach to

international education that frames all program benefits as deriving from
being, to quote Bennett (2012: 110), ‘in the vicinity of events’ with an out-
comes-centered approach that focuses on rich and unique international inter-
ventions” without fetishizing embodiment. Some administrators have echoed
this sentiment, challenging their faculty to devise new ways to international-
ize without physically going international. Thus, we have seen an increased
attention to creating blended, virtual partnerships with host institutions. Much
like the COIL programs in the SUNY system, this model promotes partnered
teaching on a virtual platform, combining students and faculty from “away”
and home campuses in both synchronous streaming classroom experiences
and virtual group or partnered projects. Transitioning online can still connect
people across boundaries without the hassle of visas and the cost of flights
and lodging, they argue; it can still provide work-based experiences such as
virtual internships that take students outside of their cultural and linguistic
comfort zones; it can still allow our students to hone valuable research skills.
Most importantly, as Coffman and Prazak point out, they allow institutions
to not abandon our on-site partners, helping them in their time of need and
continuing to provide some level of interaction and economic support on
which they have come to rely.
Going virtual has other benefits, too. First, it provides a continued source
of revenue for the university in these pandemic times, allowing institutions to
retain students. If study abroad does return to normalcy and embodied travel, it
can also help further diversify offerings, appealing to students who might not
have the time, funding, ability, or willingness to travel abroad. Di Giovine is
particularly sensitive to what may be rising costs of travel in the post-COVID
era, saying, “Many proposals for reopening tourist destinations are predicated
on increasing costs for services, which would intentionally drive down tourist
numbers, mitigating many of the perceived ills of mass tourism in terms of
 Epilogue 337

sustainability and ethical relations with communities.” One extreme case, for
example, is Cambodia, the home of Angkor Wat and the sprawling Angkor
Archaeological Park, a longtime UNESCO World Heritage site (Di Giovine
2009). As of this writing, there have been no coronavirus-related deaths in
Cambodia, which made headlines for taking in a cruise ship to which all other
Southeast Asian countries closed their ports (Bloom 2020). To ensure that
Cambodia remains a safe option for tourists, in June 2020, the government
announced that all foreigners entering the country must show that they have a
health insurance package worth $50,000 and make a deposit of $3,000 in cash
or by credit card to cover possible expenses if a person catches COVID-19,
including healthcare, laundry services, meals, and a funeral (Calder 2020).
Coupled with higher costs for flights and visa fees, as well as the cost for
university credits, this would make study abroad to Cambodia exception-
ally expensive, restricting participation along socio-economic lines. “If we
universally embraced this model,” Di Giovine speculates, “I fear a return to
more 19th century modes of study abroad and tourism where only the wealthy
were privileged enough to travel.” Yet a virtual option—which might include
discussions with local English-speaking students, archaeologists excavating
the temple complex, dance troupes, and others—could deliver the same con-
tent and information at a fraction of the cost, could ensure that study abroad
continues to be democratizes and accessible.
But as Lisa Breglia discusses in her Afterword (this book), written between
meetings to discuss the future of her study-abroad programs, the other camp
sees study abroad as fundamentally impossible to replicate in the virtual
realm. As anthropologists, we are especially keen in understanding the power
of “being there” (Bradburd 1998; Borneman and Hammoudi 2009) to grasp
and render (Geertz 1973: 10) the “imponderabilia of everyday life” that can-
not be seen through armchair travels “or computing documents” but instead
needs to be “observed in their full actuality” (Malinowski 2002[1922]:
18)—and study abroad is very much predicated on the transformative vision
of having these unique, embodied experiences. Most importantly, eschew-
ing the actual travel aspect seems to fundamentally alter the core aspects of
study abroad, the mobility, and embodiment factors. As we have shown in
our Introduction, for better or for worse, study abroad was modeled on tour-
ism practices—from the transformational pilgrimages of yesteryear to the
Grand Tour of the nineteenth century to the types of educational and cultural
tourism of today. Furthermore, many of our contributors—anthropologists
by training—have also utilized ethnographic methods and ideas to either
structure their tour or pedagogically as a form of instruction. Eliminating
embodiment eliminates that which makes study abroad both touristic and
anti-touristic and that which makes it a unique form of higher education
learning—rendering it simply another form of virtual learning. This is not
338 Epilogue

only problematic for experiential and high-impact learning (Kuh 2008)

schemes, but instructors have seen that students have already experienced
online learning fatigue. Thus, as one administrator points out, “You still will
always and forever have people who will say it’s not the same experience
as being there. You’ll always have the same two sides: creating access to
global contexts without physically being there, and the importance of global
opportunities.”
However, even if study abroad remains fundamentally an embodied travel
experience, significant changes are anticipated—especially those that have to
do with safety and risk. “Logistically, our college is already moving towards
a ‘new normal’ in our travel programs with added layers of preparation and
assumption of risk,” including allowing travel to countries that have a CDC
and State Department Advisory at level 2 or below and having students sign
additional waivers, report Lampman and Schweitzer. On the program deliv-
ery side, says an administrator, “generally different program providers are
looking at how to sell programs that are deemed ‘safer.’ Instead of putting
students in double rooms, put them in single rooms for the same price. But
also being intentional about offering programs that are safer.” Indeed, desti-
nation selection and study-abroad programming would likely mirror chang-
ing trends in the tourism sector, which is seeing a move away from populated
urban centers into more rural destinations, especially to places closer to home
that are perceived safe. Italians have begun calling this turismo di prossim-
ità—proximity tourism—or even “cocoon tourism” (see Banfo 2020). Rather
than visiting major centers such as Florence, Venice, and Rome, smaller
towns and agritourisms are preferred. This would pedagogically change the
foci of the study-abroad trip, de-emphasizing Renaissance art and architecture
studies (with their museum visits) in favor of Slow Food and Slow Tourism
experiences that are easily accomplished outside and in small groups.
Certain destinations, too, face an uphill battle for at least U.S. students
post-COVID. For example, Lampman and Schweitzer point out that their des-
tination, Cuba, could be one of the safest places to travel, as it is “the world
leader in the ratio of doctors per person” and “has also been a world leader
in internationalism during the pandemic,” sending highly skilled doctors
abroad, allowing cruise ships to dock, and managing to lose only eighty-two
people to coronavirus (see Lampman and Schweitzer 2020). Yet

one of the greatest issues our Cuba program faces is perception of risk. . . .
Cuba is an interesting case study because many, if not most, Americans already
perceive travel to Cuba as risky due to political rhetoric and media portrayals,
even though Cuba is widely considered one of the safest countries in the world
for travelers. In a time of pandemic, Americans may also be particularly wary
of “3rdrd world countries” which are often perceived as dirty, disease-ridden and
 Epilogue 339

healthcare impoverished. Will students be interested in traveling to Cuba again,

and if so, when?

Indeed, “Parents will likely be less enthusiastic about paying for their kids to
travel to a country with an under-funded or inaccessible healthcare system.
Students may be wary of encountering and bringing home to aging par-
ents, guardians, and relatives a virus that could take their lives,” speculates
Bodinger de Uriarte.
Thus, the retreat into closer-to-home, trusted places may also be a boon to
the domestic “study away” programs like those at Susquehanna University,
in which students can continue to enjoy high-impact learning experiences,
living away from home and outside of their comfort zone, yet in relative
proximity to their campus. Students would not be subject to international
travel bans, different visa requirements and embassy closures, the high costs
of airline tickets, and the uncertainty of being far away from home during
a possible reemergence of a pandemic. As Neriko Doerr suggests, such
domestic programs could “provide an opportunity to refocus on ‘difference’
within the students’ home country.” And it is important to reflect on some of
the goals of study abroad—a productive immersion in difference that helps
students understand that the world is filled with a diversity of approaches and
understandings of how to “be” in it. If an increased understanding of cul-
tural diversity, and intercultural competence, are expected outputs for study
abroad, there is much to suggest that productive, intercultural learning can
also happen closer to home.
Nevertheless, we should remember that study abroad is necessary for
breaking boundaries and ethnocentrism, for fostering a sense of international
competency, for developing intercultural awareness and communication
skills. Discussing the racial protests that erupted after a series of highly pub-
licized police killings of African Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic
in the United States, Greer and Schweitzer point out that their program could
help instruct on race in a way that is accessible, taking students outside of
their own highly charged contexts but which is fundamental for understand-
ing the historical development of racial inequality in North America:

The confluence of the pandemic and the protests surrounding the brutal killing
of George Floyd create a strange juxtaposition for our course. Trinidad and
Tobago is a Caribbean country, which allows us to discuss the history of impe-
rialism and colonialism that created the global system of race-based oppres-
sion we experience today. In the prep class before travel, we spend a semester
exploring the intricacies and brutalities and on-going realities of the racial
discourses fashioned and established by the imperialist project. For students
to lose the opportunity to immerse themselves in that literature, then travel to
340 Epilogue

a post-colonial country where forty percent of the population is black, another

forty percent is East Indian, and the other twenty percent a host of many ethnici-
ties, would be unfortunate.

Nguyen concurs, arguing that amid the crises currently gripping the United
States (and the world) today—from pandemics to racism to extremism—
never before has the concept of study abroad been more relevant:

In light of how diseases, from Ebola to swine flu to COVID-19, originate in one
location and then spread because of globalization and increased travel between
nations, advocating for travel might seem foolish. However, as anti-Asian senti-
ments have risen in the U.S.; as science and facts have become obfuscated by
politics and willful ignorance; and as we look at our own systems and question
how we can improve in areas where we have failed, the need to experience
other cultures and study other societies is critical. It’s important that upcoming
generations see and understand that there are different ways of being and of gov-
erning so that they do not fall into the trap of thinking that change is impossible
or unprecedented. . . . It is in this way that we defeat the fear that a virus or any
other existential threat may bring: by having people not look at each other as
threats but rather as fellow travelers with whom they can commiserate.

After all, as the truism goes, we travel to understand ourselves as much as it

is to understand others (see, for example, Picard and Di Giovine 2014).

CONCLUSION: WHITHER A WAY FORWARD?

Deadly, costly, disruptive, and greatly impacting our sense of biological and
psychological well-being, the COVID-19 crisis has nevertheless provided a
further opportunity to assess study abroad for its benefits and drawbacks. In
a time of economic uncertainty, further made tense by increasingly market-
based measures for higher education outputs, it is not entirely clear how
programs, providers, and institutions may take this extended moment to
reevaluate the promises and costs of study abroad. While this volume articu-
lates a number of different critiques of study abroad, each of the contributors
is deeply committed to many of its promises.
Coupled with the return of students in mid-program and the suspension of
study-abroad programs, we have all had to deal with institutional responses
to the pandemic—from full-scale campus closures to different variations of
online learning needs and demands. This reduction in face-to-face learning
has profound effects on the fostering and support of immersive environments,
at home institutions and abroad, the kind of immersion that most if not all of
 Epilogue 341

us find central to the educational experience. At the same time, we need to rec-
ognize that full-time online educational experience has been part of what col-
leges and universities have offered for quite a while, not only as an alternative
to “regular” classes but also to accommodate the different needs of students.
One of the things that this halt in study abroad has allowed many of us to
do is critically reassess our programs and our understandings of pedagogical
authority. The pandemic offers us an extended moment to reflect on the goals
and outcomes we may have built into into our programs and consider how
they might be achieved through other means. For many of the authors in this
book, the primacy of cultural immersion—however successfully achieved in
our variety of programs—is a hallmark of our discipline; such experience “in
the field” is what transformed anthropological inquiry from the armchair to
extended periods of participant observation. It is hard to imagine achieving
the goals of study abroad without actually going abroad.
But many of the questions raised in this book are focused on some of the
taken-for-granted positive outcomes of study abroad—that studying abroad
necessarily provides a unique pedagogical outcome, one that contributes
to the development of their intercultural competence or global citizenship
through direct experience with cultural difference. It may be that we train
ourselves to seek that difference closer to home—through domestic programs
that focus on our own colonial and post-colonial presents, or that we work
to reimagine engaging international difference without a continued emphasis
on international travel. The coming 2020–2021 academic year will be one in
which study abroad, as we know it, will have to transform—we wait to see,
and to shape, those transformations.

NOTE

1. Unless otherwise noted and cited, all quotes attributed to contributors are tak-
ing from a written questionnaire or correspondence they submitted to us specifically
for this epilogue. Similarly, quotes attributed to administrators and providers, who
wished to remain anonymous, are from interviews conducted in May and June 2020.

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 Afterword
Keeping Study Abroad Real
Lisa Breglia

We were weeks into the COVID-induced lockdown, and I was in the fourth
virtual meeting of the day. It was a typical morning in my new life as a
teleworking university administrator. As I Iogged in, I saw the little boxes
populate with the faces the other global studies faculty signaling we were
gathering for our virtual meeting. We are a small group––tight knit, collab-
orative, and missing working together now that we were separated by stay-
at-home orders and the varying stresses of work and family demands. Next
on the agenda was what to do about our upcoming required seminar abroad.
Twice a year––each summer and winter––a faculty member takes a group of
our graduate students on a study trip to an international location. These study
trips are arranged with a local university partner, through which our students
receive lectures from their faculty, go on site visits, and engage in an in-depth
exploration of a specific topic that connects local and global issues relevant
to the host city.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in Spring 2020, the students were to
travel to Budapest in early summer. Our faculty member was already on
site––incidentally with a group of our undergraduate students on their own
internship abroad semester. Everything was already in place to receive and
accommodate up to twenty of our MA students. But by Spring Break it was
apparent that university-sponsored international travel in May would be
impossible. Among the other “pivots” we were struggling with, now we also
had to craft an alternative to the study abroad trip. The solution was right
there in front of us, one of the faulty members suggested: As our colleague
was already on site in eastern Europe, why don’t we have him “lead” the trip
virtually? And given future uncertainties of the upcoming months, we could
plan the winter break trip in the same fashion. This way, we could still add an

347
348 Afterword

experiential dimension to the curriculum as well as guarantee students could

graduate on time.
In theory, the idea offered a solid alternative to a wholesale cancellation of
the seminar abroad. But––perhaps as an early indication of “pivot-fatigue”–
–I reacted poorly to my colleague’s helpful suggestion. Instead of getting
behind the solution to our COVID-induced problem, I madly flashed my
“raised hand” icon in our meeting––the proper way to democratically partici-
pate in a group discussion on our university’s virtual classroom and meeting
platform––and impatiently intervened before I was called on. Seriously, a
“virtual study abroad?” No way. Not happening. I had a stake in this decision:
the next trip on our schedule was my own trip with our graduate students
to Havana. I have been leading this two-week winter break trip since 2013.
Could this deep, immersive experience be substituted with a “virtual” equiva-
lent? I worried that we were thinking in a fog of crisis through which every
“virtual” solution seemed like an easy fix.
We were months into dealing with the effects of COVID on the universi-
ty’s short and long-term operations before I had to face the reality of the issue
again. I received an email from our university’s study abroad office: Given
global conditions and the uncertainty of travel, wouldn’t I like to try my hand
at designing a virtual study abroad for my next planned faculty-led trip? I
was given an array of webinars and websites to consult. They were filled
with success stories from faculty and third-party providers talking about their
pivots to virtual programs. Program providers and academic directors spoke
of seamless transitions of academic content to the online format, of connect-
ing students on five different continents in WhatsApp groups, and even about
the virtues of the online platform in terms of expanding the abilities to host
guest speakers from NGOs and corporations. People were simply more avail-
able and easier to connect with in virtual space. In sum, the virtual programs
were not a poor substitute for the on-the-ground programs––especially those
for more advanced students with a higher level of academic content (like my
own). I did not disbelieve what I learned about pivots of other programs. In
fact, I admired them. But I did not believe I could make the pivot myself. I
wanted to keep mine “real.”
My insistence on grounded “reality” goes beyond and cuts deeper than
confronting COVID-induced circumstances. Instead, it is deeply connected to
the important issues both tackled and provoked by this volume; most signifi-
cantly, the transformative promises and ethical possibilities of study abroad.
The work in this book is most revelatory in its explorations of not what is
new but what we continue to struggle with and strive to overcome in study
abroad’s latent tourism dynamics. This book’s value is in its careful attention
to how the “classic” anthropological questions of the touristic encounter are
shaped, shifted, and adjusted in the study abroad mise-en-scene. The authors
reflexively use their ethnographic toolkit to explore the encounter with the
 Afterword 349

Other, the lure and power of cultural difference, the creation of touristic
and anti-touristic identities and subjectivities, and the possibilities of ethi-
cal rather than exploitative engagements. It is appropriate that we ask these
questions very critically, without hesitation or reservation. After all, since
in so many of these cases anthropologists are faculty leaders and academic
directors of study abroad trips, we are ourselves at the center of the brokering
and decision-making.
The same is true for the current moment as we are seduced in the fog of
crisis into becoming academic tour guides of virtual study abroad programs.
Though far from blind or naïve about the global nature of the pandemic,
the serious restrictions on travel and student mobility, and the university’s
hesitancy toward risk––I was preoccupied not only with the worry over
what kind of experience a virtual study abroad could offer but, even more
so, what this meant for my Cuban partners. Over the past eight years I had
been building the relationships and the means to work almost exclusively
without third-party providers to bring up to twenty-five students each year.
From my first trip in 2013 until the pandemic, my relationships in Havana
had grown closer through a profound political and economic upheaval in
the relationship between the Cuba and the United States. The most notable
whiplash came as the incredible euphoria of Obama’s diplomatic opening in
late 2016 turned to a swift re-enactment of travel and trade sanctions by the
Trump administration. The U.S. tourists who had flooded Havana’s streets
disappeared just as Cuban entrepreneurs found the capital to prepare for what
they thought was to be their new future. COVID brought an already dire eco-
nomic situation to crisis levels as the tourism sector was entirely shut down.
Though I brought my students through this thick and thin, continuing a vir-
tual partnership felt out of reach. Internet in Cuba is scarce and unreliable.
“Virtual delivery” of classes for Cuban students was not a reality during the
COVID lockdown. Instead, students watch classes on state-run TV stations.
As much as I wanted to keep my commitments to my Cuban partners (as we
are their major foreign partner and annual source of hard currency), a virtual
exchange under the terms and models offered by my university and my U.S.
counterparts was not possible. In this case, “virtual” was neither a solution
nor even an option.
Virtual study abroad will become more and more attractive as a go-to “fix”
in a post-COVID world––one in which decisions about the importance of
global travel will weigh the reality of risk against the perception of threat.
Let’s be sure to not blindly join in the rush to replace the “real” experi-
ence with its virtual substitute. Instead, let’s remember the lessons about
foregrounding the ethical relationships created through the promises and the
politics of study abroad: not just with our students but especially with our
partners on the ground. This way we can keep study abroad “real” and main-
tain its transformative potentials.
 Index

adventure, xi, 10, 18, 20–21, 90–91, authenticity, xiii, 24, 120, 141, 159,
108, 113, 149, 162, 177–94, 250, 196, 204, 216, 249–50, 253, 255,
254, 274, 298 326; staged-, 12, 15–16, 31, 244,
Africa, 10, 12, 41–63, 135–36, 140, 287, 300
163, 292, 294, 317, 328, 331, 335
AirBnB, 14, 281, 326 backstage, 12, 16, 21–22, 30–31, 150,
alumni, 157, 285, 299; of study abroad 164, 219–20, 249, 299, 309
programs, 260; and travel, 9, 20 Banksy, 282
American Anthropological Association Barbie Savior, 23, 316n2
(AAA), 295, 308 Barkin, Gareth, 12, 16, 21, 45, 48, 55,
American Institute for Foreign Study 120–21, 125–26, 131, 136, 142n4,
(AIFS), 13 153–54, 180, 196, 237, 297–98, 303,
anthropology, ii, xiii, 4–5, 12, 17, 30– 328–29, 331–32, 334–36
31, 43, 124, 126, 137, 153, 237–38, bars, 105, 108, 216, 295
252, 254, 293, 295, 302, 304–5, 307, Barth, Fredrik, 11
309, 315 Biggs, Melissa, 12, 21, 218, 298, 316,
anthropology of food, 237–38, 252, 254 330–31, 335
Anthropology of Tourism Interest Bodinger de Uriarte, John, xii, 10–12,
Group (ATIG), 295–96 16, 20–22, 24–25, 55, 59, 90, 127,
anti-tourism, 281–323; movements, 139, 161, 246, 296–98, 303, 316–
29, 283, 285; protests. See protests, 17n2, 329, 334, 339
anti-tourism. See also study abroad, Bologna Cooperative Studies Program
as anti-tourism; study abroad as, 3, (BCSP), 315
13–16, 21, 30–31, 150, 171, 179, border-crossing, 6, 27, 89–93, 105,
284–85, 299, 314–15, 326 110–12, 152, 154, 180
Ascione, Elisa, 11–12, 21, 183–84, 215, border-making, 89–91, 107–13, 180
290, 294, 311–12, 328, 330–31 borderzone, 12, 17, 23
Association of American Colleges and boundaries, xiii, 2, 9–11, 22, 27, 30, 81,
Universities, 303 133, 152, 157, 181, 189, 191n1, 252,

351
352 Index

336, 339; ethnic, 108; geopolitical, commodification, 19–20, 225. See also
26. See also Barth, Fredrik study abroad, commodification of
Breglia, Lisa, 330, 337 communication, 51–52, 89, 121, 130–
Bruner, Edward M., 12, 154, 199, 205, 33, 137, 243, 304, 339; intercultural,
210–11, 302 1, 5, 42, 246
Butcher, Jim, 27–28, 283–84 communitas, 92–93, 289, 310–11. See
also ritual
campus, xii, 5–7, 9–10, 12–13, 19, 25, cooking classes, 215–22, 237, 248–49,
30, 123–24, 131, 136, 260, 298–99, 252, 297, 328, 330
329, 332–33, 336, 339, 340 cosmopolitanism, 14, 283–84, 295, 300,
Caribbean, 71, 74, 83, 85–86, 329, 315–16
339–40 COVID–19, 325–27; impacts on study
Catholicism, 197–204, 208, 289–90, abroad, xv, 325–41, 347
313–14 crime, 75–76, 78, 84, 86n2, 135, 245
Centers for Disease Control and cruises, 29, 281–82, 295–96, 326–28,
Prevention (CDC), 127, 338 335–38
Christianity, 197–201, 204, 208, Cuba, 11, 149–73, 303, 327, 338–39,
212n5, 290. See also Catholicism; 349
Protestantism cultural competence, 11–12, 188
Christou, Anastasia, 267–68 culture, ii, xii, 3–6, 10–12, 14–18,
Chronicle of Higher Education, 4–5 25–28, 31, 44–45, 67–70, 77–78,
class: economic, 2, 11, 18, 20–21, 80–81, 92–93, 97, 105, 111, 122,
52, 67–69, 92–94, 99, 101, 104–5, 124–25, 136–39, 149–60, 162–63,
110–12, 137, 150, 157–58, 171, 169–70, 172, 180, 196–98, 201, 203,
197, 247, 283, 295, 303, 316; study 206, 216–18, 223, 228, 235–56, 260,
abroad, 10, 19, 30, 58, 70–83, 85, 263, 266–68, 271, 274–75, 277–79,
106, 135, 142n4, 149, 155–56, 161, 289–90, 292–300, 303, 305–6, 308,
163–68, 171, 178–79, 181, 186–90, 314–17, 340
215–23, 229n1, 230n4, 235, 237–39, culture shock, 162
241–42, 245–46, 248–49, 252, 254,
256, 260, 275–76, 293, 298–99, 304, Dance, 21, 75, 101, 134, 149–51, 155–
306–7, 310–11, 315, 316–17n2, 328, 56, 163–72, 196, 267, 274, 303,
332–33, 339, 341, 348–49 337
cleansing, 95–97, 110–11, 295 danger, xv, 10–11, 13, 57, 89–90, 97–
Coffman, Jennifer, 12, 16, 52–53, 290, 98, 127, 161–62, 171, 181, 190, 191,
293, 316, 329–31, 336 200–202, 204–6, 241; managed-, 25,
Collaborative Institutional Training 177–79
Initiative (CITI), 306–7 data analysis, 75, 77, 79, 151
colonial history, 71, 85, 151, 339 dating, 24, 297–98
colonialism, 13, 339 Department of Defense, 263–64
comfort zone, 2–3, 10, 12, 21, 24–25, Department of State, 2, 45, 259–60,
81, 90, 92, 110, 125, 137, 150–52, 263–64
154, 157, 165, 171, 177–79, 184–92, Dewey, John, 17–18, 155
198, 201–3, 222, 226–27, 240, 303– diaspora, 260, 266–68, 276, 316
4, 336, 339. See also discomfort Didion, Joan, 266
 Index 353

difference, 3, 6, 11–13, 17, 20–21, 23– 121–24, 131, 133, 137–38, 255, 334,
24, 27, 48, 60, 62, 73, 89–93, 101–5, 336; and siloing, 20
110–13, 119–28, 133, 136–37, 139– education abroad. See study abroad
41, 152, 154, 156, 158–59, 161, 178, educational tourism. See tourism,
180–81, 183, 186–89, 191n2, 206–9, educational
211–12, 225–26, 235, 238–39, 242– edutainment, 23–24
43, 247–48, 252, 254, 277, 286, 289, edutourism, 14,152–54
291–92, 300–301, 307, 310, 339, embodied learning, 150–52, 166–67,
341, 348–49 303–4
Di Giovine, Michael, xii, 1–2, 9, 11–12, ethics, 284–85, 305–7, 325, 335;
15–16, 20–24, 27, 89–90, 92–93, difference from morals, 314–15
107, 111, 120, 134, 157–57, 168–69, ethnocentrism, 25–26, 31, 69, 121,
197–202, 206, 236, 240, 253, 282, 136–37, 284, 293–94, 339–40
285–89, 291, 294–96, 299, 302, 310– ethnography, 15, 17, 21, 67, 75, 79,
11, 315, 329–32, 334–37, 340 90–91, 119, 121–25, 129, 133–34,
discomfort, 12, 24–25, 55, 59, 119–20, 139, 151, 155–57, 249–50, 285, 302,
122–24, 126–27, 129–30, 133–34, 304, 313–14, 337, 348; difference
136, 141, 152, 163–65, 171, 185, between tourism and, 4–5; of
187–88, 190–92, 195, 200–204, restaurants, 254; teaching, 73–76,
226–27, 236, 266, 268, 291, 298, 78–79, 82–83, 86; use in study
311; -zone, 177–81. See also comfort abroad, 3, 12, 17, 31, 70–72, 93–94,
zone 142, 252–54, 303, 305–7, 310
Disney, Walt, 23–24 ethnomusicology, 161, 303
doctors, 113, 338–39 expatriates, 271, 297, 301–2
Doerr, Neriko, 10–12, 21–22, 55, 90– experiential learning, 19, 48, 155, 157,
92, 105–7, 109, 126–27, 141, 154, 171, 186, 196, 252, 296, 337–38
180–81, 186–87, 240, 298, 300–301,
310–11, 339 farming, 218, 245
drugs, 212n6; medical use. See festivals, 108, 216, 218–19, 265,
medicine; use among students, 297 312
Dubrovnik, 281, 295 field methods, 67, 70–71, 83
field notes, 305–6
economics, 4, 13, 20, 25, 54, 123, 140– fiestas. See festivals
41: profit, 13–15, 24, 41, 90, 121–22, food, 11, 21, 56, 79, 95, 100, 103,
123, 127–34, 137, 139, 140–41, 178, 157–59, 170–71, 179, 185, 187,
286, 288–89, 291; costs to hosts, 191, 200–201, 215–30, 235–56, 267,
204–5, 218–19 246–47, 330–31; 269–70, 294, 306–7, 312, 315, 328,
costs to students, 90–91, 94, 99, 108; 332, 338; local, 72, 86, 158, 215–16,
leakage, 291; losses, 330 229, 301; photography of, 243–43;
education: as central component in producers, 215–16, 229–30, 236–37,
study abroad, 12–13, 122–24, 249, 251–52
134–35, 149–54; experiential, xii, food studies programs, 11, 235, 238–40
6–7, 196, 246; high-impact, 15–19, Forum for Education Abroad, 7, 129
25, 31, 42. See also Kuh, George; freedom, 30, 138, 161, 170, 261, 266,
international-, 5–6, 9, 42, 45, 119, 271, 276, 309
354 Index

Fulbright Program, 4, 9, 13, 226, 262– heritage, 9–10, 24, 29, 84, 98, 100, 104,
64, 277, 301. See also Institute of 134, 217, 223, 244, 250, 252–53,
International Education (IIE) 259–61, 263–64, 266–68, 277–79,
Fussell, Paul, 283 282–83, 306, 315, 337
high-impact learning experiences, 1,
Game of Thrones, 275–76 15–16, 19, 25, 31, 42–43, 52, 61–62,
gap year, 14, 17, 44, 120, 198, 289, 304, 308–10, 335–36, 339. See also
296–97 education, high impact; Kuh, George
Geertz, Clifford, 71, 79, 300 holiday, 22, 71, 202, 242–43, 265, 281,
gender, 4, 47–48, 75, 94, 125, 135, 137, 284. See also vacation
149–51, 155–56, 163, 185, 303, 316 homestay, 6, 12, 21, 52–54, 58, 105,
general education requirements, 298–99 120, 135–36, 150, 157–59, 163–64,
Global Attitudes, Survey, 25–26 171, 216, 227–30, 270, 300–302,
global citizenship, xv, 1, 12, 14–16, 18, 314, 330
25–31, 48, 67–72, 78, 84, 86, 152– hostels, 271
54, 177–78, 180–81, 186–89, 191, hosts, 5, 9, 11–17, 29–31, 42, 46–49,
240, 278, 284–85, 289, 298, 315–16, 52–54, 57–58, 60–62, 91–94, 105–
325, 341 12, 135–36, 142, 150–51, 171, 179,
globalization, 7–8, 26–28, 68–70, 92– 181, 204–5, 207, 215–19, 236–37,
93, 140, 149, 180, 340 244, 246–47, 250, 263, 270, 278,
Goffman, Erving, 12, 22, 183 290–97, 301; and guests, 58–60,
Graburn, Nelson, 17, 110, 151, 205, 157–59, 205, 207–9, 219, 225, 227–
236, 286, 288 29, 230n3, 252, 286, 300, 311–12,
Grand Tour, 15, 17–18, 20, 31, 124, 326–28, 330, 336, 347–48
296–99, 337 hotel, 11, 20–21, 90, 95, 103–4, 157–58,
Greer, Aaron, 12, 15–16, 21, 25, 77, 224, 288, 300, 312, 326
188, 303–4, 307, 315, 329, 334 humanitarianism, 22, 45, 208, 211, 247,
guests. See hosts, and guests 292; popular-, 247, 294. See also
guide, 21, 23, 30, 98, 100–101, 104, Jolie, Angelina
125–26, 134, 138–39, 142, 150, 154, hyphenated identity, 9, 260, 262, 266–
171, 184–85, 198, 204, 220, 235, 67, 276, 278, 279n1
239, 251, 263, 304–5, 308–17, 326,
331, 333, 349 Iceland, 6, 178, 187–88, 191n3
guidebook, 91, 283 imaginaries, 3, 10, 15, 23, 43, 62, 98,
guilt, 197, 203, 266, 270–71, 275, 278, 110, 153–54, 168, 170, 173, 192,
295, 301 205, 223, 236, 255, 286–87, 293,
297, 299, 302, 325–26; student, 91,
Hajj, 288–89 108, 162, 168, 171, 185, 227–28,
Handler, Richard, 14, 24, 45, 48, 57 294; tourist, 90, 149–51, 161, 168,
HBO, 295–96 171, 172, 182, 185, 227, 237, 256,
health, 4, 10–11, 53–56, 94–95, 97–99, 284, 288, 294, 309, 311
121, 123–24, 126–32, 138–39, 170, immersion, xv, 4, 6–7, 30, 52–53, 62,
205–6, 208, 211, 215–16, 225, 229– 67, 70, 90–92, 94, 105–13, 132, 141,
30, 242, 246, 284, 288, 290, 307, 312 150–52, 155, 157–58, 171, 173, 177–
healthcare, 337–39. See also medicine 78, 186, 238, 242, 297, 339–41
 Index 355

Immigration and Customs Enforcement MacCannell, Dean, 12, 22, 157–58, 183,
(ICE), 333 204
inequality, 2, 6, 15–16, 26–27, 29, 55, markets, 94–95, 101–3, 158–59, 215, 221–
152, 155, 170, 208, 247–48, 284, 22, 225–26, 238, 265, 286, 300, 305–6
287, 295, 315–16, 339–40 McDonald’s, 229n2, 301
Institute of International Education medicine, 98–99, 195, 199, 201–2,
(IIE), 2, 4, 8, 13, 42, 45–52, 54, 205–7, 209–10, 248
62n1, 70, 120–21, 128, 142, 152, Medlife, 291, 293
179, 224, 263–64, 327–28, 333 Mexico, 102, 195–97, 199–201, 208–9,
Institutional Review Board (IRB), 211–12, 212n6, 216–30, 330–31
305–6 missions, 5, 15, 195, 198–99, 203;
intercultural competence, 43, 52–53, medical, 207, 209, 211
58–59, 62, 123, 125, 133–37, 141, mobility, xv, 1, 3, 7, 10, 15, 27–28, 31,
339, 341 60, 223, 284, 286–87, 295, 299–300,
interdisciplinary, 29, 31, 238–39, 282, 302, 316n1, 325–27, 337, 349;
285–86, 334 degree-, 9
internationalization, 3–5, 25, 29–30, Mormonism, 289–90
298–99, 325, 332. See also Morocco, 10, 178, 184, 191n3
universities, internationalization music, 149–57, 160–61, 163–73, 218,
missions of 266–67, 298, 303
interview skills, 73–75
Italy, 10, 229–30, 235–56, 292–93, 296, nation-state, 27, 30, 68, 92–93, 284;
301, 303, 307, 326–28, 330 ideology, 110
negotiation, 5, 11–12, 17, 23, 27, 43, 54,
Jolie, Angelina, 294–95 74, 78–79, 119, 120, 134, 136, 141,
Journal for Sustainable Tourism, 29 188, 204, 237, 240, 260, 286, 288–
89, 295, 308, 311, 313, 315, 326
Kenya, 49–50, 52–54, 58–60, 221, 329 neoliberalism, xi, 15, 19–20, 22–23, 26,
Kok, Ilja, 17 28–29, 31, 44, 119, 121, 123, 137–
Kuh, George, 18–19, 155, 303, 305, 310 41, 179–81, 183, 187–88, 246, 247,
253, 283, 294–95; and universities,
Lampman, Aaron, 10, 12, 16, 21, 300, 13–14, 18, 22, 304
303, 309, 329, 338–39 networked hospitality, 300
language, xii, 4, 26; ability, 42, 46–47, Nguyen, Annie, 9–10, 12, 300–301,
67–68, 70, 70, 89, 155, 158, 183, 308, 316, 329, 340
185, 187, 191, 197, 235, 238, 240, non-governmental organizations
242, 246, 247, 252, 263, 267, 274– (NGOs), 22, 45, 52, 55–56, 58, 61,
75, 277, 281, 293, 296, 307, 309, 221–22, 348
316; acquisition, 216, 228–29, 297, nostalgia, 150–51, 172–73; imperialist-,
300–301; translation, 273 151–52, 169, 172
learning outcomes. See study abroad, nutrition, 200–201, 304, 307, 312
learning outcomes of
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 4–5, 302 Ogden, Anthony, 20, 24, 91, 123, 177,
liability, 10, 128–29, 179, 185–86, 309 186, 248
localism, 223 Open Doors Report on International
Lonely Planet, 217, 230, 283 Education Exchange, 2, 48–49, 224.
356 Index

See also Institute of International 298–300; as mentor, 235, 303, 305,

Education (IIE) 307–16; as promoter, 153
O’Rourke, Dennis, 17 Program development, 25–29, 263. See
othering, 10, 54, 89–90, 93, 97–98, 109, also study abroad
183 protestantism, 197–98
otherness, 17, 23, 74, 151, 158, 160–61, protests: anti-tourism, 15–16, 282;
191n1, 226, 286, 288, 301, 326 racial, 339; student, xi–xii
overtourism, 14, 29, 282
race, 94, 125, 149–51, 316; and racism,
pandemic, xii, 327, 330, 334, 338–41, 104, 136–37; teaching, 28, 155, 339.
347; reopening of tourism after, See also Protests, racial
333, 335, 349; and shift to virtual Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA), 304–5
delivery, 336; study abroad Ratner, Vaddey, 266
uncertainty and, xv–xvi, 326–27, refugee, 9, 262–64, 267–68, 276–79,
329. See also COVID–19 292
participant observation, 21, 95, 150, research, 25–26, 68–69, 80, 83–85,
155, 216, 252, 254, 303, 313, 341. 105, 138–39, 198, 206–7, 217, 219,
See also ethnography 225, 252, 262, 264, 268, 303–4,
pedagogy, 20, 123–24, 134, 139–42, 307–8, 311–13, 315, 316n1, 336; in
185–86, 304, 308. 334–36 choosing a study abroad program,
Peru, 90–91, 93, 99–105, 108, 111–12 240; component of study abroad
Perugia, 235–42, 249, 252–56, 293–94, program, 21, 30, 43, 72, 74–76,
297, 311–13, 315, 328, 330–31 78, 83, 135, 262–63, 275–76, 303;
Pew Research Center, 25–26 ethnographic. See ethnography;
photography, 182–84, 187, 189, 190, planning a program, 82–83; student-
192, 217–18, 223, 243–44, 302. See faculty, 303, 305, 310, 315, 328.
also food, photography of See also study abroad, as a high-
pilgrimage, 15, 120, 124–26, 195–202, impact educational practice; on study
210–12, 287–89, 301–2, 309–17, abroad, 3–5, 17, 30–31, 52, 91–96,
337–38 99–100, 105, 119–24, 137, 151,
political science, 62–63, 74, 224 191n3, 216, 227, 229n1, 305–6, 325;
postcolonialism, 339–41 on tourism, 14–15; Universities, xi
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), risk, xii, 10–11, 21, 24, 55, 61, 92, 95,
308 97, 99, 120–21, 127–28, 130–31,
Prazak, Miroslava, 12, 16, 290, 293, 135–36, 177, 181, 184–92, 201, 204,
316, 330–31, 336 208, 226, 275, 292–93, 309, 325,
prep class, 30, 71–78, 82, 85, 339–40 338, 349; -management, vx, 119,
pricing, 11, 20–21, 44, 89–91, 94, 123–24, 132, 139, 177–78, 185–86
99–102, 104, 108–9, 111–13, 226, rite of passage, 302; study abroad, as,
229–30, 281–82, 228. See also study 124, 153, 186, 199–220, 296
abroad, pricing ritual, 10, 17, 70, 90–99, 110–11, 120,
private visits, 20–21, 299 124–27, 137, 149–52, 155–57, 163–
professor, 3, 63, 236–37, 259, 277, 285, 73, 183, 198, 230, 244, 252, 286,
331, 333; as concierge, 30, 309; as 303, 310; collective, 90–91, 94–99,
guide, 13–14, 16, 20, 30, 68, 94–100, 110–11
 Index 357

romance, 12, 20, 43, 152–53, 164, 241, Spain, 70–73, 76–77, 90–91, 93, 105–6,
255, 282, 300, 309 109, 111–12, 169–70, 227, 240, 296,
Romanticism (movement), 296–97 299, 301, 327
staged authenticity. See authenticity,
safety, 10, 86n1, 104, 120, 123, 162, staged
165, 215–16, 248, 262, 282; and stereotypes, 10–11, 22, 105, 112–14,
pandemic, 325–26, 333–34, 337–38; 153–54, 161, 205, 251, 254, 292,
protocols on tour, 8, 24–25, 44, 295, 299–300; ethnic, 152; of mass
58–59, 76–77, 86n1, 89–91, 94–95, tourism, 15–16, 98, 287
97–98, 111, 126–35, 138–39, 153, strategic essentialisms, 159–60
185–87, 201, 203, 240–41, 250, Strauss, Virginia, 17, 25–26, 302
297–98 stress, 4, 164–65, 197, 331, 347. See
Saigon, 264, 268–69, 273–74, 276, also health
279n2 student: graduate, 4, 216, 224, 262–63,
Salazar, Noel, 23, 27, 110, 151, 182, 304, 347–48. See also Fulbright
205, 223, 229, 236–37, 309 Program; international, 109, 178,
sanctions, social, 11 216, 237–38, 332–33; pre-medical,
Santería, 150, 155–56, 163, 166–68, 172 291–93; undergraduate, 4–5, 41–42,
Schweitzer, Don, 12, 15–16, 21, 25, 46–55, 85, 119–20, 133–34, 152–53,
188, 303–4, 307, 315, 329, 334 179, 235, 262–63, 291–93, 299, 303,
Schweitzer, Kenneth, 10, 12, 16, 21, 305–8, 315, 326, 347
300, 303, 309, 329, 338–39 Student and Youth Travel Association
seducation, 309 (SYTA), 8
seduction, 23–24, 149–50, 236–37, Student Travel Association (STA), 8
309–10, 349 study abroad, xvi; as anti-tourism, 3,
selfies, 182–84, 236–37, 242–43 13–17, 21, 29–31, 150–51, 171, 179,
Semester at Sea, 328 284–87, 290–91, 295, 299, 302–3,
Serio, Katharine, 9, 12, 22, 126, 289– 308, 314–17, 326–27. See also anti-
90, 294, 329 tourism; assessment and, 13–14, 18,
service-learning, 13–14, 21–25, 41–44, 61, 91, 126, 141, 190, 228–29, 305–
48–49, 52–54, 57, 60–62, 67, 70, 6; carbon footprint of, 6, 23, 29–30;
125, 139, 185–86, 198, 244–46, 248, as career preparation, 18, 20, 26, 28,
290–95, 325. See also study abroad, 62, 125, 222, 262–63, 290, 298–99,
service; volunteerism; voluntourism 304; commodification of, 19–20,
short-term study abroad. See study 255–56; cost of, 14, 42, 45, 52–53,
abroad, short-term 101–2, 110–12, 130–31, 153–54,
short-term travel class, 67, 72, 83–84 291, 293–94, 299, 329, 336–37, 339–
Sierra Leone, 90–91, 93–100, 102, 105, 40; and cross-cultural understanding,
110–12 6, 8–10, 18–19, 42, 90–92, 112, 126,
Slow Food, 218–19, 229n2, 253, 338 135–38, 149, 152, 154, 168, 180,
slow tourism, 338 189, 316, 335–36; decrease after
social media, 8, 23–24, 54, 159–60, 208, COVID–19, 325–41, 347–49. See
237, 242–45, 330–31, 335 also pandemic; definition of, 5–7,
sociology, 4, 31, 84–85, 209 13; domestic, 6–7, 10, 12, 289–90,
358 Index

298, 339, 341. See also study away; term, 19, 119–27, 125, 136–37,
and embodiment, xv, 24, 167, 183, 153–54, 196, 299; similarities to
228, 251, 297, 300, 316, 325–26, tourism, 2, 4, 7–9, 14–17, 110, 134,
328, 335–38; as a high-impact 289, 297; and status, 27–28, 90–91,
educational practice, 1–2, 15–16, 111–12, 124–26, 169–70, 243, 289;
19, 25, 42–43, 52, 62, 132, 297–98, Student Learning Paradigm of, 18;
308–10, 335–39; historical increase as supplemental education, 5–7,
of, 2, 29–30, 41–42, 49, 51–52, 62, 9–10, 12–13, 17–18, 166, 172, 296;
70, 121–22, 133, 152–54; learning theories of, xi, 3, 124, 128, 154, 183,
outcomes of, 1, 3, 15, 18–23, 26–29, 191–92, 285; as transformative, 8,
43, 51, 58, 60, 62, 68, 70, 74, 78, 82, 10, 13–14, 19, 27, 30–31, 62, 119–
91, 121–23, 125, 127, 139–40, 150, 20, 124, 127, 155, 195, 240, 326–27,
167, 177–78, 181, 183, 186–88, 191, 348–49; universities and, xi–xii,
196, 228, 240, 244, 246–48, 250, 1–3, 6, 9, 13–14, 18, 20–22, 29–31,
265, 283, 288, 310, 328, 335–36, 44–46, 62, 69–70, 93, 121–26, 141,
341; length of, 3, 7–9, 17–18, 305, 142n5, 178–80, 188, 191–92, 196,
334. See also study abroad, short- 235, 237–38, 260, 262, 285, 289,
term; marketing and, xii, 12, 18, 298–99, 331–33, 336–37, 347–49;
22, 24, 26, 48, 54, 69, 119, 128, and university administration, 196;
151–53, 236–37, 240, 255, 284–85, virtual, 30, 328–32, 336–37, 348–49
307, 309, 316; and neoliberalism, study away, 23–24, 27, 178–79, 230,
xi–xiii, 13–15, 18–20, 22–23, 26, 260, 339; and differences with study
28–29, 31, 119–21, 123, 137–41, abroad, 5–7, 9
179–81, 187–88, 295; origins of, 20. Susquehanna University, 6–7, 10, 18,
See also Grand Tour; and pricing, 339
90–91, 94, 99, 108. See also study sustainability, 14–15, 52, 68, 216–17,
abroad, cost of; as a product, 18–20, 235, 237–39, 244–46, 281–83, 285,
127, 179; promotion of, 12, 124–25, 287, 291, 294–96, 314; COVID’s
130, 132, 177, 182, 186–88, 192, effects on, 335–37; of study abroad,
229, 236; providers, xv, 4, 11–13, xv, 28–30, 315–16; teaching,
18–19, 30–31, 44–46, 48–49, 52–53, 245–47, 312. See also study abroad,
100–102, 119–24, 127, 128–39, carbon footprint of
141n2, 142n4, 178–81, 185, 237, Swahili, 60, 331
250–51, 294, 295–96, 308–9, 311–
13, 326, 330–31, 334–35, 338, 340, Tanzania, 49–50, 54–55, 329
348–49; recovery from pandemic, taste, 21, 67, 100, 158, 196, 205, 215–
326, 334–41. See also pandemic; 29, 254, 312; and distaste, 254
as rite of passage, 199–20, 124, Thomas Cook, 283
153, 186, 296; and service, xii, 12, tourism, xii–xiii, xv, 1–4, 7–9, 11–17,
14–17, 20–25, 41–45, 48–49, 52–53, 20, 28–31, 43–44, 52, 55, 57, 60, 62,
57, 60–63, 70, 121–22, 125, 139, 67, 70, 81, 85, 90, 92–93, 98, 101–2,
179–80, 185–86, 198–99, 229, 246– 110, 112, 120–26, 128, 132, 134,
48, 261, 287, 289–300, 310, 314, 150–51, 157, 161–62, 169–72, 177,
325, 328. See also service-learning; 179, 190–91, 195–99, 202, 204–6,
volunteerism; voluntourism; short- 208, 212n3, 216–17, 222, 223, 229,
 Index 359

236, 238–39, 243–44, 247–51, 255– 237–38, 246–47, 260, 262–63, 269,
56, 268, 281–317, 325–31, 334–38, 289, 304, 307–8, 310, 314–15, 329,
348–49; culinary, 215–17, 221, 341, 347–49; internationalization
229; domestic, 7, 12, 298, 327, 300; missions of, 25–26, 67–70,
educational, 9, 14, 17, 20–25, 152– 152–53, 235, 278–79, 284–85,
54, 156–57, 198, 295–300, 302, 307, 298–99, 331–34, 336–37. See also
337; Visiting Friends and Relatives internationalization. See also study
(VFR), 15, 300–302, 311, 316n1; abroad, universities and
volunteer. See voluntourism Urry, John, 7, 57, 151, 157, 165, 237,
tourismphilia, 282 243–44, 255–56, 286, 295
tourismphobia, 282 Utooni Development Organization,
Tourism Research Information Network 58–60
(TRINET), 334
tourist bubble, 150–51, 157–59, 171, vacation, 22, 44, 74, 196–98, 201–2,
284–86, 299–300 212, 239, 328. See also holiday
tourist gaze, 23, 57, 150, 196 Vietnam, 9, 259–69, 271, 273–77,
tourist gentrification, 14–15, 281 294–95, 301
touristification, 14–15 Vietnam War, 261–65, 276–77
tourist imaginaries. See imaginaries, volunteerism, 42–44, 52, 153, 295
tourist voluntourism, 12, 14, 22–23, 42–45, 57,
tour operator, 8, 291. See also study 196, 208–9, 247, 290–95, 302, 307–8
abroad, provider Vrasti, Wanda, 19, 26, 290
travel confidence, 74, 78, 92
Trinidad and Tobago, 70–74, 78, 80, 83, weekending, 191n1
334, 339 West Chester University, 6, 10, 29–30,
Turin, 313 331–32
witnessing, 212n5
Uganda, 49–51, 55–61, 95 Wong, Ali, 267
Umbra Institute, 315 World Heritage sites, 24, 282
United Nations Educational, Scientific writing, 52, 71, 73–74, 89, 91, 109, 134,
and Cultural Organization 138, 142, 155, 170, 178, 218, 249,
(UNESCO), 25, 217, 223, 282, 337 317; creative, 259–61, 263, 271,
United Nations World Tourism 275–77; ethnography, 83, 302
Organization (UNWTO), 2, 282–83,
327 Young Southeast Asian Leaders’
universities, xi–xii, 1–6, 9–10, 13–14, Initiative (YSALI), 332
16, 18–24, 29–31, 44–46, 48–50, 54,
59, 62, 93, 106, 121–24, 126–29, Zemach-Bersin, Tayla, 18, 20, 25, 69,
131, 134, 139–42, 178–80, 189, 191, 188–89
 About the Contributors

Elisa Ascione is the coordinator of the Center for Food and Sustainability
Studies at the Umbra Institute, a U.S. study abroad program in Perugia, Italy.
A cultural anthropologist, she teaches courses on sustainability and food
production in Italy, anthropology of food, and history and culture of food in
Italy. She has conducted research and published on heritagization processes
of foods in Central Italy, and on the intersection of migration, work, and
gender relations in Italy.

Gareth Barkin is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research is focused

on practices surrounding the representation of culture in and of Southeast
Asia. His current project explores short-term study abroad at U.S. universi-
ties, focusing on the representation of Southeast Asian culture and place in
an increasingly market-driven pedagogical arena. He has led numerous short-
and long-term study-abroad programs and works to develop collaborative
approaches that focus on mutual, productive engagement between Indonesian
and American college students. He is a professor of anthropology at the
University of Puget Sound.

Lisa Breglia is senior associate dean and associate professor of global affairs
at George Mason University. Her research examines the struggles between
the public good and private sector development in the cases of natural and
cultural resources. She is a specialist in Latin America and has conducted eth-
nographic research in the Yucatán Peninsula for more than twenty years. She
has been bringing students to Havana, Cuba, every winter break since 2013.

Melissa S. Biggs is a cultural anthropologist with research interests in cultural

politics and representation, critical heritage studies, food culture studies, and

361
362 About the Contributors

nationalism and indigenous rights. She was a 2016–2017 Fulbright–García

Robles Scholar in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.

John J. Bodinger de Uriarte is a cultural anthropologist with research inter-

ests in national and small museums; discourses of study abroad, adventure,
and self-transformation; and tourism. He serves as chair of the sociology
and anthropology department and directs both the Museum Studies Program
and the Diversity Studies Program at Susquehanna. He has led multiple
short-term study-abroad programs to the Galápagos, Iceland, and Morocco.
His publications include Casino and Museum: Representing Mashantucket
Pequot Identity.

Jennifer Coffman is a cultural anthropologist whose research and teach-

ing focuses on human–environment interactions and issues of development
from a political ecology perspective. She studies land and wildlife resource
management and sociocultural change, participatory development and ethnic
politicking, and local land and food production issues in East Africa, and she
established and directs James Madison University’s East Africa Field School,
an intensive summer program. Coffman is professor of integrated science
and technology and associate executive director at the Center for Global
Engagement at James Madison University.

Michael A. Di Giovine is associate professor of anthropology at West

Chester University of Pennsylvania and honorary fellow in the Department
of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Michael is also
the director of the West Chester University Museum of Anthropology and
Archaeology, the convener of the American Anthropological Association’s
Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group, a member of ICOMOS and its
International Cultural Tourism Committee (ICTC), and a consultant for
museums and heritage sites. Michael has been involved in study-abroad
and educational travel his whole life—participating first at a young age and
then through college, as director of operations for an educational tour opera-
tor, and currently as the director of a successful ethnographic field school
in Perugia, Italy. Michael’s research spans Europe and Southeast Asia and
focuses on tourism, pilgrimage, heritage, foodways, and religion. Among
other venues, he has been featured on National Public Radio, The Boston
Globe, Atlas Obscura, La Cucina Italiana, and The Economist. Michael is
the author of The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism
(2009). With Ronda Brulotte, he is the coeditor of Edible Identities: Food
and Foodways as Cultural Heritage (2014); with David Picard Tourism and
the Power of Otherness: Seductions of Difference (2014) and The Seductions
of Pilgrimage: Sacred Journeys Afar and Astray in the Western Religious
 About the Contributors 363

Tradition (2015); and with Jaeyeon Choe Pilgrimage Beyond the Officially
Sacred (2020). He sits on the academic board of The International Journal
of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage and is the book reviews editor for both
Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing and the
Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change. Michael is the editor of Lexington
Books’ series, The Anthropology of Tourism: Heritage, Mobility and Society.

Neriko Musha Doerr received a PhD in cultural anthropology from Cornell

University and currently teaches at Ramapo College in New Jersey, United
States, as assistant professor of anthropology and international studies. Her
research interests include politics of difference, language and power, and
education in Japan, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the United States, as well
as study-abroad and alternative break abroad experiences. Her publications
include  Meaningful Inconsistencies: Bicultural Nationhood, Free Market,
and Schooling in Aotearoa/New Zealand,  Transforming Study Abroad: A
Handbook, and The Global Education Effect and Japan: Constructing New
Borders and Identification Practices.

Aaron Andrew Greer is currently assistant professor of anthropology at

Pacific University in Oregon. His dissertation focused on the role of Hindu
religious education in alleviating economic anxieties among East Indian
communities in Trinidad and Tobago in the Southern Caribbean. His current
research explores the problem of law and the relationship between the polis
and the State in Trinidad and Tobago.

Richard Handler is professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia;

he was the founding director of the Global Studies program, in which role
he served for eleven years. Handler has written on nationalism and cultural
politics and is currently completing a book on the national iconography of
U.S. postage stamps.

Aaron Lampman is associate professor of anthropology and international

studies at Washington College. He received his PhD in environmental anthro-
pology from the University of Georgia. His research, funded by NSF and
NIH, has focused on ethnoecology and sustainable development in Mexico
and Panama. He also conducts disaster mitigation research focused on cul-
turally influenced perceptions of risk associated with climate change and
sea-level rise.

Annie Nguyen is a lecturer of writing studies at the University of

Washington–Tacoma. She completed a Fulbright in Creative Writing in
Vietnam in 2001and began independent travels in Southeast Asia. She led
364 About the Contributors

students in global leadership programs in China and Europe from 2005 to

2007, promoted and oversaw the study-abroad program as the director of
global studies at the Community College of Baltimore County from 2010 to
2012, and has designed and executed short-term study-away/study-abroad
programs in England, Thailand, Vietnam, and Hawaii.

Miroslava Prazak teaches anthropology at Bennington College, focusing her

longitudinal research in East Africa on gender, age, social, economy-based
inequalities, and particularly the impact of economic development on various
cultural institutions, including family, education, and healthcare systems. In
addition, her interests include ways of knowing, gender ideologies, rites of
passage, and historical change.

Don D. Schweitzer has worked extensively with young people as a practi-

tioner, an educator, and a researcher. His dissertation work incorporated the
tenets of Positive Youth Development and resulted in invitations to national
social work symposiums at the University of Houston and the Ohio State
University. He is the director of the Bachelors Program in Social Work, and
the Chair of the Department of Social Work and Public Health at Pacific
University.

Kenneth Schweitzer has spent almost two decades studying Afro-Cuban

musical culture, with a focus on African-rooted religious forms (Santería,
Palo, and Abaku). Schweitzer returns to Cuba annually to continue learn-
ing more about the unique musical, cultural, and political landscape of this
Caribbean island nation. An associate professor of music at Washington
College, Dr. Schweitzer has expertise as both a drummer and an ethnomu-
sicologist; since 2014, Ken has created educational adventures in Cuba for
both students and private groups. His publications include The Artistry of
Afro-Cuban Batá: Aesthetics, Transmission, Bonding and Creativity (2013).

Katharine Serio completed her PhD in anthropology from the University of

Arkansas, Fayetteville, in spring 2020. For her dissertation Born-Again on
Sundays, she worked in Belize examining religious performances and narra-
tives of a Methodist Church.