Intercultural exchange and mutuality in volunteer tourism: the case of intercambio in Ecuador

Volunteer tourism has been criticised for promoting neo-colonial discourses of development aid. To date, there is a dearth of research into organisations that do not overtly position themselves within a development aid context. This article draws on ethnographic research within a small-scale organisation in Ecuador, Fundacion Arte del Mundo, which promotes the creative arts, intercultural learning and mutuality as core to its volunteerism. This article highlights the benefits and potentialities of emphasising such intercultural learning exchanges and suggests that the predominance of development aid discourses, both in the practice and critiques of volunteer tourism can obscure a more serious engagement with such examples of learning and mutuality as constitutive of a less paternalistic volunteer tourism. The article argues that the experiences evident in the volunteerism of Fundacion Arte del Mundo at times actively subvert and decentre neo-colonial binaries and power differentials that often underpin exchanges between volunteers and the local community. By drawing attention to experiences of intercultural learning and mutuality, the article serves to shift the framing of discussion and practices of volunteer tourism away from those which consistently draw on neo-colonial binaries as the reference point of analysis and in doing so reify their interpretive power.