This book provides a valuable insight into how volunteer tourism is growing and developing. Theoretical and empirical case studies from leading researchers explore the experiences of the volunteer tourist and the power relationships between volunteers and host communities.

Part One: Journeys Beyond Otherness - Communities, Culture and Power 1: Volunteer Tourism as Alternative Tourism: Journeys Beyond Otherness, K Lyons; S Wearing 2: "Pettin' the Critters": Exploring the Complex Relationship Between Volunteers and the Voluntoured in McDowell County, West Virginia, USA and Tijuana, Mexico, N McGehee; K Andercek 3: Volunteering Tourism Knowledge: A Case from the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, C Cooper, L Ruhanen; E Fayos-Sola 4: Lessons from Cuba: A Volunteer Army of Ambassadors, R Spencer 5: "Make a Difference!": The Role of Sending Organizations in Volunteer Tourism, E Raymond Part Two: Inward Journeys: Motivations, Needs and the Self 6: The Volunteer's Journey through Leisure to the Self, S Wearing; A Deville; K Lyons 7: Gibbons in their Midst? Conservation Volunteers' Motivations at the Gibbons Rehabilitation Project, Phuket, Thailand, S Broad; J Jenkins 8: Discovering Self and Discovering Others through the Taita Discovery Centre Volunteer Tourism Program, Kenya, A Lepp 9: Negotiated Selves: Exploring the Impact of Local-Global Interactions on Young Volunteer Travellers, A Matthews 10: Opening the Gap: The Motivation of Gap Year Travellers to Volunteer in Latin America, N Söderman; S Leigh Snead 11: The Dynamics Between Volunteer Tourism, P Pearce; A Coghlan Part Three: Journeys at the Edge - Overlaps and Ambiguities 12: All for a Good Cause: The Blurred Boundaries of Volunteering and Tourism, K Lyons; S Wearing 13: Volunteers as Host and Guest in Museums, K Holmes; D Edwards 14: Journeys for Experience: The Experiences of Volunteer Tourists in and Indigenous Community in a Developed Nation - A Case Study of New Zealand, A McIntosh; A Zahra 15: Absences in the Volunteer Tourism Phenomenon: The Right to Travel, Solidarity Tours, and the Transformation Beyond the One-Way, F Higgins-Desboilles; G Russell-Mundine 16: Mediation of Volunteer Tourism Alternatives: Guidebook Representations of Travel Experiences in Aboriginal Australia, T Young