Further Reading
Confronting Privilege
To Hell with Good IntentionsBy: Ivan Illich
This 1968 speech given by Monsignor Ivan Illich gives an alternative opinon on American students volunteering around the world. His stark language and compact points provide a useful introduction into criticism on global engagement. The White Savior Industrial ComplexBy: Teju Cole
This article from The Atlantic questions the White Savior Industrial Complex. He argues, "The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege." This article ties together recent happenings regarding Kony 2012 with the Kristof legacy and humanitarianism in Africa. |
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible KnapsackBy: Peggy McIntosh
Find a discussion of this article on the intercultural contact part of this website. Mr. Kristof, I Presume? Saving Africa in the Footsteps of Nicholas KristofBy: Kathryn Mathers
Mathers breaks apart Kristof's narrative of privileged Americans as "bridge characters" for greater stories of African suffering. This article tightly summarizes issues of global engagement when mixed with privilege. |
Consumerism & Tourism
The Danger of the Single Story
By: Chimamanda Adichie
The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. |
Notes on Codification and Commodification in Travel Writing
By: David Miller
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The View from the Verandah: Understanding Today's Colonial Student
Phillip Ogden deconstructs the persona of the "Colonial Student: "Colonial students yearn to be abroad, to travel to worlds different from their own, to find excitement, to see new wonders and to have experiences of a lifetime. They want to gain new perspectives on world affairs, develop practical skills and built their resumes for potential career enhancement, all the while receiving full academic credit. Like children of the empire, colonial students have a sense of entitlement, as if the world is theirs for discovery, if not for the taking. New cultures are experienced in just the same way as new commodities are coveted, purchased and owned" (pp. 37-38).
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Images of the Other: Selling Study Abroad in a Postcolonial World
By: Kellee Caton
Caton looks into the marketing of Semester at Sea, finding that the vast majority of their representations of host culture people places them in positions of service, isolation from "modernity," rendering them exoticized and essentialized. She says: "The overall impression one is left with is that of two very different worlds colliding--one simple, primitive, unchanging, and closely tied to nature; the other capable of manipulating the world's resources to produce complex technologies that allow human lifestyles to be constantly changing shape." |
Nature for Sale: The Growing Trend of Wilderness ConsumptionBy: Fiona Murray
"What happens when outdoor experiences are packaged and sold like any other commodity? When the environment becomes a playground for people, the cost of admission to the playground equals the value of the place. According to this attitude, if the mountains are good for weekend walks, then they have value. If not, fire up the bulldozers." |
How to Write about AfricaBy: Binyavanga Wainaina "Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular. |
Empathy & Dialogue
To be Updated.
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The Giving Field
By: Warren Nilsson
"Few of our commonplace experiences remain as fundamentally mysterious as the simple act of giving. Most of us think of a gift as a vector, something with a point on the end, like an arrow, that travels in a specific direction from one person to another. But look more closely. Who is the giver? Who is the receiver? And just what, in truth, is the gift?" |