Spectacle and adventure philanthropy

Author links open overlay panelJillian M.RicklyaRebeccaClouserb
a
University of Nottingham, UK
b
Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Received 29 September 2018, Revised 4 December 2018, Accepted 7 December 2018, Available online 21 December 2018.

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2018.12.008


While humanitarian tourism is increasingly examined from critical theory perspectives (see Ingram, 2011; Mostafanezhad, 2013, 2014; Simpson, 2004), less attention has been given to the role of media and spectacle in the enactment of this type of tourism. This research note aims to expose the social power of spectacle in humanitarian tourism, broadly, by arguing that the production of spectacle is necessary to adventure philanthropy, specifically. Adventure philanthropy combines altruism and humanitarianism with adventure travel (Lyons & Wearing, 2008) and is part of broader trends in philanthropy that employ alternative means of fund-raising (Coghlan & Filo, 2013; Goodwin, McCombes, & Eckardt, 2009). In adventure philanthropy, individuals partner with charitable organizations to set travel goals while engaging social media to raise awareness and funds for specific causes – for example, trekking the Silk Road to raise funds for women’s health initiatives or kayaking to Guatemala to support children’s education in the country. However, the spectacle of travelling towards destinations where aid recipients wait commodifies both the recipients’ poverty and the philanthropists’ adventure stories. This effect, in turn, depoliticizes the structural causes of poverty, ultimately normalizing inequality and reproducing the status quo, which raises questions as to the effectiveness and the results of humanitarian tourism. Such questions are relevant to a number of stakeholders: tourists/participants, audiences, recipient communities, corporate sponsors, and humanitarian organizations. Debord’s theory of the society of the spectacle is most known for the contention that “spectacular society effaces the reality of class struggle” (Jenkins, 2009, p. 8). The totalizing effects of commodification have transformed social life from being to having to appearing (Debord, 2009, p. 28). The spectacle “is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images” (Debord, 2009, p. 24). As such, spectacle is commonly used to explain visual ideologies of tourism, in particular the “tourist gaze” (Ryan, Hughes, & Chirgwin, 2000; Yudina & Grimwood, 2016) and tourism marketing (Cloke & Perkins, 2002; Gotham, 2002). However, Lisle (2004) extends the implications of spectacle by suggesting that many tourists are well aware that “the world is mediated and commodified for their consumption” (p. 14–15). Indeed, Linhart’s (2006) analysis of mission trips observed students who are critical of the spectacle nature of the trip, while also aware of their own inability to overcome it. The spectacle society “created an existence against which the students want to feel”; they wanted “to act passionately” and “to reach out and to help others” (p. 456–7). Nevertheless, they reproduced the spectacular images that inspired their participation in the trip. This is the power of spectacle, argues Jenkins (2009); it is both the means and the end of action, continually reproducing itself, because “[i]n the name of either ‘enlightened pragmatism’ or a pernicious moralism the pseudo-choices we are presented with come with an impossible burden of ‘responsibility’ for their consequences” (p.18). Thus, we posit that in order to garner public attention, spread awareness, and raise funds spectacle is a necessary condition of adventure philanthropy. Yet, the power of spectacle is not uniform but rather extends from four social functions: burden of responsibility, enlightened pragmatism, spectacular rebelliousness, and celebrity, each of which turns attention away from aid recipients and towards the adventurers thereby commodifying the event. As such, Debord’s theory of the society of spectacle should be reconsidered for its applicability to humanitarian tourism and the role of media within it.