Domestic volunteer tourism in Thailand

Abstract

This article explores domestic volunteer tourism in Thailand and how it relates to moral politics and recent political struggles. Volunteer tourism typically entails middle class Thais, who reside in the country's capital or other urban cities, traveling to remote villages to perform volunteering activities. Through an ethnographic account, the article shows how these trips provide an opportunity for volunteers to experience and embody the ideals associated with the notion of the ‘volunteer spirit’ and how volunteer tourist trips tend to reproduce the kind of subjectivity and power relations that help to preserve, rather than challenge, the political status quo. In particular, the article highlights the ways in which popular volunteer discourse and practice correlate closely with the politics of ‘good people’ (khon di), which promotes ‘moral rule’ by ‘good people’ rather than a more democratic and inclusive kind of politics.