St Mary's Tourism Academic to Deliver Lecture at Royal Anthropological Institute

Programme Director for BA Tourism Management at St Mary’s University, Twickenham Peter Smith will deliver a lecture at the Royal Anthropological Institute on 25^th April. The lecture, entitled International volunteer tourism: decommodified moral encounters or a search for moral meaning?, will discuss themes from Peter’s recently published joint-authored monograph: Butcher, J and Smith, P (2015), Volunteer Tourism: The Lifestyle Politics of International Development, Routledge. Peter will argue that both the decommodified framework of volunteer tourism and the corporate-endorsed trend to encourage international volunteering have common justifications, namely the need to explore and develop the ‘self’ through engaging with communities in the developing world and the attempt to create moral meaning through individual life choices and consumption. The lecture forms part of the Development Studies Association Tourism Research Seminars at the Institute. The event is free and open to the public, to find out more about the lecture and book your place please click here.