Reframing discourses of healthcare “helping” in volunteer tourism: Critical interculturality, liberation theology, and Latin America

Stanley, Phiona

Abstract

This chapter discusses critical interculturality as the socio-historical context against which individuals’ intercultural communications and developing intercultural competence may be understood. The individuals are short-term sojourners, primarily young adults from the USA. Although medically unqualified, they volunteer in Latin American healthcare settings, where their structural privilege allows them to gain experience undertaking invasive medical procedures. They do this for kudos – a discourse of ‘helping’ – and/or to enhance their resumes ahead of medical school applications in their home countries. Such practices and the underpinning discourses that enable them are roundly critiqued, with theorization drawn from liberation theology and critical medical ethics.

Citation

Stanley, P. (2024). Reframing discourses of healthcare “helping” in volunteer tourism: Critical interculturality, liberation theology, and Latin America. In F. Dervin (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Interculturality in Communication and Education. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003513940-37

• Online Publication Date: Nov 20, 2024
• Publication Date: Nov 20, 2024
• Deposit Date: Sep 11, 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Book Title: The Routledge Handbook of Critical Interculturality in Communication and Education
• Chapter Number: 31
• ISBN: 9781032815732
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003513940-37
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3189255
• Publisher URL: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Interculturality-in-Communication-and-Education/Dervin/p/book/9781032815732
• Contract Date: Sep 11, 2023