{"id":62946,"date":"2014-12-29T11:01:01","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T16:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=62946"},"modified":"2014-12-26T12:56:51","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T17:56:51","slug":"instragrammingafrica-the-narcissism-of-global-voluntourism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/12\/29\/instragrammingafrica-the-narcissism-of-global-voluntourism\/","title":{"rendered":"#InstagrammingAfrica: The Narcissism of Global Voluntourism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2\"<\/a>An article in The Onion <\/em>mocks<\/a> voluntourism, joking that a 6-day visit to a rural African village can \u201ccompletely change a woman\u2019s facebook profile picture.\u201d \u00a0The article quotes \u201c22-year old Angela Fisher\u201d who says:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think my profile photo will ever be the same, not after the experience of taking such incredible pictures with my arms around those small African children\u2019s shoulders.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It goes on to say that Fisher \u201chas been encouraging every one of her friends to visit Africa, promising that it would change their Facebook profile photos as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was once Angela Fisher. But I\u2019m not any more.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I have participated in not one but three <\/em>separate, and increasingly disillusioning, international health brigades, short-term visits to developing countries that involve bringing health care to struggling populations.<\/p>\n

Such trips \u2013 critically called voluntourism — are a booming business, even though they do very little advertising and charge people thousands of dollars to participate.<\/p>\n

How do they attract so many paying volunteers?<\/p>\n

Photography is a big part of the answer.\u00a0 Voluntourism organizations don\u2019t have to advertise, because they can crowdsource.\u00a0 Photography \u2013 particularly the habit of taking and posting selfies with local children \u2013 is a central component of the voluntourism experience. Hashtags like #InstagrammingAfrica are popular with students on international health brigades, as are #medicalbrigades, #globalhealth, and of course the nostalgic-for-the-good-days hashtag #takemeback.<\/p>\n

It was the photographs posted by other students that inspired me to go on my first overseas medical mission. When classmates uploaded the experience of themselves wearing scrubs beside adorable children in developing countries, I believed I was missing out on a pivotal pre-med experience. I took over 200 photos on my first international volunteer mission. I modeled those I had seen on Facebook and even premeditated photo opportunities to acquire the \u201cperfect\u201d image that would receive the most \u201clikes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over time, I felt increasingly uncomfortable with the ethics of those photographs, and ultimately left my camera at home. Now, as an insider, I see three common types of photographs voluntourists share through social media: The Suffering Other, The Self-Directed Samaritan, and The Overseas Selfie.<\/p>\n

The Suffering Other<\/em><\/p>\n

In a photograph taken by a fellow voluntourist in Ghana (not shown), a child stands isolated with her bare feet digging in the dirt. Her hands pull up her shirt to expose an umbilical hernia, distended belly, and a pair of too-big underwear. Her face is uncertain and her scalp shows evidence of dermatological pathology or a nutritional deficiency\u2014maybe both. Behind her, only weeds grow.<\/p>\n

Anthropologists Arthur and Joan Kleinman note<\/a> that images of distant, suffering women and children suggest there are communities incapable of or uninterested in caring for its own people. These photographs justify colonialist, paternalistic attitudes and policies, suggesting that the individual in the photograph\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026must be protected, as well as represented, by others. The image of the subaltern conjures up an almost neocolonial ideology of failure, inadequacy, passivity, fatalism, and inevitability. Something must be done, and it must be done soon, but from outside the local setting. The authorization of action through an appeal for foreign aid, even foreign intervention, begins with an evocation of indigenous absence, an erasure of local voices and acts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Self-directed Samaritan<\/em><\/p>\n

Here we have a smiling young white girl with a French braid, medical scrubs, and a well-intentioned smile. This young lady is the centerpiece of the photo; she is its protagonist. Her scrubs suggest that she is doing important work among those who are so<\/em> poor, so<\/em> vulnerable, and so<\/em> Other.<\/p>\n

\"1<\/a><\/p>\n

The girl is me. And the photograph was taken on my first trip to Ghana during a 10 day medical brigade. I\u2019m beaming in the photograph, half towering and half hovering over these children. I do not know their names, they do not know my name, but I directed a friend to capture this moment with my own camera. Why?<\/p>\n

This photograph is less about doing actual work and more about retrospectively appearing to have had a positive impact overseas. Photographs like these represent the overseas experience in accordance with what writer Teju Cole calls<\/a> the \u201cWhite Savior Industrial Complex.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, in directing, capturing, and performing in photos such as these, voluntourists prevent themselves from actually engaging with the others in the photo. In On Photography<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Susan Sontag reminds us:<\/p>\n

Photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing \u2013 which means that\u2026it is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On these trips, we hide behind the lens, consuming the world around us with our powerful gazes and the clicking of camera shutters. When I directed this photo opportunity and starred in it, I used my privilege to capture a photograph that made me feel as though I was engaging with the community. Only now do I realize that what I was actually doing was making myself the hero\/star in a story about \u201csuffering Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Overseas Selfie<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/a>[Photo removed in response to a request from\u00a0Global Brigades.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his New York Times\u00a0Op-Ed<\/a>, that modern champion of the selfie James Franco wrote:<\/p>\n

Selfies are avatars: Mini-Me\u2019s that we send out to give others a sense of who we are \u2026 In our age of social networking, the selfie is the new way to look someone right in the eye and say, \u201cHello, this is me.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although related to the Self-Directed Samaritan shot, there\u2019s something extra-insidious about this type of super-close range photo. \u201cHello, this is me\u201d takes on new meaning \u2013 there is only one subject in this photo, the white subject. Capturing this image and posting it on the internet is to understand the Other not as a separate person who exists in the context of their own family or community but rather, as a prop, an extra, someone only intelligible in relation to the Western volunteer.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Voluntourism is ultimately about the fulfillment of the volunteers themselves, not necessarily what they bring to the communities they visit. In fact, medical volunteerism often breaks down existing local health systems. In Ghana, I realized that that local people weren\u2019t purchasing health insurance, since they knew there would be free foreign health care and medications available every few months. This left them vulnerable in the intervening times, not to mention when the organization would leave the community.<\/p>\n

In the end, the Africa we voluntourists photograph isn\u2019t a real place at all. It is an imaginary geography whose landscapes are forged by colonialism, as well as a good deal of narcissism. I hope my fellow students think critically about what they are doing and why before they sign up for a short-term global volunteer experience. And if they do go, it is my hope that they might think with some degree of narrative humility<\/a> about how to de-center themselves from the Western savior narrative. Most importantly, I hope they leave their iphones at home.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Pacific Standard<\/a>\u00a0and at Mondiaal Nieuws<\/a> in Dutch.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lauren Kascak is a graduate of the Masters Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, where Sayantani DasGupta is a\u00a0faculty member. \u00a0DasGupta\u00a0is the editor of\u00a0<\/span><\/em>Stories of Illness and Healing<\/a><\/span>\u00a0and the author of\u00a0<\/span><\/em>The Demon Slayers and Other Stories<\/a><\/span>\u00a0and <\/span><\/em>Her Own Medicine<\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article in The Onion mocks voluntourism, joking that a 6-day visit to a rural African village can \u201ccompletely change a woman\u2019s facebook profile picture.\u201d \u00a0The article quotes \u201c22-year old Angela Fisher\u201d who says: I don\u2019t think my profile photo will ever be the same, not after the experience of taking such incredible pictures with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":62947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[232,252,1778,283,285,1760,20063,1757,140,295],"class_list":["post-62946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cultural-imperialismneocolonialism","tag-healthmedicine","tag-nation-ghana","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-internet","tag-social-networks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1-2-Copy2.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62946"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65555,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62946\/revisions\/65555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}