Tourism and Modernity: Taiwanese Volunteers’ Travelling Experiences in Europe

• Main Authors: Lin Hsiang-Pin, 林湘蘋
• Other Authors: Yeh Hsiu-Yen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/00700464857794717831

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 歐洲文化與觀光研究所 === 99 === Implying sociological theory of serious leisure, mobility and reflexivity, this thesis aims to explore the profound implication of modernity by investigating contemporary Taiwanese youth volunteers’ travelling and dwelling experiences in Europe. The study also examines how these mobile youth make a ‘sense of Europe’ by encountering locals, embodying places and by everyday practices. In order to analyze the meaning of being a volunteer tourist in Europe, the researcher employs qualitative research methods of in-depth interview and content analysis using 10 youth volunteers’ narratives as main data, together with 3 relevant written texts as supporting contexts. In recent years, international volunteer tourism has turned into an increasingly popular activity among Taiwanese youth people, who seek to embrace the cultural Other and gain personal developments by this kind of alternative tourism. The phenomenon of being an active volunteer tourist helping others shows that Taiwanese young people are becoming much more ‘serious’ toward leisure participation. In other words, doing volunteer tourism is not just for fun or relaxation. Rather these volunteer tourists are in search of cultural immersion, a sense of Europe and inner growth, as well as seeking to build transnational social networks and their own multiple capital. The cross-border serious leisure practice of volunteer tourism provides Taiwanese youth a chance to perform their rite of passage, through which a more reflexive self is significantly stimulated and brought about in order to engage in a dialectical process between Self and Other. With the discussion and analysis of Taiwanese international volunteer tourists’ dwelling-in-travel experiences, this thesis illustrates the interdisciplinary approach of tourism studies. In addition, the narrative analysis of Taiwanese youth mobility and modernity provides a unique perspective for understanding the relationship between tourism and modernity and explores ways to understand youth mobility as a performance of modernity.