Feeling Our Way: Emotions and the Politics of Global Citizenship in Study Abroad Programming
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v29i2.394Keywords:
Study abroad, short-term, Guatemala, Canadian university, Privilege, Education abroad, Emotion, Global citizenship, Solidarity, Higher EducationAbstract
The terms ‘solidarity’ and ‘ethical travel’ were used to frame a one-week study abroad program to Guatemala. The students involved came from a Canadian university and were primed through pre-trip meetings and program materials to expect their trip to produce good feelings of connection and support. However, many of the students experienced bad feelings that were variously described as frustration, disappointment, shame, and guilt. In this paper, we take the ‘bad feelings’ of this trip seriously to understand the relationship between this study abroad program and the (re)production of privilege. Based on interviews with student participants, we identify a trio of emotional responses –shame/guilt, frustration/anger, and critical empathy– that highlight the variability of student responses and their political implications. We argue that this critical analysis of emotional politics is an underutilized tool for examining how study abroad programs can simultaneously (re)produce and challenge privilege.
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References
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Ahmed, Sara. 2004a. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge.
———. 2004b. “Collective Feelings.” Theory, Culture & Society 21 (2): 25–42.
———. 2004c. “Declarations of whiteness: the non-perhormativity of anti-racism. Borderlands E-journal 3 (2).
———. 2005. “The Politics of Bad Feeling.” Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal 1: 72–85.
———. 2014. “The Politics of Good Feeling.” Critical Race & Whiteness Studies 10 (2): 1-19.
Anderson, Philip H., Leigh Lawton, Richard J. Rexeisen, and Ann C. Hubbard. 2006. “Short-Term Study Abroad and Intercultural Sensitivity: A Pilot Study.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 30 (4): 457–469.
Andreotti, Vanessa Oliveira de. 2014. “Soft versus Critical Global Citizenship Education.” In Development Education in Policy and Practice, edited by Stephen McCloskey, 21–31. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Bramwell, Bill, Bernard Lane, Scott McCabe, Jan Mosedale and Caroline Scarles. 2008. Research perspectives on responsible tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 16 (3): 253-257.
Cravatte, Celine and Nadege Chabloz. 2008. “Enchantment and solidarity: Which dream does ‘fair tourism’ sell? Tourism Studies 8 (2): 231-247.
Davies, L. 2006. “Global Citizenship: Abstraction or Framework for Action?” Educational Review 58 (1): 5–25.
Herod, A., and Melissa W. Wright, eds. 2002. Geographies of Power: Placing Scale. Oxford: Blackwell.
Heron, Barbara. 2004. Gender and exceptionality in North-South interventions: Reflection on relations. Journal of Gender Studies 13 (2): 117-127.
Jurecic, Ann. 2011. “Empathy and the Critic.” College English 74 (1): 10–27.
Kern, Leslie, Roberta Hawkins, Karen Falconer Al-Hindi, and Pamela Moss. 2014. A collective biography of joy in academic practice. Social & Cultural Geography 15 (7): 834-851.
Kobayshi, Audrey and Linda Peake. 2000. Racism out of place: thoughts on whiteness and antiracist geography in the new millennium. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90 (2): 392-403.
Laliberté, Nicole, and Carolin Schurr. 2016. “The Stickiness of Emotions in the Field: Complicating Feminist Methodologies.” Gender, Place & Culture 23 (1): 72–78.
Mahrouse, Gada. 2011. Feel-good tourism: An ethical option for socially-conscious Westerners? ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 10 (3): 372-391.
Marston, Sally. 2000. “The Social Construction of Scale.” Progress in Human Geography 24 (2): 219–42.
Massey, Doreen. 2002. “Globalisation: What Does It Mean for Geography?” Geography 87 (October): 293–96.
———. 2006. “Space, Time and Political Responsibility in the Midst of Global Inequality.” Erdkunde 60 (2): 89–95.
McKittrick, Katherine and Clyde Woods (eds). 2007. Black Geographies and the Politics of Place. Toronto: Between the Lines Press.
Mitchell, Katharyne. 2003. “Educating the National Citizen in Neoliberal Times: From the Multicultural Self to the Strategic Cosmopolitan.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 28 (4): 387–403.
Mohanty, Chandra T. 2003. “Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles. Signs 28 (2): 499-535.
Pedersen, Paula J. 2010. “Assessing Intercultural Effectiveness Outcomes in a Year-Long Study Abroad Program.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 34 (1): 70–80.
Pedwell, Carolyn. 2014. Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Razack, Sherene H. 2007. “Stealing the Pain of Others: Reflections on Canadian Humanitarian Responses” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 29 (4): 375-394.
Roman, Leslie. 1997. Denying (White) racial privilege: Redemption discourses and the uses of fantasy. In Michelle Fine, Lois Weis, Linda Powell and L. Mun Wong (eds.), Off White: Readings on Race, Power and Society. New York: Routledge, p. 270-282.
Shaikh, Nermeen. 2007. “Interrogating Charity and the Benevolence of Empire.” Development 50 (2): 83–89.
Smith, Matt Baillie, and Nina Laurie. 2011. “International Volunteering and Development: Global Citizenship and Neoliberal Professionalisation Today.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 (4): 545–59.
Sparke, Matthew. 2013. Introducing Globalization: Ties, tensions, and uneven integration. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell
Snider, Jamie S., Stephen Reysen, and Iva Katzarska-Miller. 2013. “How We Frame the Message of Globalization Matters.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 43 (8): 1599–1607.
Todd, Sharon. 2015. Toward an Imperfect Education: Facing Humanity, Rethinking Cosmopolitanism. New York: Routledge.
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Published
2017-11-16
How to Cite
Laliberté, N., & Waddell, C. (2017). Feeling Our Way: Emotions and the Politics of Global Citizenship in Study Abroad Programming. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 29(2), 79–93. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v29i2.394
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Research Articles
