"Children That are Cute Enough to Eat": The Commodification of Children in Volunteering Vacations to Orphanages and Childcare Establishments in Siem Reap, Cambodia

Abstract

That the volunteer tourism industry in Cambodia is now considered to be fueling the demand for "orphans" in towns like Siem Reap requires that academia continues to apply a broad range of critical perspectives to the examination of this popular tourist trend. Here I add to the growing body of criticality by framing around the question of just "what" is being consumed in these popular vacations. It was during a 6-week period as a volunteer tourist in an orphanage in the town that my curiosity and unease compelled me to ask: "what is going on here?" This article is based on the subsequent research project examining the volunteer tourist experience in orphanages and children's care centers in Siem Reap and draws on interviews with individuals considering a volunteering vacation, volunteers in situ, and vacation returners, as well as an extensive examination of grey literature. Critically examined through the lens of consumerism and an understanding of the pleasure-seeking motives inherent in consumer decisions, volunteer tourism is recognized as a contemporary consumer commodity, but significantly one that involves personhood. Commodification and objectification of people and bodies are familiar concepts in the tourism literature. I discuss how, when examined using these concepts, the role that these processes play in making the bodies of poor children available to the volunteer tourist market is made evidently visible. I also discuss how, through the trope of eating, poor children in orphanages are objectified as "morsels of exotic otherness," evoking a provocative concept of "consumerism." I conclude that critical analysis shows that there is significantly more to these helpful vacations than their often taken-for-granted positive depiction and argue that sentimentality can detract from the real processes that are operating in this popular vacation trend.