Volunteer Tourism Encounters: Perspectives from an Indigenous Host Community in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Volunteer tourism is a global trend in which travellers engage in voluntary work, often in social, environmental, or charitable projects. Stefanie Schien explores the lived experiences of a Shuar community in the Ecuadorian Amazon that hosts volunteer tourists. She challenges the view of locals as passive aid recipients and highlights how they actively navigate, negotiate, and leverage voluntourism to pursue their own strategies and motives. By emphasizing the perspectives and agency of the host community, this thought-provoking study complicates our understanding of voluntourism and shows that what is at stake for the Shuar in this global exchange is the continuation of their self-determined way of life.

Stefanie Schien is the curator of the South American collections at Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. She previously worked in the Ethnological Collection of Museum Natur und Mensch in Freiburg. After studying social sciences at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, she obtained a master’s degree in social anthropology from the University of Edinburgh. She completed her doctorate in social and cultural anthropology at Philipps-Universität Marburg. In addition to her curatorial work, she focuses on South American anthropology, material culture, provenance research, and collaborations with Indigenous peoples. ---