and linguistic immersion. The chapter brings in the particular position of students “studying abroad while studying abroad”—that is, non-US students who come to America for college, and during their college years, study once again “abroad.”
Neriko Musha Doerr’s Chapter 6, entitled “Falling In/Out of Love with the Place: Affective Investment, Perceptions of Difference, and Learning in Study Abroad,” compares two American summer study abroad students’ learning experiences in terms of their affective investment (or lack thereof) in the destination, France and Spain, asking how the different degrees of affective investment shaped students’ learning experiences and perceptions of difference among people. Doerr argues that the student with an invested, romantic view of the destination highlighted differences between French people and Americans and, when she came to be disillusioned, reflected on her experience critically, whereas the student with fewer romantic preconceptions noticed not only differences between the host and home societies but also differences within each society and similarities between host and home societies; however, she absorbed whatever she encountered though with little critical reflection.
Yuri Kumagai’s Chapter 7, entitled “Learning Japanese/Japan in a Year Abroad in Kyoto: Discourse of Study Abroad, Emotions, and Construction of Self,” analyzes the interplay between the students’ sense of the “success” of their study abroad experience (itself influenced by the discourse of immersion), and their romanticized and exoticized views of Japan. The two students both expressed a romantic fascination with Japan (geisha, Shinto, tea ceremony, etc.), but during their year in Kyoto the student who focused on academic work and experienced more mundane parts of Japanese life viewed her study abroad as wanting, while the other who plunged into many “traditional” cultural activities viewed hers as successful while retaining an exoticized view of Japan.
Part III of this volume consists of two chapters that discuss volunteer abroad experiences. Cori Jakubiak’s Chapter 8, entitled “One Smile, One Hug: Romanticizing ‘Making a Difference’ to Oneself and Others through English Language Voluntourism,” illustrates the contradictory link between the discourses of love and caring in teaching, and the encounter with the “exotic” other. Using data collected from the ethnography of English-language voluntourism, where people from the Global North teach English in the Global South as humanitarian aid, this chapter discusses the ways in which voluntourists describe their experience affectively as being helpful and having an important impact, as transformative of self and others, and as an authentic experience of the cultural Other. Her analyses of these affective languages in turn illuminate the ideological underpinning of the voluntourist projects and situate them in terms of North-South power relations.
Richard Li’s Chapter 9, entitled “People with Pants: Self-Perceptions of WorldTeach Volunteers in the Marshall Islands,” illustrates how the romantic view of Americans as modernizers held by the volunteers as well as Marshall islanders intersect with anticolonialist views, and how this varies geographically between the urban and rural Marshall Islands. The chapter depicts WorldTeach volunteers in the Marshall Islands negotiating a tension between their romantic self-image as modernizers and a desire to avoid imposing their values and beliefs, which evolves faced with the Marshall Islanders own idealized and romantic notions of Americans.
The conclusion written by Hannah Davis Taïeb and Neriko Musha Doerr pulls together arguments and suggestions from all the chapters and discusses how we can use this knowledge for reflecting on study abroad and volunteer abroad practice and discourse, and for thinking about ways to “intervene” in student experience. We also consider what unanswered questions this work has brought up and fruitful directions for future research.
Together, these chapters explore the role of affect in studying and volunteering abroad. While the chapters introduce the reader to individual students and the details of their day-to-day lives while studying and volunteering abroad in particular settings, these quotidian and experiential details are put into the context of the diverse theoretical questions we discussed in this chapter.
Collectively, these chapters contribute to the discussions on globalization and analyses of affect in (re)constituting and crossing borders on which the discourses of globalization rely; to the discussions of power relations in the encounters with the cultural Other cases in which such power relations are not apparent; and to the literature on affect in learning a new examination of the fields of study and volunteer abroad that involve mobilizing and managing affect in specific ways. To the fields of study abroad and volunteering/serving abroad, this volume adds analyses of how affect and wider sociocultural and economic structures relate with each other, as affect is not only mobilized and managed while situated in these wider contexts but also shapes subjectivities and the actions of those involved.
Romantic passions drive us to gaze at maps, pack our bags, and step out of our daily lives to travel. Pushed by strong feelings, we hope for freedom, for new emotions to spring up as we travel into new worlds. However, Althusser (1971) tells us that we are never free: we are always subject in a double sense—subject as author of our own actions but also subjected to ideologies or systems of representation (i.e., categories). Passions rise up inside us, we feel, but we feel as part of wider political, economic, and sociocultural structures. Analyzing such dynamics helps us further examine our experience, perceptions, and feelings, not only in terms of what they can teach us about ourselves personally, but also as they and we are part of our time. Passions for travel thus help us journey into other domains intellectually and affectively.
Postscript: Reflecting on the Genesis of This Project
This project was born out of a conversation that took place in July 2011 in Paris. Neriko Musha Doerr was carrying out fieldwork on study abroad, following a student attending Hannah Davis Taïeb’s study abroad program. As we talked about the program and our understandings of study abroad in general, we found our mutual interest in the question of romance—the romance of travel, the romantic attraction of certain destinations and cities, the romance of service. Being ourselves an anthropologist specializing in education (Doerr) and a study abroad director and international educator trained as an anthropologist (Taïeb), we come at the subject from different but related points of view. Though our starting point was the question of romance, as we worked and solicited ideas from colleagues, we expanded our scope to other kinds of passions about travel, learning, and service. We decided to investigate questions of affect in the very specific context of study abroad and volunteering abroad, looking not only at romance, desire, and objectification, but at other passions and emotions such as shame, embarrassment, yearning, and the desire to be of service. We hoped to analyze these themes in an open-ended, context-specific manner, looking at particular places and projects and some of the expressions of affect they elicit. This is a beginning in which our two divergent visions, as detailed below, converged.
Neriko Musha Doerr: I came to do research on study abroad because a friend, Drew Maywar, who was designing a study abroad program for engineering students asked me to work with him as a consultant to understand and support the adjustment of students to their destination, Japan. Prior to that, my research had been on issues of education, language politics, race relations, and technologies of power in the context of the revitalization of indigenous Maori language in Aotearoa/New Zealand (2009), English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) education in the United States (2012), and the education of Japanese-as-a-heritage-language (JHL) in the United States (Doerr and Lee 2012; 2013). The friend felt my expertise would be an asset for the team. Although the program did not materialize due to lack of funding, I was inspired by what is involved in study abroad processes, and I decided to carry out research on study abroad.
For me, the issue of romance was one of the things that made study abroad special. Compared to the areas of education I had studied, in which the students tended to be driven to learn by their ethnic affiliation, the sense of responsibility, and parental and peer pressure (indigenous language revitalization); by the necessity to adjust and increase career opportunities (ESL education); or by the need for communication with extended
