Framing Ethical Responsibility: Voluntourism, Ethnomusicology, and the Importance of Listening as Ethical Praxis

About the Author: Maria Spear is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Musicology at Dalhousie University. She received her Bachelor of Music with a major in Community Music from Wilfrid Laurier University in 2022. Her current thesis research compares how Kanye West and Mariah Carey communicate their experiences with bipolar disorder through their music, analyzing dimensions of gender, genius, and the historical performance of madness. She plans to pursue a PhD in Musicology after her MA, hoping to further explore the ways that music can help people tell their stories.

Introduction

The absence of true listening in our modern Western ethical frameworks presents a number of challenges that threaten to upend conceptions of the good around the world. A commitment to active listening is often the difference between positive change and stagnation in terms of global development. Per Lipari (2014), listening is paramount to an ethical framework that connects us on a broader level than merely by geographical constraints. Lipari asserts that ethical praxes that incorporates listening is so central precisely because it “creates the possibility of an ethics driven neither by rules and obligations nor by outcomes and consequences, but rather, one that is drawn toward an ethics of attunement—an awareness of and attention to the harmonic interconnectivity of all beings and objects” (p. 2).

Having People, Having Heart: Charity, Sustainable Development, and Problems of Dependence in Central Uganda (Scherz, 2014) devotes much of its exploration of the author’s fieldwork with two Ugandan nonprofit organizations to the analysis of various conceptions of ethical frameworks. In unpacking how ethics of charity function in Central Uganda, Scherz is able to shine a light on how an increasingly market-driven approach to international understandings of sustainable development have radically changed the way that charitable organizations in Uganda relate to the community members they serve, as well as the foreign investors on which they rely. Scherz worked with Hope Child and Mercy House, two Ugandan non-governmental organizations (NGOs) whose approaches to care differ greatly from one another. Hope Child began in 1995 as a toll-free child helpline, and has grown to become an increasingly important child rights and adult empowerment organization servicing Central Uganda. It was initially built on a foundation of embracing the kingdom of Buganda’s traditional ethics of omutima omuyambi; a phrase used to express the lack of expectations of reciprocity inherent to acts of kindness between members of a community. Today, it operates more strictly under an ethics of audit consistent with the increased influence of a colonial lens of charity. The ethics of audit refers to the oversight and regulation of operations characteristic of many Western NGOs, one that emphasizes efficiency and tangible results of success. Mercy House is a Catholic-operated charity house for orphans, young children, disabled young adults, and the elderly. Founded in 1928, the nuns who run the organization focus on the provision of vital material goods, such as clothing and mattresses, as well as vocational training programs. Their conception of ethical duty is markedly different from that of Hope Child, and presents challenges when examined closely by Scherz.

In considering the complexities at work here, I find a notable link between the questions Scherz raises of the imposition of Western ethical frameworks and the rapid expansion of the “voluntourism” industry. Voluntourism is the process by which predominantly young people are able to purchase a trip to an impoverished country (here, I am operating by the definition of poverty put forth by Johnson and Mason [2012], which takes into account economic disparity in relation to material need as well as social capital) in order to provide various forms of aid, for which they are largely underqualified. It is just one way that the Western sustainable development model enforces its standards on countries which may be better supported through their own ethical frameworks. In this paper, I will explore the connection between voluntourism and the damage done to host countries through applying the ethical frameworks used by voluntourism organizations as problematized by Scherz (2014) in Having People, Having Heart. In order to connect this discussion of ethics to my own work as a graduate student in musicology, I will consider the ways that Scherz’s writing relates to the major ethical considerations common in the field of ethnomusicology. Finally, I will detail the ways that listening is a critical component of ethical responsibility. In doing so, I will draw parallels to the importance of listening in creating lasting impact in both sustainable development and ethnomusicology.

Defining poverty: situating my lens

Before continuing with my analysis, I find it necessary to expand upon what I mean when I refer to a country or community as ‘impoverished.’ Global definitions of poverty are ever-shifting, as they are largely dependent on the average cost of living of a given country at a specific time. Cyclical trends in levels of employment, which then determine what it costs to live within one’s means in terms of food, shelter, clothing, and other necessary material goods, have a direct correlation to the percentage of a population that lives below the poverty line (Johnson and Mason, 2012). The economics-focused definition of poverty has reigned supreme in the decades since poverty research has grown as a discipline. While it is an important piece of the puzzle that determines how a community becomes impoverished, I also want to make clear the role that social capital plays in this inequality. Social capital can most succinctly be expressed as an individual’s credit or potential for upward mobility, as afforded by their membership to certain social groups. It is a concept that acknowledges social and cultural hierarchies and seeks to explain why some people benefit more from societal systems than others inherently, which relegate others to lives of poverty. Social capital is related to, but different from, material wealth. It can be informed by class, but it is an extension of it that impacts actors not just financially but also on dimensions of race, gender, age, and any number of other social classifications. So, when considering the countries on the receiving end of voluntourism aid or ethnomusicology interventions as ‘impoverished,’ I am considering the communities being impacted as being both economically and socially disadvantaged on a global scale as compared to the groups who are intervening.

Voluntourism and the problematization of imposing international aid

Though it has gained increased attention in the last decade (Benali & Kravets, 2022), voluntourism is not a 21st century invention. Since as early as the 1960s Europeans and Americans have found themselves increasingly drawn to the allure provided by a vacation that promises tangible and irrefutable good as an outcome, and have capitalized on that feeling. Today, over 1 million volunteers from around the world participate in the industry every year (Parrotte, 2015). For the average cost of a couple thousand dollars and a few weeks of one’s life, a volunteer can feel as though they are making a positive difference in the world. In fact, this is the chief way in which voluntourism organizations market their trips. For example, Projects Abroad stresses their trips’ potential to facilitate not only personal growth and a sense of purpose, but also to contribute to “the development of communities around the world” as well as create “lasting impact” and a “real difference” (n.d.). The popular voluntourism organization AIESEC takes a different angle that reflects another major draw of the voluntourism industry. It promises to help volunteers “unlock [their] leadership potential” (n.d.). This emphasis on the volunteer as opposed to the host country and its citizens is imperative to understanding the way the voluntourism industry can negatively impact the countries it strives to help.

An anonymous former volunteer, who spent three weeks building an orphanage in Tanzania, says that “[voluntourism] sells wealthier people access to impoverished and struggling communities in exchange for a life-affirming experience” (VICE, 2022). The source goes on to say that they wanted to “…make a difference, be a global citizen” but that they were also “definitely thinking about how it would look when I applied to college and how it would look on my resumé.” Further, the industry has been criticized for “channeling resources towards projects that voluntourists find exciting and meaningful, rather than what a community needs” (Benali & Kravets, 2022, p. 471). As the voluntourism industry continues to make its mark on the world through the tangible imprint it leaves behind in the host countries it serves, so too does its normalization of Western ethical frameworks in areas built on non-Western geopolitical frameworks.

Scherz (2014) characterizes Mercy House’s ethical framework as an “ethics of mimetic virtue” (p. 112). The Catholic sisters that run the organization have developed a code of ethics in which they model themselves after the holy men and women that came before them in European convents and monasteries, extending all the way back to Christ. The chain of accountability is not built on anything material, but rather on a subjective understanding of what is good and just. In this way, the sisters  “…do not seek to shape themselves so that they might better serve the poor; they serve the poor so that they might better shape themselves into true ‘brides of Christ’” (p. 117). While this allows the sisters to carry out each good deed as one with a singular and simple intention, not connected to a larger goal of expansion or visibility, it also means that the sisters involved in Mercy House are fundamentally disconnected from the aid provided by many voluntourism organizations. As Scherz writes, Mercy House’s commitment to their own ethical framework “disqualifies them from a share of the aid that has flowed into Uganda since the late 1980s” (p. 113). If there is nothing in it for the volunteers or the organizations running the programs, when it comes to long-term marketability or resume-building bullet points, an organization like Mercy House is deemed incompatible with the rigidity of Western understandings of development. The staff has less financial support because there are no overseas organizations channeling resources into their programming, the organization’s aim of the provision of material goods becomes more difficult, and there are fewer staff members overall because there are no volunteers to support the operations of the organizations. Thus, the overall standard of care at an NGO like Mercy House is weakened simply because it wants to commit to its own traditional ethical framework.

This rigidity in terms of how an organization is able to carry out development work also applies to Scherz’s (2014) exploration of Hope Child. While the organization began in 1995 as a toll-free child helpline, it has grown into a network focused on children’s rights and the empowerment of local adults through social service initiatives and educational programming. Despite the fact that material gifts such as clothing, bedding, and school fees are the most desperately needed resources for its patrons, Hope Child is in no small part financially dependent on international aid. As such, those prudent material gifts that are seen as unsustainable through a Western conception of global development fall by the wayside in favour of the model seen in the voluntourism sphere. Scherz articulates this problem by writing, “Hope Child constantly vacillates between its prior commitment to an ethics of charity and its new commitment to sustainable development” (p. 51).

Certainly, the intention behind the action matters. The volunteers and, one could argue, the organizations in the voluntourism industry often conduct their work with the good-hearted intent to stimulate global development and support disadvantaged communities. Despite this, Scherz (2014) consistently emphasizes that forcing non-Western NGOs to abide by ethical standards that are counterintuitive to their cultural practices and goals for local community support, dampens the impact of that good intent. This combination of good intent and flawed ethical execution when it comes to interacting with countries on the receiving end of foreign aid can also be seen in the field of ethnomusicology.

Ethnomusicology and its ethical considerations

Ethnomusicology, much like voluntourism, has the capacity to enact social change and increased levels of cross-cultural understanding. But what is ethnomusicology? One could say that the fields of musicology and ethnomusicology together are the “science of music” (Lee, 1983, p. 3). If musicology is the study of music broadly, then ethnomusicology specifically concerns itself with understanding music and its role in a culture in a given time and geographic locale. This is often done by conducting fieldwork in which an ethnomusicologist and their team of researchers engage with the musical traditions and cultural practices of a group through a combination of active participation and participant observation. Inherent to this practice is what pioneering ethnomusicologist Dr. Bruno Nettl names as an insider-outsider dynamic (2015). There are ethical questions to be asked when asserting one’s self as an authority of cultural traditions which are not one’s own. Nettl writes:

Is our study of a foreign culture’s music a kind of exploitation, bound to have an adverse   affect on the people and their traditions or an effect they didn’t want? Are we taking economic advantage of the musicians? Can outsiders ever “get it right” anyway, and shouldn’t people have control over the way they are represented? (2015, p. 211)

These are major questions that have plagued the field of ethnomusicology for decades, and for which there are no definitive answers. This is in part due to a need to reconcile these difficult questions with what ethnomusicologists see as pure-hearted and good intent. Mirroring the overt aims of the voluntourism industry, ethnomusicology aims to build bridges between cultures. The adage that music is a ‘universal language’ is one that is touted time and time again as a way of asserting the bridge-building capabilities of music, and music-making. The idea that music can transcend any and all cultural barriers is an enticing one. Ethnomusicologists believe they are helping those they study by exposing the world to musical traditions potentially unheard of previously, and they might very well be. However, these goals are only met when a strict ethical framework is followed. As Scherz asserts throughout Having People, Having Heart (2014), applying a Western understanding of ethics to another country’s cultural practices is misguided at best and can have a tangible negative impact on the country’s way of life at worst. This is just as true in ethnomusicology as it is in the voluntourism and NGO spheres.

The following is a useful example that illustrates an ethical failure in ethnomusicology fieldwork that parallels Scherz’s understanding of Central Ugandan ethical frameworks’ relevance in conducting cross-cultural development work (2014). Agawu (2003) writes that “the combined forces of modernization, urbanization, literacy, and the imitation of Western artistic modes of expression” have led to a crisis in the way that North American ethnomusicologists interact with African musical traditions (p. 206). Specifically, Agawu refers to the engrained spiritual origin of many African musics and dances. What becomes of the purity of tradition, then, when these practices are commodified or otherwise watered down for Western consumption through the process of ethnomusicological research? This dichotomy is best articulated by Agawu:

The result is that African musicians have had to devise ways of paying lip service to “tradition” while responding to newer, modern imperatives. For example, choreographers may retain the morphology of ancient dance while divesting it of its spiritual and ethical content. The behavior of individual musicians may also embody the conflicting imperatives of tradition and modernity. (p. 207)

Scherz’s (2014) observation of Hope Child’s Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) procedures serves as a relevant example of this kind of ethical failure. By 2007, Hope Child had created an entire department dedicated to M&E and 17% of the organization’s budget was allocated to it. This 17% was triple the budget allocated to “material contributions to individuals or households” (p. 103) and the 17% did not include salaries for any of the M&E employees. These salaries also made up a substantial portion of the budget. Further, Scherz (2014) noted in her shadowing of Hope Child staff that staff meetings were often taken up discussing M&E business. Larger issues or outright failures within the organization were pushed aside indefinitely as the staff focused on reporting the failing in the meeting minutes, but did not further discuss the issues or how to solve them. These internal meetings were, in part, designed to teach M&E staff the skills necessary to become successful at report writing in order to prepare them for later grant writing. They stressed the importance of report form to the ethics of audit; not only does the emphasis on report writing make the Hope Child look credible to outside (Western) auditors, but it also makes the individual workers employable within the broader NGO labor market.

Just as Agawu (2003) highlights the ways that African musicians are often caught between tradition and distilling that tradition into something palatable for Western understanding, Hope Child’s adoption of a Western system of ethics of audit puts the organization at odds with their goals of care versus the standards set by a Western model of sustainable development. Hope Child felt pressure to balance their aim of holistic care with their beneficiaries’ needs to see visible proof of development (Scherz, 2014, p. 103). Further, this need for proof of development can be linked to the marketability of voluntourism. When the success of a NGO is partly tied to the profitability of a voluntourism program, and visibility is key to international understandings of sustainability, a program is most profitable when there is tangible evidence of its success.

There is another critical link to be made between the ethical frameworks being extrapolated by Having People, Having Heart (Scherz, 2014) and ethnomusicology research: the importance of listening.

Hearing without listening: the lasting impact of voluntourism and ethnomusicology research

The ethical responsibility connected to the act of listening cannot be overstated. In my view as a musicologist, it is what lies at the heart of the ethical quandaries that Scherz (2014) raises throughout Having People, Having Heart. Listening as an active ethical principle has the power to help shape the long-term functionality of a community. This is a claim supported across disciplines. In healthcare, Dinkins and Sorell (2006) assert that “we can listen best in the pauses and silences of ethics” (p. 4). Thus, this act of intentional listening by healthcare professionals prompts stronger bonds between those providing healthcare services and those on the receiving end of care. Music has its intervention here, too. The emphasis on listening to music together (and music tied to the emotional needs of a patient) as an act of support between patients in hospice care, their loved ones, and their healthcare team has notable positive impact as a healthcare intervention (Johnston et al., 2022).

Listening is a fundamental piece of how the sisters of Mercy House understand their role in supporting their community. Especially when working with the vulnerable population housed by Mercy House, Scherz (2014) identifies listening as a physical demonstration of the love that patrons might not have received at any other time in their lives. Scherz writes, “listening and physical expressions of support and solidarity were crucial to the residents’ sense of being loved and cared for, a need central for many of the children and adults whose lives had been defined by rejection and abandonment” (p. 77). Thus, Scherz highlights the way that a strong commitment to an ethical framework grounded in listening guides an organization as well as has a lasting impact on the people the organization serves.

To underscore just how important this commitment is, Scherz also contextualizes listening in Hope Child’s organizational structure. The organization had an “early commitment to empathetic listening” (Scherz, 2014, p. 50) rooted in Christian ethical teachings that it does its best to maintain, even as it has shifted to a more secular model of ethics consistent with the Western sustainable development model. Scherz argues that while Hope Child attempts to reconcile these two ethical assemblages, this “paradoxically prevent[s] them from listening to some of the community’s most adamant demands” (p. 15). But can this failure to listen to the community’s needs be solely attributed to the staff at Hope Child, or is this the fault of a shift in the target of the listening? Rapid expansion brought on by the popularity of the voluntourism industry demonstrates that listening to those providing financial aid, on whom Hope Child has become dependent, proves to be more crucial to the organization’s maintenance and continued existence than listening to community needs. In this way, the voluntourism industry is partly responsible for fundamentally altering the way that a NGO like Hope Child relates to listening as a core ethical principle.

The practice of listening is central to fieldwork in ethnomusicology, and when done ethically it can have incredibly far-reaching implications both temporally and geographically. Here, Shelemay (1996) serves as a particularly pertinent example. In conducting ethnomusicological fieldwork with Jewish people of Syrian descent living in Brooklyn, New York, Shelemay collaborated with community members to record and archive nearly 200 pizmonim (sing. pizmon), paraliturgical hymns that fuse Hebrew texts with Arabic melodies. Many years after the conclusion of the research project, at a pizmon concert honouring the life and work of a prominent music teacher in the community, Shelemay experienced the following:

I heard a recording of my own voice asking Mickey [the teacher] a question about a pizmon; it had obviously been taken from the tape of a research session we had held some five years earlier when Mickey taught pizmonim to me and my students. I was startled to find myself incorporated in this manner, to be publicly included in the experience of Mickey and his community. (p. 41)

Shellemay goes on to write that even so many years after the research project had officially ended, “it had been absorbed into the fabric of both community activities and individual memories” (p. 42). The project had an identifiable impact on the community that had been fostered by a commitment to attentive listening.

Listening, either a resolute commitment to or a lack thereof, is consistently noted as an important part of the development of ethical praxis whether it is in global development work or ethnomusicology. Additionally, as demonstrated by Scherz’s (2014) observation of Hope Child, the absence or misdirection of listening can have a profound impact on the quality of care provided by those in positions of perceived authority, such as the sisters of Mercy House or the young people who participate in the voluntourism industry.

Conclusion

Sustainable development praxis is grounded in a strong ethical foundation. The claim of this paper is not that Western models of development are without an ethical framework, but rather, as Scherz (2014) attests, that Western conceptions of ethics as they relate to sustainable development are often incompatible with the actual needs of the countries they aim to help. This can cause a disconnect between the goals of an organization when it comes to serving its local patrons versus serving its international investors. It can happen in a myriad of ways, such as through imposing an ethics of audit, as in the case of Hope Child wherein this meant the actions of the organization did not meet the needs of the community, or with Mercy House wherein the staff’s resistance to Western pressure to change their ethical framework limited their international financial support. Both cases can be linked to the increased demand for voluntourism opportunities. Additionally, the disconnect between foreign support and local needs can be seen in ethnomusicology fieldwork when there is a lack of understanding for the ethics inherent to particular cultural music practices. What these disconnects of the voluntourism industry and ethnomusicology fieldwork have in common is a lapse in listening. In the two pertinent examples presented where attentive listening to the needs of a community were made a priority, in Mercy House (Scherz, 2014) and the pizmonim recording project (Shelemay, 1996), long-term positive impact was felt. Having People, Having Heart (Scherz, 2014) makes affirming points about the necessity of respect for a country’s ethical framework and the way it informs its respective communities’ approach to charity and development. These points can be applied specifically to the two NGOs in Central Uganda analyzed by Scherz (2014), but also more broadly to the voluntourism industry and to the field of ethnomusicology. However, without the key application of listening as part of ethical praxis, the good-hearted intention of a sustainable development model of aid is significantly dampened. The act of listening only serves to further help a community thrive, on its own terms via a framework of ethics that can truly echo the needs of its people.

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