A missed encounter? Tourists, volunteers, co-operators, natives

Lecture by Marco Aime, University of Genoa, in dialogue with Peter Schiesser, President FOSIT Federation of Southern Switzerland NGOs
Save the date – Tuesday, 14 May 2024, 6 pm
Location – room 355 West Campus Lugano

Anthropologist Marco Aime will be a visiting professor at USI in the Master in International Tourism. Given the interest and novelty of the topic, the first lecture of his course will be open to the public and it will be held in Italian.

International cooperation through tourism often yields mediocre results due to the difficulty of communication between diverse cultures. Even with the best intentions, tourist imagery, cultural differences, and misunderstandings can still create problems. This is also the case with voluntourism, a recent trend that involves combining tourism with volunteer work such as building schools, digging wells, and teaching in orphanages. The participants aspire to explore the world while helping those less fortunate, but it can be challenging to turn these aspirations into reality.

Marco Aime is full professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Genoa. He has studied and travelled extensively in West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali). His books include L'incontro mancato. Turisti, nativi, immagini (Bollati Boringhieri 2005), Timbuktu (Bollati Boringhieri 2008), La carovana del sultano. Dal Mali alla Mecca: un pellegrinaggio medievale (Einaudi 2023), Di pietre, di sabbia, di erba, di carta. Un antropologo sul campo (Bollati Boringhieri 2024).

For further information, please contact: [email protected]