Voluntourism and Multispecies Collaboration: Life, Death, and Conservation in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef

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This ethnographic exploration delves into conservation voluntourism and its interaction with biodiversity on Utila, a crucial part of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. Anthropologist Keri Vacanti Brondo presents a novel theoretical framework that views conservation voluntourism as a green industry shaped by coloniality and capitalism, which creates an economy of affect while perpetuating inequalities and dispossession. Utilizing a decolonizing methodology grounded in landscape assemblage theory, Brondo introduces the concept of “thinking-like-a-mangrove” to highlight alternative perspectives in Utila that challenge the dominant tourist spectacle associated with voluntourism. Readers accompany voluntourists, iguanas, whale sharks, turtles, lionfish, and islanders, gaining insights into environmental management while engaging in affective labor and multispecies care. The financial capital and labor from conservation tourism, amplified by social media, benefit conservation organizations. This critical examination prompts reflection on the effects of this emerging tourism market, which hinges on the exchange of “affect” with other species. It raises questions about how human socialities are shaped through these interactions, what lives and dies in Utila’s affect economy, the criteria for species deemed "killable," and who holds the power to make these decisions.