A Response to Jim Butcher and Peter Smith's Paper 'Making a Difference': Volunteer Tourism and Development.

The author argues that the different dimensions and complexities of volunteer tourism need further examination throughout a wide field of theory. He says that he used the practice of international youth development and ecotourism to develop the context of volunteer tourism. He adds that structuration theory can constrain the thoughts and actions of individuals if the notion of the duality of structure is to be accepted. He also comments on the paper entitled "Building a Decommodified Research Paradigm in Tourism: The Contribution of NGOs," which discusses the dominance of Western neo-liberal free market paradigms in the tourism research agenda.