PEACE CORPS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

92primitive lives. As evidenced by the photographs, volunteers are modern, progressive,developers of the underprivileged host country nationals. The third world people aremost often portrayed as exotic, primitive creatures, content with their lives. This image isfully constructed by our own ideas about what the third world is and what we offer todevelop that world.Visual Rhetorics are Politically Charged and Ideologically BoundPhotographic images used by the Peace Corps ignore the nuances of daily life.These images make broad, sweeping generalizations about the way the world works andthe difference between cultures. Rarely in recruitment photographs is the countryspecified. The omission of this detail suggests that all non-Western countries areessentially the same. They all are in need of development; they are all somehowconnected because volunteers serve in those countries. The assumption also exists thatPeace Corps volunteer service is essentially the same regardless of location. Photographshave the power to select and frame our ideologies of other cultures. In the case of thePeace Corps, the ideologies constructed from the recruitment images suggest that thirdworld identities are all the same. This ideological blanketing of cultures tells a storyabout our cultural perceptions as Westerners.Visual Rhetorics are Bound by Narrative and Constructive of New NarrativesTwo narratives develop out of the rhetorical analysis performed in this chapter: anarrative of development and a narrative of volunteer service. Each of these narratives isconstructed through the photographs; this happens because photographs give us the