The Ethics of Traveling | Christoph Winter | TEDxPrincetonU

Tourism contributes to 9% of the global GDP and accounts for one in eleven jobs worldwide. It affects the people living in the regions we explore as backpackers, more conventional tourists or exchange students. Travelling also has a significant impact on us as we are facing issues and opportunities we wouldn’t experience at home. Yet, while the United Nations World Tourism Organization is already pushing for a “universal right to tourism”, we rarely engage in the ethics of traveling. We may ask ourselves, whether we should stay in some local guesthouse rather than in a Western hotel chain and whether we should really be celebrating when our bargaining skills finally get us the 50% discount. However, a much more important question seems to be entirely neglected: where we ought to travel to in the first place? Christoph is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and a graduate student at the Faculty of Law at Humboldt-University to Berlin. Last year, Christoph was a Visiting Researcher at the Departments of Philosophy and Politics at Princeton University. He conducted his undergraduate studies in law at Humboldt-University to Berlin, the University of Sydney and King’s College London and previously worked for, among others, University College London, the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs in New York and taught at various universities. His primary research interests lie in the intersections of law, morality and the behavioral sciences. Christoph is a passionate traveller, soccer player and scuba diver. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx