Tourism has been examined within the context of social science theory, however, little work has considered the range of social science disciplines and applied them to specific phenomena located within the field. This paper adopts such an approach to conceptualise and examine tourism volunteers and volunteering. In particular, the sociological view focuses upon the conceptualisation of volunteering as leisure, the psychological view seeks to understand motivations driving volunteering, the economics view complements these perspectives in terms of why people volunteer and further examines the value of volunteer contributions and finally the political view discusses social capital and its relevance to volunteering. Comparative consideration of these key disciplines provides a picture of the status of research relating to tourism volunteers and volunteering. This analysis enables gaps in current knowledge and conclusions and implications for improved understanding to be identified.