Political Economy of Tourism: A Critical Perspective (Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility) by

Language: eng
Format: azw
ISBN: 9781136859519
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2010-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

Tourism on the development agenda

Participation, empowerment and inclusion have become new key words in the field of development studies but they do not always improve gender balance, especially when participation is aimed at household heads, usually men (Momsen 2003). Many practitioners see tourism as a way to improve livelihoods among hosts as tourism expands into poorer countries. Pro-poor tourism (Torres and Momsen 2004; Scheyvens and Momsen 2008) looks at specific aspects of tourism as a wealth creator but rarely considers the importance of gender balance in tourism-related changes. More often it is seen in terms of sustainability of both tourism and the environment.

Tourism may be seen as the key to development in resource-poor areas and among minority groups. In a study of the gender impact of a tourism project on a Mayan community in Quintana Roo, Mexico, it was found that, despite the non-governmental organization (NGO) being led by a woman, participation was considered only at the household level (Momsen 2003). Husbands, as household heads, committed wives to work on the project although the women did not have the spare time. The benefits were considered only in terms of male needs such as feeder roads. When we held a women’s focus group they told us that what they wanted was a clinic and a secondary school in the village rather than improvements to roads but these views had never been presented to the NGO (Momsen 2003). A study aimed at improving the economy of a Miwok-Maidu Native American community in California’s Sierra Nevada through tourism was also led by a woman economist but again ignored gendered views at the grassroots (Momsen 2002b). In both cases the NGOs involved expected women community members to provide cultural performances and crafts for sale to visitors but the communities themselves saw the tourism activity as a reclamation and reaffirmation of a culture that had been almost lost, rather than an exercise in local economic development. The Miwok-Maidu Foundation in California, like the Maya in Mexico, did not see earning money by commoditizing their culture as of major importance, and the women in particular did not wish to interact directly with tourists on the ecotourism tours being developed in both countries (Momsen 2002b).

The cultural turn and poststructural ideas of embodiment and sexuality bring new approaches to the study of gender and tourism (Pritchard et al. 2007). However, Aitchison (2005) argues that these should not allow for a rejection of the previous materialist analyses. She suggests that a social–cultural nexus should be the basis of a new conceptual framework within which to explore ‘the mutually informing nature of the social and the cultural in shaping both materialities and relations of gender and tourism’ (Aitchison 2005: 207). Within this a third-wave feminism that considers intersections of race, class, age, sexuality, nationality, ability, etc. as challenging the primacy of gender among social inequalities is leading to an awareness of the need for an embodied and ethical tourism. Pritchard et al. (2007: 9) see the tourism industry as potentially

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.