Poverty Tourism and the Problem of Consent

2009

Poverty tours-actual visits as well as literary and cinematic versions-are characterized as morally controversial trips and condemned in the press as voyeuristic endeavors. In this collaborative essay, we draw from personal experience, legal expertise, and phenomenological philosophy and introduce a conceptual taxonomy that clarifies the circumstances in which observing others has been construed as an immoral use of the gaze. We appeal to this taxonomy to determine which observational circumstances are relevant to the poverty tourism debate. While we do not defend all or even most poverty tourism practices, we do conclude that categorical condemnation of poverty tourism is unjustified.

… Paper No. 11-21, Boston Univ. …, 2011

Abstract: Based on moral grounds, should poverty tourism be subject to specific policy constraints? This article responds by testing poverty tourism against the ethical guideposts of compensation justice, participative justice, and recognition justice, and two case ...

Over recent years, the philosophical dilemma of human rights has occupied a central position in the academic debate worldwide. Of course, tourism seems not to be an exception. Despite the promising economic benefits and multiplying effects of tourism, some voices have alerted on the problems and limitations of tourism management to achieve a fairer wealth distribution in local communities. Having said this, the idea of tourism as a key force towards a more democratic and prosperous society began to be placed under the critical lens of scrutiny. This chapter, in this context, discusses critically how tourism potentiates economic growth but under some conditions deteriorating (if not vulnerating) the basic rights of locals. The opposite is equally true. Local communities embrace tourism to boost their economies while paradoxically making them more dependent and vulnerable to external economic actors.

GeoJournal, 2010

During the mid-1990s, a new form of tourism was established in metropolises of several developing countries or emerging nations. This type of tourism consists in visits to the most disadvantaged parts of the respective city. Poverty tours or slum tours are offered on a relatively large scale in the South African cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro

Tourism Geographies, 2012

This book sets out to give a comprehensive overview of tourism and poverty. Regina Sheyvens responds to the lack of studies and publications on the potential contribution of tourism to poverty alleviation and examines how tourism can uplift the well being of the poor. The book is based on the authors' fundamental belief that the sustained presence of high levels of inequality and poverty in the world is an insult to humanity. The eight

Though modern nation states appealed to slum-tourism as a valid mechanism towards pacification of slums or violent ghettos, less attention is given to detractors who observe contradictory results. This chapter critically explores the anthropology of poverty to expand the current understanding of slum tourism, the connection of capitalism and poverty as well as problems of policy makers to delineate sustainable programs of development in slums. Far from being a solution for the trouble, slum tourism not only aggravates the situation of exploitation slum-dwellers daily live, but falls in a deep-seated paradox. If poverty is commoditized in order to enhance profits in locals, it will be never reduced as the supporters of slum tourism preclude. At time community gains further profits from slum tourism, poverty tends to be replicated.

Tourism's role as a development tool has increased over the past three decades. Its contribution to poverty alleviation was first noted in the 1970s, but this focus was increasingly blurred in theoretical debates over 'development' in the 1980s and 1990s. It resurfaced at the end of the 1990s with the emergence of 'pro-poor tourism' (PPT), defined as tourism which brings net benefits to the poor. In this paper the emergence of PPT is described, its main features outlined, and several conceptual and substantive criticisms are discussed. It is concluded that, while PPT is based on a worthwhile injunction to help the poor, it is distinctive neither theoretically nor in its methods, and has become too closely associated with community-based tourism. Rather than remain on the academic and development margins, it should be reintegrated into and reinform mainstream studies of tourism and development, and focus more on researching the actual and potential role of mass tourism in alleviating poverty and bringing 'development'.

Tourism of Culture, 2020

One of the main themes of development strategies around the world is poverty reduction. Poverty is the result of the interaction of social, political, and economic processes, then economic growth and income redistribution can not solely resolve this problem. According to some experts, tourism has been a tool for development since the 1970s and its role in reducing poverty, especially poverty as capability, has been considered since the late 1990s. Since then, pro-poor tourism has quickly become a well-known and valuable tool. It has become a way to reduce poverty, so the goal of tourism is to support the poor by improving access of them to the tourism sector and providing them with a source of income. But pro-poor tourism also has its own critics who believe that it is a priority to reduce poverty, and protection is of secondary importance, which in turn harms the environment, the economy and culture. It cannot be argued that this type of tourism can lead to a reduction in poverty in all its dimensions. For this purpose, the present study seeks to combine the two categories of poverty and tourism development. Then it intends to categorize and analyze the challenges of pro- poor tourism in 9 groups with a critical approach through analytical-descriptive method and documentary studies and by analyzing the opinion of experts in this field.

Current Issues in Tourism, 2007

Current discourse surrounding ‘pro-poor tourism’, a term emerging out of the writing of UK researchers in the late 1990s, suggests that tourism can effectively work as a tool to alleviate poverty. This proposition is alluring given that tourism is a significant or growing economic sector in most countries with high levels of poverty. Consequently the idea of utilising tourism to eliminate poverty has been embraced by donors, governments, non-governmental organisations, conservation organisations and tourism bodies, including the World Tourism Organisation. Academic views on the relationship between poverty and tourism have however varied widely over the past half century. While in the 1950s tourism was identified as a modernisation strategy that could help newly-independent Third World countries to earn foreign exchange, in the 1970s and 1980s many social scientists argued that poor people and non-Western countries are typically excluded from or disadvantaged by what tourism can offer. It is thus fascinating to see how there has been a concerted push towards a reversal of this thinking in the 1990s, coinciding with the development industry’s global focus on poverty alleviation. This paper will detail this evolution of thinking and in doing so, explore theoretical debates on the tourism-poverty nexus.

Global Dynamics in Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality

The visit of the favela or slum into a tourist destination is seen as a part of the so-called reality tours phenomenon and of the global circulation of the favela as a trademark. Tourist behaviour involves a search for leisure experiences from interactions with features or characteristics of places they choose to visit. Examples are the favelas in Brazil, the township of South Africa, the slum in India that have led to different definitions of "slum tourism", "poor-poor tourism", "reality tourism". Web heavily affect today most of the online activities and their effect on tourism is obviously rather important. The aim of the chapter is to discuss about slum tourism definitions. At the same time, taking Reality Tours and Travel-a wholesaler slum websites-as a case, this study attempts to explore issues of the quality of strategic choices on the web. Considering that the content of web site includes a wide variety of technologies, is important that website offer also interactivity with e-tourists. Through the results of the study, it is possible to gain knowledge of the slum e-tourism.