S1511 Identity, Heritage and Globalization (Global Challenges core)
Levenson Deborah
Encounters with Others: Global Tourism and Third World Communities
Tourism is one of the fastest growing global industries. No single sphere connects as many people and cultures as does tourism today. It effects identities on the multiple levels of nation, gender, class, race, and sexuality, and it alters the meanings of tradition, local culture and heritage.
Once a luxury for the wealthy, tourism has become embedded in the life styles of hundreds of millions of people; according to the United Nations in 2013 international tourists numbered over one billion. Whether in the Amazon, Costa Rica, Turkey or Venice and whether families with children, the elderly or young backpackers, the needs of tourists draw on local resources of labor, water and land, and on cultural reserves of music, cuisine and crafts. This course unpacks tourism as a global event. Its links seem without end.
Discussions about tourism abound. Does it promote economic development? Increase world understanding? Modernize? Drain resources? Promote dependency? Reinforce hierarchies of color and class? Does it redesign urban spaces into historical fantasies? Support museums? Preserve folk culture? Homogenize folk culture?
By first discussing general global issues and then looking at case studies, Encounters with Others gives students a chance to understand how tourism, an apparently commonplace question of reading guidebooks and booking lodgings, reshapes the world. It offers a complex picture, and an opportunity to understand global tourism without making simplistic judgments.
Learning outcomes
Students will learn to contextualise tourism within the dynamics of globalization. They will learn to examine the relationship between developed countries and underdeveloped ones through the lens of tourism. They will acquire a sense of the importance of contingencies: many of the ills ascribed to tourism reflect weak local governmental policies, and not tourism per se.
They will learn about the crucial role of international organizations. A final outcome will be that students acquire knowledge about Latin America.
Evaluation
Readings