Stuck With Tourism

Tourism has become one of the most powerful forces organizing the predatory geographies of late capitalism. It creates entangled futures of exploitation and dependence, extracting resources and labor, and eclipsing other ways of doing, living, and imagining life. And yet, tourism also creates jobs, encourages infrastructure development, and in many places inspires the only possibility of hope and well-being. Stuck with Tourism explores the ambivalent nature of tourism by drawing on ethnographic evidence from the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula, a region voraciously transformed by tourism development over the past forty years. Contrasting labor and lived experiences at the beach resorts of Cancún, protected natural enclaves along the Gulf coast, historical buildings of the colonial past, and maquilas for souvenir production in the Maya heartland, this book explores the moral, political, ecological, and everyday dilemmas that emerge when, as Yucatán’s inhabitants put it, people get stuck in tourism’s grip.

Tourism has become one of the most powerful forces organizing the predatory geographies of late capitalism. It creates entangled futures of exploitation and dependence, extracting resources and labor, and eclipsing other ways of doing, living, and imagining life. And yet, tourism also creates jobs, encourages infrastructure development, and in many places inspires the only possibility of hope and well-being. Stuck with Tourism explores the ambivalent nature of tourism by drawing on ethnographic evidence from the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula, a region voraciously transformed by tourism development over the past forty years. Contrasting labor and lived experiences at the beach resorts of Cancún, protected natural enclaves along the Gulf coast, historical buildings of the colonial past, and maquilas for souvenir production in the Maya heartland, this book explores the moral, political, ecological, and everyday dilemmas that emerge when, as Yucatán’s inhabitants put it, people get stuck in tourism’s grip.

This stunning “dystopian feminist eco-thriller” from an award-winning South Korean author “takes on climate change, sexual assault, greed, and dark tourism” (Ms. Magazine). Welcome to the desert island of Mui, where a paid vacation to paradise is nothing short of a disaster in this “mordantly witty novel [that] reads like a highly literary, ultra–incisive thriller” (Refinery29). Jungle is a cutting–edge travel agency specializing in tourism to destinations devastated by disaster and climate change. And until she found herself at the mercy of a predatory colleague, Yona was one of their top representatives. Now on the verge of losing her job, she’s given a proposition: take a paid “vacation” to the desert island of Mui and pose as a tourist to assess the company’s least profitable holiday. When she uncovers a plan to fabricate an extravagant catastrophe, she must choose: prioritize the callous company to whom she’s dedicated her life, or embrace a fresh start in a powerful new position? An eco–thriller with a fierce feminist sensibility, The Disaster Tourist introduces a fresh new voice to the United States that engages with the global dialogue around climate activism, dark tourism, and the #MeToo movement.

Nine-year-old Neil McDonald has always wanted to write a book. Every time he tries, though, it comes out `like the Hardy Boys or something'. But when a maverick substitute teacher challenges him to record all the events and thoughts of a single day, the doors of creativity swing open. It helps that the day in question is, in Neil's words, `pretty weird'. The time is the fall of 1971; the setting is lsquo;North America's northernmost Metropolis'. The cast includes Neil, his best friend Keith and his gnome-like baba, a budding Black Power advocate, the heavy-smoking son of anti-war activists, and a very small boy wielding a very large axe in a public park. Neil thinks his day will climax with the broadcast of the first night game in World Series history, but what he's in for is something much deeper, a surprise that will teach him much about the world and his place in it. In the end, Neil has his book. And it's nothing at all like the Hardy Boys.

"Travel is no longer a past-time but a colossal industry, arguably one of the biggest in the world and second only to oil in importance for many poor countries. One out of 12 people in the world are employed by the tourism industry which contributes $6.5 trillion to the world's economy. To investigate the size and effect of this new industry, Elizabeth Becker traveled the globe. She speaks to the Minister of Tourism of Zambia who thinks licensing foreigners to kill wild animals is a good way to make money and then to a Zambian travel guide who takes her to see the rare endangered sable antelope. She travels to Venice where community groups are fighting to stop the tourism industry from pushing them out of their homes, to France where officials have made tourism their number one industry to save their cultural heritage; and on cruises speaking to waiters who earn $60 a month--then on to Miami to interview their CEO. Becker's sharp depiction reveals travel as a product; nations as stewards. Seeing the tourism industry from the inside out, the world offers a dizzying range of travel options but very few quiet getaways"--

For his 65th birthday, acclaimed novelist Michael Mewshaw took a 4,000–mile overland trip across North Africa. Arriving in Egypt during food riots, he heads west into Libya, where billions in oil money have produced little except citizens eager to flee to Europe or join the jihad in Iraq. In Tunis, Mewshaw visits an abandoned Star Wars movie set where Al Qaeda has just kidnapped two tourists. Ignoring U.S. Embassy warnings he crosses into Algeria, traveling through mountain towns and seething metropolises where 200,000 people have died during more than a decade of sectarian violence. Searching for the tombs of seven monks murdered by Islamic fundamentalists, he reaches a village where six more people have been beheaded the day before. When he interviews a repentant terrorist responsible for 5,000 deaths, the man praises the Boy Scouts for training him. By contrast, the Moroccan city of Tangier seems almost tame. But then he meets the last literary protégé of Paul Bowles who accuses Bowles of plagiarism and murder. In the end, the reader, like the author, is immersed in a fascinating adventure that's sometimes tragic, often funny, occasionally terrifying and always a revelation of a strange place and its people.

It is widely recognized that travel and tourism can have a high environmental impact and make a major contribution to climate change. It is therefore vital that ways to reduce these impacts are developed and implemented. 'Slow travel' provides such a concept, drawing on ideas from the 'slow food' movement with a concern for locality, ecology and quality of life. The aim of this book is to define slow travel and to discuss how some underlining values are likely to pervade new forms of sustainable development. It also aims to provide insights into the travel experience; these are explored in several chapters which bring new knowledge about sustainable transport tourism from across the world. In order to do this the book explores the concept of slow travel and sets out its core ingredients, comparing it with related frameworks such as low-carbon tourism and sustainable tourism development. The authors explain slow travel as holiday travel where air and car transport is rejected in favour of more environmentally benign forms of overland transport, which generally take much longer and become incorporated as part of the holiday experience. The book critically examines the key trends in tourism transport and recent climate change debates, setting out the main issues facing tourism planners. It reviews the potential for new consumption patterns, as well as current business models that facilitate hyper-mobility. This provides a cutting edge critique of the 'upstream' drivers to unsustainable tourism. Finally, the authors illustrate their approach through a series of case studies from around the world, featuring travel by train, bus, cycling and walking. Examples are drawn from Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. Cases include the Eurostar train (as an alternative to air travel), walking in the Appalachian Trail (US), the Euro-Velo network of long-distance cycling routes, canoe tours on the Gudena River in Denmark, sea kayaking in British Columbia (Canada) and the Oz Bus Europe to Australia.

A spirited critique of the cultural politics of the tourist age. Or, why we are all tourists who hate tourists We've all been tourists at some point in our lives. How is it we look so condescendingly at people taking selfies in front of the Tower of Pisa? Is there really much to distinguish the package holiday from hipster city-breaks to Berlin or Brooklyn? Why do we engage our free time in an activity we profess to despise? The World in a Selfie dissects a global cultural phenomenon. For Marco D'Eramo, tourism is not just the most important industry of the century, generating huge waves of people and capital, calling forth a dedicated infrastructure, and upsetting and repurposing the architecture and topography of our cities. It also encapsulates the problem of modernity: the search for authenticity in a world of ersatz pleasures. D'Eramo retraces the grand tours of the first globetrotters - from Francis Bacon and Samuel Johnson to Arthur de Gobineau and Mark Twain - before assessing the cultural meaning of the beach holiday and the 'UNESCO-cide' of major heritage sites. The tourist selfie will never look the same again.