With the popularity of Slumdog Millionaire, we began to see more and more articles about poverty or slum tourism. Since it left a bad taste in our mouth, we did a little research (also known as sitting on our arse and websurfing) here and there but couldn’t bring ourselves to write a post about it… until now.
Hannah Rubenstein’s blog on poverty tourism (or “poorism,” yuck) raises many interesting and important questions. Hannah lived in Nicaragua recently and at one point was asked to take a group of American tourists to a nearby village, show them one of the typical houses, while introducing the large family that shared the one-room house to the tourist group. It sounds like it was an awkward few minutes for several reasons, including no “pre-education” for the tourists, very little in the way of integration of the local family into the “tour,” and no preparation for Hannah herself. It sounded almost like a zoo experience, the last thing anyone involved needs to associate this type of experience with.
On the other hand, there are ways that this type of education can be beneficial for both tourist and local community member. On her blog, Hannah outlines some of the United Nations’ criteria for this type of tourism. The only thing we feel has been missing from this discussion is the fact that we do not need to name this type of tourism “poverty tourism,” “slum tourism,” or god help us, “poorism.” Instead, let’s just call it what it is: cultural tourism. Going to a community, sharing a meal with a local family, taking a tour of their home, school, or hospital, and learning more about the community is cultural tourism. By bringing the socio-economic status into play here we diminish the local people (all they are good for is the fact that they’re poor) and put the emphasis in the wrong place.
Once the tour that Hannah gave is improved upon, how about calling it something like “La Colina (or whatever the name of the town is) with a Familia Tipica?” This way, the tourists will have an authentic experience without feeling pity and/or exploitative and the host family will know they are contributing to the tourist’s education without feeling like they are negatively on display. Cultural tourism is a win-win situation.
Rightly said. The economic condition is nothing to showcase professionally – in fact it is already kind of odd with the celebrity tours in Hollywood. There it is looking up, while with “poverty tourism” it can be used to give people the feeling of being something better.
I think that the problem starts with the definition of poverty. While some people are better in terms of money, formal education, health etc. other people are richly blessed by great natural surroundings, traditions, tales, joy and many other forms of wealth.
Tourism can be a fantastic form of exchanging resources:
Tourists have time and money to travel, whereas destinations have natural setups and culture that they can offer. Thus, it can be enriching for both sides. Toursts can bring financial resources to economically disadvantages areas and in exchange get a great learning experience. The challenge is to provide systems that enable encounters on an eye to eye level. Operators who bring tourists to “backward” destinations have to carefully set up mutual learning experiences. If poverty alone was the topic of the tour, tourists would not feel well. If poverty was their sole interest, they could well find it at home. But who has the guts to join a beggar on a mall and start a conversation about poverty.
In Chile, I worked with a group that called it socio-cultural tourism. It was a reaction to the tourism that had been created on other hills of Valparaiso, where the poor had been forcibly moved from their land. On Cerro Polanco, they were creating a tour route that highlighted the dirversity (from squatters to 3 story mansions) while supporting a local economy, not displacing people, and having the locals involved in all aspects of the tourism. For more information, check out Fundacion Rescate Patrimion at http://www.vrf.cl/
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader.