Category Archives: Conference

Touristification Impossible

Call for Papers – Research Workshop

 

Touristification Impossible:

Tourism development, over-tourism and anti-tourism sentiments in context.

 

 

4th and 5th June 2019, Leicester UK

TAPAM – Tourism and Placemaking Research Unit – University of Leicester School of Business

 

Keynotes by Scott McCabe, Johannes Novy, Jillian Rickly and Julie Wilson

 

Touristification is a curious phenomenon, feared and desired in almost equal measure by policy makers, businesses and cultural producers, residents, social movements and last but not least, tourists themselves. Much current reflection on over-tourism, particularly urban tourism in Europe, where tourism is experienced as an impossible burden on residents and cities, repeats older debates: tourism can be a blessing or blight, it brings economic benefits but costs in almost all other areas. Anti-tourism social movements, residents and some tourists declare ‘touristification impossible’, asking tourists to stay away or pushing policy makers to use their powers to stop it. Such movements have become evident in the last 10 years in cities like Barcelona and Athens and there is a growing reaction against overtourism in several metropolitan cities internationally.

This workshop sets out to re-consider (the impossibility of) touristification. Frequently, it is understood simplistically as a process in which a place, city, region, landscape, heritage or experience becomes an object of tourist consumption.  This, of course, assumes an implicit or explicit transformation of a resource into a commodity and carries an inherent notion of decline of value, from ‘authentic’ in its original state to ‘commodified’ after touristification. In other words, touristification is often seen as a process of ‘selling out’. But a change of perspective reveals the complexities involved. While some may hope to make touristification possible, it is sometimes actually very difficult and seemingly impossible: When places are unattractive, repulsive, controversial, difficult and contested, how do they become tourist attractions? Arguably in such cases value is added rather than lost in the process of touristification. These situations require a rethink not just of the meaning of touristification, but the underlying processes in which it occurs. How do places become touristically attractive, how is attractiveness maintained and how is it lost? Which actors initiate, guide and manipulate the process of touristification and what resources are mobilised?

The aim of this two-day workshop is to provide an opportunity to challenge the simplistic and biased understanding of tourism as a force of good and touristification as desirable, so common among destination marketing consulting and mainstream scholarly literature. But it will equally question a simplistic but frequent criticism of touristification as ‘sell-out’ and ‘loss of authenticity’.

We invite scholars, researchers, practitioners and PhD students to submit conceptual and/or empirical work on this important theme. We welcome submissions around all aspects and manifestations of touristification (social, economic, spatial, environmental etc.) and, particularly, explorations of anti-tourism protests and the effects of over-tourism. The workshop is open to all theoretical and methodological approaches. We are delighted to confirm keynote presentations by Scott McCabe, Jillian Rickly, Johannes Novy and Julie Wilson.

The workshop is organised by the Tourism and Placemaking Research Unit (TAPAM) of the School of Business and builds on our first research workshop last year on ‘Troubled Attractions’, which brought together over 30 academics from the UK and beyond.

 

 

The workshop format

The research workshop will take place in the University of Leicester School of Business. It will combine invited presentations by established experts with panel discussions and research papers. Participants will have the chance to network and socialize during a social event in the evening of Tuesday 4th June. There is small fee of £20 for participation. Registration includes workshop materials; lunch on 4th and 5th June 2019 and social event on 4th June.

 

Guidelines for submissions

We invite submissions of abstracts (about 500 words) by 31st April 2019. Abstracts should be sent by email to: Fatos Ozkan Erciyas (foe2 (at) le.ac.uk).

Stigma to Brand Conference Programme announced

From Stigma to Brand:
Commodifying and Aestheticizing Urban Poverty and Violence

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, February 16-18, 2017

The preliminary programme has now been published and can be downloaded  here.

For attendance, please register at stigma2brand (at) ethnologie.lmu.de

Posters presenting on-going research projects related to the conference theme are welcome.

Convenors:

Prof. Dr. Eveline Dürr (LMU Munich, Germany)
Prof. Dr. Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Gareth Jones (London School of Economics and Politics, UK)

This conference investigates the motives, processes and effects of the commodification and global representation of urban poverty and violence. Cities have often hidden from view those urban areas and populations stigmatized as poor, dirty and dangerous. However, a growing range of actors actively seek to highlight the existence and appeal of “ghettos”, “slums” and “no-go areas”, in attempts to attract visitors, investors, cultural producers, media and civil society organisations. In cities across the world, processes of place-making and place-marketing increasingly resignify urban poverty and violence to indicate authenticity and creativity. From “slum tourism” to “favela chic” parties and “ghetto fabulous” fashion, these economic and representational practices often approach urban deprivation as a viable brand rather than a mark of shame.

The conference explores how urban misery is transformed into a consumable product. It seeks to understand how the commodification and aestheticization of violent, impoverished urban spaces and their residents affects urban imaginaries, the built environment, local economies and social relations.

What are the consequences for cities and their residents when poverty and violence are turned into fashionable consumer experiences? How is urban space transformed by these processes and how are social relationships reconfigured in these encounters? Who actually benefits when social inequality becomes part of the city’s spatial perception and place promotion?
We welcome papers from a range of disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, geography, sociology, and urban studies.

Keynote speakers:

  • Lisa Ann Richey (Roskilde University)
  • Kevin Fox Gotham (Tulane University)

 

CfP AAG 2017

CfP Association of American Geographers

Boston 5th to 9th April 2017

The complex geographies of inequality in contemporary slum tourism

rocinha klein

The visitation of areas of urban poverty is a growing phenomenon in global tourism (Burgold & Rolfes, 2013; Dürr & Jaffe, 2012; Freire-Medeiros, 2013; Frenzel, Koens, Steinbrink, & Rogerson, 2015). While it can be considered a standard tourism practise in some destinations, it remains a deeply controversial form of tourism that is greeted with much suspicion and scepticism (Freire-Medeiros, 2009). In the emerging research field of slum tourism, the practices are no longer only seen as a specific niche of tourism, but as empirical phenomena that bridge a number of interdisciplinary concerns, ranging from international development, political activism, mobility studies to urban regeneration (Frenzel, 2016).

 

Slum tourism is sometimes cast as a laboratory where the relationships and interactions between the global North and South appear as micro-sociological encounters framed by the apparent concern over inequality. Beyond questioning the ways in which participants shape the encounters in slum tourism, structural implications and conditions come to the fore. Thus spatial inequality influences opportunities and hinders governance solutions to manage slum tourism operations (Koens and Thomas, 2016). Slum tourism is found to be embedded into post-colonial patterns of discourse, in which ‘North’ and ‘South’ are specifically reproduced in practices of ‘Othering’ (Steinbrink, 2012) . Evidence has been found for the use of slum tourism in urban development (Frenzel, 2014; Steinbrink, 2014) and more widely in the commodification of global care and humanitarian regimes (Becklake, 2014; Holst, 2015). Research has also pointed to the ethical implications of aestheticizing poverty in humanitarian aid performances and the troubles of on-the-ground political engagement in a seemingly post-ideological era (Holst 2016).

 

More recently a geographical shift has been observed regarding the occurrence of slum tourism. No longer a phenomenon restricted to the Global South, slum tourism now appears increasingly in the global North. Refugee camps such as Calais in the north of France have received high numbers of visitors who engage in charitable action and political interventions. Homeless tent cities have become the subject of a concerned tourist gaze in the several cities of the global north (Burgold, 2014). A broad range of stigmatised neighbourhoods in cities of the global North today show up on tourist maps as visitors venture to ‘off the beaten track’ areas. The resurfacing of slum tourism to the global North furthers reinforces the need to get a deeper, critical understanding of this global phenomena.

 

Mobility patterns of slum tourists also destabilise notions of what it means to be a tourist, as migrants from the Global North increasingly enter areas of urban poverty in the South beyond temporal leisurely visits, but as low level entry points into cities they intent to make their (temporal) home. Such new phenomena destabilise strict post-colonial framings of slum tourism, pointing to highly complex geographies of inequality.

 

In this session we aim to bring together research that casts the recent developments in slum tourism research. We aim specifically in advancing geographical research while retaining a broad interdisciplinary outlook.

 

Please sent your abstract or expressions of interest of now more than 300 words to Tore E.H.M Holst (tehh (at) ruc.dk) and Thomas Frisch (Thomas.Frisch (at) wiso.uni-hamburg.de) by October 15th 2016

 

References

 

Becklake, S. (2014). NGOs and the making of “development tourism destinations.” Zeitschrift Für Tourismuswissenschaft, 6(2), 223–243.

Burgold, J. (2014). Slumming in the Global North. Zeitschrift Für Tourismuswissenschaft, 6(2), 273–280.

Burgold, J., & Rolfes, M. (2013). Of voyeuristic safari tours and responsible tourism with educational value: Observing moral communication in slum and township tourism in Cape Town and Mumbai. DIE ERDE – Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin, 144(2), 161–174.

Dürr, E., & Jaffe, R. (2012). Theorizing Slum Tourism: Performing, Negotiating and Transforming Inequality. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos Y Del Caribe, 0(93), 113–123

Freire-Medeiros, B. (2009). The favela and its touristic transits. Geoforum, 40(4), 580–588.

Freire-Medeiros, B. (2013). Touring Poverty. New York N.Y.: Routledge.

Frenzel, F. (2014). Slum Tourism and Urban Regeneration: Touring Inner Johannesburg. Urban Forum, 25(4), 431–447.

Frenzel, F. (2016). Slumming it: the tourist valorization of urban poverty. London: Zed Books.

Frenzel, F., Koens, K., Steinbrink, M., & Rogerson, C. M. (2015). Slum Tourism State of the Art. Tourism Review International, 18(2), 237–252.

Holst, T. (2015). Touring the Demolished Slum? Slum Tourism in the Face of Delhi’s Gentrification. Tourism Review International, 18(4), 283–294.

Steinbrink, M. (2012). We did the slum! Reflections on Urban Poverty Tourism from a Historical Perspective. Tourism Geographies, 14(2), forthcoming.

Steinbrink, M. (2014). Festifavelisation: mega-events, slums and strategic city-staging – the example of Rio de Janeiro. DIE ERDE – Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin, 144(2), 129–145.

From Stigma to Brand: Conference on Slum Tourism in 2017

From Stigma to Brand:
Commodifying and Aestheticizing Urban Poverty and Violence

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, February 16-18, 2017

Call for Papers

Convenors:

Prof. Dr. Eveline Dürr (LMU Munich, Germany)
Prof. Dr. Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Gareth Jones (London School of Economics and Politics, UK)

This conference investigates the motives, processes and effects of the commodification and global representation of urban poverty and violence. Cities have often hidden from view those urban areas and populations stigmatized as poor, dirty and dangerous. However, a growing range of actors actively seek to highlight the existence and appeal of “ghettos”, “slums” and “no-go areas”, in attempts to attract visitors, investors, cultural producers, media and civil society organisations. In cities across the world, processes of place-making and place-marketing increasingly resignify urban poverty and violence to indicate authenticity and creativity. From “slum tourism” to “favela chic” parties and “ghetto fabulous” fashion, these economic and representational practices often approach urban deprivation as a viable brand rather than a mark of shame.

The conference explores how urban misery is transformed into a consumable product. It seeks to understand how the commodification and aestheticization of violent, impoverished urban spaces and their residents affects urban imaginaries, the built environment, local economies and social relations.

What are the consequences for cities and their residents when poverty and violence are turned into fashionable consumer experiences? How is urban space transformed by these processes and how are social relationships reconfigured in these encounters? Who actually benefits when social inequality becomes part of the city’s spatial perception and place promotion?
We welcome papers from a range of disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, geography, sociology, and urban studies.

Keynote speakers:

  • Lisa Ann Richey (Roskilde University)
  • Kevin Fox Gotham (Tulane University)

more to be confirmed.

• Please submit an abstract for a paper presentation including a title and your affiliation to: stigma2brand@ethnologie.lmu.de
Deadline for abstract submission is October 10, 2016
• Please note that limited financial support for registered PhD students is available. Please indicate in your abstract submission if you wish to apply.

 

Creation of slum tourism operators network

Reality Tours and Travel, a well know and large operator in Mumbai, has joined up in partnership with researchers and tourism organisations from around the world, to take the initiave and create a slum tourism operators network. The purpose of the network is to share best practices, discuss the challenges slum tour operators face and to help each other problem solve these challenges. The ultimate goal is to ensure slum tour operators maximize the positive impact on the community and their guests while operating the tours as responsibly as possible. Pooling together the collective knowledge and experience on the matter of slum tourism can help achieve this goal.

In practice, the idea is to invite as many operators as possible into a dialog over their approaches and concepts, initially via an online networking process, but with the longer term aim of getting operators together in workshops, on regional and perhaps global level. For those interested in participating in this network, to share their knowledge and learn about slum tourism around the world, an online form has been created. We would like to ask practioners and researchers, who are willing to contribute or participate in this network, to fill in the form and share their knowledge about operators across different destinations. Although the initiative to set up the network comes from Reality Tours and Travel, we like to emphasises they have done this to learn and share information. Information from the network will be shared among participants.

You can go to the form by clicking on this link:

Second Destination Slum Conference

CFP: Second Destination Slum Conference

New Development and Perspectives in Slum Tourism Research

14-16 May 2014, University of Potsdam, Germany

www.destinationslum.com

In December 2010 slum tourism researchers gathered in Bristol, UK, for the first international “Destination Slum” conference addressing specifically the aesthetic, economic, historical, political and social DSCN0772dimensions of slum tourism. Slum tourism, defined broadly as touristic visits to urban areas of relative poverty, remains a controversial pastime. Despite the controversies this leisure practice is on the rise globally, in developing as well as developed countries. New destinations are added to an already comprehensive list of locations while some older destinations shows signs of maturity and saturation with high levels of diversification, policy interventions, including the integration of slum tourism into urban regeneration and urban tourism strategies. Slum Tourism seems to have entered a new phase.

Just like the development of the phenomenon of slum tourism, academic research has picked up in speed as well, accounting for the phenomenon in a range of case studies from diverse disciplines. The foci of research have also shifted beyond the pertinent questions of ethics, impact and motivation, to address the multiple connections of slum tourism to other forms of tourism, like volunteering, sustainable tourism, community based and pro-poor-tourism or dark tourism and others. Moreover researchers have turned to discuss the possible contributions research on slum tourism can make to questions arising in the study of global phenomena and questions like mobilities, social movements and protest, urban regeneration, security, mega events or poverty alleviation.

Slum tourism research has reached a new phase  and the second conference of the network will enable an engaged exchange of the insights gained over the last few years. We aim to better understand the recent rapid expansion and diversification of slum tourism as well as to develop new perspectives on the phenomenon.

We‚d like to invite empirical and theoretical papers that discuss slum tourism and related phenomena in various destinations, comparative research focusing on different case studies as well as conceptual cognate questions such as, but not limited to

theoretical reflections on slum tourism
tourism and poverty alleviation
informal economies ˆ informal tourism
authenticity and valorisation regimes in slum tourism
slum tourism in urban policy
urban regeneration, gentrification and tourism
slum tourism and mega-events
(changing) moral and ethical views on slum tourism
security, slum and tourism
entrepreneurship in slum tourism
social functions/roles of slum tourism
justice tourism and solidarity travel
volunteer tourism and poverty
economies of charity and slum tourism
the migration/tourism nexus and the slum
identity, culture and slum tourism
literary slumming in writing, film and games
histories of slum tourism and slumming

Please submit your abstract of up to 300 words with affiliation and contact details using the submit abstract page on the conference webpage. All abstracts will be peer-reviewed by members of the conference committee and we will notify within four weeks of your submission. Accepted papers are to be considered for publication in a special issue of an academic journal (negotiations are underway).

UPDATED Deadline for abstract submissions: 1st of March 2014

Conference Webpage:

www.destinationslum.com
We are also happy to accept panel proposal via conference (at) slumtourism.net

Conference Cost

The conference fee is 100 Euros (50 Euros for post-graduate and non-waged
researchers) and covers conference two lunches and two dinners, coffee and
refreshments as well as a side programme.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Commodifying Urban Poverty, Social Exclusion, and Marginalisation: Spatial and Social Consequences

The 17th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences will host a session called: “Commodifying Urban Poverty, Social Exclusion, and Marginalisation: Spatial and Social Consequences”. The conference will be held in Manchester 5-10 August 2013, but the organisation is already asking for paper proposals (the deadline is 20 July 2011). This seems a good opportunity to present on slum and poverty tourism to a wider audience. More information can be found below:

CALL FOR PAPERS: Commodifying Urban Poverty, Social Exclusion, and Marginalisation: Spatial and Social Consequences

IUAES, Manchester 5-10 August 2013

Convenors: Eveline Dürr and Rivke Jaffe

This panel seeks to investigate the effects of increasing commodification and marketable global representations of the urban poor and their particular spaces. While many cities are eager to “clean” their central spaces and move pavement dwellers, beggars, street children and other “undesirable” citizens out in order to present a favourable image to visitors and potential investors, others draw attention to marginalisation, poverty and social exclusion and market no-go areas, gang life, drug districts, slums and other poverty-ridden urban areas as tourist destinations. While these socio-spaces were previously banned from the city’s representation, they are now tentatively included as integral parts of the urban environment. Increasingly, tourists seem to be keen to move into these spaces, yet in a controlled and safe way. The consequences of these quickly expanding, globally prevalent urban practices are manifold yet have hardly been investigated empirically, much less in a comparative perspective. This panel aims to examine the ways tourism intersects with spaces of urban misery and their representation. It seeks to understand how the commodification and increasing circulation of representations of the poor and their spaces affects city imaginaries, urban space, local economies and social relations. By emphasizing actors and socio-spatial dimensions, this panel includes a performative understanding of these practices and thus goes beyond the analysis of representation strategies. What are the consequences for cities and their dwellers when poverty and decay are turned into fashionable tourist experiences? How are cities transformed by these processes and how are social relationships reconfigured in these new spaces of encounter? Who actually benefits when social inequality becomes part of the city’s spatial perception and place promotion? Comparative and reflective empirical research contributes to the understanding and analysis of these fairly recent urban challenges. Papers addressing these aspects are welcome.

Please email your abstract (ca. 200 words) accompanied by information about the author (name, affiliation) to Eveline Dürr (Eveline.Duerr@lmu.de) and Rivke Jaffe (RJaffe@fsw.leidenuniv.nl).

Deadline for paper proposals is 20 July 2011.

For more information about the IUAES conference see http://www.iuaes2013.org/

 

Promoting tourism for sustainable development and poverty reduction

On the 10th of May the UN Steering Committee on Tourism for Development is organising a Tourism Special Event at LDC-IV Conference. The idea is to “share strategic insights on major challenges and devise the way forward for tourism in the least the developed countries” and to “set the scene for a new framework for development through tourism”

Although the conference is by invitation only, the full brief of the event is given on the website and it is worth the read. It shows an interesting discursive UN-development with relation to tourism, sustainability and poverty reduction that will most likely influence international policy developments with regards to slum tourism.

Responsible Tourism in Cities mini-conference

Friday 6 May the City of Cape Town organises a day event on topics specific to Responsible Tourism in Cities as part of the Indaba tourism conference. This may be an interesting event for those wanting to learn  more about how Cape Town as a destination deals with township tourism. How does it fit in with the portfolio of the city and to what extent is it seen as responsible tourism?

Participants can not only go to the conference in person, but there is also the possibility to participate online via live video streaming of twitter.  Information can found on the website of the conference, but the wiki of planeta.com and the website of Responsible Tourism Cape Town contain more information.

After the conference four sessions are will be made available on the Responsible Tourism Cape Town website as will videos of the presentations and discussions.