The Poverty Tourism Debate – a compilation post

Posted on August 11, 2010 at 8:19 pm

The subject of poverty tourism keeps resurfacing in the aid world. The general crux of the debate is whether it’s OK to pay to look at poor people/areas. Proponents state that visiting other areas helps us understand the world and become more compassionate and better donors. Opponents argue that it’s exploitative of poor people and really doesn’t add much to the viewers understanding of complicated issues.

The following is a list of blogs/articles that debate this topic. Please feel free to recommend others.

Recent posts

Slumming It - Expad.ie – “I’m not in favour of having a quick, purposeless gawp at relative poverty. If that’s what you go to do, all you will see is poverty, you won’t get any context.  If a rich American tourist strutted through my back garden taking photos without permission or without bothering to stop and say hello, I’d heave a plant pot at his skull and feel justified in doing so. If he was invited in by a neighbour and was genuinely interested in something about me, I’d probably put on some coffee.”

Our Most Important Job – How Matters – “A great article by writer J.B. MacKinnon last year entitled, “The Dark Side of Volunteer Tourism” grounds me. He wrote, ‘First, nothing is likely to stop the increase in person-to-person contact between people of the richer nations and people of the poorer. Second, there is much to be gained on both sides from this exchange. Third, those gains will be made through a series of small, personal, humbling errors.’”

Poverty Tourism: A Debate in Need of Typological Nuance – Staying for Tea – Toward a Common Language and Taxonomy of Poverty Tourism

On poverty tourism: my two African cents - Project Diaspora - “You really want change? Put down the camera, walk up to anyone in that slum, get to know them.”

Slumdog Tourism – NYT Op-Ed – “Slum tourism turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from.”

Dilemmas – Dispatches – “Needing to see and understand poverty, even though we are not poor, is a dilemma we have to live with.”

Previous posts

The Pity Industry – LTO Cambodia – “Consider very carefully your real motivations before engaging in this sort of dubious ‘volunteer work.’ Those who are honest with themselves may very well find it’s more about the warm and fuzzy feelings generated in themselves by supposedly helping these children than by actually helping them.”

The Dark Side of Volunteer Tourism – Utne Reader – “First, nothing is likely to stop the increase in person-to-person contact between people of the richer nations and people of the poorer. Second, there is much to be gained on both sides from this exchange. Third, those gains will be made through a series of small, personal, humbling errors.”

A new brand of poverty tourism – Next Billion – “It’s easy to go on debating whether these tours are right or wrong, but it may be more practical to delineate aspects that make the tours more sensitive to and empowering for the local communities”

Poverty Safari – Aid Thoughts - “You too, from the safety of your 4×4, can get to experience the overwhelming poverty of the Rwandan people, only to escape back to your hotel in the evening.”

Slum Tourism in Kibera: Education or Exploitation? – Brain Ekdale – “While I do not pretend to speak on behalf of Kibera residents, I would argue there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to visit Kibera.”

Poverty tourism is getting a lot of attention lately – UN Dispatch – “Shifting modes from gawking guests to paying tourists makes it clear to host communities that they possess things of value.”

When is it appropriate for a donor to visit an aid recipient – Good Intentions are Not Enough – “Education, Not Titillation”

Development Tourism: thinking out loud… – Tales from the Hood – “Appropriate, structured cultural exchange can be a very positive thing.”

Development Tourism – Is It Good? – Lessons I Learned – “My thoughts are, it’s not black and white – it’s not ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’.”

Jeffry Sach’s Misguided Foreign Aid Efforts – Huffington Post – “On a brochure for a tour of Jeff Sachs’ Millenium Village in Rwanda, managed by one of Sachs’ Columbia University colleagues, Rule #1 is ‘Please do not give anything to the villagers — no sweets, cookies, empty water bottles, pens or even money.’”

Should starving people be tourist attractions? – Aid Watch -”I agree with Wade that it is dehumanizing that the villagers are just exhibits for tourists teaching them about abstractions like ‘poverty traps,’ and are also to be used as propaganda for the MVs’ ‘successful intervention.’”

Response from tourism operator to “Should starving people be tourist attractions” - Aid Watch – “Ms. Wade was totally misguided and misinformed, and used her personal grudge against the MVP to maliciously attack our tourism project and, thereby, our work as a whole.”

Response to MV tourism operator on “Should starving people be tourist attractions?” - Aid Watch – “Respecting the individuality, humanity, and dignity of every person, no matter how poor, is a sacred and fundamental cause.”

Giving tourists a look at gang culture – NYT – “A group of civic activists is preparing to offer bus tours of some of the grittiest pockets of the city, with profits funneled back into the community.”

Slum tourism: Visitors see the “real” Jakarta – CNN – “He said his tours were also about educating foreigners on real issues facing the country.”

And Now For Something Completely Different: Davos Features “Refugee Run” – Aid Watch – “When somebody sent me this invitation from Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, I thought at first it was a joke from the Onion.”

“Poverty Tours Travel a Fine Line” – Christian Science Monitor – “Does peeking at how the other five-sixths lives preserve culture – or commodify it?”

“On Paying Money to Look at Poor People” – To Africa from New York Blog – “If you didn’t pay to take a tour of Mayange, but instead drove out there yourself, brought a translator, and bumbled from homestead to homestead asking the same questions, would you be described as an exploitative voyeur?”

Disaster Tourism – Good Intentions are Not Enough – “What is interesting and educational to you may be intrusive and demoralizing to them”

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