Full Description
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.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Predatory and Sticky Tourism Geographies
1 • Beach Enclosures: Manufacturing a Caribbean Paradise
2 • Wild Hotspots: Contested Natures on the Maya Coast
3 • Colonial Enclaves: Site-Specific Indigeneity for Luxury Tourism
4 • City-Village: Domestic Maquila in the Tourist Offstage
Conclusion: Tourism Fixation and Disciplinary Retoolings
Notes
References
Index
