Tourism, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality
Issue Editors: Tamar Diana Wilson and Annelou Ypeij
Tourists from the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan are increasingly traveling to Latin America and the Caribbean, at the same time that domestic tourism also is increasing in that region. Tourists do not only visit well-known mass tourism destinations. More and more, they also travel to the most remote places and the smallest communities, for ecotourism, ethnic and cultural tourism, alternative tourism, and other forms of “niche tourism,” including romance and sex tourism. Like other major world industries, tourism produces profound economic, cultural, political and social changes. Yet tourism is distinctive because of its face-to-face nature, and thus these changes are mediated at many levels through personal encounters, as men and women in host communities respond to new challenges and opportunities offered by tourism. The everyday actions and reactions of local people – the “hosts” or “toured,” as well as the mediators between locals and tourists, as well as the structural positions of the actors – race/ethnicity, class, and gender – strongly transform and determine the specific directions that tourism development may take and how tourism is experienced. In particular, a growing body of research shows that tourism is not a gender-neutral phenomenon. Tourism produces different outcomes for local women and men, challenging them in different ways and offering them different opportunities, in part depending on the urban or rural context in which they construct their everyday lives. Gender constructions shape tourism development, which then confirm, construct, and change gender notions and identities.
This issue will focus on the ways women and men in host communities in Latin America and the Caribbean understand tourism as they experience it in their everyday lives. What are the challenges they face and what opportunities are open to them? How is tourism linked to ethnic, sexual and gender constructions and how do these constructions in turn give direction to the development of tourism? How do gender relations transform in the face of tourism development? How does tourism shape the bodies and sexualities of the people ‘toured’ and who do individuals deal with this? And what roles do play imaginations and the search for the exotic and authentic other in all this? By studying gender relations and ethnic imaginings at tourism localities in urban as well as rural areas, this issue aims to further disentangle the concepts of “local’’ or ‘’host’’ communities that in the debate on tourism often are considered as a homogeneous entities. Power relations, social inequalities, unequal distribution of resources, ascribed identities and gender practices are all being renegotiated in the context of tourism, as is the control that local men and women may exercise over its development and their own daily lives.
We invite submissions that address these and other relevant issues.
SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS
Manuscripts should be no longer than 25 pages (approximately 7,000-7,500 words) of double-spaced 12 point text with 1 inch margins, including notes and references, and paginated. Please follow the LAP style guide which is available at www.latinamericanperspectives.com under the “Submissions” tab. Please use the “About” tab for the LAP Mission Statement and details about the manuscript review process. The LAP style guide is available on request or online.
Manuscripts may be submitted in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. If submitting in Spanish or Portuguese, please indicate if you will have difficulty reading correspondence from the LAP office in English.
All manuscripts should be original work that has not been published in English and that is not being submitted to or considered for publication elsewhere in identical or similar form.
Please feel free to contact the Issue Editors with questions pertaining to the issue but be sure that manuscripts (including separate file with basic biographical information and e-mail and postal addresses) are sent to the LAP office in Word or rtf format by e-mail to: laps@ucr.edu with the subject line – “YOUR NAME – MS for "ISSUE NAME”
In addition to electronic submission (e-mail, or CD-R or floppy disk if unable to send by e-mail) if possible submit two print copies including a cover sheet with basic biographical and contact information to: Managing Editor, Latin American Perspectives¸ P.O. Box 5703, Riverside, California 92517-5703
Editor contact information:
Tamar Diana Wilson - tamardiana@yahoo.com
Annelou Ypeij - j.l.ypeij@cedla.nl