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Lecture: The growth of tourism

This lecture will address the biggest industry in the world and the most significant for the Caribbean: tourism. We will consider the historical development of tourism, especially in Cuba and Jamaica, as well as how Caribbean tourism has been theorised as a continuation of the plantation system. We will also examine the way in which the Caribbean is imagined through tourism and historical origins of such ideas.

Suggested reading

Brennan, Denise, What’s Love got to do with it? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic (London, 2004).

Cabezas, Amelia L., ‘Tropical Blues: Tourism and Social Exclusion in the Dominican Republic’, Latin American Perspectives (2008) 35: 3, pp. 21-36.

Cater, E., ‘Consuming places’ in Allen, J. and Hamnett, C. (eds), A Shrinking World? Global Unevenness and Inequality (Oxford, 1995), pp. 183-231.

Connel, John, 'Tourism in Anguilla' in David Barker, Carol Newby and Mike Morrissey (eds), A Reader in Caribbean Geography (Kingston, 1998), pp. 165-171.

Daye, Marcella, Chambers, Donna and Roberts, Sherma (eds), New Perspectives in Caribbean Tourism (New York, 2008).

Duval, David Timothy (eds), Tourism in the Caribbean: Trends, Development, Prospects (London; New York: Routledge, 2004).

Gmelch, George, Behind the Smile: The Working Lives of Caribbean Tourism (Bloomington, 2003).

Goddard, Robert, ‘Tourism, Drugs, Offshore Finance, and the Perils of Neoliberal Development’ in Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (eds), The Caribbean: A History of the Region and its Peoples (Chicago, 2011), pp. 571-582.

Eneas, Godfrey, The New Caribbean: A Region in Transition (Bloomington: Authorhouse, 2010).

Hall, C. Michael and Tucker, Hazel (eds.), Tourism and Post-colonialism: Contested Discourses, Identities and Representations (London and New York, 2004).

Kempadoo, K. (ed.), Sun, Sex, and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean (Oxford, 1999), especially chapters 1, 2, 6 and 9.

Maerk, Johannes and Boxill, Ian (eds.), Tourism in the Caribbean: Knowledge Construction in Latin America and the Caribbean (Mexico, 2000).

Medlik, S., Understanding Tourism (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999).

Montero, Carla Guerrón, ‘On Tourism and the Constructions of “Paradise Islands” in Central America and the Caribbean’, Bulletin of Latin American Research (2011) 30: 1, pp. 21-34.

Mowforth, Martin, Charlton, Clive and Munt, Ian, Tourism and Responsibility: Perspectives from Latin America and the Caribbean (London: Routledge, 2008).

Mullings, Beverley, ‘Caribbean Tourism: Trouble in Paradise’ in Skelton, Tracy (ed.), Introduction to the Pan-Caribbean (London, 2004), pp. 97-117.

Padilla, Mark, Caribbean Pleasure Industry, Tourism, Sexuality and AIDS in the Dominican Republic (Chicago and London, 2007).

Pattullo, Polly, Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean (London: Cassell, 1996).

Phillips, J., ‘Female sex tourism in Barbados: A postcolonial perspective’, Brown Journal of World Affairs (2008) 14: 2, pp 201-212.

Potter, R., Barker, D., Conway, D. and Klak, T., ‘Tourism, environment and development’ in The contemporary Caribbean (Harlow, 2004), pp. 406-443.

Rojek, C. and Urry, J., Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory (London, 1997).

Sheller, M., Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies (London: Routledge, 2003), chapters 2 and 4.

Seward, Shirley B. and Spinrad, Bernard K. (eds), Tourism in the Caribbean: The Economic Impact (Ottawa, 1982).

Strachan, I. G., Paradise and Plantation: Tourism and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean (London: University of Virginia Press, 2002), especially introduction (*), and chapters 1, 2 and 3.

Taylor, Frank Fonda, To Hell with Paradise: A History of the Jamaican Tourist Industry (Pittsburgh, 1993).

Thompson, Krista A., An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).

Titley, G., ‘All sights reserved: All-inclusive resorts and the imagined Caribbean’ in Courtman, S. (ed.), Beyond the Blood, the Beach and the Banana: New Perspectives in Caribbean studies (Kingston, Jamaica, 2004), pp. 205-220.

Wilkes, Karen, Whiteness, Weddings, and Tourism in the Caribbean: Paradise for Sale (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).