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In-Depth Information
mentioned, Terry (2009) laments how legal decisions in American courts have led to the
enhancement of exploitation of Filipino cruise ship workers on a global basis.
Nevertheless, Gibson (2009) suggests that these studies fail to meet Britton's initial agenda.
Others, including Hall and Page
(Chapter 2)
and Bianchi
(Chapter 5)
in this volume, repeat
this sentiment. Hall and Page's argument that tourism geographers do not actively critique
neoliberalism explains why labour and specifi cally the inequities relating to this dimension
are superfi cially treated in the economic geography of tourism. Further, Bianchi blames the
inattention on the excessive zeal with which geographers have embraced the postmodernist
'critical turn'. He believes that, in an effort to avoid criticisms of a productionist bent in their
work (Franklin and Crang, 2001), the proponents of the 'critical turn' are guilty of casting
aside fundamental issues such as the material inequalities and conditions of tourism labour
markets. The 'critical turn' does not comprehensively analyse the market-based mechanisms
behind the division of labour witnessed in tourism settings, nor does it allow us to fully
comprehend how tourism workers shape the geographies of their everyday life.
To reignite tourism geographers' need to take a keener interest in labour-related issues
from a political economy standpoint, we would like to highlight Herod's (1994, 1997) notion
that workers are not subservient to capital but, rather, have an active say in the way economic
landscapes are formed. Herod believes that all workers, regardless of status, wish to engineer
an economic landscape that aids in their own 'self-reproduction' (1997: 16) and that this can
only occur in spaces where they have access to housing and transportation options they can
afford. In other words, he contends that in any given society the workers create their own
geographies in ways that allow them to sustain their livelihoods.
Few tourism researchers seem aware of Herod's work on 'labour geography' although
Gladstone and Préau (2008) independently discuss how the gentrifi cation of neighbourhoods
surrounding New Orleans' French Quarter has largely been an outgrowth of tourism workers'
actions (see also Wilson and Tallon,
Chapter 13 i
n this volume). Tufts (1998, 2004, 2006) has
contributed regular academic pieces relating to the labour geographies of tourism workers. In
an investigation of the forces leading to uneven spatial development within Toronto during
the city's failed bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games, he recognised that it was not merely the
developers, neighbourhood boards and banks that infl uenced this process but also that workers
(including tourism workers) had their say (both collectively and individually) (Tufts, 2004).
Herod himself has co-edited
The Dirty Work of Neoliberalism: Cleaners in the Global Economy
(Aguiar and Herod, 2006), which explores the conditions for cleaners in various sectors
(including hotels) resulting from the cost-saving practices of fi rms (e.g. through outsourcing)
during this age of globalisation and neoliberalism. A fundamental argument is that women
(many of them immigrants) dominate low-tier jobs (such as cleaning). These women are
active in the performance of reproductive tasks traditionally linked to the housewife's unpaid
household chores (e.g. cooking, cleaning and making beds).
Recognising this reality, Tufts and Savage (2009: 945) recently suggested several research
directions in labour geography overall, including the need for 'unpacking the complex identi-
ties of workers and the way in which those identities simultaneously are shaped by and shape
the economic and cultural landscape'. Specifi cally referring to women (and/or immigrants)
in tourism, one could ask questions such as: who are they; where do they come from; where
do they go to next; how do they choose where and when to work based on the geographies
of their everyday lives; how do their work schedules infl uence where they live and their
mobility patterns? Some of this research directly relates to the analysis of the social relations
of tourism production and consumption more commonplace to the 'critical turn', but, thus
far, tourism geographers have not conducted much integrative analysis.
