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replacement of traditional patterns of thoughts and belief with a notion of scientifi c economic
rationality' (Willis and Kumar, 2009: 112).
With modernisation tourism was seen as an excellent opportunity for economic growth
and the attraction of foreign currency and investment, as well as to diversify the economy,
generate employment, promote technology transfer, improve improvement, and for the adop-
tion of moder n va lues and l ifest yles (Telfer, 2002 ). The World Bank fi nanced tourism projects
in the late 1960s for the fi rst time, and encouraged indebted Third World countries to open
up to tourism-based foreign investment (Harrison, 2008; Pleumaron, 1994).
Modernisation theory has been criticised for its marked ethnocentrism and the use of
large-scale top-down approaches and interventions that fail to take adequate consideration of
particular situations (Power, 2003). Tourism development inspired by modernisation ideas in
the Third World led to substantial foreign control of the industry, involving high levels of
leakage of the income generated out from the destinations and an increased dependency on
Western companies and tourists. It has been alleged to also promote the exploitation of local
labour forces, environmental degradation and social and cultural disruption, and to have
failed in addressing poverty and inequality (Scheyvens, 2002; Brown and Hall, 2008).
Dependency theories
When the benefi ts promised by the modernisation approach did not trickle down and
inequalities actually increased, radical approaches to development became more infl uential.
Dependence theory, infl uenced by Marxism and structuralism, emerged in the 1960s in Latin
America, deriving from the work of Raúl Prebisch and later André Gunder Frank. It focused
on the long-term structural disadvantages of the Third World which derived from histories
of colonialism and capitalism itself. Together, they provided the conditions for the develop-
ment of the West at the expense of the exploitation and underdevelopment of the Third
World. Development remained understood as a mainly economic process, and to achieve it,
dependencistas
emphasised domestic industrialisation and protectionism measures to strengthen
domestic economies and reduce external dependence (Conway and Heynen, 2008).
Dependency has been one of the most used development approaches in the study of tourism
up to today. From this perspective, tourism is seen as a neocolonial and exploitative activity
that strengthens the vulnerability and dependency of Third World countries, through which
they are drawn into the globalised economy and subordinated to the interests and control of
Western tourists and companies (Pleumaron, 1994). Among geographers, Britton (1991) was
key in highlighting the extent to which dependency reproduces and reinforces inequalities,
and others have emphasised the unequal power relations it involves, which can reinforce
racism and class marginalisation (Munt, 1994). These approaches, although pointing to very
important issues, have been criticised for their tendency to oversimplify tourism and assume
that it is inherently exploitative of local people and places, neglecting the agency and ways in
which people actually negotiate and respond to tourism (Scheyvens, 2002).
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a body of theory that, in contrast to modernisation and dependency
approaches that emphasised state intervention, identifi ed the free market and the reduction of
the state as the keys to development and economic growth (Simon, 2008). It became more
infl uential when, at the end of the 1970s, the rise in oil prices, the slowdown of the world
economy and the increase in interest rates led to the 'debt crisis' in which, starting with
