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Palestine, in which ' justice tourism' is deployed as a means to resist the curtailment of mobility
and appropriation of land which lies at the heart of the economic injustice of the Israeli
Occupation, whilst simultaneously constituting part of the wider struggle among Palestinians
for politico-cultural recognition (see Kassis, 2005).
While Marx did recognise the diverse unfolding of capitalist development in space and
time (see Marx, 1974 [1887]: 603; 669-70), he identifi es the imperative of competition as the
driving force of capital accumulation everywhere. The 'destructive' logic of competition is
borne out in the tourism political economy in different ways, whether in the form of small
tourism businesses struggling to survive or else be swallowed up by larger conglomerates, or
the current 'crisis of over-production' that has befallen much of the Spanish tourism and
property industry (see Moya, 2009). This does not, however, equate to determinism, nor
does it suggest that states are powerless in the face of a rampant neoliberal globalisation.
Rather, the power of the state has been reconfi gured, with the full acquiescence of ruling
parties, along the lines of a 'transnational market-based free enterprise system' (Gill, 1995:
400) in order to optimise the conditions of capital accumulation:
the nation-state is now more dedicated than ever to creating a good business climate
for investment, which means precisely controlling and repressing labour movements
in all kinds of purposively new ways.
(Harvey, 2000: 87)
In response to the economic crises and recessions of the 1970s, governments (particularly in
the UK and USA) orchestrated a range of reforms which set in motion a reorganisation of the
balance of power between states and markets, and capital and labour, largely in favour of
capital. Echoing Marx's original concept of primitive accumulation, this process, defi ned by
Harvey as 'accumulation by dispossession' (2005: 145-52), has been instrumental in dyna-
mising the forces of capital accumulation after the stagnation of the previous epoch and the
subsequent restoration of 'shareholder value'. The neoliberal state has used a variety of means,
including privatisation and devaluation (of public assets), the deregulation of fi nance and the
orchestration of crises, and has engineered the release of assets (including labour-power) at
very low (and in some instances 'zero') cost into the 'privatised mainstream of capital accu-
mulation', in order that they be put into profi table use (Harvey, 2005: 149). This process is
widespread in the realm of tourism development, from the privatisation of state tourism assets
in Peru (Desforges, 2000), the transfer of public land into private ownership along Valletta's
historic waterfront (Boissevain and Theuma, 1998), and the appropriation of land on behalf
of developers for luxury tourism development in Cambodia (Levy and Scott-Clark, 2008).
Perhaps the most shocking of all is the manner in which states have indulged in the corporate
re-engineering of societies after 'natural disasters', as in Sri Lanka, where coastal populations
were displaced and land appropriated to make way for new 'luxury' resorts in the wake of the
2004 tsunami, as well as the remaking of New Orleans for capital and tourism consumption,
post-Hurricane Katrina (see Klein, 2007; Rice, 2005).
Conclusion
The 'critical turn' in Tourism Studies is heralded by its advocates as a new way of thinking
about and engaging with tourism which challenges the hegemony of dominant business-
driven and positivist research agendas in tourism. However, this chapter has argued that its
professed emancipatory stance is signifi cantly undermined by its post-structuralist theoretical
