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moments and spaces of encounter. Tricia Barnett from non-profi t organisation Tourism
Concern writes in the introduction to The Ethical Travel Guide (Pattullo and Minelli, 2006:
viii) that 'If you decide to visit one of these hotels, guest houses, lodges or villages you will
know that your money will go to people directly and not be lost to outsiders. You can then
have a great holiday and not take a guilt trip!' At one level this is perhaps true, but being on
holiday is much more than just paying for a hotel room or taking a cultural tour. That more
ethical enterprises might now exist cannot guarantee ethical conduct (whatever that might be),
nor counteract the variability of how tourism encounters actually transpire. Cultural exchanges
take place in unfolding circumstances, relationships develop (or deteriorate) and reactions are
negotiated ( Johnston, 2007). Both the critique of tourism as corruption and the newly
branded ethical tourism industry share 'a sentimental nostalgia . . . that resembles nothing so
much as the vituperative nostalgia of conservatives, who fondly imagine a time where the elite
alone travelled and everything in the world showed itself truly to them' (Culler, 1988: 10).
Again, the parallels are with fair trade: branding masks the possibility of more or less
ethical practices under the 'ethical tourism' banner (Duffy, 2000); it codifi es ethical tourism
(against all other tourism, which is unethical by implication); and it introduces a moralising
element that endorses some types or spaces of tourism against amoral 'others' (Butcher, 2003).
The 'new moral tourist' seeks non-intrusive encounters that reconnect sensitively with nature
and culture - all good intentions. But ethical tourism risks becoming another opportunity for
cosmopolitan travellers, who distance themselves from mass tourists, to accumulate cultural
capital (Germann Molz, 2007) and consider themselves superior - adding to the 'right'
luggage and adventure wear as markers of distinction (Britton, 1991: 454).
Ethical tourism hopes to overturn a binary between oppressor (tourist) and oppressed
(host community, tourism labour, nature) that may not bear out so simply in reality. Amidst
exploitation tourism workers negotiate marginality and improve their life chances (Malam,
2008b), an observation that does not preclude opposition to capitalistic relations of work, but
rather acknowledges possibilities of resistance and the presence of intermittent victories.
In the context of sexual politics, Waitt et al. (2008: 785, see also Waitt, Chapter 10 o f this
volume) argued that:
representations of the gay tourist as a passive consumer, whizzing around the
commercial gay circuit, are rather simplistic . . . Indeed, the presence of interna-
tional tourism amenities and associated travellers in non-Western nations might
even help constitute alternative expressions of same-sex desire and identity . . . and
do so on the political terms of local sexual dissidents rather than those of 'Western
imperialists'.
Backpackers are another case: becoming part of the tourism workforce is for many part of the
travel experience - a particular preference that complicates binary readings of tourism as
Third World workers in servitude to rich Westerners (Duncan, 2008). Boon's (2007) analysis
of the negotiation of front- and back-of-house boundaries by hotel room attendants demon-
strates just how fl uid the micro-geography of tourism work can be, with resultant ambiguity
for what might constitute 'ethical' tourism encounters in any given place and time. Even mass
tourism - so frequently depicted as tourism's dark heart, with its low-wage labour, environ-
mental damage and cheap cultural stereotypes - involves local populations establishing and
defending front and back zones of encounter: places to entertain and to escape; places to
perform formulaically for tourists, allowing everyday life to take place away from the tourist
eye (Butcher, 2003; Anton Clavé, Chapter 28 i n this volume).
 
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