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By contrast, slum-dwellers meeting Western tourists in a pro-poor ethical tourism experi-
ence must re-visit Western expectations of 'slum life' every time they greet, serve or accom-
pany tourists through their neighbourhoods (see also Wilson and Tallon, Chapter 13 in this
volume). Limitations and contradictions are apparent even for the most well-meaning or
best-designed ethical tourism enterprises.
Sensory encounters: beyond ethical essentialism
Accordingly, recent work in tourism studies has progressed from cultural imperialist critiques
(and moralistic endorsement of ethical tourism) to focus on the complexity and materiality of
tourism encounters. Beyond sight, researchers are now analysing the other senses (see also
Edensor and Falconer, Chapter 9 and Larsen, Chapter 8 in this volume) and how encounters
are experienced in an affective, embodied fashion, through touch, sound and taste. It becomes
possible for tourists to 'internalise a place through its food' (Everett, 2008: 337), because
'eating and drinking out are important performances in the consumption of place' (Cuthill,
2007: 64). Sensor y encounters infor m geographical analysis of mater ial space, its sur veil lance,
governance and affective possibilities (Paterson, 2009). Some sensory cues are obvious: street
signs guide sightseeing tourists; police encourage orderly behaviour; paid ticketing at
museums and galleries ensures commercial return and regulates the movement of bodies. At
once mundane and profound, such technologies of space enormously shape what encounters
are possible - and how tourists attach meaning to them (Griffi n and Hayllar, 2007).
Augmenting physical infrastructures are less obvious, but often no less important, sensory,
psychological and cultural cues for the regulation and expression of bodies in tourist space
(Saldanha 2005). Music, for instance, marks out tourist space, defi nes its borders and makes
tourists feel invited (or unwelcome) - as in New Orleans, where both before and after Katrina
jazz marked sections of the French Quarter as tourist-friendly (Gibson and Connell, 2005).
At street parades and festivals, sound has been shown to be pivotal in tourists participating
with a sense of joyous abandon rather than reserved observation (Duffy et al. , 2007).
The simple pleasure from feeling sun and sand on the skin is central to the beach's ubiquity
in tourism, while cultural norms governing bodily exposure and decorum prevail and shape
the sensory environment (Obrador Pons, 2007). Similarly, in Third World informal sector
sites - markets, bazaars, streetscapes - bodily proximity, smell, heat and noise have long
invoked the exotic. For Robinson (2001: 40), 'what tourists seem to feed from is the appre-
hension of confl ict and the emotional responses brought out by the tangible recognition of
difference'.
The senses trigger specifi c bodily and emotional responses and encourage human interac-
tions, from the festival parade to the nightclub. Tourism is visceral, and frequently relies on
hedonism: sun-baking, dancing, drinking, taking drugs, pursuing sexual encounters, the
'noise and din of the disco and the sweat of the massage parlour' (Ryan, 2002: 27). Accordingly,
tourism research has been refreshed by experts on space and sexuality, offering analysis of the
complexities of sexual encounters, as correctives to a cerebral view of the world as 'asexual
terrain, a world seemingly devoid of lust, passion and sex' (Waitt et al. , 2008: 782). Within
regulated spaces unpredictable encounters are still possible; while in the heat of the moment,
'sensory and social overload' renders self-conscious tourist behaviour impossible, 'rehearsed
tourist roles have little coherence in these settings' (Edensor, 2001: 77).
Geographers have also sought to situate tourism encounters as moments of interaction
between humans and non-human landscapes (Bentrupperbäumer and Reser, 2009). Waitt
and Lane (2007) traced how 'wilderness' comes to be understood through bodily encounters
 
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