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modes of tourism development. When the earlier edition of this chapter was
written, the influence of dependency theories and the 'neo-colonial' model
of tourism had already been on the wane for some time, and Britton's (1991)
seminal publication on tourism and post-industrial capitalist development
had placed the study of tourism development firmly within the 'structura-
list' camp. Since then, a more theoretically nuanced picture has emerged which
eschews both the macro-structural generalisations which did, to some
extent, plague many analyses of tourism and (under)development, as well as
the more post-structuralist hubris and which condemns all attempts to view
processes of tourism development as interrelated parts of a complex whole,
as essentialist. A new generation of scholars, influenced by a range of critical
and radical development studies perspectives, have responded to the changes
brought about by globalisation and the reconfiguration of global capitalism
since the early 1990s to provide a more nuanced and empirically informed
picture of the industrial structure and relations of consumption in interna-
tional tourism (see Mosedale, 2011).
The principal objective of this chapter, therefore, is to reflect and
elucidate upon the systemic sources of power which serve to reproduce and
condition different modes of tourism development, as a basis from which
to develop a more theoretically informed understanding of the structure and
dynamics of the political economy of tourism. Where appropriate, it has
sought to incorporate new theoretical insights into the international political
economy of tourism that have emerged in the past decade, although it remains
largely true to the ideas set out in the earlier version. This chapter does not
claim to provide a comprehensive study of the international political econ-
omy of tourism but, rather, presents a particular way of looking at tourism
development based on the radical theoretical traditions in political econ-
omy (see Dunn, 2009; Sherman, 1987). The central normative preoccupa-
tion of such an approach consists of an analysis of the social relations of
power which condition unequal and uneven processes of tourism develop-
ment, which are reinforced through particular configurations of ideologies
and institutions. In this regard, the following section reviews some of the
central 'problems' in political economy as well as examining some of the
earlier applications of the neo-colonial dependency model in tourism,
before then going on to explore the contemporary tourism political econ-
omy in more detail.
Capitalist Development and the Power of Tourism
A radical political economy approach to the analysis of tourism and capi-
talist development both challenges the neoclassical view of market equilib-
rium as the central dynamic force of development, as well as reified Marxist
models which profess to 'explain' development processes according to a
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