Towards a New Political Economy of Global Tourism Revisited - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 292

actors and institutions ? As a precursor to a more in-depth consideration of
these issues, the following section reviews the concept of core-periphery rela-
tions, one which has played an important part in constructing the neo-
colonial model of tourism development.
Tourism and core-periphery relations
Earlier research into the political economy of tourism drew heavily on
both the liberal economic paradigm, which emphasises the positive economic
effects of tourism and analyses tourism policy in terms of practical solutions
to its negative environmental and social consequences, as well as the Marxist
tradition, specifically, dependency theory (cf. Frank, 1966; Wallerstein, 1979).
Authors in the latter tradition envisaged tourism as an expression of metro-
politan hegemony that subordinates peripheral states to a position of depen-
dence on foreign capital and tourists (Leheny, 1995). Although Bryden (1973)
and de Kadt (1979b) are rightly credited for some of the earliest critical insights
into tourism development, the political economy of tourism is perhaps best
associated with Britton's (1980b, 1982b) pioneering series of articles in which
he elaborated upon the manner in which Third World destinations are exploi-
ted by metropolitan capitalist enterprises who organise and control the nature
and scope of tourism development in the former. According to the enclave
model of Third World tourism he devised, it was emphasised that tourism
both exacerbates social and economic inequalities between the core and
periphery as well as within destinations themselves. Britton, along with cer-
tain others (Hills & Lundgren, 1977; Pérez, 1980), focused predominantly on
the unequal relations of exchange between destinations in the so-called 'less
developed countries' and the rich generator nations which were rooted in the
historical structures of the colonial trading system.
Colonialism had distorted the underlying structure of Third World econ-
omies via the imposition of an externally oriented pattern of trade, organ-
ised around specialised commodity export enclaves producing for the
metropolitan market, otherwise known as the 'plantation system' (Beckford,
1972). This resulted in the disintegration of the endogenous economy and
the eventual subordination of peripheral states to a position of 'structural
dependency' even after formal political independence had been achieved.
Accordingly, critics have argued, the growth of international tourism was
predicated upon the superior affluence of the industrialised nations and
underpinned by the systemic inequalities in the world economy (Davis,
1978; Hiller, 1976). Their view offered a stark contrast to the optimistic
outlook of developers and governments, who claimed that tourism would
help overcome the structural distortions inherited from the colonial econ-
omy and promote economic development in many newly independent states
(cf. Krapf, 1961; Bond & Ladman, 1980). Thus, rather than stimulate an
autonomous dynamic of development, tourism contributes directly towards