Ethical Tourism in the Postcolonial Era

Tourism has become a huge source of revenue and cultural exchange for many parts of the developing and developed world. Through tourism people are able to escape their normal routine and interact with exotic and different places, as well as people. This act of traveling for the sake of pleasure and "vacation" sometimes leads tourists astray in their ethical judgment of how to act as a visitor in a different land. This paper will dive deeper into this issue by comparing the "tourist" through the sexualized tourism market in Brazil and more ethical forms of alternative tourism, such as volunteer tourism.

The act of touring has been done for hundreds of years but has morphed into a more lucrative, dangerous industry as travel has become more accessible to a wide spectrum of people. According to (New Keywords) there are generally two kinds of people participating in travel: the tourist and the traveler. The tourist is a superficial being, taking time "out from everyday routines to sample, but not necessarily engage with others” (356). The tourist may also be seen as vulgar and ignorant when presented with new cultures and ideologies. The traveler, on the other hand, is an "independent, genuine explorer on a quest of discovery" (356). The tourist participates in generic forms of tourism while the traveler seeks more personalized experiences that are more sensitive to their destination's environment and people. Through travel the "colonial and postcolonial character of modern tourism" is apparent as many people from the more privileged sectors of society visit the Third World and commodify their host's culture, bodies, and livelihood. Unfortunately, the bulk of the profit from these tourists goes to multinational companies instead of t...

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...tourists feel the need to visit mass tourism destinations, such as all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean, there are others who seek an experience that will change them forever. They want to soak up pieces of other cultures to put in their experiential scrapbook, feeling the emotions and living a lifestyle of the Other by diminishing personal boundaries. In contrast places like Brazil, Thailand, the Philippines and the Caribbean Islands are living a different reality as sexualized images of their women, and sometimes children, have become a problem by creating an unhealthy sex tourism market (Bandyopadhyay 940). With the mergence of alternative tourism and increasing global awareness about the many human rights issues stemming from generations of colonial exploitation there is hope that people will be more inclined to choose safer more sustainable modes of tourism.