Arguing Over The “Caribbean”: Tourism on Costa Rica's Caribbean Coast

Abstract

Through examination of a village on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, this article suggests that the “Caribbean” can be used as an ideational notion enacted through a politics of aesthetics, food and body. The “use” of the “Caribbean” and the “Rastafarian” gives insight into a particular, ambivalent and contradictory, politics of identity at play by Afro-Costa Ricans, at the village- and national levels. It also shows the use of the tourism industry as a resource for understanding and representing notions of the self, community and belonging.