Strength, mobility, and variety: Central discourses which undermine tourism’s ability to subvert broader gender orders in Botswana

Abstract

ABSTRACTTourism is often identified for its subversive potential, its ability to change the behaviours of locals (whether positively or negatively). This is certainly the case when authors discuss the feminisation of the industry and how such work exposes women to alternative gender orders (involving gender practices, relations, identities, and roles). Botswana’s National Ecotourism Strategy (NES) made similar presuppositions. Using the dominant and dichotomous discourses from how Batswana life and labour are structured as well as those for how labour within the camp itself is arranged, this article attempts to identify whether the gender order of the camp goes anyway in subverting that of the village (and Batswana more broadly). The article finds that the camp does little in this regard and therefore focuses on the given discourses and contemplates why the subversion potential of tourism has been curtailed.