The Red Riviera: gender, tourism, and postsocialism on the Black Sea

Abstract

Kristen Ghodsee. The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism, and Postsocialism on the Black Sea. New Directions in Women's Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. xii, 226 pp. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. Notes. Appendices. $74.95, cloth. $21.95, paper.In The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism, and Postsocialism on the Black Sea, Kristen Ghodsee offers a compelling and beautifully-crafted ethnographic study of women and the Bulgarian tourism industry. In a refreshing intervention to the existing literature on post-Soviet women, which stresses the mostly negative effects of socialist collapse on East and Central European women's lives, Ghodsee convincingly argues that women employed in the tourism sector have successfully navigated post-socialist economic and social transformations. This success, she shows, is in large part thanks to the education and experience that women were offered under the socialist system, which has translated into valuable cultural and economic capital in contemporary Bulgaria. Ghodsee thus challenges the assumption that economic transition has been more detrimental for all women than for men in Bulgaria, although she does acknowledge that, while a small group of women experiences an increase in their standard of living, the majority of Bulgarian women slide into poverty (p. 5). Ghodsee's inspiring work should encourage scholars to ponder whether women employed in tourism in Bulgaria represent an interesting exception, or if there are other economic niches across the post-socialist region where women are regrouping and successfully forging careers.Ghodsee takes her major theoretical inspiration from Bourdieu's ideas about social and cultural capital and from the trajectory adjustment theory of Gil Eyal, Ivan Szelenyi, and Kleanor Townsley. Throughout the book, she draws on ethnographic examples to illustrate how women in the socialist-era tourism industry in Bulgaria developed unique and valuable portfolios of different forms of capital (especially cultural capital consisting of general education, work experience with foreigners, and fluency in foreign languages) that have allowed women to thrive-or at least survive-in the tourism industry. Although some readers may wonder whether the women profiled in The Red Riviera truly represent post-socialist success stories-job security seems perilous, and some women are supporting their nuclear and extended families single-handedly-Ghodsee helps the reader see the situation through the women's eyes, and convincingly shows that these women are faring much better than many in post-socialist Bulgaria. Her analysis includes a valuable combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including several surveys the author conducted among tourism workers on the Black Sea coast. Ghodsee gracefully moves between the historical and macro- (Bulgarian, post-socialist) contexts and the specific cases she describes; general trends and statistics are humanized as Ghodsee connects them to the experiences and narratives of everyday Bulgarians. …