Theorizing Other discourses of tourism, gender and culture

Abstract

At its broadest level, this article is concerned with identifying, reviewing and developing synergies between three subject fields that have experienced rapid growth over the last two decades: tourism studies, gender studies and wider cultural theory. At a more specific level, the article seeks to review the interface between structural and cultural power in the construction of gender relations and gendered Others in tourism. The article adopts and adapts poststructural and postcolonial feminist critiques that have placed emphasis on the symbolic, textual, discursive and performative construction of the Other. Seeing the Other person or people as merely subaltern in tourism is problematized when we listen to these poststructural and postcolonial feminist voices. These voices articulate discourses that speak of the complexity of tourism and gender relations. In doing so, however, these academic voices create yet further possibilities of representing Others and raise additional questions about authors, authority and the subaltern’s speech. Thus, tourism, through its association with the exotic and erotic, is critiqued as a complex media, medium and mediator of symbolic and material power in the Othering of gender and culture as part of the fluid process of tourism and global consumption where issues of power and representation are continually tested and contested.