Touring and Obscuring Poverty: Urban and Rural Cultural-Heritage Tourism

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper explores ways pro-poor political messages in cultural-heritage tourism are expressed by tour operators and differentially received and re-communicated by tourists dependent upon whether the experience is located at the center or periphery of national cultural-heritage brands. Two types of cultural-heritage tourism are compared, urban slum tours and rural performances of tradition. Within these types four examples are reviewed, township tours in South Africa and slum tours in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and Maasai tours in Tanzania and Kenya, and Batwa tours in Uganda. Township tours in South Africa and Maasai tours in Kenya and Tanzania are located at the center of authorized forms of national cultural-heritage brands, whereas slum tours in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and Batwa tours in Uganda operate at the periphery as alternative, less-authorized, forms of cultural heritage. Through a survey of online advertisements, media reports, and reviews, the paper finds that despite all four examples being framed as pro-poor cultural-heritage tourism by tourism providers, typically only tourists that visited the peripheral examples consumed and re-communicated messages of poverty and political marginalization, whereas visitors to central cultural-heritage products typically framed their reviews in terms of historical and cultural authenticity. By comparing cultural-heritage products central to national cultural-heritage brands with peripheral ones, which are conceptually similar (e.g. pro-poor cultural-heritage tourism) despite other outward differences (e.g. urban versus rural), this paper contributes toward the illumination of an aspect of the cultural work of heritage tourism regarding the creation and maintenance, and ability to contest cultural identities.