Re-Centering Women in Tourism: Anti-Colonial Feminist Studies addresses tourism as simultaneously empowering women and reproducing colonial hierarchies. Placing a unique and long overdue theoretical frame around tourism, this volume contributes to conversations on the engagement of women in tourism by centering women's multivalent lived experiences-as hosts, liaisons, vendors, performers, producers, and consumers-in tourism projects. Examining eco-tourism, craft production, and food tourism initiatives, the contributors embrace the building of new knowledge and advocate for change. By centering women and their experiences through epistemological lenses that encompass colonial histories and economics, this collection reframes the very presuppositions on which tourism initiatives are based and helps imagine sustainable and regenerative alternatives.
Frances Julia Riemer is professor of educational foundations and associate faculty and director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Northern Arizona University.
Section I: Touristing Chapter 1 Who Invited the Women?: The Double Bind of a Culturally Respectful Female (or Feminist?) Traveler Chapter 2 (Re)Shaping the Volunteer Tourist Bubble: The Intersectional Experiences of Two Women Volunteers in Guatemala Chapter 3 'Skanky stories': Breaking Boundaries of Sexual Taboo in Women's Narratives Section II: Hosting Chapter 4 Women's Work and Tourism in Negril, the Capital of Casual Chapter 5 Pedagogical Tourism: The Gendered Coloniality of Spanish Lessons in Guatemala Chapter 6 Linger: Burned Bambu: Aftermath Nostalgia Chapter 7 "The Baskets Cannot Send the Children to School": Women, Handicrafts, and Tourism in Botswana's Okavango Delta Section III: Equitable Alternatives Chapter 8 "My Mother's Recipe, My Nation's Narrative": Intersections of Food, Militarism, and Masculinity in Maisa's Kitchen Chapter 9 Entrepreneurial Domesticity: Women on the Forefront of Touristic Endeavors in Costa Rica
This collection of essays is a magnificent guide to re-framing tourism as ethical and caring work. The predominantly female authors are uniquely placed to see and know the problems of a Western and patriarchal tourism industry. In writing their devotion to better tourism worlds, they are gifting to us the means to reflect, learn, and enjoy new ways of experiencing travel and tourism that are premised on less harm and more awareness. This book is a tribute to the power of the authors' generosity and original contributions to tourism research. -- Emma Lee, Federation University Australia; co-author of Indigenous Women's Voices: 20 Years on from Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies
