Narratives of National Development and Racialized Modernity in South African Tourism

• In Event: 20481 - Section on Sociology of Development Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4. States and Governance

Abstract

This paper examines how Western tourists in the global South reconfigure narratives about national development and racialized modernity. In post-apartheid South Africa, Black townships have become popular tourist attractions. They are imagined to be places of “authentic” African poverty but also marked as places of “traditional” African culture. I draw upon fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with 45 tourists to examine how white Westerners observed Black place and ultimately made conclusions about Black South Africa and white Euro-America. After interacting with township communities, tourists reported positive reactions that rejected stereotypes of township danger and poverty but also minimized structural inequalities. They flattened township life into “poor but happy” and culturally communal frames that confirmed Africa’s inferior position in the racial global order. Yet this assessment also compelled tourists to reflect on life in the West. There, they reported, life was materially better but spiritually depleted, gesturing to the social ills of “development.” Their accounts demonstrate how tourism in the global South may reify dominant ideologies in some ways, but open up critical potential in others.

Author

• Annie Hikido, University of Massachusetts-Amherst