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Save/ShareIn an article titled "Next Stop, Squalor," Smithsonian magazine talks about organized tours of the world's worst slums. (This topic is one that Budget Travel touched on in its 2004 article, "Reality Tours to the Emerging World.")
Poverty tourism is the most common label used to describe the trend in tours that allow travelers to see the wretched of the earth up-close. Some folks--though not BT--also call the trend "poorism."
As Smithsonian's article points out: "For years, tour operators have been escorting foreign visitors through Rio de Janeiro's infamous favelas, with their drug gangs and ocean views, and the vast townships outside Cape Town and Johannesburg, where tourists are invited to mix with South Africans at one of the illicit beer halls known as shebeens. A nonprofit group in New Delhi charges tourists for guided walks through the railway station, to raise money for the street children who haunt its platforms."
Poverty tours give some people a case of the squirms. To wit: A new tour of the Dharavi slum in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) India, which is reputedly the largest slum in Asia, has been criticized by some Indian newspapers, such as Mumbai-based Mid-Day as being exploitative. The tour company, Reality Tours and Travel, counters by saying that its walking tour is educational, and its website points out that 80 percent of its profits after tax are donated to local charitable agencies.
Smithsonian's article is, on balance, favorable to slum tours. The author John Lancaster, took a tour of the Dharavi slum in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India. He writes: "It seemed to me that the purpose of the tour was not to generate pity, but understanding."
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I think whether it's exploitative or educational depends on which side of the open-air latrine you're standing. If you're the one in Bermuda shorts wrinkling your nose, it's educational, and you can pat yourself on the back for choosing to treat the poor like a zoo exhibit (which you see as enlightened).
If said slum is your neighborhood, I imagine the stream of pasty tourists trailing through whilst tut-tutting about your own life, I imagine it feels exploitative to say the least.
Posted By Christy Hoover on April 13, 2007, 4:26 PM
If the children of billionaires came to my neighborhood to see how the common people lived, I'd be pissed.
Posted By Paul -V- on April 13, 2007, 7:31 PM
I remember one time while on a bus in Caracas in the 1970's, the American tourists threw coins out the windows to begging children and to some adults that were holding their handicapped children. The children were fighting and clawing at each other while scrambling for the coins.Some adult onlookers just stared at us with such hatred in their eyes. The Americans were laughing and it made me so ashamed to be an American.
Posted By kaia canfield on April 17, 2007, 8:30 PM
I don't think this is necessarily making a zoo out of the third world and its citizens. Seeing how the other half lives, when done in a respectful way, is an extremely important thing for upper class world citizens to do. Experiencing some of the world's poorest places has played a very formative role in my worldview, and I think many other Americans, especially those who wish to craft our public policies, would do well to see what I have seen. If the culture of these tours is informative and respectful, I see nothing inherently wrong with them.
Posted By Heckelman on April 21, 2007, 8:43 PM