Packaging poverty: tourism, violence, and the politics of space in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Tusia, Tomi

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Description

Title

Packaging poverty: tourism, violence, and the politics of space in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Author(s)

Tusia, Tomi

Issue Date

2012-05-22T00:19:25Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Moodie, Ellen

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Moodie, Ellen

Committee Member(s)

• Lugo, Alejandro
• Manalansan, Martin F.
• Graham, Laura R.

Department of Study

Anthropology

Discipline

Anthropology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• violence
• poverty
• tourism
• Brazil

Abstract

Based on ethnographic field research with tourists, residents, and community activists in/of Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on participant-observation at Rio de Janeiro’s State Ministry of Tourism, on critical analysis of popular discourse and of federal and state urban planning policies and programs, this dissertation explores the packaging of poverty in Rio de Janeiro. It examines how particular kinds of spaces are produced, maintained, and offered up for tourist consumption, and it interrogates the connections between macro-level decision-making and micro-level practices in order to understand how and why “poverty tourism” arose and flourishes in Brazil. I argue that “poverty tourism” is neither accidental nor inconsequential, but rather that the relegation of the urban poor to the status of tourist attraction is intimately tied to the operations of class exploitation, problematic, and segregationist, spatial management policies, violent racism, and a linguistically enacted politics of hierarchical othering.

Graduation Semester

2012-05

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Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2012 Tomi O'Neil Tusia

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