From: Paul BICK <paulbick@msn.com>Right - my original point was that there is a vast difference between exposure to culture (a good thing) and a tourist industry - which provides exposure to the tourist industry (and does absolutely nothing to alleviate poverty, by the way).
Like most people on this list, I imagine, my first trip to Haiti was also a revelation. Part of the revelation was that there was actually a "there" there, as the saying goes. There is no "there" left in most of the Caribbean - which has largely become a generic series of tour-boat docks and interchangable high-walled resort enclaves. A palm tree is a palm tree is a palm tree...
Yet, we all recognized a different kind of .. authenticity.. in Haiti, right? Something we might call "soul." But in that recognition, of course, is a danger of romanticizing poverty - its so easy (for Americans especially) to conflate "poverty" and "authenticity," which seems a logical step on the road to commodifying poverty itself, the same way we commidfy every romantic notion.
The "misery tour" concept was simply a device to cast these ideas in a new light.
Paul Bick Department of Anthropology The University of Illinois at Chicago Behavioral Sciences Building #2128 1007 West Harrison Street Chicago, IL 60607 847-863-8725
From: Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu> To: "Bob Corbett's Haiti list" <haiti@lists.webster.edu>Subject: 30131: Mdmdread (reply) Re: 30078: Kathleen (reply to Paul Bick) (fwd)Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 08:08:08 -0600 (CST) From: Mdmdread@aol.com Some twenty years ago I spent time in Cite Soleil with a group of artisansfrom whom I bought handicrafts, which I then sold for them at a non-for-profitstore in the States. I'd also take groups of 'tourists' to see the shop and workspace there. Some might say that is voyeurism, but I thought those trips served several purposes -- the first being that they brought income into Cite Soleil becausethey bought handicrafts from the store, so the money went directly back to theartisans. Another was that it provided these people a chance to see the conditions that artists had to work under/in/with in order to produce theirgoods. And it was a way to understand a part of Haitian life that otherwise mightbe closed off to them. I don't know what most of those people did with that experience after they left Haiti and returned home. But when I was first introduced to Haiti, itchanged my life, and I'm forever grateful that someone allowed me to see a sideof Haiti that otherwise might have remained an academic one. <BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.
_________________________________________________________________Mortgage rates as low as 4.625% - Refinance $150,000 loan for $579 a month. Intro*Terms https://www2.nextag.com/goto.jsp?product=100000035&url=%2fst.jsp&tm=y&search=mortgage_text_links_88_h27f6&disc=y&vers=743&s=4056&p=5117