Slum Tourism: A Review of State-of-the-Art Scholarship

In this review article, Rodanthi Tzanelli notes that (today) “slum,” “favela,” or “township” tourism (i.e., visitations to urban sites of squalor and poverty for leisure, education, or philanthropy) has evolved into a mobility trend worthy of dedicated study by tourism scholars. She signposts relevant contemporary studies and arguments on the subject by focusing upon the ways in which slum tourist “motivations” are structured socially and culturally at transcultural, international levels and not just as localized or individualized preferences. As a result, this review article taps into issues of capitalist demand and supply of exotic poverty and otherness. Tzanelli’s aim is to highlight the social scientific traditions on which present dominant arguments on tourism supply and motivation are constructed, so as to shed light on the underlying norms and values by which the overall study area is informed. To this end, she discusses how different analytical modes connect to specific “gazes” or styles of study of slum tourism, which are by turn informed by particular epistemological frameworks. In her view, such epistemologies produce different versions of reality about slums that circulate in intellectual and policy networks.