Book Chapter

Poverty, class, and tourism : from seeing poverty to modern philanthropy, social policy, and antipoverty activism

Abstract

Tourism’s relationship to poverty and class is multifaceted and has changed over time. Tourism is a social phenomenon in which class and poverty often become apparent and are sometimes negotiated. In this chapter, the author focuses on a certain aspect of the relationship between tourism and class, namely tourism’s role in enabling and underpinning the politics of class and poverty. Using the context of Victorian slumming as an empirical backdrop, the chapter discusses three aspects of the politics of class in tourism: (1) the relationship of knowledge and class in tourism, with tourism producing but also obscuring knowledge; (2) the relationship of tourism and inequality, interrogating how tourism enables claims making in contexts of inequality; and (3) the role of free time for political action, investigating how the availability of free time and space has enabled the formation of class-based politics. The chapter contributes to better understanding the role of tourism in political and classbased action, a role not widely acknowledged in political history and social movement studies.

Attached files

Authors

Frenzel, Fabian

Oxford Brookes departments

Oxford Brookes Business School

Dates

Year of publication: 2022
Date of RADAR deposit: 2023-01-06

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Related resources

This RADAR resource is the Version of Record of Poverty, class, and tourism : from seeing poverty to modern philanthropy, social policy, and antipoverty activism
This RADAR resource is Part of The Oxford Handbook of the history of tourism and travel [ISBN: 9780190889555] / edited by Eric Zuelow ; Kevin J. James (Oxford University Press, 2022-)