Poverty Tourism Justice And Policy

Commentaries Poverty Tourism, Justice, and Policy Can Ethical Ideals Form the Basis of New Regulations? Abstract Should poverty tourism be subject, on moral grounds, to specific policy constraints? This article responds to the question by testing poverty tourism against the ethical guideposts of compensation justice, participative justice, and recognition justice, and two case descriptions, favela tours in Rocinha and garbage dump tours in Mazatlan. It argues that the complexity of the social relationships involved in the tours requires policy-relevant research and solutions. Keywords: compensation justice, participative justice, poverty tourism, recognition justice “Poverty tourism” is getting a lot of attention today as a practice that should be subject to ethical reflection.1 Articles have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and the Huffington Post, and some denounce the practice as morally repugnant. On January 17, 2010, the New York Times posed questions about the ethics of “gang tours” in Los Angeles; on February 16, 2010, Bill Maher condemned mainstream media coverage of the effects of the earthquake in Haiti as “disaster porn”;2 and media critics have debated whether the film Slumdog Millionaire (2008) is an exploitative cinematic version of a poverty tour (Selinger and Outterson 2010). Poverty tourism refers to cases in which financially privileged tourists visit impoverished communities for the purpose of witnessing poverty firsthand. Many visitors expect the trip will prove educational and help alleviate poverty. Unfortunately, few scholarly contributions on the subject shed light on its core ethical dimensions. Most of the work on niche tourism focuses on one or more of the following issues: • ecology, indigenous , justice, and disaster tourism (Butler and Hinch 2007; Gotham 2007a, 2007b; HigginsDesbiolles 2007, 2008; Higham 2007; Johnston 2006; Lewis and Gould 2007; Ryan and Aicken 2005; Weaver 2001; Whyte, 2010) • the impact on poverty (Bennett, Roe, and Ashley 1999; Goodwin 2009) • cultural aspects (Bruner 1996; Desmond 1999; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998; Smith 1989; Sturken 2007) Selinger’s “Ethics and Poverty Tours” (2009) and Selinger and Outterson’s “The Ethics of Poverty Tourism” (2010) are among the first scholarly contributions to address the normative dimensions of poverty tourism.3 These studies question some of the premises of the typical arguments that it is inherently wrong. They show that contextual Although this form of tourism is considerations are crucial to an assessment of a growing practice that involves the moral permissibility of different forms of poverty tourism and the intentions motivatparticipation from some of the poorest ing tourists.4 and most vulnerable populations in Although this form of tourism is a growing the world, few state, administrative, or practice that involves participation from some private bodies have regulatory policies of the poorest and most vulnerable populafor governing it tions in the world, few state, administrative, or private bodies have regulatory policies for governing it. Whether tourism practices of this kind should be subject to specific policy constraints depends on whether it can be shown that good reasons exist for vulnerable parties to judge them as unfair. One way of testing for unfairness is to determine whether existing or proposed practices violate any of the following three ideals: compensation justice, participative justice, and recognition justice. Far from a simple application of ideals to practices, the argument here is that the complexity of the social relationships involved in these tours requires policy-relevant research and solutions. The conclusion offers recommendations that range from the production of tourism literature to social studies of hosts’ perceptions. In the discussion that follows, the three ideals are outlined as “guideposts” for fair practices. The guideposts are explored in relation to the complexities involved in poverty tours in Brazil and Mexico, and possible approaches for policy-relevant research are suggested. The final section offers some ideas for policy. Fairness and Poverty Tourism Policies respond to unfairness in many familiar contexts. For example, preventing unfairness requires that managers of global pharmaceutical companies abide by policies that regulate clinical trials in developing countries. Successful policies thus must be based on methods that secure reliable, affordable, and feasible results, and include procedures for assessing impacts. Policies also should be compatible with justice for all affected parties. Hence, pharmaceutical administrators, in conjunction with regulatory authorities, have formulated ethical codes that support fair treatment on such issues as informed consent for illiterate people, and access to follow-up treatment for poor patients who otherwise could not obtain needed care. In relevant instances, such as Australian indigenous tourism, policies are judged according to whether they protect vulnerable parties and promote economic development (Altman 1989; Whitford, Bell, and Watkins 2001). If it is morally appropriate to design and mandate poverty tourism policies, then it has to be shown that the relationships among the financially privileged tourists, the tourism operators, and the potentially vulnerable members of the host community are unfair. The possible economic asymmetries among these parties warrant concern about the presence of unfairness. Indeed, communities become poverty tourism destinations for the sole reason that their members are destitute. Ethical ideals can be used to assess whether the parties affected by any practice are receiving fair, or just, treatment.5 Ideals Indeed, the relationship between the are “guideposts,” or simple tools or heuristics tourists and community members is that can be used as (1) cues for picking out mediated by numerous other social features of a practice that should be character- relationships and, without extensive ized as unfair, and (2) justification of the morresearch, it is hard to determine the al appropriateness of distinct policy solutions. The guideposts considered here are referred nature and extent of unfairness even to as “compensation justice,” “participative if there is a strong suspicion that it is justice,” and “recognition justice.” there. a practice or policy to support justice is not an exact science, after all. However, the guideposts can be used to identify blatant injustices and to clarify whether a given policy supports fair outcomes. The first guidepost is compensation justice. It reflects the moral principle that in every human transaction, each party should be compensated fairly for any services rendered. Compensation can be understood in three ways: direct financial or material compensation, indirect financial or material compensation (e.g., compensation through a nongovernmental organization working in the area), and immaterial compensation (e.g., the benefit to a destitute person of knowing that by hosting tourists, he or she is making a meaningful contribution to alleviating poverty).6 The challenge is to determine what compensations are fair in the eyes of all affected parties, especially those who are vulnerable to being exploited. Determining what compensations are fair requires information about the values of those who stand to be compensated. Values include personal and cultural preferences, such as conceptions of fairness and the relative importance of money, and they extend to identity-based perceptions of what is at stake in the given situation. In ordinary transactions, compensation justice is premised on free exchange between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither being under any compulsion, and on full information. Poverty tourism may well fail many of these conditions, which suggests the possible need for policy. As a guidepost, then, compensation justice flags any compensation scheme that is not anchored in the relevant values research. In some cases, failing to do research is just “bad business.” Many draft policies include market research on client values for this purpose. Apart from instrumental purposes, research of this kind has a justice aspect. For example, in some transactions people will accept compensation under terms that challenge their values because they desperately need the funds or fear that the compensator cannot understand their preferences. Social tensions can arise when members of one party feel that their consent was obtained under unfair terms of exchange. To minimize the likelihood of this discordance arising, two salient questions need to be considered when drafting poverty tourism policy that is intended to promote compensation justice: Are profits justly allocated and distributed, and does injustice occur as a consequence of a community’s adapting to the demands imposed by its interactions with tourists, as in cases when market demand requires the community to conform to tourist expectations? Put differently, is the exchange characterized by compulsion? The second guidepost is participative justice. It concerns whether or not all parties are consulted in decision-making and whether they have given their consent. Participative justice is grounded in the idea that the outcomes of human transactions are only morally acceptable if all affected parties have endorsed them through a meaningful opportunity to give their consent. As a guidepost, participative justice plays a part in evaluating draft compensation schemes. Not only do these schemes require a basis in relevant research, but they also have to be embraced by those who stand to be compensated. Consent that is “express” and “informed” requires that the process of obtaining consent does not rely on manipulation, coercion, duress, or information that is false, absent, or incomprehensible to those consenting. To the extent that information asymmetries exist in poverty tourism, participative justice is threatened. Participative justice can be used in terms of two kinds of consent, “express” and “tacit” (Beauchamp and Childress 2009). Consider the example of a tourist who stays for several days in a host community and is actually housed by community members. Gaining informed consent here has to be express insofar as those who are doing the hosting should sign off directly and with full information on what they are about to do. The second kind of consent is tacit. Suppose a tourist goes to a country to simply wander through poor neighborhoods to witness actual poverty. One way of looking at this scenario is that the tourist is simply strolling through the neighborhood as an individual or in a small group, is not looking at anyone in particular, and is bringing tourism dollars to the local merchants, money that indirectly contributes to the welfare of the neighborhood or country. In such a scenario, express consent cannot be secured. However, consent can be tacit if there are no direct objections by the community members or merchants to the presence of the tourists. The parties are, in effect, giving their consent. In the case of poverty tours, tourists may go to a particular area simply to walk through the neighborhood and view the poverty (or humanity) of the residents, and there may be adequate channels for residents to express their objections, if any. Where there are no such channels, it would be impossible to know whether they object unless they engage in public agitation. As a guidepost, it should be acknowledged whether express or tacit consent is possible. In the case of express consent, there has to be a way to secure it for all affected parties, with sufficient disclosure of relevant information. In the case of tacit consent, efforts must be taken to show that channels for expressing objections are known and available. The third guidepost is recognition justice. It captures the idea that affected parties will see a practice or policy as unfair if it privileges the cultural terms of others over theirs without any relevant reason being offered or discussed.7 This type of justice is easiest to understand through the example of procedures for obtaining consent. In the United States, consent is often acquired through the use of a contract that the individual consenter endorses with his or her signature and recognizes as a legally binding and enforceable document. The meaningfulness, binding power, and enforceability characteristics present in the American context may not exist elsewhere. In the case of poverty tourism, the community members may not value contracts and signatures in the same way that tourists and tourism operators do. The residents may consent and sign on the dotted line, but they only do so because they do not want to lose the opportunity for their community to receive financial compensation. In this case, the American procedure for obtaining consent is privileged over that of the community, whatever its culturally specific procedure may be. The only reason for this privilege is that the tourism operators have more financial power. The reality that there are wealth inequalities is not a good reason for privileging one way of obtaining consent over another and avoiding the task of negotiating cultural differences in order to find a consent procedure that everyone considers to be fair. Cultural terms may be privileged in more scenarios than obtaining consent. Recognition injustice also occurs when the way a tour is conducted does not attend to community members’ feedback or the operator does not take efforts to find out what local people and other parties think about the tour. When feedback is ignored and no efforts at communication are made, the residents are subjected to a practice conceived entirely from the cultural perspective of the tourists or tourism operators. A practice that imposes one set of cultural terms onto another runs the risk of being unfair to those whose cultural terms are ignored. In short, compensation justice, participative justice, and recognition justice are guideposts that can be used to gauge whether policies and practices are likely to be considered fair in the eyes of all affected parties. The guideposts can be summarized as follows: • Compensation justice: Are compensation schemes free from coercion and sustained by research on the values of those who stand to be compensated? • Participative justice: Have all affected parties given their express or tacit consent to the compensation scheme, the possible outcomes, and the expected activities? • Recognition justice: Are any cultural terms unjustifiably privileged? Practices that include clear violations of any of these three guideposts may not be viewed as morally legitimate or responsible by vulnerable parties who sense they are being treated unfairly by tourists and tour operators. In contrast, practices that meet the demands of these standards are more likely to support justice and reflect legitimacy and responsibility. Can these guideposts be applied to poverty tours in order to assess whether governments or organizations should create policies for them? Applying the Guideposts to Poverty Tours Violation of any of the guideposts may be a good reason for advocating regulations. Unfortunately, the guideposts cannot be applied algorithmically, because numerous social relationships mediate the interactions among tourists, hosts, and the other parties in poverty tours. Without new policy-relevant research, it is hard to determine the nature and extent of unfairness, even when one has a strong sense of its presence. The following discussion of favela tourism in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Exhibit One), and garbage dump tours in Mazatlan, Mexico (Exhibit Two), identifies some of the social complexity. Guided tours of Brazilian favelas are advertised in hostels and other places that tourists frequent. Guides take tourists through the favelas, providing an array of opportunities to purchase locally produced goods and talk to locals. In the Rocinha favela tours, the complexity of social relationships makes it difficult to assess compensation justice, because the affected parties are compensated in diverse ways ranging from purchases to donations to charitable organizations. Since some of the compensation does not go directly to residents, room exists for improving how the affected parties are compensated. Tourism operators concerned with this issue can change the situation through research, which may identify practical compensation schemes that are consistent with community members’ values, even though it can be difficult to decide whom to consider and how to undertake the needed inquiry. Viable possibilities include case studies and interviews that gauge what the residents think (if anything) about the fairness of the compensation and what improvements (if any) they favor. In terms of participative justice, the residents of Rocinha lack a clear mechanism of consent. Neither community associations nor powerful drug gangs officially endorse tourism. Nevertheless, the visits have been conducted for many years, without significant internal opposition. In some highly disorganized communities, lack of opposition is not tantamount to consent, but in Rocinha, the tours could not occur if either the drug gangs or the residents’ association opposed them. It thus seems significant that strident opposition is absent. Additionally, shopkeepers, motoboys (see Exhibit One), artists, and NGOs are the groups that interact most directly with tourists. They engage in voluntary market transactions that are at least as favorable as any other commercial exchange that Rocinha residents experience; for the artists and NGOs, the benefits are particularly salient. Recognition justice, here, has to do with whether the residents are forced to accept the tourists’ cultural terms. Since tourists assume it is acceptable to travel to Brazil and pay a tour operator to go to Rocinha, they may presume that residents are or ought to be passive. Another point to consider is whether operators narrate their tours with stories that residents would claim are untrue and misleading. Recognition justice requires that residents have opportunity to give constructive feedback to the operators and tourists about how the tours should be conducted, what the narratives should be, and what the tourists should expect to see. Whether recognition injustice requires relief through policy is an open question, and further research examining these narratives could serve as an important basis for policies that correct injustices at the level of discourse. In sum, favela tours contain several unknowns related to social complexity that make it difficult to determine whether flagrant injustices abound. These unknowns should be subject to research that examines how residents perceive compensation schemes, what channels exist (or do not) for discontent to be expressed, and whether narratives about the community are biased. The contextual inquiry ought to assess whether the guideposts are followed or violated, and when violations occur, policy responses should be considered. Some poverty tourism occurs alongside ongoing volunteer or other service-oriented tourism, as in the case of the garbage dump tours in Mazatlan, Mexico. The La Vina church group drives tourists to Mazatlan’s largest dump to feed a hot lunch to the Exhibit 1: Favela Tourism in Rocinha Rocinha is one of the largest favelas (shanty towns ) in Brazil, located on a steep hillside in Rio de Janeiro. Perhaps 100,000 or more people live there, mostly with no formal land titles and only modest municipal services. But Rocinha is much more developed than the archetype of a squatters’ settlement: most of the structures are substantial multistory buildings, many with reinforced concrete construction. As favelas go, Rocinha has some advantages that others do not have. It is a desirable place to live for workers in the beachfront hotels of Rio, since the commute to work is modest. Nevertheless, sewage runs in open gutters and drug gangs brandish weapons on busy street corners. It is a place that upper-class Brazilians are loath to visit. Many Brazilians are shocked that foreign tourists would want to participate in poverty tours of the favela. But tourists flock to Rocinha, particularly young people staying in Rio’s youth hostels. Most hostels advertise favela tours, with rival operators selling various tour options. Favela tours are offered on the same terms as hang gliding, or tours of the National Park, Sugar Loaf, and the Christ the Redeemer statue. Tourists are encouraged to bring their cameras on bealocal.com, a Website advertising the tours. The leading tour owners do not live in Rocinha, but use their profits to live in much wealthier Rio neighborhoods like Leblon, Ipanema, or Botafogo. Some of their employees live in favelas, including some of the men who drive the vans and the motoboys (motor bike taxis) that take the tourists up the winding main street of Rocinha to the top of the mountainside. If the books of the tour operators were audited, it would probably be found that only a small percentage of the fees paid by tourists end up in Rocinha. A significant percentage is paid off the top to the hostel owner, as a commission for directing tourists to particular tours. The tours are for-profit enterprises by local entrepreneurs, not charitable endeavors. Nevertheless, many people in Rocinha do benefit economically from the tours. Each motoboy is paid the going rate for the taxi ride. Tours stop at small shops and bakeries during the walk down the hillside, and tourists buy sodas and Brazilian donuts. A few children make crafts from discarded materials that are sold in the narrow alleys. Some tours also offer more significant shopping opportunities in Rocinha, including an art gallery co-op featuring local Rocinha artists. The artwork is not inexpensive—generally much more expensive than the tour itself, but the artists are indeed favela residents. The tour operators facilitate these purchases by bringing the tourists to the co-op, and by arranging for both the delivery of the artwork back to the hostel and payment, since the foreigners are unlikely to have brought much cash into the favela. For these services, the operator earns a hefty commission and perhaps an exclusive relationship with the artists. In private conversations, the artists do not report any feeling of being exploited; they seem genuinely pleased to sell to tourists at fair prices, even with the commissions. Their alternatives are to sell on the streets of Copacabana and Ipanema, generally at lower prices and greater inconvenience to their studio work. Some favela tours also support local charities. NGOs are active in Rocinha, including several founded and operated by local residents. Some tours visit the NGOs and observe their educational work with children. Tourists are then given an opportunity to donate funds directly, and many do. Over the years, repeat visitors see the effect of their donations as programs grow to serve more children. scavengers who pick up trash there. Because the church also permits participants to photograph the scavengers, the tour blurs the distinction between poverty and volunteer tourism. The compensation justice aspects in this case are clear. The garbage dump tour takes place in the larger context of social relationships in the region. Unlike the Rio favela tours, the dump tour is run as a nonprofit spiritual enterprise, with most of the funds going directly to the intended recipients. In one sense, La Vina runs the tour as a “loss leader” to introduce tourists to its larger social and religious mission in Mazatlan. But its effort is also geared toward establishing fair compensation for the community members, mixing social justice with religious teaching. Consent and participative justice are more problematic in the Mazatlan context than in Rocinha, given the extreme poverty at the dump and the complexity of the social relationships among the many actors. Officials clearly allow La Vina to operate; the mobile kitchen drives past the guard shack without hindrance. It is also explicit that the scavengers welcome the truck. Unlike some soup kitchens in the United States, there is no explicitly religious programming associated with the food, and thus coercion is not present. And yet there is something troubling about presenting options to people who are so desperately poor that they lack the capability to make unconstrained choices. In all likelihood, they will always accept the food even when tourists are snapping pictures of them. Other, less principled visitors might well take further advantage of the scavengers. Two characteristics of La Vina are worth noting. First, the goal of fair compensation does not necessarily insulate the situation from problems of participative justice. Second, while the church is rooted in the community, and has a vibrant local membership, much of its money and leadership comes from abroad. La Vina has one foot in each world, which allows it to serve as a bridge and conduit for resources, but also complicates its role in participative justice. While the tour operators should carefully reflect on whether there are sufficient communication channels to at least ensure that tacit consent is secured for the voyeuristic aspects of the tour, it is difficult to conceive of further mandates that could be imposed in this context. A set of interviews and focus groups with church members, employees, and residents that uses the guideposts as lead questions could reveal new strategies for addressing the participatory issues. Recognition justice may also be quite problematic because the tour is a highstakes experience for community members. The only reason that their existence is of interest to tourists is that they are dramatically underprivileged. Since the high stakes may allow the benefits to overshadow feelings of discomfort, it is reasonable to wonder how sensitive the tourists are to their privileged relation to cultural assumptions. Perhaps visitors should be urged to consider not just the conditions of poverty experienced by the residents, but also how the latter might view the tourists from their own cultural standpoint. Perhaps the garbage dump workers could be asked how they would prefer to receive help, or what they think about being photographed. It would be important to find out how the tourists’ etiquette is looked on by those subject to the tour in order to see whether policies should be enacted, perhaps by the church, to change it. In sum, the garbage dump tour poses some challenges regarding how to think about justice given the position the scavengers are in. Research should seek to draw out information about what strategies could be used to limit the degree to which the extremities involved in such cases inevitably compromise justice, especially in terms of participation and recognition. Recommendations The discussion in this section offers some recommendations for how the research outlined above can be used as the basis for poverty tourism policies. Exhibit 2: Garbage Dump Tours in Mazatlan Mazatlan is a Mexican beach resort town. In addition to short-term tourists, it attracts a number of American and Canadian retired couples (“snow birds”) who spend the winter months on the pleasant Pacific coast. In a pattern similar to Rio and other resort towns, the beachfront hotels are supported by a low-wage workforce of cleaners, cooks, and service employees. These workers cannot afford to live in Mazatlan’s Zona Dorado ( “Golden Zone”). Some live in dusty colonias on the outskirts of Mazatlan. Some of the colonias are quite impoverished. The La Vina church is in the Zona Dorado. Two related congregations share the building—Mexican families from nearby neighborhoods, worshiping in Spanish, and a snow bird English-speaking congregation of wealthy retirees. The church solicits funds for outreach projects in the colonias, including new churches, youth education events, water purification equipment, mobile kitchens that provide a hot lunch for children, and primary-care health clinics. Many of these activities are staffed by short-term volunteers from the United States and Canada, who take vacation days to come to Mazatlan to serve residents of the colonias. Other volunteers are snow birds, whether members of La Vina or not, who develop longer-terms relationships in the region. Some donate substantial amounts of time, energy, and money to the outreach projects. The most unusual La Vina project is the garbage dump tour, which involves a dozen or more tourists being driven to Mazatlan’s largest dump. At the dump, dozens of scavengers pick through the trash as it is dumped, looking for valuables and recyclable materials. An informal network of brokers at the fringes of the dump purchase plastic, metal, paper, and other recyclable materials from the pickers. The dump is a sad, smelly place. The workers have no access to clean food or water, or sanitary facilities of any kind. It is a hot, dusty, and hazardous landscape, utterly bereft of shade. It seems an unlikely tourist destination, especially when the beaches of Mazatlan beckon in the distance. And yet, each year hundreds of wealthy people take these tours. They come to the dump to serve lunch to the trash pickers. The La Vina mobile kitchen drives up the compacted trash mountain to the area where new trash is being actively dumped and sets up shop nearby. About an hour later, hot lunches and cool water are ready for all of the scavengersup to a hundred people. They welcome the mobile kitchen, but know to wait until the food is ready before setting their work aside. Some poverty tours do not directly compensate residents and other affected parties. In these cases, more should be done to understand how indirect compensation would be beneficial to the community members in terms of their values and preferences. It should not be assumed that all affected parties view positive economic change as morally acceptable. Depending on the findings, tourism organizations, associations, and relevant government units could set standards of compensation that operators would have to meet in order to be “certified” to guide tours. The standards envisioned here would be sensitive to the social complexities described in the previous sections. Operators, for example, would have to show that their businesses donate a certain percentage to charity, provide sufficient opportunities for tourists to make local purchases, and keep local merchants and others who stand to benefit informed of the tourists’ preferences. These standards would add a stamp of responsibility for tourists who are concerned about the impact of their presence in the community. Some practices do not occur in situations when express consent is possible. In these cases, operators and charitable organizations working in the area are responsible for setting up channels for tacit consent. One of the problems with some poverty tours is that it is simply not known what the residents think about them. Part of what makes this a problem is the absence of communication channels between the different parties. Depending on the situation, there should be mandates that require organizations to explore whether such channels are possible and how to open them in contextually appropriate ways. Government orders and rules may also include “consultation” requirements that can be applied to poverty tours. It is likely that some poverty tourism practices violate recognition justice, and if so, remedial actions should be taken. Operators should strive to create tours that are more sensitive to residents’ feedback, even when the stakes are high for the community. Another side to this is the crafting of policies that pertain to narratives describing poverty and visitor etiquette. Tourism organizations, associations, and government units should be able to review and assess these narratives in order to ensure that residents are not harmed by the way they are represented. Tourist etiquette can be nudged through pamphlets and articles in tourism books that give some brief information about picture taking and other activities that might appeal to some tourists but be offensive to the residents. Such recommendations must be applied within the socially complex world of the poverty tour. Improving these tours should involve research that is designed not only with the guideposts in mind but also some of these recommendations. “Policydriven” research of this kind would be especially helpful for addressing the unique vulnerabilities of the people who are exposed to others in poverty tours. These suggestions by no means exhaust all the possible angles, and we hope that others will contribute further to the discussion of poverty tours, justice, and policy.