Under the American-dominated modernization framework of development, the United States and Europe are viewed as the goal to an imaginary end, the solution to a long evolutionary process of industrialization. Other countries, primarily poorer, recently decolonized countries largely compromising of people of color, are therefore positioned as inferior in the global hierarchy of power and wealth. Despite the fact that neoliberal policies such as SAPs and imperialism are incredibly instrumental (and arguably the fundamental cause) of developing countries’ constructed poverty, American and Western European countries aimed to promote the social/economic well-being of Third World countries so that they can develop into a Euro/American model of society. Through this framework, the importance of tourism emerged, an industry based on the idea of one group serving and entertaining the other. In the 1960s, the UN as a development strategy, pushed onto poorer countries across the world, promoted tourism. The introduction of neoliberal policies and economic restructuring by the IMF and World Bank also worked to promote tourism as countries could no longer rely on agricultural production or more traditional economic practices. Therefore, tourism emerged as a enormous sector for many countries, fostering a greater dependency on Western nations. Access opened up for influence and exploitation and tourism-dependent countries were made vulnerable to the tastes of Western tourists and powerful foreign corporations.

Tourism has become a huge player in privatization as well, as Cabeza states, “Caribbean beaches are privatized, and the surrounding communities are excluded from entering hotels and beaches.”[1]  Consequently, tourism and privatization caused by tourism by foreigners leaves locals in a predicament, where they are pushed out of their own home and community.  Unfortunately, sometimes privatization also causes locals to be in a difficult financial situation, as in the case of many sex tourists, like in the film, Excess of Sex Tourism, where locals use foreigners for sex to make money.[2]  Also, tourism has disrupted the local environment some countries, like Ecuador, due to foreigners not respecting the environment, hence, the implementation of the Buen Vivir in some countries in the Global South.[3] We focused our investigation of tourism in India through closer analyses of medical tourism, religious tourism, ecotourism, and sex tourism. We will study the relationships between the influx of Western tourism into India and how colonial exploitation and larger histories of imperialism manifest in the tourism sector to this day.

Works Cited

Acosta, Alberto. "The Buen Vivir: An Opportunity to Imagine Another World." In Inside a

Champion: An Analysis of the Brazilian Development World.

Cabezas, Amalia L. Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican

Republic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009.

Excess of Sex Tourism. Directed by Monarch Films Inc.

Kempadoo, Kamala. "Women of Color and the Global Sex trade: Transnational Feminist Perspective" Project MUSE. Wesleyan University Press, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

[1] Amalia L. Cabezas, Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 29.

[2] Excess of Sex Tourism, dir. Monarch Films Inc.

[3] Alberto Acosta, "The Buen Vivir: An Opportunity to Imagine Another World," in Inside a Champion: An Analysis of the Brazilian Development World, 192-208.