Slum Tourism in the Americas: Commodifying Urban Poverty and Violence

这个三方研究项目调查了美洲四个城市的贫民窟旅游：洛杉矶、墨西哥城、金斯敦和里约热内卢。这个项目利用多地点的人种学方法，在全球流动和城市政治经济景观的背景下，对城市贫困和暴力的商品化进行了理论推导。这项研究同时关注贫民窟旅游的政治经济学和他们的代表性-表演性政治。它的目标是问：不同的参与者通过什么代表性策略来谈判贫民窟的“世界地位”？作为以文化生产和消费为基础的符号经济的一部分，暴力是如何美化和表现的？通过贫民窟居民、游客、旅游经营者和国家演员之间的“贫民窟旅游柜台”，产生了哪些新的社会关系和主观性？我们对贫民窟旅游的方法是原创的，也很重要，原因有几个。首先，我们的跨城市比较研究将使我们能够区分个别城市的概括性模式和独特特征。这一点尤其相关，因为贫民窟旅游在全球范围内构成城市贫困的表现方面越来越受欢迎和有影响力。其次，在现有工作主要关注游客作为消费者的情况下，我们还会问，如何将更广泛的参与者联系到“贫民窟游客相遇”中，将贫民窟转化为旅游产品。第三，对生产和消费的关注与该项目对贫民窟旅游中暴力行为的审美化和表演的中心重点相联系。最后，该项目在方法上是创新的：其多地点、纵向和民族志研究既是对大多数现有贫民窟旅游方法的挑战，也是询问“相遇”的表演性、建立关于贫困和暴力的知识的最适当手段。其结果将与学术和非学术利益攸关方(居民、公民社会、城市发展和旅游业政策制定者)相关。这项三方研究是正在进行的努力的一部分，目的是将各国的学科传统联系起来，发展欧洲跨学科的城市研究。

This trilateral research project investigates slum tourism in four cities in the Americas: Los Angeles,Mexico City, Kingston, and Rio de Janeiro. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic approach, this projectaims to theorise the commodification of urban poverty and violence in the context of global mobilitiesand urban political economies of spectacle. The research has a twin focus on the political economy ofslum tours and their representational-performative politics. Its objectives are to ask: Through whatrepresentational strategies do different actors negotiate the slum's "place-in-the-world"? How is violenceaestheticised and performed as part of symbolic economies based on cultural production andconsumption? What new social relationships and subjectivities are produced through the "slum tourismencounter" between slum-dwellers, tourists, tour operators and state actors? Our approach to slumtourism is original and important for several reasons. First, our cross-city, comparative research willallow us to distinguish between generalisable patterns and the idiosyncratic features of individual cities.This is particularly relevant as slum tours are increasingly popular and influential in constituting therepresentations of urban poverty on a global scale. Second, where existing work largely focuses ontourists as consumers, we also ask how a broader range of actors connect in the "slum tourist encounter"to convert the slum into a tourism product. Third, this attention to both production and consumptionlinks to the project's central focus on the aestheticisation and performance of violence in slum tours.Finally, this project is innovative methodologically: its multi-sited, longitudinal and ethnographic researchis both a challenge to most existing methodologies on slum tourism and the most appropriate means tointerrogate the performativity of the "encounter", to establish knowledge on poverty and violence. Theresults will be relevant for academic and non-academic stakeholders (residents, civil society, urbandevelopment and tourism policymakers). The trilateral research is part of on-going efforts to connectnational disciplinary traditions and develop European interdisciplinary urban studies.