We are living in an age of widening inequality and fragmented social solidarity and trust. Simultaneously, our social connections and relationships are increasingly disperse. In this context, how do people understand and respond to their experiences of marginality and alienation? This dissertation uses the case of transnational intimate relationships in Peru to understand how these relationships and the context in which they occur become sites for individuals to resist experiences of subordination and disaffection, and reimagine future possibilities for themselves. Máncora, Peru is a small coastal town that has experienced rapid growth as a tourist destination, but that contends with high levels of socio-political and economic informality and precarity. Against this backdrop, I examine the relationships that have emerged between a group of local men and tourist women mainly from North America and Europe. Previous scholarship has understood these relationships as “female sex tourism” or “romance tourism,” however this dissertation moves beyond these sometimes one-dimensional accounts. Ultimately, beyond arguing that these relationships are not merely transactional, I argue that these relationships, and the context in which they occurred, provided the men and women I met in Máncora with something curative: a remedy for the marginality and alienation that they experienced in their everyday lives. Specifically, I examine how their relational pursuits of pleasure, escapism, and desire gave rise to fantasy. This fantasy fueled and was fueled by their relationships, and allowed the men and women to contest and cope with a sense of alienation and marginality engendered by neoliberalism, and make meaning under conditions of structural constraint. Using qualitative methods, including participant observation, interviews, photography, and social media content analysis, I explore three key themes. Part one describes a masculine subculture that emerged on the beach where the men worked and met their partners. This subculture was premised on pleasure and leisure, and shaped how they cultivated relationships with their partners, managed everyday experiences of subordination, and planned for the future. Part two examines the economic and gendered dynamics that underpinned the women’s desire for travel and escape. These dynamics also shaped why they sought out relationships with unlikely partners, and how they envisioned that they could transform their everyday lives to be more fulfilling. Finally, part three explores the role of fantasy in how the men and women imagined alternative possibilities for themselves within their relationships, and in the touristic context of the town. This dissertation also makes three key contributions. First, within sociology, Weber’s thesis of the “disenchantment of the world” is well known. It describes the sense of a loss of purpose, meaning, and transcendence in people’s lives as a consequence of modernity and the rationalization of social life. Less explored, however, is Weber’s recognition of the possibility of re-enchantment that can paradoxically emerge in response to these forces as people seek to recover meaning. This dissertation locates this process of re-enchantment in the ways that people engage with fantasy. Second, this dissertation advances a sociology of fantasy. I define fantasy as material, economic, and erotic imaginaries that allow people to project and construct alternative lives. I argue that fantasy can be understood as operating beyond the realm of individual-level behavior, and be recognized as a social condition or relational phenomenon. I also argue that while sometimes improbable and limiting, fantasies can also be a productive means through which people cope with and contest experiences of marginality and alienation. Finally, this dissertation makes a theoretical intervention by bridging conceptions of the future from sociology and queer theory. Queer theorists argue for utopian orientations to the world that permit for potentiality where there is none, and a being and doing for the future to move through the present. Sociologists have written about “imagined futures” to describe how people use seemingly irrational ideas about the future to make identity claims, assert moral worthiness, and transcend present realities. I argue that queer theory provides us with models for thinking about the reasons for, and means through which, marginalized people find spaces to exist, thrive, assert identity, and find community. A queer lens is useful because it demonstrates how and why marginality can lead to responses centered around pleasure, utopic imaginaries, and the projection of alternative futures.

No description available.

Essa tese estuda os trabalhos de duas organisações que atuam na prevenção do turismo sexual de crianças e adolescentes, Ecpat na Suécia e Resposta no Brasil. Os tópicos estudados referem-se a como essas entidades organizam suas campanhas e quais as mensagens que elas enfocam. Também estuda-se o Código de Conduta/The Code of Conduct, um instrumento usado pelas duas organizações no intuito de facilitar a indústria do turismo a se comprometer na prevenção do turismo sexual de crianças e adolescentes. Desse modo, analiza-se os materiais de propaganda das agências suecas de viajem bem como faz-se um estudo geral sobre a propaganda brasileira de turismo desde a década de 1960. / This thesis studies the work of two organisations working to prevent child sex tourism, Ecpat in Sweden and Resposta in Brazil. Issues dealt with cover how the organisations campaign and what messages they choose to focus upon. I have also looked closer at the Code of Conduct, a tool used by both organisations to make the tourism industry committed to the prevention of child sex tourism. I have further analysed advertisement material from Swedish travel agencies and made a quick exposé over the Brazil tourism advertisements since the 1960s.

Increasing tourism numbers in third world countries affect their economies and certain aspects of their society positively; however, there are concomitant negative effects that expose the dark side of the tourism industry. One of these is the escalating commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), particularly child prostitution (CP) in the context of tourism, a phenomenon known as child sex tourism (CST). Although tourism plays an important role in creating the perfect storm of poverty-stricken children colliding with wealthy tourists, it is not solely responsible for this phenomenon. Internationally and nationally, the lacuna of knowledge on CST in particular hampers an informed response by way of resource allocation and coordinated service delivery to both victims and perpetrators. Utilising a qualitative research approach, and the collective case study and phenomenological research designs complemented by an explorative, descriptive and contextual strategy of inquiry, the researcher explored the status of the knowledge of and response to the CSEC through the lens of closely associated role players, who were purposively selected for inclusion in the study. These were adult survivors who were as children engaged in sex work and victims of child sex tourism, social workers and non-social workers involved in rendering child welfare and protection services, members of the Family Violence Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) Unit of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and representatives of the hospitality and tourism industry. Data was collected via individual in-depth semi-structured interviews, telephone interviews, and email-communication and thematically analysed. The researcher found that a range of microsystem level factors, such as poverty and family dysfunction, pushed children to the street, and as a means to survive engage in sex work, enabling tourists (i.e. local - out of towners) and foreigners, mainly men from varied sexual orientation) to commercially sexually exploit both boys and girls, from as young as nine years of age, and of different race groups, which leave them with physical and psychological scars. The following main findings surfaced: The social workers, in comparison to the non-social workers, who have a primary responsibility to provide child welfare and protection services were ill-informed in terms of identifying CST as phenomenon, untrained and/or slow to respond appropriately with interventions directed to the victims and perpetrators of CSEC. The service provider groups, as microsystems interfacing on a mesosystem, were fraught with perceptions that the social workers and the SAPS were being inadequate. Furthermore a lack of cooperation, collaboration and communication between the service provider groups to respond to CSEC existed. The hospitality and tourism industry service representatives were also ill-informed about the phenomena of CP and CST with a response that at best can be labelled as fluctuating between an indirect response to that of turning a blind-eye. From the findings, recommendations for social work practice, education and training and recommendations specific for the other closely associated role players in responding to the CSEC were forwarded. / Social Work / D.Phil. (Social Work)

Increasing tourism numbers in third world countries affect their economies and certain aspects of their society positively; however, there are concomitant negative effects that expose the dark side of the tourism industry. One of these is the escalating commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), particularly child prostitution (CP) in the context of tourism, a phenomenon known as child sex tourism (CST). Although tourism plays an important role in creating the perfect storm of poverty-stricken children colliding with wealthy tourists, it is not solely responsible for this phenomenon. Internationally and nationally, the lacuna of knowledge on CST in particular hampers an informed response by way of resource allocation and coordinated service delivery to both victims and perpetrators. Utilising a qualitative research approach, and the collective case study and phenomenological research designs complemented by an explorative, descriptive and contextual strategy of inquiry, the researcher explored the status of the knowledge of and response to the CSEC through the lens of closely associated role players, who were purposively selected for inclusion in the study. These were adult survivors who were as children engaged in sex work and victims of child sex tourism, social workers and non-social workers involved in rendering child welfare and protection services, members of the Family Violence Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) Unit of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and representatives of the hospitality and tourism industry. Data was collected via individual in-depth semi-structured interviews, telephone interviews, and email-communication and thematically analysed. The researcher found that a range of microsystem level factors, such as poverty and family dysfunction, pushed children to the street, and as a means to survive engage in sex work, enabling tourists (i.e. local - out of towners) and foreigners, mainly men from varied sexual orientation) to commercially sexually exploit both boys and girls, from as young as nine years of age, and of different race groups, which leave them with physical and psychological scars. The following main findings surfaced: The social workers, in comparison to the non-social workers, who have a primary responsibility to provide child welfare and protection services were ill-informed in terms of identifying CST as phenomenon, untrained and/or slow to respond appropriately with interventions directed to the victims and perpetrators of CSEC. The service provider groups, as microsystems interfacing on a mesosystem, were fraught with perceptions that the social workers and the SAPS were being inadequate. Furthermore a lack of cooperation, collaboration and communication between the service provider groups to respond to CSEC existed. The hospitality and tourism industry service representatives were also ill-informed about the phenomena of CP and CST with a response that at best can be labelled as fluctuating between an indirect response to that of turning a blind-eye. From the findings, recommendations for social work practice, education and training and recommendations specific for the other closely associated role players in responding to the CSEC were forwarded. / Social Work / D. Phil. (Social Work)

Sabang used to be a small, marginalized Philippine fishing village that in the span of three decades became a well-known international sex tourism site. This thesis deals with the implications of tourism (including sex tourism) and how it has become embedded in the daily life in today’s Sabang. The thesis highlights the local populations’ diverse reactions to the various changes associated with tourism growth, in particular how various symbolic, moral, and spatial boundaries are constructed and maintained. The ethnographic material examined in this thesis builds on several periods of fieldwork, in total 18 months, that were carried out between 2003 and 2015. Analytical tools found in tourism anthropology and in particular the branch of postcolonial tourism studies has guided the discussion and analysis of the socio-cultural effects of becoming a tourism town. This thesis argues that complex networks of boundaries are significant in maintaining a sense of order and social cohesion in times of change. Notions of cultural differences are expressed through the narratives and behaviors of the various inhabitants, and contribute to the maintaining of boundaries within and between groups. From the beginning of tourism growth commercial sex has been central and has become a significant factor in the tourism economy. While residents acknowledge their dependency on the go-go bars, the business of the night is framed so as not to defeat the inhabitants’ struggles to maintain local community’s sense of morality, or at least to set up boundaries between the outsiders’ immorality and insiders’ morality. Tourism has also offered opportunities to challenge conventional social hierarchies and local seats of power, and there are also recurrent discussions about who has the right to control resources and who can claim entitlement to a place now shared by people from all over the world.

Sexturismär ett brett begrepp som mestadels förknippas med västerländska äldre män som reser till utvecklingsländer för att köpa sex. Detta har uppmärksammats sedan början av 1970-talet men på senare år har den kvinnliga sexturismen uppmärksammats allt mer i den svenska media. Studien redogör för den svenska kvinnliga sexturismen utomlands, med Gambia som fallstudie. När svensk media talar om fenomenet används förskönande beskrivningar, där kvinnornas beteender omantiseras i jämförelse med männens sexturism. Problematiseringen med detta är att två lika handlingar med samma syfte, beskrivs på två olika vis, beroende på kön. Studien redogör för hur svensk media väljer att framställa den kvinnliga sexturismen, de underliggande motiven till framställningen och slutligen hur den ensidiga framställningen påverkar Gambia socialt, kulturell och ekonomiskt. För att studien skulle bli genomförbar har ett antal intervjuer gjorts med två journalister och en skribent som skrivit om liknande ämnen. Dessutom har fyra intervjuer gjorts med respondenter som någon gång rest eller reser till Gambia. Tidigare forskning, teoretisk referensram och empirisk material har analyserats för att ge svar på studiens syfte och frågeställningar. Resultatet av hela studien visar att svensk media framställer den kvinnliga sexturismen som något romantiskt och oskyldigt, dels för att kvinnorna själva väljer att kalla deras handlingar för romanser, dels för att samhället ser kvinnornas handlingar som mindre skadliga. Konsekvensernamed detta är att landets image påverkas negativt, vilket resulterar till att Gambia stämplas som ett oattraktivt resemål. Den kvinnliga sexturismen är inte hållba ri längden vilket leder till att Gambia stannar i en stagnationsfas.

O turismo étnico é, hoje, uma das áreas potenciais para o desenvolvimento daatividade turística nacional, quando o histórico interesse de negros norteamericanos pelo Brasil amplia-se via massificação do produto turístico de recorte identitário. Esta dissertação é o resultado da pesquisa realizada com turistas negros norte-americanos no Rio de Janeiro, que aponta para a forma com que estes turistas, enquanto consumidores, influenciam na reorganização do mercado turístico carioca por meio de demandas racializadas. Curiosamente, por trás de tais demandas desvelou-se um fundo político, marcado por papéis de gênero, que fornece instrumentos para o mapeamento inicial do turismo sexual envolvendo aquela população na Cidade Maravilhosa. A pesquisa aponta que este universo está basicamente dividido em dois grupos de turistas: o do turismo étnico, majoritariamente formado por mulheres; e o do turismo sexual, composto, com raras exceções, inteiramente por homens. Esta diferença sugere que a racialização imposta no turismo étnico seja uma exigência das mulheres americanas e indica a preocupação delas em estabelecer identidades e constatar diferenças com os negros em lugares onde eles tenham participado da história, preocupação que não atinge os turistas sexuais". / The ethnic tourism is one of the potential areas for the development of the national tourist activity nowadays in Brazil, since the historic interest of African-Americans widens through the popularization of an ethnic tourist product. This dissertation is the result of a research, made with African-American tourists in Rio de Janeiro, which shows the way, as consumers and through racial demands, they manage to influence the configuration of the cariocas tourist market. Curiously, behind those demands was a political background, oriented by gender roles, which helps to visualize the dynamic of the sexual tourism involving that population in the Wonderful City. It shows that the African-American tourist universe in Rio is basically divided into two groups: the ethnic one, which is mainly formed by women and, the sexual one, only formed by men. Such a difference suggests that the racial demands imposed by the ethnic tourism may be gender oriented, which indicates the African-American women preoccupation in establishing identities and finding out the differences about places where blacks may have taken part of the local history, which has nothing to do with the concerns of the sexual tourists.

O turismo étnico é, hoje, uma das áreas potenciais para o desenvolvimento daatividade turística nacional, quando o histórico interesse de negros norteamericanos pelo Brasil amplia-se via massificação do produto turístico de recorte identitário. Esta dissertação é o resultado da pesquisa realizada com turistas negros norte-americanos no Rio de Janeiro, que aponta para a forma com que estes turistas, enquanto consumidores, influenciam na reorganização do mercado turístico carioca por meio de demandas racializadas. Curiosamente, por trás de tais demandas desvelou-se um fundo político, marcado por papéis de gênero, que fornece instrumentos para o mapeamento inicial do turismo sexual envolvendo aquela população na Cidade Maravilhosa. A pesquisa aponta que este universo está basicamente dividido em dois grupos de turistas: o do turismo étnico, majoritariamente formado por mulheres; e o do turismo sexual, composto, com raras exceções, inteiramente por homens. Esta diferença sugere que a racialização imposta no turismo étnico seja uma exigência das mulheres americanas e indica a preocupação delas em estabelecer identidades e constatar diferenças com os negros em lugares onde eles tenham participado da história, preocupação que não atinge os turistas sexuais". / The ethnic tourism is one of the potential areas for the development of the national tourist activity nowadays in Brazil, since the historic interest of African-Americans widens through the popularization of an ethnic tourist product. This dissertation is the result of a research, made with African-American tourists in Rio de Janeiro, which shows the way, as consumers and through racial demands, they manage to influence the configuration of the cariocas tourist market. Curiously, behind those demands was a political background, oriented by gender roles, which helps to visualize the dynamic of the sexual tourism involving that population in the Wonderful City. It shows that the African-American tourist universe in Rio is basically divided into two groups: the ethnic one, which is mainly formed by women and, the sexual one, only formed by men. Such a difference suggests that the racial demands imposed by the ethnic tourism may be gender oriented, which indicates the African-American women preoccupation in establishing identities and finding out the differences about places where blacks may have taken part of the local history, which has nothing to do with the concerns of the sexual tourists.

Child sex tourism is tourism organised with the primary purpose of facilitating a commercial sexual relationship with a child. It involves a segment of the local child sex industry that is directly connected to both an international and domestic tourist market. The increase of tourism has brought with it complications in that tourism is being used as a means for sex tourists to initiate contact with children. Aside from child sex tourists who are paedophiles, there are those who engage in the opportunistic exploitation of children while travelling on business or for other reasons. There are a number of social and economic factors leading to child sex tourism and the effect is that child victims are exposed to immediate harm, irreversible damage and even death. As South Africa's tourism industry expands into one of the country’s top earners of foreign currency, it is unfortunate to note that its child sex tourist trade is also on the increase. Reports show that sex tours are as easily organised as wine route tours in Cape Town. Commercial sexual exploitation of children is prevalent in South Africa and has become more organised in recent years. A comprehensive response to the problem is essential to ensure that South Africa does not become a “safe haven” for child sex tourists. Effective laws at home and the extraterritorial application of these laws to prosecute South African nationals for crimes committed abroad are imperative. Significant steps are being taken both nationally and internationally to target child sex tourism. South Africa has ratified several international instruments on children’s rights, trafficking in persons, child labour, and discrimination against women and young girls, all of which relate to child sex tourism. In doing so, South Africa has made an international commitment to uphold the provisions of these instruments and give effect to them. South Africa is therefore under an international obligation to create the necessary structures and apply mechanisms and resources to combat child sex tourism.