Современные проблемы сервиса и туризма 2016_v.10_#3 | Page 92

ТУРИСТСКО-ИНФОРМАЦИОННЫЙ ЦЕНТР РГУТИС
RSUTS TOURIST INFORMATION CENTER

«Policies of Tourism
and Empowerment:
General reflections
and local experiences»
(«Politica de turismo e Desenvolvimiento.
Reflexoes gerais e Experiencias Locais»)1:
Review
Reviewed by Maximiliano E. Korstanje,
University of Palermo, Argentina
Over recent decades, the theory of
development that promised the growth of
many non-capitalist societies by the adoption
of global trade and the mainstream cultural
values of capitalism fell into discredit. Not only
the exegetes of development failed to explain
poverty and inequality worldwide, but even in
some nations who accepted the maxims of IMF
or World Bank to struggle against poverty their
situation notably aggravated. To what extent
tourism plays a vital role in subordinating
peripheral economies to center is one debate
given in post Marxists circles. Likely because its
attachment to profit-oriented paradigms, it was
unfortunate that the International Academy for
the Study of Tourism is reluctant to accept the
criticism of Marxism for the industry, no less
true is that we need to assume «the theory
of development» as it was drawn in Northern
Hemisphere rests on polemic foundations. The
idea of tourism as a vehicle to progress seems
to be a naïve story nobody believes now.
In this valuable book, «Politica de
Turismo e Desenvolvimiento», edited by
Jean Costa and Michele de Sousa present
an interesting discussion respecting to the
intersection of politics and tourism. As
something else than the encounter between
supply and demand, tourist consumption
is tilted at re-organizing the attachment of

locals to their soil in which case reformulating
not only the epistemological roots of the
discipline, but the policy making-process.
One of the challenges to review a fullblown Portuguese-written book is huge.
On another hand, to what extent English
speaking readers would be interested in a
book of this caliber, which they will not read
is another questions, which encourage me to
make this review in English.
Whatever the case may be, what
I  have clear is that Costa and Sousa`s book
represents a valid conceptual platform to
discuss further the ebbs and flows of tourism
within society. As this argument given, in an
ever changing world we are experiencing a
real fragmentation of produced-knowledge.
Operating in this circumstance, authors who
form of this project shed interdisciplinary
light on applied-research to call the attention
to the fact the tourism research, unlike other
disciplines, lack of shared-epistemology nor
clear edged-cut methodology to understand
«the tourist behaviour». This books reminds
the importance in re-defining the contours of
tourism beyond the profit-oriented paradigm,
in troducing new themes which in some cases
evince the serious material asymmetries
mobilities generate. What this book tries
to respond is the question, is tourism a real

1
Costa J.H., Sousa M. Política de turismo e desenvolvimento: reflexões gerais e experiências locais. Mossoro,
RN: Fundação Vingt-un Rosado, 2010. 287  p. ISBN 978-858988848-6. Read this book: https://issuu.com/
jeanhenriquecosta/docs/pol__tica_de_turismo_e_desenvolvime

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