| This dissertation considers how tourism, as a total social process, is enacted, interpreted, and produced within township destinations on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. In focus, a niche industry providing tours of satellite African townships has grown into a standard excursion. Township tours introduce tourists to the history and effects of apartheid as well as feature local culture and development in these disadvantaged areas marked by race and economic class. This study addresses three interrelated concerns. First, I describe and examine how the practices of township tourism occur and become normalized. Second, I argue that tour places and practices are socially produced, depending on and transforming social relationships and social positions. Third, I illustrate the major paradoxes of this type of cultural tourism that emerge from deep-rooted conflicts over issues such as representation and control in this racialized and classed setting. What such an analysis ultimately reveals is the unsettled and uneven path of social transformation in the new South Africa. Overall, I consider how tourism plays out in the lives of local participants in an effort to offer new ways to consider the manifold impacts of the growth of tourism in so-called marginalized communities, especially in developing world cities of Africa and beyond. This analysis integrates scholarship on post-apartheid South African public culture, urban studies, place, and tourism with the personal experiences of local tourism practitioners. |
