First there was eco-tourism.  Now, there’s “slum tourism,” a growing industry where tourists are taken way off the beaten path, into some of the most impoverished neighborhoods and districts in the world.

A New York Times article today talks about the increasing number of tours to slums, and offers both the criticisms and defense of such excursions:  “Critics charge that ogling the poorest of the poor isn’t tourism at all. It’s voyeurism. The tours are exploitative, these critics say, and have no place on an ethical traveler’s itinerary…”  On the other hand, “[i]gnoring poverty won’t make it go away.”

I can understand the appeal of so-called slum tourism (I really don’t like this phrase, but I’m not sure what else to call it—any ideas?)  Tourism is often extremely exploitative, and dependent on an underclass native population to survive.  Jamaica Kincaid’s wonderful book, A Small Place, expounds on the actual feelings of resentment, even hatred, that locals often feel to tourists, who come to “get away from it all” while blinding themselves to the life that the local population leads.  Furthermore, I know I have often visited places and come away feeling like I didn’t get past a pretty basic, surface experience.  In short, is it even fair to visit, say, Mumbai or Rio de Janiero, and not be faced with the crushing poverty the overwhelming majority of the cities’ residents endure on a daily basis?

As more people—particularly young college students with the means to pay and the desire for a less “typical” tourist experience—become more interested in alternate forms of tourism, I can only see these types of tours expanding to more locations.  I, for example, went to Mexico twice while I was in college, and although one visit was for a delegation of people of color to Chiapas, and the other was a trip for a class on globalization, both of these trips were a type of tourism.  Kids who do mission trips, or alternative spring break, still have a tourist experience, but have an activity and sense of getting involved in the local community that (supposedly) makes the experience deeper and more meaningful.

But according to the NY Times article, “slum tourism” has been criticized because it sometimes doesn’t really have a purpose to improve or give back to the communities—it’s more likely to be just another stop on a tourist itinerary, an opportunity to put up photos on an online album your friends are sure to never have seen before.  Tours that don’t give anything back to the people living in the slums are certainly exploitative, and voyeuristic.  Similarly, the article closes with a paternalistic quote from a professor who took favela tours.  He states that although beggars used to hassle the tourists, they now have learned that if they make “something” (not sure what type of thing he’s talking about) they will make money—as if the locals need tourists to “teach” them about how to get out of poverty.

Still, tourism can be used to raise awareness of the conditions of life for the impoverished.  As Harold Goodwin of the International Center for Responsible Touris says, “Tourism is one of the few ways that you or I are ever going to understand what poverty means.”

What do people think?  Would you ever take such a tour?