International Development & Tourism

This course explores the potential for tourism to function as a mechanism for social, political and economic development. While both development and tourism have long independent histories, it is especially since the 1970s that tourism has become an important mechanism to achieve development itself, and since the 1990s tourism has increasingly become a component of sustainable development more generally. For several decades now, tourism has therefore become an important instrument to address socio-economic inequality and try to reconcile this with ecological sustainability. This has led to a proliferation of different types of tourism that address this relationship in different ways, including among others , pro-poor tourism, indigenous tourism, community-based tourism, ecotourism, responsible tourism, volunteer tourism, sustainable tourism and philanthrotourism. This course outlines the history of the relationship between tourism and international development, exploring how this has changed and evolved over time. In doing so, we analyse how different approaches to international development more generally have been mobilized to address tourism development specifically. Central themes we address in this regard include the connections between tourism and (1) migration (e.g. in the Mediterranean, empty villages); (2) labour, gender and race; (3) nature, violence and militarization; (4) livelihood diversification; (5) culture and authenticity; (6) (over)tourism and urbanization; (7) colonialism; (8) capitalism; (9) philanthropy and (10) disasters and adaptivity (e.g. COVID-19). We also explore the various ways that the relationship between tourism and development has been analysed theoretically, including via developmental, psychoanalytic, critical race studies, postcolonial and feminist lenses. The course contains two important excursions, to the Holiday Fair and Migrantour.

For MTO students, the Personal Professional Identity trajectory is integrated in this course. Related activities focus of connecting between student's individual profiles and disciplinary knowledge to explore opportunities for mobilization, action, and change.

• Identify key contemporary issues in the field of development studies

• Demonstrate understanding of theories on the relationship between international development and tourism

• Apply critical development theory to tourism development

• Analyse and evaluate socio-cultural and ecological processes of tourism development and the potential of tourism to function as an effective sustainable development strategy

• Design new pathways for tourism as a sustainable development instrument

• Integrate their self-awareness and understanding of complex systems with disciplinary knowledge to identify opportunities for making sustainable and impactful contributions as responsible changemakers

• Assignment essay (70%) Paper.
• Assignment other (30%) 3 group assignments (10% each).
• Assignment other (0%) Students are assessed on pass/fail basis for completing a PPI specific assignment and making input to their Personal Professional Development Plan. Completion of this assignment is only mandatory for MTO students in at least one regular trajectory course.

GEO13806 Tourism & Sustainable Development or a similar course

• To be decided.