Slum Tourism in the Americas: Commodifying Urban Poverty and Violence

This trilateral research project investigates slum tourism in four cities in the Americas: Los Angeles,
Mexico City, Kingston, and Rio de Janeiro. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic approach, this project
aims to theorise the commodification of urban poverty and violence in the context of global mobilities
and urban political economies of spectacle. The research has a twin focus on the political economy of
slum tours and their representational-performative politics. Its objectives are to ask: Through what
representational strategies do different actors negotiate the slum's "place-in-the-world"? How is violence
aestheticised and performed as part of symbolic economies based on cultural production and
consumption? What new social relationships and subjectivities are produced through the "slum tourism
encounter" between slum-dwellers, tourists, tour operators and state actors? Our approach to slum
tourism is original and important for several reasons. First, our cross-city, comparative research will
allow us to distinguish between generalisable patterns and the idiosyncratic features of individual cities.
This is particularly relevant as slum tours are increasingly popular and influential in constituting the
representations of urban poverty on a global scale. Second, where existing work largely focuses on
tourists as consumers, we also ask how a broader range of actors connect in the "slum tourist encounter"
to convert the slum into a tourism product. Third, this attention to both production and consumption
links to the project's central focus on the aestheticisation and performance of violence in slum tours.
Finally, this project is innovative methodologically: its multi-sited, longitudinal and ethnographic research
is both a challenge to most existing methodologies on slum tourism and the most appropriate means to
interrogate the performativity of the "encounter", to establish knowledge on poverty and violence. The
results will be relevant for academic and non-academic stakeholders (residents, civil society, urban
development and tourism policymakers). The trilateral research is part of on-going efforts to connect
national disciplinary traditions and develop European interdisciplinary urban studies.

Potential beneficiaries of the research include:

Private companies and civil society organisations that promote 'cultural engagement' across the globe, and especially with cities, based on notions of poverty and violence. Most obviously these would include tourism companies, especially those involved in ethical and 'dark' tourism, but might also be extended to educational organisations and programmes, organisations that promote so-called 'voluntourism' and 'gap' holidays.

International and national agencies involved in the upgrading, regularisation or integration of 'slums' into the wider urban fabric and political economy. An example might be UN-Habitat and especially its Safer Cities programme. Similarly, but more tentatively, might be agencies involved with collating data on youth and crime, such as UNODC, or on culture and social action, such as UNESCO.

Advocates and pressure groups engaged with contesting representations of slums as sites of poverty and violence, as well as involved in contesting images of youth and 'race'. Many such groups are also 'cultural producers' or promoters, and include links with media organisations and agents of popular culture. We believe that outputs from the project might be especially attractive to link with work of galleries, graffiti artists and studios. We will aim to identify such groups within the study cities and beyond.

City agencies and consultancies interested in 'reimagining' the city, including architectural and design practices. We will explore possible contacts with urban agencies within local government as well as policing, probation and justice departments.

The principal benefit of communicating the research process and results to beneficiaries will be to change mindsets towards poverty, violence, young people and symbolic spaces in the city. It is not expected that the research will have direct and verifiable impacts on the health or wealth of the UK or of the study cities. It is hoped that the attention to cultural representation and production will inform how societies approach stigma, empathy and socio-economic engagement, and therefore address the conditioning factors that produce and reproduce inequality.