Ethical tourism and development: the personal and the political

Over the last 25 years, ethical tourism has become an important point of reference for social scientists, business specialists, campaigns and significant numbers of ordinary people. Yet, just a generation ago, prior to the pervasive influence of consumer politics, the consumption of holidays seemed problem free – you really could ‘leave your cares behind'. Political and moral interventions in society were posed in a different way and within a different context prior to the growth of consumer politics in the 1980s. The rise of, and dilemmas associated with, ethical tourism tell us more about wider social and political consciousness – simply how people make sense of their place and their possibilities in the world – than it does about a surfeit of lack of ethical behaviour. This paper focuses on the growth of a discourse of qualities such as ‘care’, ‘awareness’ and ‘responsibility’. It draws on the idea of the private and public sphere to argue that a language of private virtue is substituted for political analysis in the advocacy of ethical tourism. Given ethical tourism's association with development and well-being, this, in turn, reinforces assumptions that are damaging from the perspective of reinvigorating political possibilities and debate on development.