Janet Henshall Momsen

Tourism and Poverty Reduction: Issues for Small Island States

Abstract The notion that tourism can contribute significantly to poverty reduction strategies is attracting great interest from multilateral institutions, tourism bodies, donors and other organizations around the globe. Tourism is certainly a major contributor to economic development in many small island developing states (SIDS) and often it is the only industry in these countries to consistently demonstrate growth in recent years. However, the growth of tourism in SIDS is by no means synonymous with poverty reduction, in fact, in some cases it entrenches existing inequalities. If tourism is to contribute significantly to the reduction of poverty in SIDS, a broad approach that values social sustainability as well as the more popular environmental sustainability and economic growth will be necessary. In addition, governments need to establish an effective policy environment and play a stronger regulatory role if sustainable, equity-enhancing tourism is to emerge. The paper suggests effective ways in which national planning can both encourage private sector actors to support poverty reduction and facilitate the involvement of wider sectors of society in tourism development. It is not sufficient for governments to simply promote tourism development in line with neoliberal growth-orientated policies.

Challenges and potential for linking tourism and agriculture to achieve pro-poor tourism objectives.

With tourism rapidly increasing in developing nations there is an emerging focus on integrating pro-poor tourism into both the international tourism and aid agendas. Following a brief review of the pro-poor tourism literature, this article argues for the explicit creation of tourism and agriculture linkages to achieve pro-poor tourism objectives. To understand both the potential and the problems associated with linking the two sectors, we present an in-depth case study of tourism and agriculture in Cancun, Mexico. The case study draws on the perspectives of Cancun hotel chefs, who control hotel food purchasing, and Quintana Roo farmers, who have attempted to supply the tourism industry, to provide a unique thorough examination of the challenges and potential for such linkages in a mass tourism resort.

Tourism in small island states: from vulnerability to strengths.

This article argues that the narrow and frequently negative conceptualisations of small island states as environmentally vulnerable and economically dependent are problematic for sustainable tourism development and for economic development, generally. Scenarios presented to date are often incomplete. Narratives suggesting that island peoples are unskilled and lack resources, and that their islands are ‘tiny’ and ‘fragile’, can undermine their pride and stifle their initiative, reducing their ability to act with autonomy to determine and achieve their own developmental goals. A range of more positive conceptualisations is given, demonstrating the strong social dimensions of sustainability in small island states and the resilience and adaptability of island states. Examples describe a number of positive development paths to sustainable tourism in small island states.

Gender and the environment: Women's time use as a measure of environmental change

These case studies pertain to marginal dry land rural areas in developing countries. The evidence suggests that women have shorter rest periods, greater intensity and fragmentation of work, and greater use of multiple simultaneous occupations than men. Macroeconomic policies have increased the work burden for women and for the poorest populations and have contributed to environmental deterioration. This paper focuses on womens use of time as a factor in explaining womens changing gender role under conditions of environmental stress. The women and the environment debate encompasses two philosophical positions. The ecofeminist theory is that women are one with nature and are unlike men, who manipulate and exploit the environment. The other theory posits that women are managers of the environment and should be approached as separate groups. The developmentalist improves on theory by offering the view that there are differences in resource allocation, entitlements, and responsibilities. The case studies deny that womens roles are fixed and generalized. The case study in Sri Lanka reveals that the Mahaweli irrigation and settlement project brought widespread deforestation and forced women to spend more time and energy in seeking fuel wood. Women adjusted to the changes by reducing the number of trips for wood, increasing the amount of the load, and involving men in the process. The number of families who switched to alternative cooking methods increased. During the dry season more of womens time is spent in washing clothes and cleaning the house. Kitchen gardening is only a wet season activity. A Burkina Faso study found that the average daily hours of work for women was 10.6 in the wet season and 12.4 in the dry season in 1991. In the Caribbean, life revolves around crop and no-crop time. Multiple job holding is a common strategy for small farmers. Gender division of labor and time use are determined by household, local context, family structure, and stage in the life cycle.

Women and Change in the Caribbean: A Pan-Caribbean Perspective.

Section I - private and public spheres of womens lives: part I - the domestic domain and the community, reputation and respectability reconsidered - Jamaica, J. Besson, marriage and concubinage - Curacao, E. Abraham-Van der Mark, changing roles in life cycles - Monserrat, L. Mihelic Pulsipher, womens place in every place - Barbuda and Dominica, R. Berleant-Schiller, W.H. Maurer part II - the intersection of reproduction and production, women in Guadeloupe, H. Dagenais, womens political organizations - Guyana, L. Peake, neighbourhood networks and national politics - Suiriname, R. Brana-Schute, the migration experience - St Nevis, K. Fog Olwig, migration, development and gender division of labour - Puerto Rico and Venezuela, J. Monk, C.S. Alexander. Section II - economic roles of Caribbean women: part I - rural employment, small farm production and gender - Barbados, C. Barrow, women small farmers - Grenada, J.S. Brierley, women in agriculture - Trinidad, I.S. Harry, smallholder agriculture in transition - Cuba, J. Stubbs, development and gender divisions of labour - Eastern Caribbean, J.H. Momsen part II - urban employment, garment and textile production - Trinidad, R. Reddock, gender and ethnicity in factory work - Trinidad, K.A. Yelvington, tourism - Jamaica, L. McKay, gender and new technology, R. Pearson.

Planned Tourism Development in Quintana Roo, Mexico: Engine for Regional Development or Prescription for Inequitable Growth?

In the 1960s the isolated tropical forest enclave of Quintana Roo was targeted by the Mexican Government to serve as the cornerstone for launching what is now considered to be one of Mexico’s most successful economic development strategies – Planned Tourism Development (PTD). This paper commences with a brief review of the role of state-driven PTD in Mexico’s national economic development agenda. Government discourse surrounding the Cancun project emphasised tourism as a mechanism for promoting ‘regional development’through creation of backward linkages to other economic sectors – notably agriculture and small industry – to benefit the region’s marginalised Mayan peasant population. Based on research in Quintana Roo, this paper contends that while PTD has generated profit for the Government, transnational corporations and entrepreneurial elites, it has failed to achieve backward linkages that may have improved conditions for the region’s impoverished rural population. Employing a case study approach, the paper illustrates the failure of PTD to stimulate balanced regional development, while analysing PTD’s role in reinforcing existing relations of domination and subordination to produce new patterns of uneven development and inequity within Quintana Roo.

Tourism and agriculture: new geographies of consumption, production and rural restructuring.

1. Introduction Rebecca Maria Torres and Janet Momsen Section I Tourism, Agriculture and Rural Restructuring 2. Tourism and Agriculture in Hungary: Post Productivist Transistion or New Functions in Rural Space? Iren Szorenyine Kukorelli 3. The Nexus Between Agriculture and Tourism in Ghana: A Case of Unexploited Development Potential Alex Asiedu and Tometi Gbdema 4. Life Between the Two Milpas: Tourism, Agriculture and Migration in the Yucatan Rebecca Maria Torres 5. Female Empowerment Through Agriculture in Rural Japan? Atsuko Hashimoto and David Telfer Section II Building Tourism and Agriculture Linkages: Challenges and Potential 6. Sustainability on a Plate: Linking Agriculture and Food in the Fiji Islands Tourism Industry Tracy Berno 7. Cracks in the Pavement: Coventional Constraints and Contemporary Solutions for Linking Agriculture and Tourism in the Caribbean Benjamin F. Timms and Stern Neill 8. Agritourism Linkages in Jamaica: Case Study of the Negril All-Inclusive Hotel Subsector Kevon Rhiney 9. Tourism and Agriculture in Barbados: Changing Relationships Pamela Richardson-Ngwenya and Janet Momsen Section III: New Forms of Tourism and Agriculture Production and Consumption 10. Adopting a Sheep in Abruzzo: Agritourism and the Preservation of Transhumance Farming in Central Italy Rosie Cox, Lewis Holloway, Laura Venn, Moya Kneafsey, and Elizabeth Dowler 11. Farm Stay Tourism in California: The Influence of Type of Farming Jill Donaldson and Janet Momsen 12. Tourism and Agriculture Viability: Case Studies from the United States and England Ellen L. Rilla 13. Visiting Winery Tasting Rooms: Venues for Education, Differentiation and Direct Marketing Deborah Che and Astrid Wargenau 14. New Forms of Tourism in Spain: Wine, Gastronomic and Rural Tourism Gemma Canoves and Raul Suhett de Morais

Domestic service as a survival strategy in Delhi, India

In developing countries, domestic work is an important source of employment for women who have migrated to urban areas. This paper looks at a group of women who have moved to Delhi after multiple migrations from their home in the Tippera district of Bangladesh. It discusses the role played by the women of this community in the process of adjustment and the significance of domestic service in this process. These women have utilised a variety of strategies to accommodate to change, using social relations as security nets in the process of adjustment.

A continuing agenda for gender: the role of the IGU Commission on gender and geography

Abstract In examining the development of the International Geographical Union’s (IGU) Commission on Gender and Geography over the last three decades, we first highlight the advances made to establish visibility for gender studies within the IGU and create structures for more inclusive feminist geographies across national, disciplinary and other borders. Given that many of the early and most widely-known advances were largely within Anglophone contexts, we then discuss the ongoing challenges and possibilities for advancement faced by feminist geographers who teach, research, and write on gender in other locations. While some of these challenges (such as a continued lack of recognition for gender studies, paternalistic hierarchies, and specific government regimes) are country-specific, others are related to broader issues of neoliberalism and corporatization, and inequities in academic publishing. Clearly, continued efforts are needed to strengthen the agenda for gender to promote more inclusive histories, practices and processes of gender/feminist geography in research, teaching and application in the international arena.