Take Me to My Paradise
292 pages, 6 x 9
9 illustrations.
Paperback
Release Date:27 Sep 2010
ISBN:9780813548104
Hardcover
Release Date:27 Sep 2010
ISBN:9780813548098
Take Me to My Paradise
Tourism and Nationalism in the British Virgin Islands
Rutgers University Press
The British Virgin Islands (BVI) markets itself to international visitors as a paradise. But just whose paradise is it? Colleen Ballerino Cohen looks at the many players in the BVI tourism culture, from the tourists who leave their graffiti at beach bars that are popularized in song, to the waiters who serve them and the singers who entertain them.
Interweaving more than twenty years of field notes, Cohen provides a firsthand analysis of how tourism transformed the BVI from a small neglected British colony to a modern nation that competes in a global economic market. With its close reading of everything from advertisements to political manifestos and constitutional reforms, Take Me to My Paradise deepens our understanding of how nationalism develops hand-in-hand with tourism, and documents the uneven impact of economic prosperity upon different populations. We hear multiple voices, including immigrants working in a tourism economy, nationalists struggling to maintain some control, and the anthropologist trying to make sense of it all. The result is a richly detailed and accessible ethnography on the impact of tourism on a country that came into being as a tourist destination.
Interweaving more than twenty years of field notes, Cohen provides a firsthand analysis of how tourism transformed the BVI from a small neglected British colony to a modern nation that competes in a global economic market. With its close reading of everything from advertisements to political manifestos and constitutional reforms, Take Me to My Paradise deepens our understanding of how nationalism develops hand-in-hand with tourism, and documents the uneven impact of economic prosperity upon different populations. We hear multiple voices, including immigrants working in a tourism economy, nationalists struggling to maintain some control, and the anthropologist trying to make sense of it all. The result is a richly detailed and accessible ethnography on the impact of tourism on a country that came into being as a tourist destination.
Take Me to My Paradise makes a genuine contribution to the growing literature on tourism and on those societies which have become economically reliant on international tourism . . . the nuanced observations and analytical revelations are fascinating.
The British Virgin Islands tourist industry has constructed a space that meets the Western expectation of a Caribbean paradise, and Cohen focuses on how this construction affects the people who live there. She skillfully accomplishes this demanding task. Packed with useful information, this book offers the novel incorporation of the author's raw field notes which add immediacy to the narrative and give the reader insight into the vagaries of anthropological fieldwork.
Take Me to My Paradise makes a genuine contribution to the growing literature on tourism and on those societies which have become economically reliant on international tourism . . . the nuanced observations and analytical revelations are fascinating.
The British Virgin Islands tourist industry has constructed a space that meets the Western expectation of a Caribbean paradise, and Cohen focuses on how this construction affects the people who live there. She skillfully accomplishes this demanding task. Packed with useful information, this book offers the novel incorporation of the author's raw field notes which add immediacy to the narrative and give the reader insight into the vagaries of anthropological fieldwork.
Colleen Ballerino Cohen is a professor of anthropology and women's studies at Vassar College. She has written several articles and has produced three ethnographic videos on BVI tourism, festivals, and musical culture.
IllustrationsÂ
Acknowledgments
A Note on Notes and Names
Introduction: Take Me to My Paradise
1. Tourism's Paradise: Historical Background
2. Making Paradise as a Tourist Desti-Nation
3. "Nature's Little Secrets": Marketing Paradise and Making Nation
4. Cultural Negotiations: Race, Identity, and Citizenship
5. Like Looking at Ourselves in a Mirror: Collaborative Ethnography in Paradise
6. Stanley's Swing and Other Intimate Encounters
7. Of Festivals, Calypso Kings, and Beauty Queens
8. Performing Paradise and Making Culture
Conclusion: Technically, It's a County
References
Index
Acknowledgments
A Note on Notes and Names
Introduction: Take Me to My Paradise
1. Tourism's Paradise: Historical Background
2. Making Paradise as a Tourist Desti-Nation
3. "Nature's Little Secrets": Marketing Paradise and Making Nation
4. Cultural Negotiations: Race, Identity, and Citizenship
5. Like Looking at Ourselves in a Mirror: Collaborative Ethnography in Paradise
6. Stanley's Swing and Other Intimate Encounters
7. Of Festivals, Calypso Kings, and Beauty Queens
8. Performing Paradise and Making Culture
Conclusion: Technically, It's a County
References
Index
