Description
Tourism is the largest form of embodied international relations and, thus, is constitutive of ‘the international’. Nevertheless, tourism is often ignored within International Relations (IR) and, consequently, has not been adequately theorised. In contributing to the critical (re)theorisation of international tourism, this paper asks: how does tourism govern? To answer this question, we introduce the concept of ‘touristic governmobilities’ and theorise the emergence of a touristic zoopolitical mode of governance. Our concept of touristic zoopolitics combines insights from the colonial practice of ‘human zoos’ (which helped to legitimise colonialism and produce the Western tourist gaze) and the neoliberal biopolitical order (where governing occurs for the market) to show how places and people – especially in the Global South – are increasingly being governed, not as national territories and citizens, but as desirable/safe ‘tourism destinations’ and ‘touristic figures’ (where governing occurs for international – often white Western – tourists). This mode of governance, we show, prioritises international tourists’ imaginaries, affects, and experiences (over those of citizens), resulting in the (re)production of colonial logics, hierarchies, exclusions, and resistances. Our findings challenge the inside/outside dichotomy assumed in IR and point to an emerging form of de facto (rather than de jure) touristic citizenship. Taking tourism seriously, then, offers new insights into the continued coloniality of the international and contributes to key IR debates.
