To Hell with Paradise: A History of the Jamaican Tourist Industry

To Hell with Paradise: A History of the Jamaican Tourist Industry
ISBN-10
0822972476
ISBN-13
9780822972471
Category
History
Pages
239
Language
English
Published
2003-04-01
Publisher
University of Pittsburgh Pre
Author
Frank Fonda Taylor

Description

A group of Jamaican entrepreneurs saw its potential and began to cultivate a tourism psychology which has led, one hundred years later, to an economy dependent upon the tourist industry. The steamships that carried North American tourists to Jamaican resorts also carried U.S. prejudices against people of color. "To Hell with Paradise" illustrates the problems of founding a tourist industry for a European or U.S. clientele in a society where the mass of the population is poor, black, and with a historical experience of slavery and colonialism. By the 1990s, tourism had become the lifeblood of the Jamaican economy, but at enormous social cost: enclaves of privilege and ostentation that exclude the bulk of the local population, drug trafficking and prostitution, soaring prices, and environmental degradation. No wonder some Jamaicans regard tourism as a new kind of sugar. Taylor explores timely issues that have not been previously addressed

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