Summary
In Settling for Less — The Planned Resettlement of Israel’s Negev Bedouin, the global trend — with its related term “poorism” — of marketing poverty, suffering and pain for tourist consumption by “well-intentioned” outsiders who learn about a place and then act on behalf of people presumed incapable of mobilizing independently (PDF p.194, 200).
Details
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Dinero sets the trend in Hutnyk’s account of Calcutta (1996), where Western tourism grew because of impoverishment rather than despite it, and in “pity tours” of Nairobi’s Kibera slum and the slum tours listed in his Table 7.1 (Mumbai, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro, Mazatlán, Cape Town) (PDF p.199-200).
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In the Negev the trend frames the counter-narrative that developed in the early 2000s against the Jewish-run “Noble Desert Savage” narrative: the bedouin presented as battered, impoverished, disempowered victims of conquest, concentration and resettlement — a presentation Dinero calls in many ways emasculating, in tension with showing the community as strong, proud and whole (PDF p.198, 200-201).
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Bustan’s Negev Unplugged tours are his worked example: designed to convert a day’s exposure to suffering into a personal plan of action, they commoditize suffering, albeit for goals many might consider worthwhile, and rest on as little as forty-eight hours’ exposure (PDF p.201-206).
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Against both narratives Dinero sets bedouin-owned ventures — Ibrahim El-Afenish’s Peace Tent in Rahat, Abu Youssef’s restaurant on Route 40N and Suleiman El-Hrenik’s shiq at El-If’dai — presenting the community in strength and pride, not victimization (PDF p.206-212).
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In Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, voluntourism in the West Bank — tourists on gap years or school breaks working in schools or organizations for a limited time, usually a year pieced together in three-month shifts to accommodate the tourist visa Israel allows — is one of the forms of international presence that Solidarity Tourism’s invitation to come and then go home is formulated to redirect: Palestinian organizers appreciate internationals who rebuild demolished homes, volunteer in preschools and walk children to school under settler threat, while refusing a missionary relationship to Palestine (PDF p.26-27).
Related pages
Settling for Less — The Planned Resettlement of Israel’s Negev Bedouin, Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, Solidarity Tourism, Bustan, Devorah Brous, Segev Shalom, Pezurah