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Introduction
- GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
- Duke University Press
- Volume 8, Number 1-2, 2002
- pp. 1-6
- Article
- Additional Information
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GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8.1-2 (2002) 1-6
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Introduction
Jasbir Kaur Puar
It has become almost predictable: news of gay and lesbian tourists encountering mishaps, the resistance of locals, the intervention of government and nongovernmental organizations, and church protests. In Cape Town a campaign to draw gay and lesbian tourists has created a furor among Christian groups. 1 In the last four years gay and lesbian cruises have been turned away from Caribbean locations and Turkey. 2 Thailand's Tourism Authority has begun to promote sex-change operations as part of its "health-tourism packages." 3 Scotland recently retracted its planned outreach to gay and lesbian tourists, while the rest of Great Britain's tourist industry is actively courting the "Pink Pound." 4 In an era of globalization during which market forces are said often to override the importance of the nation-state, the state is indeed in an ambiguous position: on the one hand, its legislative efficacy is mediated through global capitalism; on the other, the demand for state intervention in such situations is increasing.
"Queer Tourism: Geographies of Globalization" addresses these conundrums and contradictions in globalization. Though there have been scattered accounts of gay and lesbian tourism, articles on sexuality and tourism, literature on sex and travel (especially as they relate to AIDS), and rich historical materials about same-sex sexuality and travel, this issue of GLQ is the first edited collection with such a scope and focus. Tourism, as a form of both past and present globalization, with uneven and unpredictable effects, is one of the most important aspects of the globalization of sexuality and sexual identities. Journals such as the Annals of Tourism Research and Tourism Management, along with numerous scholars, have documented the rapid rise of the tourism industry in the last century. Gay and lesbian tourists account for at least 10 percent of the U.S. travel industry, and that percentage is growing. Yet queer tourism is still one of the least researched or discussed topics in scholarly venues, perhaps because it so obviously intrudes on many of our personal and professional desires for mobility and travel. [End Page 1]
The purpose of this special issue is thus twofold. The first is to describe, document, and theorize the growth and expansion of gay and lesbian tourism and other emerging forms of queer travel. The second is to make explicit the importance of queer sexualities to globalization, tourism, and economic systems. Studies of globalization range from presenting the "global" as an overarching, homogenizing force, in opposition to a pure, resistant "local," to theorizing local-global exchange, hybridization, and multidirectional flows. 5 Sexuality as related to tourism, migration, identity formation, and economic labor flows, though it is intrinsic to analyses of globalization, often remains unaddressed in these accounts. 6 Reflected in the following pages are interdisciplinary discussions focused on various materials and channeled through queer and feminist theory, globalization studies, and ethnography: theoretical ruminations, detailed ethnographic descriptions, activist literature, and fictionalized and factual travel accounts, as well as analyses of mainstream gay and lesbian travel writing.
There is no pretense of doing representational justice to the geographic areas where queer tourism is relevant. Rather, different scales of location are offered here--cities, nations, worlds--and situated in both locality and globality. Several articles, such as Venetia Kantsa's about lesbian tourism to Eresos, on the Greek island of Lesvos, and Kevin Markwell's about Mardi Gras tourism to Sydney, offer copious and illuminating ethnographic accounts of how global tourism has altered the spatial relations of place and identities in local settings. While Kantsa documents the very physical, geographic changes wrought on the landscape of bodies and places in Eresos, Markwell highlights the relationship of place to temporality--what he calls "temporal containment"--and notes that the potential of Mardi Gras's transgressive features is greatly diminished by limitations not only of place but of time. This containment is reflected in part by the marginalization of working-class gays and lesbians, of gays and lesbians of color, and of bisexuals, transgendered people, and queers. Michael...