Who’s got the money?

Power relations is a recurring topic in social studies, famously analyzed by Foucault. In tourism studies, power relations are often allocated as to arise from social inequalities between local communities and the visitors. Typically, the power differential is viewed to the disadvantage of the local community.

As economic power lies with the ‘rich’ tourists, locals having specialized their work towards the tourist business appear depended on the spending-power of the tourist. The material wealth of the tourists positions these members of the local community in an inferior position.[1] The extent to which this rather subjunctive relation to the power of capital holds true in Jordan’s tourism environment, I could not assess. However, we did learn how badly local communities involved in the business are impacted by the decline of tourism, following the unwrapping crisis in the Middle East. This affects also the state’s monetary status as Jordan’s tourist industry has the largest inflow of private foreign exchange.[2]

Talking about global capital power, I at least need to mention the U.S. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)[3] focuses among others on boosting tourism to generate economic growth in Jordan. As a branch of the US government, financial power is on their side. The USAID’s power position vis-à-vis the local community becomes apparent when considering that tourist projects are often funded and monitored by USAID. To what extent this power differential may be exploited by the USAID to press forward their way of arranging tourist sites is debatable. In any case, it is foreign-government allocated money that is flowing into Jordan’s economic development – identifying patterns of global power is hardly to miss.

The commercial side of tourism becomes also nicely apparent when I hear the USAID’s mission trains over 2.000 USAID travel agents whose job it is to sell Jordan.

---

[1] Stephen Williams, Tourism Geography (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 139-240.

[2] Ibrahim Osta, 'USAID – The Economic Growth Through Sustainable Toursim Project “Sites Development and Presentation“', 2015.

[3] Usaid.gov, 'U.S. Agency For International Development', last modified 2015, accessed September 8, 2015, https://www.usaid.gov/.

Jordan's tourist industry hopes for more tourists to come to Jordan - locals in the business rely on the tourists' spending power