Thursday, July 11, 2019

All-Inclusive Resorts and Colonialism


Gated communities, particularly in third world countries, are  concentration camps. Only the prisoners are on the outside. Colonization classically takes advantage of underdeveloped societies, exploiting  low paid workers, who function like slaves on the basis of the remuneration they receive for their toil. Thus you see the rise of chains of all-inclusive resorts in some of the most impoverished places on earth. Only the threat of terrorism spares some locales which would be the site of what travel agents call a new "property." It all involves sex, since the power of capital in tottering economies can be an aphrodisiac, but there's also explicitly sex tourism in places like Thailand, India, Greece and Dominican Republic where the traveler may get an even more significant bang for their buck. From an architectural point of view, colonization produces a unique configuration since walls and barbed wire are meant to keep oppressed populations out rather than in, though it is also possible to think of some resorts as unwitting prisons where travelers stooped in luxury are deprived of any sense of place. Armed guards may escort them on a trip up the river to see the remains of a lost civilization, but these visitors are shackled by the vulnerability occasioned by their own wealth and resources and remain the captives of their minders and hosts.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.