Turismo e cultura de viagem

A presente Dissertação faz uma análise dos novos hotéis surgidos nos anos 1980, conhecidos como Hotéis Design. Inicialmente, a pesquisa apresenta um quadro geral da hotelaria e do design, introduzindo em seguida os hotéis precursores, sua essência e conceitos, finalizando com um paralelo entre dois projetos. O estudo ainda contempla o universo do designer Philippe Starck e a transição entre arquitetura, interiores e objetos. O trabalho também mostra a nova sociedade de consumo e de muitos estilos de vida.

O turismo tem sido um dos instrumentos usados na Gestão Urbana para torná-la mais competitiva dentro do mercado globalizado. Seus aspectos específicos são o diferencial que fazem o marketing do lugar, ou seja, são os elementos atrativos que torna este lugar único em relação às outras localidades, fazendo com que os visitantes queiram voltar. Num primeiro momento a atração turística é saudável para os negócios locais. Porém, quando o volume de visitantes torna-se excessivo, fazendo com que a estrutura urbana não mais tenha condições de atender a toda essa população flutuante e ainda, acrescendo-se a chegada de migrantes de outras regiões do país, que vêm em busca de empregos, há praticamente um inchaço urbano com acelerada expansão e de degradação ambiental. Neste contexto, é que se considera a cidade de Campos do Jordão um estudo de caso relevante. Primeiramente, era conhecida como a cidade dos "tísicos", em que encontravam as benesses de um clima de altitude. Depois, com a divulgação de eventos culturais como o festival de inverno (desde os anos de 1940) é que as características específicas de sua arquitetura, como uma estação de inverno, tornaram-na conhecida, como a suíça brasileira. Enquanto o turismo foi se consolidando na cidade, o processo de exploração imobiliária foi crescendo e com ele á atração de mão de obra para trabalhar na construção civil. Configurou-se assim, a estrutura urbana atual. Por sua vez esse turismo é protegido devido ao fato de Campos do Jordão se localizar em uma área de preservação ambiental, devendo, portanto, ter sua ocupação controlada. 

Devido à inquietação, à falta de respostas e ao excesso de preconceito no meio arquitetônico no trato com a questão da pós-modernidade, uma investigação mais atual a respeito desse tema se faz necessária. Vivemos numa sociedade balizada pelo capital financeiro, ou sociedade do capitalismo avançado. As constantes intervenções arquitetônicas em edifícios emblemáticos na cidade de São Paulo (e no mundo, como um todo) são sintomáticos de uma nova era de exploração do patrimônio e conversão de bens tombados em polos geradores de turismo, publicidade e fruição de capital. A concatenação entre as práticas conduzidas pela condição pós-moderna e a exploração de bens tombados como novos espaços culturais é a investigação proposta nesse trabalho, que antes de estabelecer verdades absolutas (e elas não existem, muito menos em se tratando de pós-modernidade), atenta para o abrasileiramento dessa pós-modernidade e suas práticas: a pós-modernidade nos trópicos. 

This phenomenological qualitative study examines the experiences of volunteer tourism on host communities using social representations theory. The experiences of three stakeholder-groups (community residents, volunteers, and nongovernmental organizations) are considered. Overall objectives of this project are to investigate the following questions: a) what are the effects of volunteer tourism on a community as perceived by different stakeholders; b) what effects do volunteer tourists have on the community compared to other forms of tourism as perceived by different stakeholders; c) how do the various stakeholders perceive the different forms of tourism in communities in which they live or work; and d) why and how do nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) use volunteer tourism as a strategy for their projects. This study attempts to describe and interpret these meanings with a high degree of depth and richness using interviews, observation, and document analysis. Each chapter is written as a stand-alone paper to be published in a journal and describes the perspectives of the three groups interviewed with the final chapter a summary and comparison from all three groups.

Findings show that there are both positive and negative impacts of volunteer tourism in favela communities, with the majority of the three groups expressing its positives and its importance to the community. All groups mentioned similar positive and negative elements of volunteer tourism with some elements that were unique to each group. This study also attempted to compare and contrast the differences between volunteer tourism and favela tours. The findings show that volunteer tourism helps recreate the social representations of the favela thereby improving self-esteem in the community, helps breakdown preconceptions, and helps create community pride. The community feels as equals with the volunteers and describes the interactions as friendships, sharing cultural experiences, and exchanging of knowledge. Conversely, all three groups described favela tours as dehumanizing using words like 'safari tour' or 'zoo tour' and felt that their community was being sold as a commodity. However, the interviews showed that all three groups, although had strong opinions about the ethical implications of favela tours, still felt conflicted when comparing it with some of the potential social and economic benefits that it may bring.

In a span of two years the City of Rio de Janeiro will have hosted two of the biggest sporting events in the world, the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. As I argue throughout this dissertation, the potential these sporting mega-events hold for attracting capital investment to the city is immense. And, as such, the City of Rio de Janeiro has unveiled a dizzying array of new urban policy initiatives designed to prepare the city for the mega-event and in the process make the city an attractive space for international investors. The consequences of these policies, I argue, is irrevocably altering the socio-spatial structure of the city creating new landscapes for tourist consumption and zones for real estate speculation. In the process, the City of Rio de Janeiro is permanently reconfiguring its nearly 450-year-old urban settlement pattern characterized by a relatively high-percentage of low-income residents occupying residencies in and near the urban core. This dissertation examines how this process is unfolding across the city. My findings suggest low-income residents are being pushed to the periphery of the city through both ‘hard’ displacement (forced evictions) as well as ‘soft’ forms of displacement, including gentrification. This research specifically focuses on the latter, exploring the various ways in which gentrified landscapes in Rio de Janeiro’s sporting mega-event city have been produced.

My research findings suggest a myriad of forces, including ‘exceptional’ urban policies, the commodification of Afro-Brazilian culture, and community ‘pacifying police,’ have been instrumental in producing gentrified landscapes in the city. Yet, by exploring gentrification in a number of spatial contexts over my five years of fieldwork, I suggest these processes unfold in a spatially uneven and place-contingent ways. I thus argue gentrification in Rio de Janeiro is actualized through a series of geographically unique connective processes, rather any one homogenizing force. This dissertation also examines how residents at risk of losing their homes resist gentrification and displacement. Through in-depth interviews with activists and months of participant observation, I point to the importance of place-based social movements asserting their ‘right to stay put’ through vigorous discursive and material defenses of their communities. These activists work to shift the production of locality in their favor so their communities might become viewed as a ‘home’ rather than an exploitable commodity.

This thesis explores the resistance to eviction of the Vila Autódromo favela, an informal community adjacent to the Rio 2016 Olympic park. The thesis explores how the space and place of the favela were constructed by residents and supporters to undermine the justification for evictions by providing an alternative discourse of informal communities to the stereotyped vision of slums. Understanding these communities and their struggle for rights is of fundamental importance given the current political turmoil in Brazil which threatens to remove the few rights that have been won through previous struggles. The ethnographic approach taken in this thesis provides close, in-depth discussion of the contentious politics around the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, specifically related to evictions in Vila Autódromo. The year-long period of fieldwork was crucial to fully understand the complexity and context of contentious politics in Rio. This thesis makes contributions across a number of fields. Firstly, the thesis provides the first ethnographic examination of protest at the sport mega-events, building on the limited research linking sport and social movements. I also address the issues of rights at the Olympic Games, making a timely contribution to this debate given the International Olympic Committee's recent commitment to human rights in host cities. Through discussing the rights claimed by residents and the actions of the city, we see rights are constructed by governments and elites, often excluding marginalised groups from justice. Further, the thesis makes contributions to spatial theory, critiquing the inherent power Lefebvre assigns to the state in constructing urban space based on the different power dynamics which exist in informal communities. Building on this, I also argue that social movements not only use space, but actively construct and produce space. This approach to integrating spatial theory with theories of contentious politics goes beyond many simplistic analyses of social movements and space which examine the spaces movements use to protest. Through liminal events in this constructed space, activists and residents generated a strong sense of the place of the favela which supported an alternative discourse of favela, undermining justifications for eviction. I also discuss the process of negotiation with journalists, often ignored within framing theory, by which activists generated sympathetic coverage of their struggle, spreading the sense of place around the world.

My thesis examines the process of gentrification of low-income residents in Vidigal, a favela located on a hill adjacent to the most touristy and desirable area in Rio de Janeiro. Favela is the Portuguese term to refer to slums in Brazil. Recently, those favelas adjacent to the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods have become attractive locations for tourists, foreigners and young middle-class Brazilians due to their geographical location, and their majestic views of the city and ocean. The sudden attractiveness of Rio’s favelas emerged in the context of the city’s economic growth, and the local government’s plans to brand it as a global metropolis and tourist destination catalyzed by the preparation for the 2016 Olympic Games.

As in many other cities around the world, Vidigal has been experiencing the first signs of gentrification: new middle-class Brazilians and foreign residents recently have been opening high-end businesses, leading to rapid rise in housing prices and, consequently, displacement of its original low-income residents. Through mixed-research methods combining official data, participant observation, and in-depth interviews, I investigate the extent to which global factors that enable gentrification in different localities around the world manifest themselves in Vidigal as well as the role of local factors in this particular case. Emphasizing the particularities of this case can enrich further research on gentrification as it becomes a global phenomenon.

This dissertation draws on a total of twenty-seven months of longitudinal ethnographic research conducted over a six-year period investigating the impacts of a proximity policing initiative known as “pacification.” Implemented in Rio de Janeiro beginning in 2008, this initiative aimed to regain the state monopoly of violence in favelas dominated by armed drug dealers while also reducing police violence. In early years, groups such as the World Bank viewed pacification as a successful policing program worthy of emulation in criminal-dominated urban peripheries throughout the global South. However, by 2016 it was clear that it had failed, as even the most successful “model communities” experienced an unparalleled spike in violence. What explains this outbreak of violence, especially in the favelas where the program was initially well-received and appeared to be working? What went wrong?

Due to limited and problematic police data, biased media coverage, and a rapidly changing empirical reality, it is very difficult to know what is actually going on in these communities from the outside. In 2012, I began ethnographic research in two neighboring “model communities” to try to understand what was working there that set them apart from other “pacified” favelas. As I returned in the summers of 2013, 2014, and 2015, I observed the rapidly shifting community relations as residents, police, and drug dealers alike prepared for what they perceived as the approaching expiration date of pacification, set by the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. By the time I arrived for a full year of fieldwork in 2016, residents were saying that pacification is not going to end, it has already ended. Rather than the single violent post-Olympic invasion that residents had imagined, 2016 was characterized by a series of invasions, attempted invasions, targeted assassinations, and killings by police as drug dealers from both factions called on a seemingly endless supply of outside reinforcements from allied favelas.

I elaborate a theory of intersecting temporalities to make sense of these community-level changes framed by what I call mega-event time. While state time is largely cyclical, mega-event time consists of a build-up period to a single major event. Increased investment, accelerated urban restructuring, and heightened international media attention characterize this period. The event itself is marked by all-out international performativity. After the event has passed, the performance ends – unless there is another event immediately on the horizon. During the period of my research, Rio hosted a series of back-to-back events, forming a continuous build-up to the final and biggest event in the series – the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. I argue that the spike in violence in 2016 and after was the direct result of a public security initiative implemented on mega-event time that had, as residents say, a prazo de validade [expiration date].

My research deepens interdisciplinary discussions of uneven development and state presence/absence in marginalized communities. It suggests that rather than talking about state absence in these areas, we need to examine (and empirically specify) convoluted forms of state presence that are deeply intertwined with the functioning of criminal groups. My dissertation also places public security reform in global context. It contributes to the growing concern about the effects of mega-events on host cities, especially in the global South. Temporary public security interventions can have disastrous consequences for marginalized communities even when carried out under the guise of promoting human rights.