In our research<\/a>, we have spent years investigating the favela<\/a> and Christmas tourism markets. Using news articles, archival material, tourism brochures, government documents, videos and photographs, we traced the controversies that have arisen in the process of marketing Rocinha and Lapland as tourist destinations. We found that controversies over tourism are, at their core, disputes over space.<\/p>\n Both Rocinha and Lapland are rife with disputes over space. Tours in Rio de Janeiro\u2019s favelas \u2013 the sprawling urban communities often described as \u201cshantytowns\u201d \u2013 have been marketed for decades, especially those in Zona Sul (South Zone).<\/p>\n At their inception, many tours were operated by businesses outside the favelas, and involved a \u201csafari\u201d-style experience with tourists in jeeps cruising through the area. Jeeps signalled favelas as places to observe at a distance rather than engage with, while driving profits out of the community.<\/p>\n The 2010 Brazilian census<\/a> itself labelled these communities as \u201csubnormal clusters\u201d occupying land irregularly, a language that did well to summarise decades of exclusion from public investment, and continued to fuel policies of eviction.<\/p>\n When a new metro station opened across the street from Rocinha ahead of the 2016 Olympics, it was named after the wealthy neighbouring S\u00e3o Conrado<\/a> instead.<\/p>\n Around the same time, so-called decorative panels<\/a> went up along the motorway from the airport, screening favelas from arriving visitors and athletes. Both were quiet decisions about geography that carried a loud message: this place doesn\u2019t, or shouldn\u2019t, exist.<\/p>\n Similar practices can be observed in Lapland. The S\u00e1mi are the indigenous people<\/a> of the region known as S\u00e1pmi, which spans the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, with around 10,000 S\u00e1mi living in Finland today.<\/p>\n They have inhabited and worked this landscape for centuries \u2014 fishing, herding reindeer, and maintaining cultural traditions including the g\u00e1kti<\/em>, their traditional clothing. Yet from the 1950s, tourism marketing increasingly cast the S\u00e1mi as exotic inhabitants of the wild north<\/a>.<\/p>\n The land and nature have been staged as empty wilderness for tourism to make use of and visitors to explore. However, that \u201cwilderness\u201d is also the S\u00e1mi homeland \u2013 a living cultural landscape, rather than simply an untouched frontier. Elements of S\u00e1mi culture, most notably the g\u00e1kti<\/em>, are reproduced on souvenirs and worn by hired performers welcoming tourists or taking part in invented ceremonies that borrow elements of S\u00e1mi tradition to stage a \u201cmystical\u201d Lapland.<\/p>\n In both cases, the ways in which the space was staged, represented and used by tourism became contested and questioned by local communities.<\/p>\n Indigenous communities\u2019 dissatisfaction with how their places were marketed compelled them to change how tourism is done. Favela entrepreneurs began running their own \u201creality tours\u201d to counter the jeep tours.<\/p>\n This format means visitors walk through the neighbourhood, eat at local restaurants, and visit a local art atelier or watch a capoeira<\/a> performance, an Afro-Brazilian martial art disguised as dance. Crucially, visitors get to hear the community\u2019s own history rather than a script written by outsiders, and profits stay in the community.<\/p>\n In Lapland, a number of local bodies, including the S\u00e1mi parliament<\/a> and the S\u00e1mi craft association<\/a>, pushed back too. They insisted the g\u00e1kti<\/em> was not merchandise and issued detailed guidelines on how the S\u00e1mi could be represented in photographs and marketing.<\/p>\nWhose place is it?<\/h2>\n
Recognition and respect<\/h2>\n
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