Take Me to My Paradise : : Tourism and Nationalism in the British Virgin Islands / / Colleen Ballerino Cohen.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Rutgers University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Cohen, Colleen Ballerino,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2010]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (292 p.) :; 9 illustrations.

The British Virgin Islands (BVI) markets itself to international visitors as a paradise. But just whose paradise is it? Colleen Ballerino Cohen looks at the many players in the BVI tourism culture, from the tourists who leave their graffiti at beach bars that are popularized in song, to the waiters who serve them and the singers who entertain them. Interweaving more than twenty years of field notes, Cohen provides a firsthand analysis of how tourism transformed the BVI from a small neglected British colony to a modern nation that competes in a global economic market. With its close reading of everything from advertisements to political manifestos and constitutional reforms, Take Me to My Paradise deepens our understanding of how nationalism develops hand-in-hand with tourism, and documents the uneven impact of economic prosperity upon different populations. We hear multiple voices, including immigrants working in a tourism economy, nationalists struggling to maintain some control, and the anthropologist trying to make sense of it all. The result is a richly detailed and accessible ethnography on the impact of tourism on a country that came into being as a tourist destination.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Notes and Names -- Introduction: Take Me to My Paradise -- Chapter 1: Tourism’s Paradise -- Chapter 2. Making Paradise as a Tourist Desti-Nation -- Chapter 3. “Nature’s Little Secrets” -- Chapter 4. Cultural Negotiations -- Chapter 5. Like Looking at Ourselves in a Mirror -- Chapter 6. Stanley’s Swing and Other Intimate Encounters -- Chapter 7. Of Festivals, Calypso Kings, and Beauty Queens -- Chapter 8. Performing Paradise and Making Culture -- Conclusion: Technically, It’s a Country -- References -- Index -- About the Author