Overview

The Living Inca Town presents a rich case study of tourism in Ollantaytambo, a rapidly developing destination in the southern Peruvian Andes and the starting point for many popular treks to Machu Picchu. Tourism is generally welcomed in Ollantaytambo, as it provides a steady stream of work for local businesses, particularly those run by women. However, the obvious material inequalities between locals and tourists affect many interactions and have contributed to conflict and aggression throughout the tourist zones. Based on a number of research visits over the course of fifteen years, The Living Inca Town examines the experiences and interactions of locals, visitors, and tourism brokers. The book makes room for unique perspectives and uses innovative visual methods, including photovoice images and pen and ink drawings, to represent different viewpoints of day-to-day tourist encounters. The Living Inca Town vividly illustrates how tourism can perpetuate gendered and global inequalities, while also exploring new avenues to challenge and renegotiate these roles.

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9781487508104

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Reviews

The Living Inca Town is an empirically rich and dynamic case study of tourist encounters in Ollantaytambo, Peru. Guelke's careful use of interviews, participant observation, and visual images gives voice to both the locals and tourists, allowing us to engage with multiple perspectives on the benefits and the downsides of the tourist industry in Peru. The participants' stories and photos render a complex picture of how they experience tourist encounters through gender, race, class, and other forms of identity. These stories and visual images illuminate sites of oppression, resistance, and empowerment in the context of material and social inequality. This book is an important and lively contribution to the literature on gender, tourism, and economic development. - Laura Parisi, University of Victoria The Living Inca Town offers a rich ethnographic study of gender and other dimensions of tourism in a cultural heritage site during the growth years of the past decade in Peru. Along with her own evocative illustrations, this is highly compelling reading. - Florence E. Babb, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A delightfully readable account of complex social, material, and intimate relations that constitute Andean tourism in a small town in Peru. In weaving her ethnographic account, the author's innovative use of photographs and sketches presents a view not only of the tourists' gaze but also the gaze of the anthropologist and Peruvian market vendors, guides, and hosts.Without shying away from challenging aspects of tourism, this book opens up tourism's many facets and leaves the reader with a complex view. - Susan Frohlick, University of British Columbia A thoughtful and engaging tour of the contentious cultural fields of tourism. Careful ethnographic work with many kinds of tourists, tourism entrepreneurs, resident foreigners, and international volunteers evoke a crossroad of global currents in the Andes. Karoline Guelke's beautiful drawings and the photos taken by her collaborators explore modes of representation while adding color and immediacy. - Julia Murphy, Kwantlen Polytechnic University Visual methodologies are often placed in the pigeonhole of the ethnographic enterprise, but not here. Photographs by local people - from dirty hotel rooms to cute lamas - and beautiful watercolours dive without filters into the moments of the tourist encounters and propel visual research tools into the magnificent potential of creative methodologies in anthropology. - Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, University of Victoria

"""The Living Inca Town offers a rich ethnographic study of gender and other dimensions of tourism in a cultural heritage site during the growth years of the past decade in Peru. Along with her own evocative illustrations, this is highly compelling reading.""--Florence E. Babb, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ""A delightfully readable account of complex social, material, and intimate relations that constitute Andean tourism in a small town in Peru. In weaving her ethnographic account, the author's innovative use of photographs and sketches presents a view not only of the tourists' gaze but also the gaze of the anthropologist and Peruvian market vendors, guides, and hosts.Without shying away from challenging aspects of tourism, this book opens up tourism's many facets and leaves the reader with a complex view.""--Susan Frohlick, University of British Columbia ""A thoughtful and engaging tour of the contentious cultural fields of tourism. Careful ethnographic work with many kinds of tourists, tourism entrepreneurs, resident foreigners, and international volunteers evoke a crossroad of global currents in the Andes. Karoline Guelke's beautiful drawings and the photos taken by her collaborators explore modes of representation while adding color and immediacy.""--Julia Murphy, Kwantlen Polytechnic University ""Visual methodologies are often placed in the pigeonhole of the ethnographic enterprise, but not here. Photographs by local people - from dirty hotel rooms to cute lamas - and beautiful watercolours dive without filters into the moments of the tourist encounters and propel visual research tools into the magnificent potential of creative methodologies in anthropology.""--Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, University of Victoria ""The Living Inca Town is an empirically rich and dynamic case study of tourist encounters in Ollantaytambo, Peru. Guelke's careful use of interviews, participant observation, and visual images gives voice to both the locals and tourists, allowing us to engage with multiple perspectives on the benefits and the downsides of the tourist industry in Peru. The participants' stories and photos render a complex picture of how they experience tourist encounters through gender, race, class, and other forms of identity. These stories and visual images illuminate sites of oppression, resistance, and empowerment in the context of material and social inequality. This book is an important and lively contribution to the literature on gender, tourism, and economic development.""--Laura Parisi, University of Victoria"

Author Information

Karoline Guelke is an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria.

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