Toxic Tourism

Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice

Nonfiction, Reference & Language, Language Arts, Public Speaking, Rhetoric, Communication
Cover of the book Toxic Tourism by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo, University of Alabama Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo ISBN: 9780817388553
Publisher: University of Alabama Press Publication: August 26, 2014
Imprint: University Alabama Press Language: English
Author: Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
ISBN: 9780817388553
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Publication: August 26, 2014
Imprint: University Alabama Press
Language: English

Tourism is at once both a beloved pastime and a denigrated form of popular culture. Romanticized for its promise of pleasure, tourism is also potentially toxic, enabling the deadly exploitation of the cultures and environments visited. For many decades, the environmental justice movement has offered —toxic tours,— non-commercial trips intended to highlight people and locales polluted by poisonous chemicals. Out of these efforts and their popular reception, a new understanding of democratic participation in environmental decision-making has begun to arise. Phaedra C. Pezzullo examines these tours as a tactic of resistance and for their potential in reducing the cultural and physical distance between hosts and visitors.

Pezzullo begins by establishing the ambiguous roles tourism and the toxic have played in the U.S. cultural imagination since the mid-20th century in a range of spheres, including Hollywood films, women's magazines, comic books, and scholarly writings. Next, drawing on participant observation, interviews, documentaries, and secondary accounts in popular media, she identifies and examines a range of tourist performances enabled by toxic tours. Extended illustrations of the racial, class, and gender politics involved include Louisiana’s —Cancer Alley,— California’s San Francisco Bay Area, and the Mexican border town of Matamoros. Weaving together social critiques of tourism and community responses to toxic chemicals, this critical, rhetorical, and cultural analysis brings into focus the tragedy of ongoing patterns of toxification and our assumptions about travel, democracy, and pollution.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Tourism is at once both a beloved pastime and a denigrated form of popular culture. Romanticized for its promise of pleasure, tourism is also potentially toxic, enabling the deadly exploitation of the cultures and environments visited. For many decades, the environmental justice movement has offered —toxic tours,— non-commercial trips intended to highlight people and locales polluted by poisonous chemicals. Out of these efforts and their popular reception, a new understanding of democratic participation in environmental decision-making has begun to arise. Phaedra C. Pezzullo examines these tours as a tactic of resistance and for their potential in reducing the cultural and physical distance between hosts and visitors.

Pezzullo begins by establishing the ambiguous roles tourism and the toxic have played in the U.S. cultural imagination since the mid-20th century in a range of spheres, including Hollywood films, women's magazines, comic books, and scholarly writings. Next, drawing on participant observation, interviews, documentaries, and secondary accounts in popular media, she identifies and examines a range of tourist performances enabled by toxic tours. Extended illustrations of the racial, class, and gender politics involved include Louisiana’s —Cancer Alley,— California’s San Francisco Bay Area, and the Mexican border town of Matamoros. Weaving together social critiques of tourism and community responses to toxic chemicals, this critical, rhetorical, and cultural analysis brings into focus the tragedy of ongoing patterns of toxification and our assumptions about travel, democracy, and pollution.

More books from University of Alabama Press

Cover of the book Archaeology at Shiloh Indian Mounds, 1899-1999 by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Beautiful Politics of Music by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Prehistoric Indians of the Southeast by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Hemingway and Women by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Alabama by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Archipelagoes of My South by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Contemporaries and Snobs by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Her Contemporaries by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Inside the Teaching Machine by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book The Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Impotent by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Drone Warfare and Lawfare in a Post-Heroic Age by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Montgomery in the Good War by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
Cover of the book Ceramics, Chronology, and Community Patterns by Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy