Foreign Policy Blogs

Slumdog Study Abroad?

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There is an excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times, Slumdog Tourism, by Kennedy Odede.  It notes the increase in “slum tourism” in places like Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai and Nairobi.

Slum tourism has its advocates, who say it promotes social awareness. And it’s good money, which helps the local economy. But it’s not worth it. Slum tourism turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from. People think they’ve really “seen” something — and then go back to their lives and leave me, my family and my community right where we were before.

I have witnessed this phenomenon many times, especially in North Africa (I lived in Morocco and Tunisia).  It struck me as more prevalent among those staying for at least a few weeks or longer.  Students on study abroad programs, Fulbrighters, Peace Corps volunteers and others seemed to be under the impression that in order to see the “real North Africa” they had to avoid anything other than the most impoverished settings; affluence, even the middle class variety, was the sign of Western influence and to be avoided as “inauthentic.” 

This view of travel and study abroad is not much different than the mission civilastrice Hubert Lyautey and his French colonial administration brought to Morocco.  The inhabitants of Morocco were, in this conception, noble savages, and their nobility was very much tied to the savagery of their lives.  French cities were built to ring the so-called Arab cities with a cordon sanitaire separating the two spaces.  This line of analysis is well tread in scholarship and one can delve into works by Janet Abu-Lughod, Edward Said and Pierre Bourdieu for more.

But it often seems accepted by the students and other young people we send overseas that authenticity and nobility can only be found in the slums.  Even those who are well meaning fall into this trap, glorifying deprivations abroad they would never tolerate at home.  It is because their very conception of being authentically Arab or North African is based on a conception not all that different then Lyautey’s.  In my experience, those most likely to quote Said’s Orientalism are also those most likely to engage in the thinking Said so deftly deconstructs.

The lesson? We should make sure to redouble our efforts to sensitize our students going overseas and encourage them to take as sophisticated a view of other societies as they can.  We don’t want them only locked away in 5-star hotels, of course, but we also shouldn’t have them discount large swaths of other societies as being inauthentic (whatever that really means).

 

Author

James Ketterer

James Ketterer is Dean of International Studies at Bard College and Director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs program. He previously served as Egypt Country Director for AMIDEAST, based in Cairo and before that as Vice Chancellor for Policy & Planning and Deputy Provost at the State University of New York (SUNY). In 2007-2008 he served on the staff of the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education. He previously served as Director of the SUNY Center for International Development.

Ketterer has extensive experience in technical assistance for democratization projects, international education, legislative development, elections, and policy analysis – with a focus on Africa and the Middle East. He has won and overseen projects funded by USAID, the Department for International Development (UK), the World Bank and the US State Department. He served on the National Security Council staff at the White House, as a policy analyst at the New York State Senate, a project officer with the Center for Legislative Development at the University at Albany, and as an international election specialist for the United Nations, the African-American Institute, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is currently a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Association and has also held teaching positions in international politics at the New School for Social Research, Bard College, State University of New York at New Paltz, the University at Albany, Russell Sage College, and the College of Saint Rose.

Ketterer has lectured and written extensively on various issues for publications including the Washington Post, Middle East Report, the Washington Times, the Albany Times Union, and the Journal of Legislative Studies. He was a Boren National Security Educational Program Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and in Morocco, an International Graduate Rotary Scholar at the Bourguiba School of Languages in Tunisia, and studied Arabic at the King Fahd Advanced School of Translation in Morocco. He received his education at Johns Hopkins University, New York University and Fordham University.

Areas of focus: Public Diplomacy; Middle East; Africa; US Foreign Policy

Contributor to: Global Engagement