Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Notes and Names
Introduction: Take Me to My Paradise
1. Tourism’s Paradise: Historical Background
2. Making Paradise as a Tourist Desti-Nation
3. “Nature’s Little Secrets”: Marketing Paradise and Making Nation
4. Cultural Negotiations: Race, Identity, and Citizenship
5. Like Looking at Ourselves in a Mirror: Collaborative Ethnography in
Paradise
6. Stanley’s Swing and Other Intimate Encounters
7. Of Festivals, Calypso Kings, and Beauty Queens
8. Performing Paradise and Making Culture
Conclusion: Technically, It’s a Country
Price:$25.95 Subtitle: Tourism and Nationalism
in the British Virgin Islands Author:
Colleen Ballerino
Cohen Subject:Anthropology Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4810-4 Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4809-8 Pages:
282 pages, 7 photographs,
1 figure, 1 map Publication Date: October 2010
Praise:
"Take Me
to My Paradise makes a genuine contribution to the growing
literature on tourism and on those societies which have become
economically reliant on international tourism . . . the nuanced
observations and analytical revelations are fascinating."-Cynthia
Enloe, Department of International Development, Community, and
Environment and Women's Studies, Clark University
Description:
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.
About the Author:
Colleen Ballerino Cohen is
a professor of anthropology and women’s studies at Vassar College. She
has written several articles and has produced three ethnographic videos
on BVI tourism, festivals, and musical culture.
