Comments on: Poorism

By: Slumdog Millionaires and Poorism « Written on the Wind

Slumdog Millionaires and Poorism « Written on the Wind — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:05:31 +0000

[...] Nothing exceeds like excess [...]

By: james

james — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:29:38 +0000

This is crazy?, Is there a adobt a person (black) and now it’s ok. dam How we have changed! Try the sowtfhside of your town! Same Color, Different Flavor! Why go elsewere whwe here is he problem? Next!

By: lia

lia — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:54:35 +0000

I think at least the rich would have learnt some compassion from this whole experience.

that way the whole point of the excersice i think!

By: eera

eera — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:48:07 +0000

Howcome no one ever thinks of taking the poor on holiday to see how the rich live?If poverty can be so frighteneing for some, the utter wastefulness of how the rich live can be a real eye opener too , one that willmake the poor understand why the Earth is suffering environmentally and atleast make them feel good about the fact that they are not responsible for it .

By: Prog Gold » Blog Archive » Linky, Linky

Prog Gold » Blog Archive » Linky, Linky — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:57:08 +0000

[...] Oh well, that’s all right then. What I’d be interested to know is how much of that three hundred grand is for thr meal and how much for the poverty tour and what, if anything, went to the villagers. [Via Last Appetite] [...]

By: Phil Lees

Phil Lees — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:34:37 +0000

It is this event that…

Alain Solivérès, whose famed Taillevent in Paris has two Michelin stars, Jean-Michel Lorain of the three-star La Côte Saint Jacques in Burgundy and Michel Trama from the three-star Les Loges de L’Aubergade in southwest France.

…all pulled out from

The Mumbai article you’re thinking about might be this poorism article from the Smithsonian mag that seemed to kick this whole thing off.

I find the trend incredibly fascinating (when I’m not finding it morally repugnant). I’d love to know if touring poor places does actually increase the tourists’ chance of taking action or not; or whether people feel that by touring a poor place, that they have made it better solely by the virtue of them being there.

While I was in Cambodia, I had a hand in organising tours for donors out to some of the sites where my organisation worked: Half day visiting people about to die (“monitoring and evaluation”)/half day touring Angkor Wat. The filthy rich people tend to either cry a lot or be too scared to leave the Landcruiser.

At least they do when I was doing my job well.

Maytel – I’ve been wracking my brain today as to whether I could think of an example of metatourism: where you go on holidays to see other people going on holidays. I can’t think of a decent one, apart from people-watching at airports.

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:45:57 +0000

Didn’t I read somewhere that the michelin chefs pulled out? Or was this another tour?

By: Maytel

Maytel — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:36:28 +0000

I guess it depends. With all the press its getting lately I have been wondering whether I should set up a “tour of the concerned” to Bangkok’s sex tourism sites so other concerned feminists can wander around and be horrified by the debauchery that is Sukhumvit Soi 2, or is tourism of sex tourism going too far. Personally I would like to observe the filthy rich visit a poor village and examine their responses. Tourism of Poorism if you will. Poorism maybe unethical but I sure do find it interesting, obviously others do too…thus the media overkill

By: Robyn

Robyn — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:10:13 +0000

There’s been a lot of recent press on ‘poverty tours’ (isn’t it weird the way media will latch on to a topic and do it to death? I was taught -wrongly? – that the first thing you should do, as a pitching writer, is read back issues and never pitch a story that’s been done within, say, the last two years).
I recently read something on touring a slum in Mumbai or some such. The author went in feeling like a creepy voyeur but came out feeling that he’d ‘connected’ with people he never would have met in a neighborhood he never would have ventured to. I don’t know what to think about it. On the one hand it’s distasteful. On the other, I know that many travelers wouldn’t wander places I or you might, and have a more narrow view of the places they visit as a result. Are tours that open eyes to the reality of places like Mumbai, that are enjoying otherwise sort of ‘glam’ coverage in recent travel press, a good thing?