Revisiting hosts and guests: Ethnographic insights on touristic encounters from Cuba

Abstract

Scholars and commentators trying to assess the nature of touristic encounters have often reached contrasting conclusions. While on the one hand, such encounters appear to be fraught by striking inequalities, highly deceptive, and a constant source of misunderstanding and reciprocal exploitation, on the other hand, they seem to hold the promise of reciprocal exchange and positive intercultural connections. How do these opposing evaluations take shape, and what informs them? Building on a selective review of anthropological literature on touristic encounters and ethnography of relationships between ‘tourists’ and ‘locals’ in Cuba, the article unpacks the moral underpinnings and interpretive frameworks on which these polarizing views are grounded. In touristic encounters in Cuba, contrasts and oppositions between sentiment and interest lead the different actors involved to blur and redraw boundaries between the intrinsic and the instrumental value of relationships. In explaining these different assessments of encounters the article draws attention to the competing agendas, aspirations, and moral demands that inform the way judgments are made, and provides analytical pathways to illuminate the uneasy coexistence of different interpretative frameworks in tourism.