The Discreet Harm of the Bourgeoisie

There's something a bit sordid about well-heeled tourists gawking at the world's poor through the tinted glass of a tour bus or the digital screen of a camcorder. "Oh look," a cardiologist murmurs to his peroxide-blond wife, "the little guy have a house out of aluminum!" "Darling! Simply darling! There truly is some sort of ascetic joy to be found in penury." Riddled not so much with schadenfruede as with the self-deluding patronization, the trips promise to show the "humor, enterprise and non-stop activity" of slum life. These sort of tours have popped up in most cities that have them. Sao Paolo, Rio, Delhi, Soweto, all have some permutation of the haves gawking at the have-nots. Even Rotterdam has a tour of the minority ghettoes called City Safari. The Economist Cities Guide just featured a new tour of the slums of Mumbai called "Reality Tours." The Tour company, led by an UK expat, takes tourists into the heart of the Dharavi slum and donates 80% of its proceeds to NGOs. Though this may assuage some guilt, it is a fine line between exploitation and exploration and 80% of a $7 tour, might just not be enough to justify ogling the slum's adorably filthy ragamuffin rapscallions.

Reality Tours and Travel [via Economist]

Previously: Photos of Bangkok's Biggest Slum, Little Slum Inn, Word of the Day: Poorism, Slammin' It In Mumbai, Touring New Orleans' Pain