Selling Authentic Happiness: Indigenous wellbeing and romanticised inequality in tourism advertising

Tarryn Phillips, John Taylor, Edward Narain and Philippa Chandler

Annals of Tourism Research, 2021, vol. 87, issue C

Abstract: An international campaign launched in 2019 encourages tourists to visit Fiji, where the locals may not be wealthy yet are ‘rich in happiness.’ Drawing on critical discourse analysis, this paper investigates the history and implications of commodifying economic assumptions about indigenous happiness and wellbeing. Invoking contemporary neoliberal approaches to ‘positive psychology’, the campaign repackages historically-entrenched colonial stereotypes about the ‘happy native’ while ostensibly inviting reflexivity about the negative impacts of Western capitalism on human wellbeing. In doing so, it problematically romanticises poverty and rationalises continued labour exploitation in tourism. We argue that commodifying anti-monetary logics about subjective wellbeing in the Global South paradoxically serves to justify and further entrench objective economic inequalities.

Keywords: Fiji tourism; Wellbeing; Poverty; Neoliberalism; Happiness; Positive psychology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:87:y:2021:i:c:s0160738320302590

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2020.103115

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