Green Tourism and the Ambiguities of Sustainability Discourse: The Case of New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward

Kevin Fox Gotham and Joshua A. Lewis
Additional contact information
Kevin Fox Gotham: Department of Sociology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA
Joshua A. Lewis: Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA

International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development (IJSESD), 2015, vol. 6, issue 2, 57-73

Abstract: This paper uses a case study of the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood in New Orleans to examine the relationships between green tourism and sustainability discourse in shaping the post-Katrina rebuilding process. Specially, we draw on long-term ethnographic field observations to highlight the tensions between abstract and idealized conceptions of sustainability and the complicated realities of uneven rebuilding and neighborhood disinvestment. We focus on changes in the tourism sector since Hurricane Katrina, the promotion of green tourism through actor Brad Pitt's Make It Right (MIR) Foundation, and the ambiguities and paradoxes of sustainability discourse. Overall, our goal is to develop a critical understanding of niche tourism in a disaster-devastated neighborhood and highlight the ways in which unspoken norms about sustainability create political-economic blind-spots to the ways in which socio-spatial inequalities, disinvestment, and entrenched social problems structure life in the city and the Lower Ninth Ward.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve. ... 18/ijsesd.2015040104 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:igg:jsesd0:v:6:y:2015:i:2:p:57-73

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development (IJSESD) is currently edited by Elias G. Carayannis

More articles in International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development (IJSESD) from IGI Global
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journal Editor ().