Virtue above rubble: the ethics of slum tourism.

Abstract

Slum tourism was developed as a result of the growing industry of tourism. Aimed at generating net revenue for the poor, slum tourism is now conducted in different parts of the world, the most well known being in Brazil and India. In the Philippines, the first site of slum tours is in Sitio Damayan, Barangay 105, Tondo, Manila. Tours have already been going on in Sitio Damayan for three to four years. The issues that arose from the data collection, however, suggests the need for re-structuring and re-evaluating whether or not tours should still be conducted. As such, this study served as an evaluation of whether the slum tour conducted in Sitio Damayan is ethical or not. The ethical parameters used by the researcher are three guidelines proposed by Selinger, Outterson, and Whyte (2011): participative justice, compensation justice, and recognition justice. To provide foundation for the research, two complementary theories were used: Lukacs‟ Theory of Reification and MacCannell‟s Staged Authenticity. The distortion of the residents‟ consciousness, which is an effect of reification, leads to a modification of reality. Thus, what the tourist sees in a slum tour is a modified reality of what the residents think tourists want to see. Employing a triangulation of methods composed of focused group discussions, interviews, and a survey of 79 respondents, the study led to the conclusion that none of the guideposts were fulfilled by the slum tour in Sitio Damayan. Data results showed that no consent was acquired, no adequate provision of compensation, and no channels for communication between and among all actors concerned in the slum tour. Added to this is the normalization of the presence of tourists in the area, which has resulted to the favorable perception of tourists toward slum tourism even if they receive no compensation from it. The low levels of interaction between the residents and the policy-makers have also resulted to a disempowered community. As such, the residents viewed themselves as objects of the tour rather than subjects who can actively participate and interact.