Tourist resorts such as Sugar Beach are enclaves (Freitag 1994; Ayala 1991; Torres
2002), devised and policed to keep the world outside at bay. In addition to the
preservation of external spatial barriers, internally, the maintenance of ordered
textures, smooth surfaces and manicured vegetation – ceaselessly reproduced
through the toils of hotel workers – safeguards the illusion of semiotic, material
and social order. There is rarely any matter out of place, whether in the form of dirt,
jarring sights, smells and sounds, potentially “threatening” persons, or “inappropriate” behavior from guests or staff. “Enclavic” tourist space such as this, contrasts
with “heterogeneous” tourist space, where tourism coexists within a more complex
matrix of other activities, spaces, people and sensations (Edensor 1998). The desire
for otherness can be satiated within heterogeneous tourist realms although tourists
may experience displacement, a frightening immersion in unfamiliar sensations
amongst baffling cultural practices without any familiar reference points.
In contradistinction to the apparent otherness (for Western tourists) of less
purified, multipurpose forms of tourist space, single-purpose tourist enclaves must
contextualize, commodify and contain the “exotic” and the different. The paradox
that such themed spaces face is that these attributes of otherness must be contextualized within a context of homely familiarity and security, within the serialized codes that inform the production of enclavic tourist space. In effect, sites such