The problem of ethical travel is that, far from heralding the end
of dominance and control, new tourism represents a more nuanced
way in which relations of power are transmitted and circulated. A
comprehensive critique must challenge the very ethic which informs
new tourism practices. Rationally organized social arrangements that
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produce new practices in travel should not be assumed, as they are
by some postmodern theorists, to be a means of increased freedom
for the individual or for society (Giddens, 1990; Lash & Urry, 1987). All
new tourist genres are the same, regardless of their specific claims,
because of the existing unified ideology that encompasses all the
practices, and acts not as a means for travellers to exercise freedom
of choice, but as a means of further tyranny and manipulation of these
travellers, their destinations, and the people inhabiting those
destinations. The criticisms associated with mass tourism (and
modernity) - classism, racism, and environmental destruction - have
been co-opted by new tourism and reformulated into a new
vocabulary of survival integral to the new businesses' promotion and
growth. This new vocabulary renders true criticism benign, by
transforming dissent into marketable characteristics - individualized,
experiential, ethical, eco-friendly - that differentiate alternatives from