The central problem of this article is the proposition that new
tourism as an industry offers an ethical way to travel. New tourism is a
concept recently adopted in debates to indicate a variety of tourisms
that have emerged that in some respects seek to distinguish
themselves from what is referred to as mainstream or conventional
mass tourism. New tourism activities, marketed as designed for and
capable of countering the differentials inherent in conventional forms
of mass travel, are said to humanize tourism in what is deemed the
Third World.1 They are seen as protecting the fragile ecosystem,
benefiting locals as much as visitors, democratizing travel among
classes, and acting as tools for cross-cultural understanding
(McLaren, 1998). This is primarily a discussion of how the Third World
is constructed through new tourism - socially, geographically, and
ideologically. A secondary purpose of this paper is to examine how
these constructions reveal the manner in which control of tourism
development resides firmly in the First World. Theories of travel
focused on local government decisions tend to minimize if not wholly