ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a number of salient themes and contradictory tendencies within the politics of tourism in the Mediterranean. Commencing with a brief reflection on the integration of the Mediterranean into European orbits of war, conquest and colonial rule, it foregrounds the importance of tourism in the uneven spread of capitalism throughout the region along with processes of nationalism and state formation. A salient characteristic of Mediterranean tourism has been the structures of patronage and clientage that have persisted and reinforced a ‘rentier’ system of accumulation in the capitalist articulation of Mediterranean tourism whilst also enabling family micro-enterprises to establish a significant foothold in these industries. The latter part of the chapter considers how the close alignment between tourism and neoliberal capitalism has given rise to forms of civic resistance, whilst securitization and the re-bordering of the region threaten to fundamentally reconfigure the political geography of Mediterranean tourism and to disrupt the dense yet fragile ties between tourism and the region’s historic cosmopolitanism. Finally, it explores the role of heritage both as a marketable commodity and marker of intra-regional difference, as well as a medium through which alternative, critical narratives of tourism and Mediterranean identities are emerging.
