Slum tourism is a globalizing trend and a controversial form of tourism. Impoverished urban areas have always enticed the popular imagination, considered to be places of 'otherness', 'moral decay', 'deviant liberty' or 'authenticity'. 'Slumming' has a long tradition in the Global North, for example in Victorian London when the upper classes toured the East End. What is new, however, is its development dynamics and its rapidly spreading popularity across the globe. Township tourism and favela tourism have currently reached mass tourism characteristics in South Africa and in Rio de Janeiro,...

Slum tourism is a controversial pastime rising in popularity on a global scale. Known as 'slumming', it has been practised since Victorian times. In recent years, slum tourism occurs in more and more cities of the Global South. Township tourism across South Africa, favela tourism in Rio de Janeiro and slum tourism in Mumbai have grown to mass tourism dimensions. This volume provides a collection of studies that shed light on the geographies of inequality in slum tourism from historical, sociological, political and anthropological perspectives. By connecting slum tourism to debates over the...