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Revista Mal Estar e Subjetividade

Print version ISSN 1518-6148On-line version ISSN 2175-3644

Abstract

ALVERGA, Alex Reinecke de  and  DIMENSTEIN, Magda. Tourism and consumpition of cities: notes on biopower. Rev. Mal-Estar Subj. [online]. 2009, vol.9, n.1, pp. 277-311. ISSN 1518-6148.

Based on the understanding of biopower as one of the main forms of capitalism propagation, Michel Foucault will promote this discussion of biopower as a double-edged technology. On one side it regulates the bodies by means of confinement institutions to produce a docile and useful individual (political-anatomy) and concomitantly projects upon the human collective, promoting life in populations, arranging cities through the control of the indices of natality, mortality, morbidity, and longevity, thereby affecting, in a massifying way, the body species (biopolitics of the populations). Inspired by the foucaultian analysis of biopower, we propose the following question that directs the objective of this article: How does this double-edge technology interfere in the contemporary tourism practice? More precisely, how does tourism transforms itself in an agency of biopower? The city of Natal, capital of the State of Rio Grande do Norte will be the focus of our reflection, because even though it is situated case, it presents elements of a national, and maybe global, problem. Then, we argue that tourism has transformed itself in an important intermediary for the (re)invention of cities. We then discuss the modifications of the theoretical application to the consumption theme in a capitalist society, highlighting the understanding of mass tourism as one specific form of consumption and subjectivity production process involved. We also discuss the investments of biopower, based on the disciplinarization of the look that guides tourist experience. Finally, we ask questions related to conflicts resulting from tourism activities in the city of Natal, pointing out some resolution and resistance aspects in this process.

Keywords : biopower; consumption; cities; tourism; discipline.

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