Abstract
Internet technologies facilitate the dissemination of visual discourses of island paradise and romance to a new generation of privileged travelers through the promotion of destination weddings. This is a growing trend. It is estimated that 25 % of US couples choose to have a destination wedding. Mintel’s consumer research estimates that in the UK, up to 20 % of ceremonies take place abroad where neither the bride nor the groom has family, or is a resident or citizen. The destination wedding is a niche product for the tourist industry, and the Caribbean is a particularly popular destination due to the images of the Caribbean fulfilling “Western ideas of [paradise and] a romantic other” (C. Hall and Tucker 2004: 10). The “global market place” (Borgerson and Schroeder 2002: 572) is the context in which Sandals actively sells the Caribbean as a paradise destination and attainable luxury, through its interactive web site and high-quality glossy brochures.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Mintel All-Inclusive Holidays Report June 2014.
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
The Sandals company is listed as one of the strongest brands in the UK by Superbrands® http://www.superbrands.uk.com/ [last accessed August 16, 2015].
- 4.
Note that I have kept the original spelling for the quotations.
References
Anim-Addo, J. (2007). Touching the body. History, language and African Caribbean Women’s Writing. London: Mango Publishing.
Banerjea, K. (1999). NI-TEN-ICHI-RYU. Enter the world of the smart stepper. In R. Kaur & J. Hutnyk (Eds.), Travel worlds. Journeys in contemporary cultural politics. New York: Zed Books.
Barber, D. (2001, Autumn/Winter) A note from David Barber, Deputy Director, Jamaica Tourist Board. RoundAbout Jamaica, No. 11.
Barthes, R. (2013). Mythologies. A complete edition in a new translation. New York: Hill & Wang.
Bartky, S. L. (2010). Foucault, femininity, and the modernization of patriarchal power. In C. R. McCann & S. Kim (Eds.), Feminist theory reader local and global perspectives (2nd ed.). New York/London: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge.
Bhattacharyya, G., et al. (2002). Race and power. London: Routledge.
Borgerson, J. L., & Schroeder, J. E. (2002). Ethical issues of global marketing: Avoiding bad faith in visual representation. European Journal of Marketing, 36(5/6), 570–594.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). Distinction, a social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge.
Burns, P.M. et al. (2010). Introduction. In P. M. Burns, et al. (Eds.), Tourism and visual culture. Volume 1 theories and concepts. Oxfordshire: CABI.
Butler, J. (2007). Gender trouble. Feminism and the subversion of identity. London: Routledge.
Castells, M. (2010). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). Chichester: Blackwell Publishing.
Cohen, E. (1992). The study of touristic images of native people migrating the stereotype of the stereotype. In D. Pearce & R. Butler (Eds.), Tourism research: Critiques and challenges. London: Routledge.
Cole, E. R., & Sabik, N. J. (2009). Repairing a broken mirror. Intersectional approaches to diverse women’s perceptions of beauty and bodies. In M. T. Berger & K. Guidroz (Eds.), The intersectional approach. Transforming the academy through race, class and gender. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
d’Hauteserre. (2005). Maintaining the myth: Tahiti and its islands. In C. Cartier, & A. Lew (Eds.) Seductions of place. Geographical perspective on globalization and touristed landscapes. London: Routledge.
Dann, G. (1996). The people of tourist brochures. In T. Selwyn (Ed.), The tourist image: Myth and myth making. Chichester: Wiley.
Davis, K. (2006). Beyond the female body. In P. D. Marshall (Ed.), The celebrity culture reader. London: Routledge.
Dirlik, A. (2005). The postcolonial aura: Third World criticism in the age of global capitalism. In P. Leistyna (Ed.), Cultural studies. From theory to action. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Foucault, M. (1980). In C. Gordon (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Power/knowledge selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. London: Harvester Press Ltd.
Gabriel, J. (1994). Racism, culture, markets. London: Routledge.
Goldman, R. (1992). Reading ads socially. London: Routledge.
Gombrich, E.H. (1996). The essential Gombrich: Selected writings on art and culture.
Hall, S. (1992). The west and the rest. In B. Giebens & S. Hall (Eds.), Formations of modernity. London: Polity Press in Association with the Open University.
Hall, S. (1996). When was the postcolonial? Thinking at the limit. In I. Chambers & L. Curti (Eds.), The postcolonial question. Common skies, divided horizons. London: Routledge.
Hall, S. (2013). The Kilburn Manifesto: our challenge to the neoliberal victory. The Guardian, 24 April. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/24/kilburn-manifesto-challenge-neoliberal-victory. Last accessed 24 Oct 2015.
Hall, C. M., & Tucker, H. (2004). Tourism and postcolonialism. An introduction. In C. M. Hall & H. Tucker (Eds.), Tourism and postcolonialism. Contested discourses, identities and representations. Oxon: Routledge.
Haymes, S. N. (1995). Race, culture, and the city. A pedagogy for black urban struggle. Albany: State University New York.
Hesmondhalgh, D. (2002). The cultural industries. London: Sage.
Hodge, L. (2014). How far to beautiful? Thinness, eating disorders and sexual trauma. In S. McNamara (Ed.), (Re)Possessing beauty. Politics, poetics and change. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
Hooks, B. (1996). Reel to real. Race, sex and class at the movies. London: Routledge.
Illouz, E. (1997). Consuming the romantic utopia. Berkeley, CA/London: University of California Press.
Ingraham, C. (2008). White weddings. Romancing heterosexuality in popular culture. London: Routledge.
Kaur, R., & Hutnyk, J. (1999). Introduction. In R. Kaur & J. Hutnyk (Eds.), Travel worlds: Journeys in contemporary cultural politics. London: Zed Books.
Lipsitz, G. (2006). The possessive investment in whiteness. How white people profit from identity politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
McCann, C. R., & Kim, S. (2010). Introduction. In C. R. McCann & S. Kim (Eds.), Feminist theory reader local and global perspectives. New York/London: Routledge.
McDonald, M. G. (2005). Tourist weddings in Hawai’i: Consuming the destination. In C. Cartier & A. Lew (Eds.), Seductions of place. Geographical perspective on globalization and touristed landscapes. London: Routledge.
Mirzoeff, N. (Ed.). (1999). An introduction to visual culture. London/New York: Routledge.
Morgan, N., & Pritchard, A. (1998). Tourism, promotion and power. Creating images, creating identities. Chichester: Wiley.
Parker, D., & Song, M. (Eds.). (2001). Rethinking ‘mixed race’. London: Pluto Press.
Pitcher, B. (2014). Consuming race. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Robinson, M. (1999). Cultural conflicts in tourism: Inevitability and inequality. In M. Robinson & P. Boniface (Eds.), Tourism and cultural conflicts. Oxon/New York: CABI.
Said, E. (1978 [1995]). Orientalism. Western conceptions of the orient. London: Penguin.
Sandals. (2014). Love is all you need. The rest is luxury included wedding booklet.
Schroeder, J. E. (2002). Visual consumption. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Selwyn, T. (Ed.). (1996). The tourist image: Myth and myth making. Chichester: Wiley.
Sheller, M. (2003). Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. London: Routledge.
Simmons, B. A. (2004). Saying the same old things. A contemporary travel discourse and the popular magazine text. In C. M. Hall & H. Tucker (Eds.), Tourism and postcolonialism. Contested discourses, identities and representations. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Simon, D. (2008). Neoliberalism, structural adjustment and poverty reduction strategies. In V. Desai & R. B. Potter (Eds.), The companion to development studies (2nd ed.). London: Hodder Education.
Spencer, S. (2011). Visual research methods in the social sciences. Awakening visions. London/New York: Routledge.
Spivak, G. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.
Stanfield, J. (1993). Epistemological considerations. In J. Stanfield (Ed.), Race and ethnicity in research methods. London: Sage.
Stone, S. D. (1995). The myth of bodily perfection. Disability and Society, 4, 413–424.
Strachan, I. G. (2002). Paradise and plantation. Tourism and culture in the Anglophone Caribbean. Charlottesville/London: University of Virginia Press.
Thompson, K. A. (2006). An eye for the tropics. Tourism, photography and framing the Caribbean picturesque. London: Duke University Press.
Uzzell, D. (1984). An alternative structuralist approach to the psychology of tourism marketing. Annals of Tourism Research, 11, 79–99.
Walter, N. (2010). Living dolls: The return of sexism. London: Virago Press.
Ware, V. (1996). Defining the forces: ‘Race’, gender and memories of empire. In I. Chambers & L. Curti (Eds.), The postcolonial question. Common skies: Divided horizons. London: Routledge.
Wilkes, K. (2013). From the landscape to the white female body: Representations of postcolonial luxury in contemporary tourism visual texts. In J. A. Lester & C. Scarles (Eds.), Mediating the tourist experience: From brochures to virtual encounters. Farnham/Surrey: Ashgate.
Wint, T-A. (2012). Once you go you know: Tourism, colonial nostalgia and national lies in Jamaica. Master of Arts Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin.
Wong, L. M. (1994). Di(s)-secting and Dis(s)closing ‘whiteness’: Two tales about psychology. In K.-K. Bhavnani & A. Phoenix (Eds.), Shifting identities shifting racisms. A feminism and psychology reader. London: Sage.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wilkes, K. (2016). Introduction. In: Whiteness, Weddings, and Tourism in the Caribbean. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50391-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50391-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-50390-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-50391-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)