Free time as a central issue of tourism studies: a genealogy of leisure/idleness based on the indigenous cosmovisions of Latin America

Abstract

ABSTRACT The dominance of the neoliberal ideology over tourism praxis in the last decades have undermined the possibilities for tourism to be seen as a social transformative force. This article considers that the richest part of the tourist experience belongs to the realm of ‘free time’. There is evidence of the importance of free time and leisure in indigenous societies, and to justify that the common-sense view of leisure activities should be confronted. Most literature on indigenous voices in tourism studies identifies the potential of indigenous ideas to contribute to Western/European values of resilience, sustainability and environmental justice. However, such values are employed in the name of modernization and neoliberalism which are taken for granted as values of civilization, but are not so in reality. Thus, this article explores anthropological and indigenous bibliographic productions from Latin America and interviews with indigenous people located in Northeast Brazil to produce a genealogy of leisure, based on 'cultural anthropophagy'. Violence, racism and fear emerged as structural elements of the Western development choice. Tourism studies could further examine leisure as a means to inform contemporary development policies and contribute toward a better life in society, relatively free from such structural ills.