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IntroductionAuthentic New Orleans
In the days following the devastation unleashed by Hurri-cane Katrina, media outlets from around the world broadcasted rivetingimages of stranded residents, widespread physical damage, and floodedneighborhoods. News coverage of the aftermath revealed that the vastmajority of people left behind in New Orleans were poor, AfricanAmerican, and elderly. Subsequent analysis confirmed the unequal effectof the hurricane’s damage, showing that almost one-half of the peopleliving in damaged areas were African American and over 45 percent ofhomes were occupied by renters.1 Since the hurricane, residents havebeen returning to the city, even though physical destruction is wide-spread. The process of rebuilding the economic base, public school sys-tems, legal and government infrastructures, and transportation systemsis likely to take years.
The demographic and population consequences of the evacuation oftens of thousands of people remain unclear. The physical damage wasextensive and uneven. Some of New Orleans’s famous tourist attrac-tions like the French Quarter and the Audubon Zoo suffered little neg-ative impact from the hurricane, whereas others such as City Park andthe city’s famous cemeteries experienced major damage. Moreover,while the Uptown area and Garden District neighborhood escaped se-vere flooding, other neighborhoods such as the Ninth Ward, Treme,Marigny, and Broadmoor remained largely unoccupied months after thestorm. Katrina’s forced displacement of residents and destruction hasnot only exposed the fault lines of race and class but also inspired de-bate over whether New Orleans’s rich culture and distinctive authentic-ity have been lost forever. No one knows what will come of the disper-sal of New Orleans’s music and artistic life, or whether the thousands ofartists and musical transients will become transplants.
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Since the havoc, journalists, scholars, and others have presented theworld with at least three contrasting scenarios for New Orleans’s future,scenarios that reflect different interpretations of the city’s past develop-ment as a tourist destination. One interpretation views the city as atwenty-first-century Pompeii, where the ravages of Katrina have wipedclean the enriching and vibrant culture that used to undergird and sup-port a flourishing tourism sector. According to popular writer AnneRice, Hurricane Katrina “has done what racism couldn’t do, and whatsegregation couldn’t do either. Nature has laid the city waste—with ascope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii.”2 Displaced musicians,preservationists, and others assert that what made New Orleans uniquewas the unbroken traditions of jazz music, creole architecture, and deli-cious cuisine. “The flavor and physical setting of the city’s culture islocked up in the vernacular wooden houses of the nineteenth century,”according to historian S. Frederick Starr, “and I fear from them now.[Are city officials] going to seize on this as an opportunity for mass de-molition, in order to build something akin to Houston?”3 “It’s Ar-mageddon for the culture,” according to one New Orleans pianist; “it’sthe ephemeral folk expression in New Orleans that is gone,” echoes onearcheologist.4 In an op-ed piece titled “Requiem for the Crescent City,”Washington Post journalist Eugene Robinson eulogized that the “oldNew Orleans is dead” because “the people who made it special aregone and so is the path for them to come back.”5 “In 2025, I can prac-tically write the tourist-guide spiel,” according to local architect AllenEskew; “the dark history will be buried, along with the black bodies.And that means a lot of black culture will be buried along with it.”6
These views suggest that the scattering of residents throughout the na-tion has eroded the tight-knit communities that used to be the seedbedsof cultural invention in the city. In this scenario, the rebuilding of NewOrleans will be akin to the banalization of the city and its transforma-tion into a culturally empty place divested of authenticity and commu-nal value.
A second interpretation is that a reconstructed New Orleans willemerge, one displaying the features of a Disney theme park or LasVegas–style entertainment destination. In this vision of the future, theresurrected city will be sanitized of its past charm and turned into a cul-turally and ethnically homogenous city that is an artificial and contrivedversion of its old urban self. “Will this quirky and endlessly fascinatingplace become an X-rated theme park, a Disneyland for adults?” Tulane
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University history professor Larry Powell asked in a speech. “Is it fatedto be the place where Orlando embraces Las Vegas? That’s the Ameri-can Pompeii I apprehend rising from the toxic sludge deposited by LakePonchartrain: an ersatz city, veritable site of schlock and awe.”7 Ac-cording to filmmaker Ken Burns, the “spectacular vernacular architec-ture is all but destroyed. . . . I’m worried the money will come pouringin and what we’ll wind up with is a bigger, gaudier New Orleans, likeLas Vegas.”8
In this interpretation, people worry about the taming of New Or-leans’s improvisational impulse and the loss of creative culture embod-ied in the characters and eccentrics that once populated the city’s neigh-borhoods. “New Orleans is the most African of American cities, andthose who have been displaced and potentially have the fewer resourcesto return are a core of this culture,” according to Danille Taylor, deanof humanities at Dillard University. “It’ll be a Disneyland if those peo-ple aren’t there.”9 This sense of unease is fueled by the slow progress ofrebuilding and eerie rumors that city leaders are courting global enter-tainment chains and casinos to locate to New Orleans to supply thecapital to rebuild the city. Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s initial proposal to cre-ate a casino district to stimulate rebuilding was quickly retracted in theface of intense opposition by local groups and the state governor’s of-fice. “They’re trying to mold this city into a pseudo-Disneyland, gam-bling center, party center, a facade,” remarked one local artist. “I . . .fear the Disneyfication of the French Quarter with all this money: peo-ple coming and buying up bars, music clubs, old restaurants—and nam-ing drinks ‘Katrina,’ ” complained another resident.10 These lamenta-tions reflect a feeling that the 20 percent of the city that did not flood,including the Uptown area and French Quarter, will retain their touristappeal and anchor the broader transformation of the city into a Disney-like theme park to entertain visitors. In this scenario, the cultural rich-ness of pre-Katrina New Orleans will become a fossilized relic to amusevisitors.
A third interpretation views post-Katrina rebuilding as helping tofoster a new appreciation and rebirth of local culture that will enlivenand mobilize people to create new bases of urban authenticity. Whilesome residents are deeply cynical and pessimistic about the future, oth-ers are hopeful that the distinctive way of life that residents nurtured forgenerations will act to stimulate and support a phoenix-like recoverythat will animate and reinvent local heritage. “The New Orleans Area is
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steeped in tradition, but it is also a place that re-invents itself when needbe,” according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper.11 Long-term residents and people who love the city have long championed NewOrleans as one of the last authentic places in the nation. These peoplemaintain that New Orleans’s unique sense of culture and place has beenthe bulwark against the homogenizing tendencies that have overtakenmetropolitan America. While the spread of suburban-style strip malls,theme parks, chain stores, and other standardized and generic experi-ences have come to define many places, New Orleans has been a cul-tural “other” that has managed to retain an individuality and authentic-ity of its own. New Orleans is “a citadel against the McNuggeting ofAmerica. It seemed to resist the homogenization seen in many cities,”according to Denver Post journalist William Porter. “For me, New Or-leans is one of the few authentic places left in our landscape, and thatcompounds the tragedy,” remarks filmmaker Ken Burns. “No other cityis so equipped to deal with [Hurricane Katrina],” according to LouisEdwards, novelist and associate producer of the Jazz and Heritage Festi-val. “Think of the jazz funeral. . . . In New Orleans we respond to theconcept of following tragedy with joy. That’s a powerful philosophy tohave as the underpinning of your culture.”12
In the months since Katrina roared ashore, a plethora of books andarticles have appeared proclaiming New Orleans to be one of America’smost beloved cities. Titles such as My New Orleans: Ballads to the BigEasy by Her Sons, Daughters, and Lovers; Why New Orleans Matters;and Very New Orleans: A Celebration of History, Culture, and CajunCountry Charm serve as timely and timeless tributes to the powerfulspirit that defines the city. On the local level, a quiet but urgent conver-sation about New Orleans’s cultural survival and its sense of authentic-ity radiates through city streets and major institutions. Prognosticationsabout loss and decline juxtapose with tales of resilience and strength inthe face of adversity. While to some the future looks bleak and the citywill never be the same, others look to the Katrina tragedy as an oppor-tunity to face the quintessential challenge of rebuilding and reinventingthe cultural heart of America.
Questions about New Orleans’s future are intertwined with symbolsof solidarity and division that seek to make explicit, and more compre-hensible, a city’s conflicting conceptions of itself and its past. In writingthis book, I try to illuminate the interlocking nature of conflicts over
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race, culture, and authenticity in New Orleans and trace historicallyhow tourism practices have displayed and articulated these conflicts.For more than a century, New Orleans has been a complex and con-stantly mutating city in which meanings of place and community havebeen inexorably intertwined with tourism practices. This book exam-ines the historical growth and expansion of the tourism industry in NewOrleans, the role of tourism in transmitting symbols of local culture andauthenticity, and the influence of race and racial inequalities on tour-ism practices. For decades, scholars have derided tourism as a globalprocess of standardization and cultural homogenization that annihilatesthe unique features and genuineness of places and creates what sociolo-gist Dean MacCannell calls “staged” authenticity.13 Others have viewedtourism as a set of discrete economic activities, a mode of consumption,or a spatially bounded locality or “destination” that is subject to exter-nal forces producing impacts. In contrast, I view tourism as a highlycomplex set of institutions and social relations that involve capitalistmarkets; state policy; and flows of commodities, cultural forms, andpeople. In this conception, tourism is not exogenous to localities but isembedded within broader patterns of metropolitan development and so-ciospatial inequality. My goal is to investigate the processes of authen-tication through which different groups and interests make claims forlocal authenticity and attempt to legitimate their constructions of raceand culture. I examine the historical development of racial meanings oflocal authenticity, analyze how conflicts over tourism have changed overtime, and address wider issues concerning the relationship betweentourism and the construction of place identity.
The connections between race, culture, and tourism are importantfor understanding the historical development of New Orleans and itsfuture in the aftermath of Katrina. Terms such as “whiteness,” “black-ness,” “creole,” “diversity,” and “multiculturalism” have long been ma-jor signifers of local identity, as a well as sources of division and con-flict. Today, these categories are fueling local and national debates overwho owns New Orleans, which groups should be allowed to return,and how the city should be rebuilt. Likewise, discussions about the roleof tourism in the rebuilding process are sparking conflict over whichcultural symbols and images reflect the “authentic” New Orleans andwho should define what is local authenticity. Popular discussions fre-quently employ reified and stereotyped designations that obscure the
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historically changing nature of race, culture, and place. Scholars havepointed out that race and culture are socially constructed categories thathave an emergent and variable quality rather than being fixed or immu-table group characteristics.14 In New Orleans, racial and ethnic groupdistinctions, as well as cultural designations, have always been politi-cally contested and subject to intense debate and protest. Moreover, theconstructed and contingent nature of race and culture have been rein-forced by the inherently fluid, situational, and fabricated nature of au-thenticity.15 Authenticity is a notoriously labyrinthine concept that canrefer to a variety of idealized representations of culture, identity, place.While authenticity may be a socially constructed representation of real-ity, it has always been real in its consequences as different groups andorganized interests have struggled to create and legitimate meaningsof an authentic New Orleans. Broadly, in this book I seek to providedeep understanding into the changing role of tourism discourses andpractices in the creation and transformation of New Orleans’s urbaniconography.16
Historians such as Catherine Cocks, Jane C. Desmond, Harvey New-man, Hal Rothman, John F. Sears, and Marguerite S. Shaffer, amongothers, have unearthed a wealth of data that describe the role tourismhas played in the development of national and local identities and inplaces of cultural significance.17 Yet many of these historical accountslack empirical specificity and have made little progress in theorizing thedevelopment of tourism and its attendant spatial manifestations. More-over, many accounts of tourism present it as either primarily negative (adestroyer of cultures and local traditions) or primarily positive (bringinga wealth of new products, ideas, and economic opportunities to people).Thus, the historical trajectories and path dependencies of tourism de-velopment remain underresearched, both empirically and theoretically.Another problem is the lack of serious examination of the connectionsbetween race and tourism. Many studies merely assert the importanceof race and racial discrimination without an appreciation of their so-cially constructed and changing meanings. In this book, I analyze thechanging linkages between tourism and race to show how specific racialmeanings and manifestations of discrimination were institutionalizedwithin the tourism industry during the twentieth century. At the sametime, I examine the role of social movements and protest groups in us-ing tourism discourses and practices to challenge social inequalities andcontest marginalization.
6 | Introduction
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Tourism from Above and Below
A major goal in this book is to develop a theoretically driven explana-tion of the historical development of tourism and its articulation withlocal actions and broader socioeconomic processes. For years, scholarshave assailed tourism as a force of globalization that hollows out therich texture and distinctiveness of local relations and their creations,and thereby corrupts authentic cultural spaces.18 According to critics,tourism transforms local culture into abstract, manufactured, and simu-lated social forms that are estranged from communal life and devoid ofauthenticity. Other more celebratory accounts have viewed tourism as aforce of diversification that promotes cultural invention and innova-tion.19 Rather than embracing either/or explanations of tourism, I de-velop a both/and conceptualization that views tourism as an amalgamof both homogenizing forces of sameness and uniformity, and diversify-ing forces of difference and hybridity. I advance this conceptualizationby distinguishing between tourism from above and tourism from below,a distinction that can help us get a better sense of how tourism can pro-mote as well as destabilize and undermine local traditions and cultures.
Tables 1.1 and 1.2 present a schematic overview of the major proc-esses, structures and networks, and key actors and organizations inNew Orleans associated with tourism above and below. Broadly, tour-ism from above and tourism from below are not independently givensets of phenomena (a dualism) but a duality; they are an interplay thatpresupposes each other. Thus, tourism from above processes do not ex-ist “apart” from localities but are embedded in networks and organi-zations that facilitate some forms of action and decision making in par-ticular locales while discouraging others. To be specific, tourism fromabove and below and their related processes exist in a reciprocal and re-flexive relationship. Grasping that tourism embodies contrasting ten-dencies at once—that it can be a force of homogenization and hetero-geneity, globalization and localization—is crucial to articulating themultiple dimensions of tourism and avoiding one-sided and reductiveconceptions.
Tourism from above draws our attention to the role of capital flows,communication and transportation technologies, and legal modes ofgovernance and regulation that have evolved over time to encouragetravel and coordinate different forms of tourism and entertainment. Theconcept also refers to a mix of the extralocal processes of globalization,
Introduction | 7
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tab
le
1.1
Top
olog
y of
Tou
rism
fro
m A
bove
Pro
cess
esSt
ruct
ures
and
Net
wor
ksK
ey A
ctor
s an
d O
rgan
izat
ions
in
New
Orl
eans
Glo
baliz
atio
nIn
tern
atio
nal T
ouri
sm N
etw
orks
and
Ass
ocia
tion
s:N
ew O
rlea
ns M
etro
polit
an C
onve
ntio
n an
dC
omm
odifi
cati
on•
Wor
ld T
ouri
sm O
rgan
izat
ion
(WT
O)
Vis
itor
s B
urea
u (N
OM
CV
B)
Rat
iona
lizat
ion
•In
tern
atio
nal A
ssoc
iati
on o
f C
onve
ntio
n an
d V
isit
ors
Bur
eaus
(IA
CV
B)
New
Orl
eans
Tou
rism
Mar
keti
ngD
isne
yiza
tion
•H
ospi
talit
y Sa
les
and
Mar
keti
ng A
ssoc
iati
on I
nter
nati
onal
(H
SMA
I)C
orpo
rati
on (
NO
TM
C)
Bra
ndin
g•
Inte
rnat
iona
l Hot
el a
nd R
esta
uran
t A
ssoc
iati
on (
IH&
RA
)N
ew O
rlea
ns M
ulti
cult
ural
Tou
rism
•H
ospi
talit
y Fi
nanc
ial T
echn
olog
y Pr
ofes
sion
als
(HFT
P)N
etw
ork
(NO
MT
N)
•In
tern
atio
nal C
ounc
il on
Hot
el, R
esta
uran
t, a
nd I
nsti
tuti
onal
Edu
cati
onN
ew O
rlea
ns S
port
s Fo
unda
tion
(IC
HR
IE)
New
Orl
eans
Hot
el-M
otel
Ass
ocia
tion
•T
rave
l and
Tou
rism
Res
earc
h A
ssoc
iati
on (
TT
RA
)A
udub
on I
nsti
tute
•D
esti
nati
on M
arke
ting
Int
erna
tion
al (
DM
I)H
arra
h’s
Cas
ino
and
othe
r ga
mbl
ing
•W
orld
Tra
vel a
nd T
ouri
sm C
ounc
il (W
TT
C)
esta
blis
hmen
ts•
Inte
rnat
iona
l Eco
tour
ism
Soc
iety
(T
IES)
New
Orl
eans
Cit
y C
ounc
il; d
epar
tmen
ts a
nd•
Wor
ld T
ouri
sm F
ound
atio
n (W
TF)
offic
es o
f ec
onom
ic d
evel
opm
ent:
tou
rism
,fil
m, a
rt, m
usic
; his
tori
c an
d cu
ltur
alU
.S. T
ouri
sm N
etw
orks
and
Ass
ocia
tion
s:di
stri
ct r
egul
ator
y co
mm
issi
ons,
etc
.•
Am
eric
an R
esor
t D
evel
opm
ent
Ass
ocia
tion
(A
RD
A)
•A
mer
ican
Hot
el &
Lod
ging
Ass
ocia
tion
(A
H&
LA
)•
Tra
vel I
ndus
try
Ass
ocia
tion
of
Am
eric
a (T
IA)
Publ
ic-P
riva
te N
etw
orks
(go
vern
men
t, c
orpo
rati
ons,
and
pri
vate
non
profi
tor
gani
zati
ons)
:•
U.S
. Gov
ernm
ent
Offi
ce o
f T
rave
l and
Tou
rism
Ind
ustr
ies
(O
TT
I)•
Stat
e go
vern
men
t of
fices
of
tour
ism
and
cul
tura
l dev
elop
men
t•
Cit
y go
vern
men
t to
uris
m a
genc
ies
and
regu
lato
ry b
odie
s•
Con
vent
ion
and
Vis
itor
s B
urea
us (
CV
Bs)
•To
uris
m m
arke
ting
cor
pora
tion
s•
Cha
in h
otel
& e
nter
tain
men
t fir
ms
•Sc
hool
s of
hos
pita
lity
and
tour
ism
bus
ines
s
Gotham_pp001-021 8/21/07 10:26 AM Page 8
tab
le
1.2
Top
olog
y of
Tou
rism
fro
m B
elow
Pro
cess
esSt
ruct
ures
and
Net
wor
ksK
ey A
ctor
s an
d O
rgan
izat
ions
in
New
Orl
eans
Loc
aliz
atio
nA
esth
etic
net
wor
ksA
rts
Cou
ncil
of N
ew O
rlea
nsH
ybri
diza
tion
•A
rts
coun
cils
, gal
leri
es, a
nd m
useu
ms
Com
mun
ity
Art
s C
ente
r (C
AC
)C
reol
izat
ion
•G
rass
root
s cu
ltur
al o
rgan
izat
ions
(ar
t, m
usic
, cui
sine
)Pr
eser
vati
on R
esou
rce
Cen
ter
(PR
C)
Dis
tinc
tive
ness
•Sc
hool
s of
art
, mus
ic, c
uisi
neSa
ve O
ur C
emet
erie
sH
eter
ogen
eity
Car
niva
l Kre
wes
Res
iden
tial
net
wor
ksFr
ench
Qua
rter
Fes
tiva
ls, I
nc.
•N
eigh
borh
ood
coal
itio
nsJa
zz a
nd H
erit
age
Foun
dati
on•
Res
iden
t as
soci
atio
nsN
ew O
rlea
ns M
usic
Col
loqu
ium
New
Orl
eans
Jaz
z O
rche
stra
Her
itag
e ne
twor
ksU
rban
Con
serv
ancy
•L
ocal
his
tori
cal s
ocie
ties
•M
usic
her
itag
e fo
unda
tion
s•
Loc
al h
isto
ric
pres
erva
tion
org
aniz
atio
ns•
Fest
ival
vol
unte
er o
rgan
izat
ions
Med
ia n
etw
orks
•C
omm
unit
y ra
dio
stat
ions
•L
ocal
new
spap
ers
•Pu
blic
tel
evis
ion
stat
ions
Gotham_pp001-021 8/21/07 10:26 AM Page 9
commodification, rationalization, Disneyization, and branding that arehistorically changing and uneven. Globalization implies the intensifica-tion of social and geographical interconnectedness and an acceleratedcirculation of people, capital, information, and cultural symbols on aworldwide scale. Commodification is the conversion of local products,cultures, and social relations and identities into saleable products thatare sold on markets for profitable exchange. Rationalization refers to aprocess in which social actions and interactions are based on considera-tions of efficiency and calculation rather than on motivations derivedfrom custom, tradition, or emotion. Specifically, rationalization is a longyet uneven historical process of applying formal planning, systematicorganization, and sophisticated technology to enhance the tourist ap-peal of local cultures, traditions, and products. Disneyization refers tothe spread of theme-park characteristics to cities and the increased useof theming techniques, the promotion of corporate brands, and thedominance of security and surveillance in the production of entertain-ment spaces.20 Urban branding is the most recent extension of the com-modification and rationalization process associated with tourism fromabove and implies the marketing of a corporate-oriented version of ur-ban culture as an object of consumption. The significance of branding,as opposed to advertising and conventional place promotion, is thatthe distinction between the real city and imagined city implodes and ad-vertised representations become the indicators and definers of urban re-ality. The branded city establishes and reproduces an infinite set of ref-erentials between entertaining products, spectacular images, and plea-surable experiences in which one referent connects with all the otherthrough highly charged associations across time and space.21
Tourism from below refers to the range of framing strategies, sym-bols, aesthetic codes, and other expressive resources that local peopleand groups create and use in everyday life to stimulate cultural inven-tion, construct local authenticity, and promote tourism at a grassrootslevel. Several scholars have used the term “glocalization” to emphasizethe integration of the global-local and of homogeneity-heterogeneity inthe development of transnational processes.22 Glocalization is akin to“hybridization” and refers to the intersection of global processes withlocal actions that result in novel and unique cultural creations in dif-ferent geographic areas. A similar term, “localization,” can be definedas a process by which local actors and organizations appropriate“global” imagery and symbols to reinforce “local” sentiments and in-
10 | Introduction
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scribe “local” meanings into products and cultural creations. The term“creolization” appears in writings on globalization and postmodernityto explain the mixing of different cultures and identities in an age ofmigration and enhanced mobility. Scholars have also used creolizationto refer to both cultural mixing and cultural adaptation, as differentgroups assimilate themselves to living in a new environment.23 Whathas not been the subject of much research is how grassroots organiza-tions and other local groups have used tourism institutions and prac-tices to construct “glocal” cultures and place identities. While research-ers argue that local authenticities are always hybrid and can result fromcreolization, it is not clear how extralocal processes interconnect withlocal actions to produce heterogeneity and diversity. In short, tourismfrom below draws our attention to how seemingly remote and distantprocesses are mediated at various spatial and institutional levels, fromthe macrolevel of globalized institutions to the microlevel of people’sday-to-day lives. Such a perspective adjudicates between a top-downapproach that stresses the role of global factors in driving tourism, anda bottom-up approach that focuses on the role of local influences andparticularizing forces.
As a sensitizing device, the tourism from above and below heuristicsuggests a set of relationships, including structures, networks, and orga-nizations for illuminating the diverse connections between tourism andmetropolitan development, urban culture, and constructions of authen-ticity.24 The categories listed in tables 1.1 and 1.2 do not exhaust thehistorical possibilities, nor do they constitute a comprehensive frame-work to explain the development of tourism everywhere and at alltimes. The structures, networks, and organizations associated with tour-ism from above in table 1.1 have evolved since the nineteenth centuryto produce and coordinate travel flows and create different varieties oftourism. We could include railroads, airlines, travel firms, and manygovernment agencies and regulatory bodies as major actors affiliatedwith tourism from above. For tourism from below, the key actors andorganizations that I identify in table 1.2 are not the only actors thatcould be listed in the figure, but they are major forces in the promotionof local culture and have played strategic and important roles in defin-ing the metropolitan area as a unique and distinctive place over the pasthalf century. We could add a variety of historic landmarks commissions,historic preservationist societies, music commissions, and nonprofit or-ganizations under the rubric of tourism from below. My goal is not to
Introduction | 11
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identify every single actor and tourism organization but to analyze andexplain the changing connections between the actors, structures andnetworks, and major processes.25
A major goal of this book is to apply and develop the tourism fromabove and below heuristic to illustrate the interactive relationships be-tween the global and the local in the development of urban tourism. Myinvestigation eschews a notion of the global and the local as abstractlevels of analysis and concentrates on the linkages that constitute theglobal-local or micro-macro duality. On the one hand, I wish to under-stand the conditions under which tourism practices can reinforce trendstoward the standardization and homogenization of culture and space.To do so, I examine the historical development of tourism organizationsand marketing strategies and the role they have played in fabricating atouristic notion of authenticity to attract visitors to New Orleans. Onthe other hand, I wish to know whether tourism practices can generateand support cultural diversification and promote the growth of newidentities and authenticities. To do so, I investigate the actions of localgroups in harnessing and incorporating tourism discourses and practicesinto their tactics of cultural invention to help preserve longstanding tra-ditions (localization) or help generate new traditions (hybridization orcreolization).26
As sociologists of culture have noted, “tradition” is not just inher-ited from the past but is socially “constructed” through everyday socialactivities and practices, taking place amid material needs and socialcircumstances. Harvey Molotch, William Freudenberg, and Krista E.Paulsen’s work on the etiology of place character; Wendy Griswold andNathan Wright’s work on the endurance of regional cultures; andThomas Hylland Eriksen’s and Ulf Hannerz’s works on “creolization”suggest that the creation of traditions and other forms of cultural in-novation are the result of recontextualization, mixing of different iden-tities, and mergers of symbols.27 This processual and hybrid view ofculture draws attention to how the production and maintenance of cul-tures and traditions take places as people interact, create meaning, andproduce and reproduce shared understandings of their behavior. Thisaction-based approach views culture as fluid, situational, changeable,and emergent. What is important is not whether cultures or traditionsare “real” or “authentic” but, rather, the ways that arguments aboutauthenticity have been framed to influence public debate, contest poli-cies, neutralize counterarguments and opposition, and mobilize constit-
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uents. I am interested in how claims about culture, tradition, identity,and authenticity have often been interpreted and reshaped to fit the exi-gencies of the present, including local debates over tourism and its con-sequences. In short, the distinction of tourism from above and beloweschews a notion of an “authentic place” corrupted by tourism and ex-amines how tourism can be a mechanism for creating and maintainingplace character, including articulating local identities and generatingplace-specific forms of collective action.
New Orleans Tourism before Hurricane Katrina
New Orleans confronts us as a city of paradox, irony, and contradic-tion. Long known as the Crescent City, the metropolis has been con-demned as a city of vice and decadence and celebrated as a place of joy-ous culture and unforgettable charm.28 The New Orleans metropolitanstatistical area has traditionally included Orleans Parish, Jefferson Par-ish, St. Bernard Parish, St. Charles Parish, and St. Tammany Parish (fig.1.1). A county in the state of Louisiana is called a “parish.” Before theHurricane Katrina disaster, the metropolitan area contained approxi-mately 1.1 million residents. Tourism in the New Orleans metropolitanarea has grown tremendously over the past century. In the early 1900s,river-based commerce, cotton trade, and a growing market for leisureand amusement dominated the New Orleans economy. During thistime, sections of New Orleans became oriented toward leisure and en-tertainment: public parks, sports grounds, theaters, art galleries, shop-ping and so on. The city’s “red light” district and jazz culture left an in-delible image in the minds of travelers and served for decades as a mag-net to draw people to experience the “sin” industry. The discovery of oilin the early decades of the twentieth century spearheaded a tremendousgrowth of the chemical and petroleum industry, and by World War II,the city had established itself as a hub for military shipbuilding andmanufacturing. Throughout the decades, political and economic elitespromoted images of New Orleans as a charming city with beautiful andhistoric architecture, outstanding cuisine, excellent music, and MardiGras. By the middle of the century, the economy had a tripartite basemade up of the oil industry, the port industry, and the tourism indus-try.29 During the 1950s, New Orleans city officials and elites began de-vising strategies to increase tourist travel to enhance the economic pros-
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perity and fiscal status of the central city. Dwindling urban population,the eroding manufacturing base, and burgeoning suburban developmentduring the 1960s raised the specter of economic stagnation and createdthe context for city leaders to accelerate the development of tourism inthe city.30
Over the decades, political and economic elites have forged close in-stitutional links and developed several public-private partnerships inpursuit of tourism as a strategy to encourage inward investment andurban revitalization. This tourism strategy has included the building ofa domed stadium, a festival mall, a massive convention center, new of-fice towers in the Central Business District, a major theme park, and aWorld War II museum. The city has also staged many mega-events, in-cluding the 1984 World’s Fair, periodic Super Bowls and (Nokia) SugarBowls, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) basketballtournaments, the Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Essence Festival, andso on. The hotel industry has grown considerably over the past few dec-
14 | Introduction
Fig. 1.1. Greater New Orleans. (Reproduced by permission of Tulane University, Howard-TiltonMemorial Library, Special Collections)
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ades, as indicated by the skyrocketing number of hotel rooms in themetropolitan area. The number of hotel rooms increased from 4,750in 1960, to 10,686 in 1975 and 19,500 in 1985. In 1990, the metropol-itan area had approximately 25,500 hotel/motel rooms. This figure in-creased to 28,000 in 1999 and to more than 33,000 by 2004. The con-vention market has also grown immensely since the 1960s. The cityhosted 172 conventions in 1960; 1,000 conventions in 1975; 1,453 con-ventions in 1990; 2,485 conventions in 1995; and 3,556 conventionsin 2000.31 Overall convention attendance increased more than twentytimes from 1960 to 2001, a development that reflects the growth of atourism infrastructure of hotel and motel accommodations, restaurants,festival promotions, university programs in tourism management andservice, professional sports, and so on. Other tourism developments thathave occurred in the 1990s and later include the legalization of gamingin Louisiana, the creation of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Cor-poration (NOTMC), the establishment of the New Orleans Multicul-tural Tourism Network (NOMTN), the creation of the Mayor’s Officeof Tourism and Arts, and the expansion of Convention and Visitors Bu-reau efforts to market the region to international tourists.
New Orleans has long been known as a city with dramatic and trou-bling disparities. In 1960, the urban population peaked at 640,000 resi-dents and declined in every decade thereafter. Between 1960 and 2000,the city lost a total of 156,000 people. Over the decades, weak jobgrowth and the loss of jobs in the chemical and petroleum industrieshave depressed the metropolitan economic base and contributed to an18 percent poverty rate in 2000, making New Orleans the sixth poorestof the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the nation. The region’s classinequalities interlock with racial inequalities. In 1960, whites made up62.6 percent of the city’s population and blacks were 37.2 percent. Asof the 2000 census, blacks made up 66.7 percent of the Central City’spopulation, and whites were 26.6 percent (table 1.3). In 2005, blacksmade up 84 percent of the city’s poor population, with a high percent-age living in segregated neighborhoods. According to the Brookings In-stitution, before Katrina, 43 percent of poor blacks in New Orleanslived in extreme poverty (census tracts with at least 40 percent of thepopulation living below the federal poverty levels). In 2000, black me-dian household income in the city was almost half the amount of whitemedian income ($21,461 as contrasted to $40,390); the black povertyrate was more than three times higher than the white poverty rate (35
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percent compared with 11 percent); and poor blacks were almost fourtimes as likely to live in areas with extreme poverty (43 percent of poorblacks lived in concentrated poverty while only 11 percent of poorwhites did).32 As result, by the time Katrina came ashore, New Orleanshad become a place of glaring racial and class inequalities, a placewhere poor African Americans were segregated and spatially isolatedfrom the rest of the population.
In short, over the past several decades New Orleans has experienceddramatic losses in urban population, stagnant incomes, and persistentpoverty and racial inequality. These conditions reflect the multidecadeerosion of the chemical and petroleum industry and port industry andthe rise of a service sector tourism economy dominated by low-wage,nonunion jobs. In 1999, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, NewOrleans had 16,000 hospitality and hotel workers, with 90 percent ofthe workforce in the city being African American.33 Over the past dec-ade, trade unions have campaigned fiercely to organize New Orleans
16 | Introduction
table 1.3Total and Racial Population in the New Orleans Metropolitan Statistical Area
(MSA), Central City, and Suburban Areas (1980, 1990, and 2000)
Total White Black Hispanic Other RacesYear Population Population Population Population (non-Hispanic)
MSA 1980 1,303,800 814,193 419,630 50,961 19,01662.4% 32.2% 3.9% 1.5%
1990 1,285,270 762,697 443,97 152,53 26,03959.3% 34.5% 4.1% 2.0%
2000 1,337,270 731,514 498,569 58,454 49,09854.7% 37.3% 4.4% 3.9%
Central City 1980 557,515 224,694 304,673 19,226 892240.3% 54.6% 3.4% 1.6%
1990 496,938 164,457 306,129 15,900 10,45233.1% 61.6% 3.2% 2.1%
2000 484,674 128,871 323,392 14,826 7,58526.6% 66.7% 3.1% 3.0%
Suburbs 1980 719,567 565,925 112,643 31,149 985078.6% 15.7% 4.3% 1.4%
1990 764,208 577,583 135,309 36,034 15,28275.6% 17.7% 4.7% 2.0%
2000 827,357 581,772 171,711 43,032 30,84270.3% 20.8% 5.2% 3.7%
source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census of Population and Housing, 1980, 1990, and 2000. Data sup-plied by the State of the Cities Data System (SOCDS), http://socds.huduser.org/. Central City includesNew Orleans, LA. Suburbs include all areas of the MSA outside of New Orleans, LA, and Slidell, LA.
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hospitality workers, with the aim of increasing benefits and wages. La-bor struggles in the hotel sector reached a crescendo in 2002 when vot-ers overwhelmingly approved a city minimum wage hike to achieve a“living wage” for working people. This vote was dealt a major blowlater in September 2002, when the Louisiana Supreme Court declaredthe living wage victory unconstitutional.34 These battles are the most re-cent manifestations of the long history of class strife and racial strugglein New Orleans. Broadly, class and racial conflict in tourism illustratethe social relations of exploitation behind the production of tourist im-ages and hospitality services. My historical examination highlights thechanging nature of race and class in struggles over meanings of authen-ticity and explains how tourism practices are intimately linked with so-cial inequalities.
Authentic New Orleans
This book addresses the links between the past and present in New Or-leans to explore the historical development of tourism with an eye tomaking discoveries that might be helpful in understanding the links be-tween race, culture, and authenticity. While classic works such as JohnUrry’s The Tourist Gaze and Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist: A NewTheory of the Leisure Class and Empty Meeting Grounds: The TouristPapers are extremely important, because of the broad and generalizedperspective they bring to the study of tourism, the kind of rich detailand investigative specificity of a historical case study can offer a re-searcher empirical and theoretical gains in understanding larger socialcomplexes of actors, actions, and motives.35
Case studies have a rich tradition in sociology and are becoming in-creasingly popular within urban scholarship on tourism, metropolitandevelopment, and urban culture and politics, as illustrated by MarkGottdiener, Claudia Collins, and David Dickens’s Las Vegas: The SocialProduction of an All-American City; Richard Lloyd’s Neo-Bohemia: Artand Commerce in the Postindustrial City; Christopher Mele’s Selling theLower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New YorkCity; and David Grazian’s Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity inUrban Blues Clubs.36 This renewed interest in case study research comesfrom the increasing recognition that contextual factors specific to thecity under study complicate cross-city generalizations about tourism.
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Susan Fainstein and Dennis Judd suggest that local contextualities ren-der the tourism process to have a relevant degree of place specificity:“Variation in the impacts of tourism and its multiple meanings . . . callfor an examination of individual cases.”37 As far as tourism is an ex-pression of larger social, economic, and political relations, the develop-ment of tourism in any particular city will express the particularities ofthe place in the making of its urban space. In short, place matters in thestudy of tourism because an analysis of why and how tourism developswill need to take into account where and when it develops.
To begin, I investigate the rise of early tourism practices and the de-velopment of a nascent tourism industry during the late nineteenth cen-tury and early twentieth century. In chapter 2, I explore the demise ofthe antebellum Carnival and the origin of the modern Mardi Gras cele-bration during the middle of the nineteenth century. Any discussion oftourism and culture in New Orleans must deal with the city’s signaturecelebration and the part it has historically played in both reflecting andreproducing class and racial conflicts in the city. The early developmentof tourism in New Orleans is associated with elite efforts to transformMardi Gras from an indigenous festival into rationalized spectacle. Inchapter 3, I examine the mobilization of business elites in the planningand staging of the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Expositionin New Orleans in 1884 and 1885. This exposition was the largestworld’s fair of its time and helped nurture the growth of new businessnetworks and cultural organizations to promote the city on global scale.
As I point out in later chapters, New Orleans has long had a pen-chant for international expositions and the efforts to attract world’sfairs in 1884, 1915, and 1984 reflect the mobilization of local elites toharness tourism flows and build attractions as expedients to economicrevitalization and urban place building. International expositions ex-emplify the articulation of tourism from above and below. On the onehand, expositions represent local efforts to create an ephemeral andlarge-scale display of local artifacts, foods, and customs to a worldwideaudience. On the other hand, expositions comprise a series of extralocalnetworks, corporations, and organizations working to transform urbanspace into an entertaining site for the visual consumption of interna-tional cultures and identities. As I show, the history of world’s fairsin New Orleans is a history of conflict and antagonism as elite groupsand interests have struggled to project a conflict-free image of New Or-
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leans while grassroots organizations have attempted to use expositionsas political venues to challenge inequalities. Thus, New Orleans’s expe-rience with world’s fairs reveals the deep fault lines of race and classand provides insight into how opposing constituencies have attemptedto articulate and legitimate differing conceptions of an “authentic” NewOrleans.
In chapters 4 and 5, I chart the historical development of New Or-leans’s tourism sector during the early twentieth century up through the1960s. As I show, the development of the city’s modern tourism sectorcoincides with the institutionalization of racial discrimination in allmajor facets of social life and culture in the city. The first half of thecentury is notable for the establishment of the New Orleans Associa-tion of Commerce to attract tourism investment and promote the con-vention trade. In chapter 4, I investigate the competition between NewOrleans and San Francisco to attract the 1915 World’s Fair, the growthof racial segregation in tourism, and the development of new strategiesto promote Mardi Gras as a major tourist attraction. As I point out inchapter 5, the 1960s are a turning point in the historical development ofNew Orleans tourism. Rise of the civil rights movement combined withspreading urban disinvestment and suburbanization motivated politicaland economic elites to devise new tourism strategies to revitalize thecity. In 1960, local leaders formed the Greater New Orleans Tourist andConvention Commission (GNOTCC), a forerunner to the current NewOrleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau (NOMCVB), torationalize the process of tourism promotion and development. TheGNOTCC is a major organization that, beginning in the 1960s, con-nects the above processes of commodification and rationalization withthe below forces of grassroots cultural invention and improvisation tolink New Orleans with a fledgling global tourism industry. Broadly, Ishow that new tourism networks, organizations, and financing helpedstimulate a major growth in the number of tourist attractions while si-multaneously generating new conflicts and struggles over meanings oflocal culture and authenticity.
The period after the 1970s inaugurates a new era of local and stategovernment efforts to promote tourism, the formation of specializedtourism organizations, and the development of new tourism networksand marketing strategies (branding). This period also reflects the growthof grassroots cultural organizations and historic preservation groups
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such as the Arts Council of New Orleans, the Community Arts Center,the Jazz and Heritage Foundation, Save Our Cemeteries, and the Pres-ervation Resource Center, among many others, dedicated to raisingawareness of local culture and heritage. I first examine the planning andstaging of the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition in New Orleans, thelast world’s fair held in the United States. On the one hand, this exposi-tion set in motion the development of new tourism organizations andpublic-private networks to attract corporate hotel chains and entertain-ment corporations. On the other hand, the exposition helped spawn apowerful network of grassroots art groups and cultural organizationscommitted to nourishing and building a tourism from below. I then dis-cuss the rise of urban branding as a major promotional strategy used bypowerful tourism organizations to transform urban culture into an ab-stract sign to entertain visitors and build attractions. Urban branding isa process of transforming otherwise mundane and ordinary symbols,images, and experiences into evocative signs of place distinctiveness toexpand the number of visitors and generate local support for tourisminvestment. In New Orleans, this narrative of distinction or brand strat-egy is constructed around three themes—history, music, and food—thatconstitute the “holy trinity” of New Orleans tourism. As I show, sincethe 1960s, broad sociocultural transformations have blurred the distinc-tion between tourism and other institutions and cultural practices, a de-velopment I refer to as a shift from a “culture of tourism” to a “touris-tic culture.” Today, a touristic culture denotes a process by which tour-ism discourses and practices increasingly frame meanings and assertionsof local culture and authenticity.
In chapters 7 and 8, I use my field observations and interviews tohighlight the conflicts and struggles over efforts to commercialize MardiGras and transform the French Quarter into an entertainment destina-tion. As tourism has come to dominate more and more aspects of sociallife in New Orleans, both Mardi Gras and the French Quarter have be-come contested terrain, where various residents, business and propertyowners, and elected officials duel over competing meanings of the be-loved neighborhood and the city’s famous celebration. Disagreementsover who speaks for the French Quarter, which groups should controlland-use decisions, and how tourist development should proceed in thehistoric neighborhood define conflicts over tourism. I develop the con-cept “repertoire of authenticity” to refer to a loose set of themes andsymbolic devices that French Quarter residents have cultivated and de-
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ployed to battle the growth of corporate entertainment chains, and le-gitimate their role as controllers of neighborhood redevelopment. Inchapter 8, I draw on interviews with local residents and Carnival enthu-siasts to explore the role of local actions and organizations in harness-ing tourist images and representations to reinforce place distinctivenessand invent new Mardi Gras traditions and customs. As I show, MardiGras stands at the intersection of tourism from above and tourism frombelow. On the one hand, the extralocal forces of commodification, stan-dardization, and rationalization are transforming the celebration. Onthe other hand, local groups and individuals are using tourism symbolsand images to anchor Mardi Gras in place and create new Carnivaltraditions as a means of reinforcing the uniqueness of New Orleans’sCarnival.
By way of conclusion, in chapter 9, I address the current moment,when a broad-based coalition of city leaders and tourism boosters areattempting to revitalize New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. Hur-ricane Katrina is an unprecedented disaster that has caused catastrophichuman suffering, economic disruption, and physical destruction. In ad-dition, the disaster has exposed to a global audience New Orleans’schronic poverty, strained race relations, and intense inequalities. Sincethe disaster, local elites have attempted to counter negative images of de-struction and advertise New Orleans as a come-back city that is regain-ing its vibrancy, style, and confidence. At the same time, city leaders andtourism officials have clashed over the role tourism should play in thecity rebuilding process. Moreover, the uncertainty and devastation un-leashed by Hurricane Katrina has reinvigorated old debates and stimu-lated new arguments about meanings and definitions of local authentic-ity. New conflicts and struggles are emerging between local groups andneighborhoods over what constitutes authenticity, who should definewhat authenticity means, and how authenticity should be expressed.My goal is to explore how the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrinais leading to new assertions of “authenticity” and new interpretations of“New Orleans.” Finally, I speculate on the future of metropolitan life,race and class relations, and tourism in the post-Katrina years.
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