Troubling Romance Tourism

Sex, Gender and Class inside the Argentinean Tango Clubs

Bibliographic Data

ID3945889
AuthorsMaria Törnqvist (0000-0002-9501-7248, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume102
Issue1
Pages21-40
Publication date2012-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/fr.2012.12
OpenAlexW2088205220
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited25

This article aims to explore and make theoretical sense of a stream of tourism that blurs the boundaries between sex, romance and intimacy, and diffuses the line between affectionate and economic relations. The empirical scope is the expanding international tourism of tango dancing-meaning the increasing number of people from all over the world travelling to Buenos Aires to dance tango and engage with the local tango culture. In contrast to women's sex tourism on the beaches of Jamaica and Ghana, the relationships evolving in the Argentinean dance halls only occasionally lead to sexual affairs and temporary romances, but they are still part of a sensual geography made up of a transnational skin-to-skin intimacy. In addition, the relations between local dancers and tourists rarely result in economic transactions of sex for money; however, they engage with a growing market of intimate dance services and are part of the economic injustices and exotified projections of our post-colonial time. Hence, this article seeks to shed critical light over a broader area of transnational romance. The case of tango evokes new sets of critical queries regarding the trade of bodily intimacy and affection; the consequences of economic inequality in the area of heterosexual romance; and the production of class morals and racialised gender regimes. Through an exploration of these intimate practices, discourses and sets of emotions produced in this particular context, a complex landscape of market forces and close-embrace dancing unfolds

Art · Colonialism · Context (archaeology) · Dance · Embeddedness · Human sexuality · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Political science · Romance · Social science · Sociology · Tourism · Gender Studies · History · Law · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society