Date of Award
12-2019
Thesis Date
12-2019
Degree Type
Honors Thesis-Unrestricted
Degree Name
B.A.
Department
Anthropology and Sociology
Degree Program
Anthropology
Director
David Beriss
Abstract
As the symbolic and functional heart of the New Orleans tourism industry, the French Quarter has been described as the city's "number one factory". Using this evocative image as a starting point, this paper explores workaday life within this factory. I argue that the political economy of tourism brings together the world of work and the world of leisure in such a way that neither can be meaningfully understood apart from each other. To get at this point, I examine the commodity which at the heart of the tourist economy, which, I contend, is the touristic experience. Drawing on data gleaned from interviews, participant observation, and analysis of tourist discourse, I show that the production of this commodity – immaterial as it may appear – is in fact quite labor intensive. Furthermore, as tourism has become the driving sector of the New Orleans economy, the social and economic arrangements that the industry entails have extended out from the factory, integrating a broader swath of the city's geography into its structure than is generally supposed.
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Recommended Citation
Freemole, Dylan Hogan, "Leisure and Labor in New Orleans' "Number One Factory": Work, Culture, and the Political Economy of Tourism" (2019). Senior Honors Theses. 136.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/honors_theses/136
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this honors thesis in whole or part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the honors thesis.