Book description
Behind the Smile is an inside look at the world of Caribbean tourism
as seen through the lives of the men and women in the tourist industry
in Barbados. The workers represent every level of tourism, from maid
to hotel manager, beach gigolo to taxi driver, red cap to diving
instructor. These highly personal accounts offer insight into complex
questions surrounding tourism: how race shapes interactions between
tourists and workers, how tourists may become agents of cultural
change, the meaning of sexual encounters between locals and tourists,
and the real economic and ecological costs of development through
tourism. This updated edition updates the text and includes several
new narratives and a new chapter about American students' experiences
during summer field school and home stays in Barbados.
George Gmelch is Professor of Anthropology at the University of
San Francisco and Union College. He has studied Irish Travellers,
return migrants, commercial fishermen, Alaska natives, Caribbean
villagers and tourism workers, and American professional baseball
players. He is the author of eleven books, including (with Sharon Bohn
Gmelch) Tasting the Good Life: Wine Tourism in the Napa Valley
(Indiana University Press, 2011). He has written two other books on
Barbados: Double Passage, which is about return migration, and The
Parish behind God's Back: The Changing Culture of Rural Barbados. He
has also written widely for general audiences, including the New York
Times, the Washington Post, Psychology Today, and Natural History.
