“Travel does not require leaving your city or state or country, but it does require leaving your comfort zone. And that can happen a block or two away from where you live.” –Chloe Cooper Jones

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Chloe talk about why a section about “slum tourism” was cut out of Rolf’s newest book The Vagabond’s Way (2:30); how so much of what we talk about when we talk about travel has industrialized middle-class presumptions (7:30); the motivations and ethical considerations that underpin seeking out disadvantaged neighborhoods as a traveler (15:00); how preconceived narratives and “cultural extraction” often motivates people’s experience in a city, in ways that do not always benefit the city (25:00); what “dark tourism” and “voluntourism” are, and what the ethical ramifications are for travelers (32:00); and the difference between articulating ideals, and the work of acting on those ideals (45:00).

Chloe Cooper Jones (@CCooperJones) is the author of Easy Beauty: A Memoir. She has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Feature Writing, and was the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, as well as a Howard Foundation Grant from Brown University.

Notable Links:

• Integrating love of travel & love of home (Deviate episode 210)
• The Vagabond’s Way, by Rolf Potts (book)
• The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, by John Baxter (book)
• Slum tourism (tours to poor areas of a city)
• Poetics, by Aristotle (dramatic theory)
• Republic, by Plato (Socratic dialogue)
• Immanuel Kant (philosopher)
• Slumdog Millionaire (2008 movie)
• Apartheid (system of institutionalized racial segregation)
• Favela (slum in Brazil)
• Yelp (crowd-sourced business review app)
• Dark tourism (tourism to places associated with tragedy)
• 1990 Hesston tornado outbreak (Kansas weather event)
• Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (tourism attraction in Cambodia)
• Saw (movie franchise)
• Voluntourism (volunteering-themed travel)
• Hurricane Katrina (2005 Gulf Coast weather event)
• Lower Ninth Ward (New Orleans neighborhood)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.