A Construção da favela turística: o caso de Vila Canoas, RJ

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the tourism takes place in the community of Vila Canoas, located in the neighborhood of Sao Conrado, south zone of Rio de Janeiro. By prioritizing the resident view, among the tourist activities that take place in the community, we decided to select domestic accommodation, service that applies hosting tourists in local homes. In this process, those who choose to work in the hosting service become hosts and start to share the space in their homes to visitors and to perform activities that require this type of service. We used as a methodology field research and oral interviews as a way to know the motivations that lead the hosts to the work they do. Whereas these residents play a new social role before tourists staying in their homes, the hosts, which is supported by the set of cultural elements, based on the slum area, home and local way of life, as a result of hosting, we noted that in addition to a new business, there is also, in some of these meetings, the formation of sociability ties between tourists and the host families. This interaction, often induced by a sphere of hospitality reaches result in the formation of friendship between the groups involved, considered one of the relevant symbolic gains for the realization of hosting. Another result presented refers to the gender issues in this tourist segment, when representations relegated to the female figure and the division of housework underlie this type of activity.