Paper short abstract:

The paper examines how tourism has created spaces within which neoliberal cosmopolitanism increasingly directs the capacity of non-state actors to appropriate elements of local culture in positing alternative memories and narratives in constituting new frameworks of belonging in Zanzibar society.

Paper long abstract:

Segments of Zanzibar's population assert its identity as a historically multi-cultural, cosmopolitan community. While this proposition remains debated among scholars, the violence of the 1964 Revolution and subsequent continuing rule of the ASP/CCM government for over 59 years over the islands have imposed an "African" footprint for constituting local notions of belonging. Yet, in the development of tourism since the 1980s, now representing a significant portion of Zanzibar's GDP, imagery of Zanzibar as the spice islands, its Arab heritage and rule, and connections to the broader Indian Ocean world rather than with Africa provide prominent motifs in shaping the tourists gaze for imagining Zanzibar's social landscape and representing local notions of belonging. This paper explores how tourism has created spaces within which different non-state actors, including members of the Zanzibari diaspora as well as others seeking new fortunes in the tourism industry from around the world appropriate elements of local culture in pursuit of new pathways of socio-economic mobility in this highly impoverished society and in negotiating alternative frameworks of belonging with local citizens as well as the ruling government. The paper argues that tourism has introduced a new framework of neoliberal cosmopolitanism in Zanzibar, where growing pressures on the internal organization of the weaker ruling government have forced it to accommodate new interactions where its narratives of the past are increasingly replaced with projects for constituting different ideas of belonging for the future, one that is open to anyone who has financial resources to participate in this process.