Masculinities and intimacies: performance and negotiation in a transnational tourist town in Caribbean Costa Rica
Date
2010-09-24T15:37:12Z
Authors
Maksymowicz, Kristofer
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Abstract
In Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, a transnational tourist town located on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, masculinities are expressed and embodied in multiple ways as a result of particular interactions that take place at the convergence of the global and the local. This thesis interrogates the masculine performances of Western tourist men in the context of a hierarchy of desirability complexly located at the intersections of sexuality, tourism, and globalization. Specifically, I argue that tourist men construct their masculinities in contestational and oppositional ways to those of local Caribbean men - constructions mediated through their homosocial encounters with men (both local Caribbean and foreign men), as well as their heterosexual intimate relationships with local women – in order to increase their statuses as more sexually desirable subjects in Puerto Viejo’s sexual landscape.
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Keywords
masculinities, tourism, Caribbean, Costa Rica, sexuality, intimacy