Exploring the duality of structure and agency – the changing dependency paradigms of tourism development on the Swahili coast of Kenya and Zanzibar

This paper aims to challenge the often too simplistic North–South dependency paradigm frequently employed by academics criticising tourism as a tool for economic development. By focusing on tourism development along the Swahili coast of Kenya and Zanzibar, it highlights the changing structure and role of foreign investment and labour migration. However, rather than simply portraying Kenya as a victim of neo-colonialism, it details the changes to structures of ‘power’ and at the same time explores the influence of Kenyan investors and labourers on neighbouring Zanzibar. Using the structuralist tradition, it details tourism investment and labour flows on the Swahili coast of Kenya and Zanzibar from the 1960s to the present day. Moving away from a purely structuralist account, this paper then discusses the accounts of tourism actors and how they have potentially contributed to the transformation of power structures in tourism development. It is argued that although people are not entirely free to choose their own actions, they are nonetheless the agency which reproduces the social structure and leads to social change. The aim of this paper is to show that the North–South control paradigm is far more complex, and it alludes to new semi periphery power centres that have developed within the South itself.