Talk:Traveling in developing countries

this seems a bit too broad of a subject

perhaps it is, lets let some people post anything they think is relevant and then edit. I suspect that we'll end up on this page with a fairly general statement about not being a prick when traveling, a reminder that conditions in other parts of the world are different than in the Developed world, and a few links to CS articles for asia, africa, the americas, and eastern europe. CouchSurfing is a bit different in Developing countries because internet access is not as generally available as in the West. This page could then also become a policy page on how to expand and develop couchsurfing in poor countries where everyone might not have internet access.--Metal.lunchbox 01:58, 19 November 2006 (EST)

The cool thing about couchsurfing is that it's a project that anyone that can get online can take advantage of. I live in Uruguay (a developing country - politically progressive people in the "Global South" use the term developing country by the way, "third world" being rather outdated) and people may not have their own laptops but they can get access to the internet for a few cents from cybercafes that are dotted all around. Let's be more inclusive and leave the "travelling in developing countries" type info for other sites. As metal lunchbox so rightly says, what's important is not being an idiot while travelling. -- welshwitch66 25 May 2008

If and How CouchSurfing affects tourism in developing countries

It might be worthwhile investigating if and how CouchSurfing affects local tourism. I read somewhere but i don't remember where that 85% (or so) of money spent by tourists of rich countries that go to Namibia don't do to people in Namibia but go to large corporations (booking, flights, travel agancies, hotel chains, ...) of the same rich countries, so that , at the real end, tourism does not harness the real disruptive power of rebalancing money power of countries of the world.

However it might also be perceived that hosting someone in a developing country via CouchSurfing (and hence for free) is subtracting money resources that could go to local people working in the tourism.

Basically I'm writing this paragraph in the discussion page because I have conflicting feelings and uncertainty about CouchSurfing in Developing Countries. I should also add that I never traveled in a developing country (update: I actually traveled in Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, Albania and some coutries in Eastern Europe, I just checked now in the list of developing countries mentioned in this article and they seems to be flagged as "developing countries" by worldbank; this sounds very strange to me, in particular my idea of developing country, a term I totally dislike, was actually more just about some African countries such as Sierra Leone and Somalia who have huge problems at the moment ... uhm I might have prejudices here ... uhm ... sorry for flooding this discussion page with my rants and doubts but it is a discussion page after all, no?) so that I have no experience at all at this regard, only doubts.

It would be great if someone who traveled in a developing country can help us all in understanding a bit better the topic and discussing it.

It would be even better if someone who lives in a developing country would help us understanding. --Phauly 07:08, 25 November 2006 (EST)

Some literature about tourism in developing countries and poverty can be found at http://www.stepuptravel.org/library.php under categories such as "Sustainable Tourism for the Elimination of Poverty", "Tourism Statistics For Developing Countries", "Information Communications Technology and Developmental Tourism". --Phauly 07:10, 25 November 2006 (EST)

http://www.stepuptravel.org/facts.php Some statistics and data about Tourism Impacts on Developing Countries

I'm also sure that there have already been some discussions in the groups about this but I don't like groups (too chaotic) so I didn't check. --Phauly 07:08, 25 November 2006 (EST)

About the expression "Developing countries"

I'm also very curious about how people living in a developing country perceive the expression "developing coutry". It is self-evident which people coming from which part of the world created the expression, so I'm interested in understanding how this is perceived in order to use a better one. Other popular expressions, unlikely unsatisfactory, are "south of the world", "emerging regions", "poor countries", "empoverished countries". --Phauly 07:10, 25 November 2006 (EST)

On informal talking, I often use third world but that's a cold war era term (USSR was the second world) :P I live in a third world country so I'm not uncomfortable with the term. Anyway I think developing countries is a polite and politically correct way to call not-first-world-countries (that's second and third world). --PabloBD 15:36, 25 November 2006 (EST)

All the options are wrong in one way or another. You can argue that all countries are developing, not always for the better or in the same way. Calling countries "developing" does carry some cultural baggage but most people I've spoken to in developing countries aren't offended by it, many of them are working to help their countries "develop". "South" or "global south" (or any of the variations on that theme) is just wrong. There are (financially) poorer countries in the north and wealthy countries in the south. It's a misuse of a term with a clear meaning. I believe "emerging" is sometimes used to describe the "in-between" countries but seems to be mostly used by economists. --Korourke 10:55, 15 August 2008 (EDT)

"developing country"

in a sense, the word development has been used to replace an old cold war terminology known as "third world" to represent nonaligned countries, i.e. places that had no clear political representation between the first world (Capitalist countries - ie US and europe) and the second world (soviet bloc communist countires) - I don't know where yugoslavia went in this.

Anyways, development as an economic representation has been used to divide the world into similar categories. Developed (first world economically rich countries), developing (second world countries that are gaining traction in the capitalist global economy) and undeveloped (countries that are considered stagnant based on current macroeconomic measurements ~ coindiently, these countries are also those that were considerd to be of no strategic value by the two superpowers during the cold war).

As far as inacurate and misvalued representation goes, the term is largely based off of economic improvement. As with any cultural value that has been essentialized as a universal imperitive, it lacks the discrete nuances of varied cultural and social values (but don't all idomatic expressions?) For a more politically salient representation the use of terms like the 2/3rds world, global south, etc. would probably suffice for an article that is inherently biased itself.

What draws to question then is the cultural representation (misrepresentation?) of the world that couch surfing projects as a website/project to broaden human perspective. Because the majority of users are from (cringe) first world countries and because the resources of tourism, global networking and travel are more limited to those living in developing/undeveloped countries....(gasp for air).. their voice is rarely herad within the couchsurfing network (if they would so chose to provide input).

I for one, have always had issue with the "exotic" section of the couchsurfing website, which to me, seem's to be based off of an Euro/American perspective.

If you've read thus far there are two foreseable options available for improving the cultural sensitivity of this article (we could also delete the article itself or provide a "traveling in developed countries" article. The first option is to leave it as is and attempt to provide as unbiased opinions and advice to travelers from Euro-America for traveling in the rest of the world, ie. isues of squatter toilets in China, malaria in africa, penguins in antartica. Changing the title of the article world would be nice, but may simply blanket the economic foundations of the article itself. The second option is to change the article's purpose to provide information on cultural as well as economic nuances throughout the world, this would in effect, lengthen the article from continents to regions to possibly countries or further. The idea here would be to change the blanketed preconcieved notions of difference based upon economic representations to independent and varied cultural differences. This would, in effect, provide an outlet for cultural differences to be celebrated as opposed to "outed" as poverty.

This is a touchy issue to deal with. If we were to find a way to properly value cultural difference this could provide an invaluable database of egalitarian exchange. Anyways, if interested/concerned inviduals are willing to chime in opinions here, I would be more than happy to facilitate a reworking of this article (even as I pickup my things to move across the world).

I added a balance tag to the article. Feel very free to improve it, or give more direct suggestions for improvement. Guaka^CS 07:58, 20 January 2007 (EST)