ENCOUNTERING BEGGARS: DISORIENTING TRAVELERS?

Travelers articulate interaction with locals as distinguishing them from stereotypical tourists. While travel in India is infused with notions of picturesque poverty, beggars disrupt this voyeuristic conception and draw travelers into fleeting relationships that are clearly marked by structural inequalities of wealth and mobility. Yet these moments are also open to individual ways of negotiating and reflecting upon inequality. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in India, I employ Harbin’s model of disorientation to analyse travelers’ encounters with beggars. Given the transformative potential some identify in travel, I consider how these encounters might create a sense of relationality between traveler and local; vulnerability in the traveler; the recognition of alternatives; and, finally, socially inclusive change that is practiced at the individual level.

► Travel to India is structurally contextualized, but individually negotiated.
► Through encounters with beggars, travelers may experience “felt disorientation”.
► Disorientation includes relationality, vulnerability, alternatives, and change.
► Disorientation contains radical potential for more socially just forms of travel.