Local encounters with globetrotters: Tourism’s Potential for Street Vendors in Cusco, Peru

The current debate on the tourism-development nexus has a rather static and narrow focus on the impact of tourism and overlooks that tourism has become strongly dependent on links between different localities. This article eschews these place-bounded approaches and focuses on linkages and the interplay between the social and the spatial within tourism developments. Drawing on the empirical case of street vendors in the tourist centre of Cusco, it explores how social capital and the way street vendors manoeuvre themselves in and through global and local environments offer new opportunities for tourism to contribute to poverty alleviation. It is maintained that social capital and interconnectivity are of fundamental importance in gaining a better understanding of the development potential of tourism.

► The paper contributes to the debate on the relation between tourism and development.
► It focuses on street vendors and their interplay between the social and the spatial.
► Street vendors manoeuvre themselves in and through global and local environments.
► This offers new opportunities for tourisms’ contribution to local development.