Interactive elephants: Nature, tourism and neoliberalism

•Examines the fundamental links between tourism and neoliberalism.•Argues that tourism captures and reshapes nature, thereby expanding neoliberalism.•Explores new forms of commodification of nature in Sub-Saharan Africa.•Interactions with elephants are carefully ‘produced’.•The interactive experiences have important implications for elephant welfare.

This paper traces the relationships between neoliberalism, tourism and nature. It argues that the dynamics of global tourism reveal an underlying (neoliberal) world order that draws specific places and animals into the world economy. In order to explore these debates further, this paper uses the recent development of interactive tourist experiences with trained elephants in Botswana, Southern Africa. This paper focuses on how those experiences are produced. In so doing, it tackles how nature is entrained, reconfigured and recreated to produce tourist experiences; it highlights how nature, tourism and neoliberalism are linked and with what effects, especially for the elephants themselves. This is an important but under-researched area in tourism studies.