Caribbean cruise tourism - Globalization at sea

Caribbean cruise tourism provides a particularly illuminating vantage point for understanding the processes of globalization in the world today. After documenting the rapid expansion of this business, the paper explores three central manifestations of globalization at work in the Caribbean cruise industry: the restructuring of the industry in the face of global competition, capital mobility, and labor migration; new patterns of global ethnic recruitment and stratification, including their incorporation into the product marketed to tourists; and deterritorialization, cultural theming, and simulation. The paper asserts that this "globalization at sea" illustrates the contradictions, ambiguities, and unchartered course of contemporary globalization processes. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. Ail rights reserved.