La fabrique d’un boom immobilier-touristique. Tourisme et spéculation dans le Nordeste brésilien (2000-2010)

Resum

Like many emerging tourism destinations, the north-east of Brazil has been the scene in the 2000s of an intense international real estate development. All along the coast, gated communities, resorts and second homes have spread thanks to an international economic conjuncture favorable to real estate bubbles. The article analyses the public and private strategies that contributed to integrating the Northeast to the international circuits of real estate tourism, whether it is i) materially through public policies and infrastructure programs, ii) collectively through emerging professional associations, or iii) symbolically through expert discourse and marketing. In doing so, the study deconstructs the blatancy of development, often presented as an inevitable outcome of a “latent potential”, civilization processes (the democratization of leisure, individual hypermobility) or international economic cycles. The study pays particular attention to the concrete experience of real estate entrepreneurs and tries to define from a sociological perspective the structuration of the real estate tourism offer. The article also considers the role of tourism in speculation processes and raises the hypothesis that tourism imaginaries act as “performative utopias” that end up downplaying the risks of the market, while imposing idealised visions of the future.