REPRESENTATIONAL POLITICS IN CHINATOWN: The Ethnic Other Carla Almeida Santos Grace Yan University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Abstract: This study engages with interlocking socio-cultural intra-ethnic relationships from the on-the-job perspectives of ethnic social agents involved in selling ethnic goods and ser- vices to tourists. It focuses on the narratives provided by Chicago’s Chinatown Chinese to jus- tify their involvement in the tourism-related project of manipulating ethnic identity. In so doing, it reveals the role of social relationships and the discursive representations of those relationships, with special attention to the depictions and manipulation of ethnicity as a kind of cultural currency in the tourism exchange. By exposing these relationships, this study reveals intra-ethnic domination processes at work in an ethnic urban space of tourism; pro- cesses which, at times, serve to produce experiences of ethnic identity. Keywords: Chinatown, urban, ethnic, multiculturalism. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION Increasingly, urban areas across North America devote significant economic resources to the development of tourism as a central compo- nent of the local economy (Eisinger 2000; Judd and Simpson 2003). To a great extent the main focus is culture and cultural products (Page and Hall 2003; Rath 2005; Zukin 1995). Such a focus has contributed to the rapid growth of ethnic urban tourism which offers insights into ethnic neighborhoods by drawing attention to their ethnic social agents, as well as the historic structures, cultural practices, and ethnic goods and services made available to tourists. Accordingly, ethnic neighborhoods increasingly rely on the representation of their ‘‘uniqueness’’ as a strategy to improve the everyday lives of their resi- dents and stakeholders (Page and Hall 2003). This tourism-related pro- ject of representing ‘‘uniqueness’’ involves interlocking socio-cultural and political relationships. Interestingly, while ethnic tourism and its centrality in urban revitalization continues to grow worldwide, tourism research has largely neglected the everyday intra-ethnic relationships involved in constructing and representing the ethnic Other in urban spaces of tourism. Therefore, this study engages in a dialogue regarding Carla Almeida Santos is Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign (Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA. Email:<csantos@uiuc.edu>). Her research interests include socio-cultural and political aspects of tourism. Grace Yan is doctoral student in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include issues of self-identity and tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 879–899, 2008 0160-7383/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain doi:10.1016/j.annals.2008.06.006 www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures 879