Scaling cigars in the Cuban tourism economy1

Abstract

Taking scale as an object of analysis (Tsing 2000), this article examines how competing scale-making projects emerge in different layers of the Cuban tourism economy. I consider how tourists and Cubans interact along contested chains of production and distribution of cigars, and therefore become entangled in bundles of ideas, discourses, practices and materialities. These constitute different scaling propositions on which tourists and Cubans converge or diverge, and which inform the success of encounters within the tourism economy. Highlighted is the importance of understanding how scaling propositions are enacted and negotiated within tourism. I conclude that the realm of tourism is a particularly fruitful platform to investigate how competing scale-making projects and notions of scale are played out in the contemporary world.