Unpacking Pride’s commodification through the encounter

Debates complicating universal constructions of tourist commodification are far from new. Yet, within tourist studies distinctions continue to resurface that reify boundaries positioning processes of commodification as necessarily liberating, victimising or pathologising. Through these boundary making processes there is potential that the meanings, politics and memories of individuals, invested in experiences deemed ‘commodified’, become devalued as tourist scholars praise pre-commodified experience. This paper responds to these tensions through utilising a feminist embodied framework focused on the encounter. The paper troubles innate constructions of commodification, by showing how interpretation of commodification is spatially and socially specific to the moment of encounter. It is thus argued that analysis of the encounter offers a way to negotiate sponsorship requirements during event planning