Contested desires: towards an understanding of intimate relations between western women and local men in touristic Zanzibar

Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the Indian Ocean Island Zanzibar, this thesis focuses on the social interaction between Western women and local men in Zanzibar´s sexually charged tourism sphere. In the first part, I explore the ways intimate relations between Western women and Zanzibari men are informed by mutually constituted imaginations of and desires for the racialized other. Then, I examine what happens when western women and Zanzibari men become sexually involved with each other. As structured along social and economic inequalities as well as contrasting notions of romance, sex, intimacy and gender, I analyse how the complexities are understood and experienced in women´s daily life. My findings contribute to the relatively recent global phenomenon and academic subject of women´s sexual relations with local men in tourist destinations of the global south. Specifically, I add to the growing body of literature on female sex and romance tourism by providing a more critical and differentiated understanding of the multiple meanings, desires and tensions which characterize these encounters