Tourism development affects prominent city centres worldwide, causing social unrest that has been labelled “tourism-phobia.” This article problematizes the recent appearance of this term by unravelling the links between the materiality of contemporary urban tourism and the response it receives from social movements opposing its expansion. We endeavour to understand the meaning that different actors involved in the city's touristification attach to this term, and in particular the perceptions of citizens’ movements that claim to espouse not tourism-phobia but urban-philia. To analyze these dynamics, we draw on Lefebvre’s discussion of the “right to the city” to highlight the extractive productive relations characterizing the tourism industry and the contestations such relations trigger. Taking the example of two Spanish cities (Barcelona and Palma), our findings indicate that the social malaise found in tourist oversaturation is due to the disruption it causes to everyday life, including price increases and rising rents. Consequently, the discomfort popular mobilisations have generated among the ruling class has led the latter to disqualify and even criminalise the former’s legitimate claims under the label of tourism-phobia. To conclude, we call for a future research agenda in pursuit of social justice and equity around re-touristification, de-touristification or even tourist degrowth.

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Most of the anthropology of tourism has focused either on authenticity or on the commoditization of culture. Furthermore, tourism has been looked at as a service sector and, at most, as an urban strategy. Few authors have investigated the organization of (in)formal labor in the tourism industry outside the wage form. I address this gap by looking at the living and dead labor that the production of cultural heritage is about. I argue that the tourism industry transforms long-labored spaces and existing collective use values into commodities. After illustrating this argument with sketches from the Ciutat de Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain), I conclude that the relation between the dead labor and the living labor that produce heritage determines people’s differential access to its commoditized outcome.

Underlying the idea of the middle classes there is a contradictory positionality, the relations of which ultimately enhance capital accumulation. By opening Marxist critique to Weberian approaches to class, we explain how the self-ascription of shortterm rental (STR) suppliers to the middle-class idea boosts exploitation and accumulation. Housing income, and recently that originating in STRs, has been used to maintain the symbolic and material status of the so-called middle classes in Spain, and specifically in Palma. Based on statistical data analysis and interviews with STR suppliers, managers and workers, we analyse the contradictory class positionality of STR suppliers in Palma (Majorca, Spain). First, we argue, that STR suppliers are part of the middle classes since they bear attributes of rent, labour and also capital, as they employ workers to produce a tourism commodity. Second, we contend that STR overnight stays should not only be considered as land rent payments, but also as the sale of a tourism commodity. Third, we claim that the contradictory positionality of the middle classes fuels self-exploitation, for STR suppliers misalign their interests with those of capital.

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