WSDC 2014 R5: SG vs IRL
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- Round 5 of the 2014 World School's Debating Championships. This match was between Team Singapore in Proposition and Team Ireland in Opposition. The motion was: THBT slum tourism does more harm than good. The debate was won on a 2-1 split decision by Ireland.
Opp 3 is one of the all time great worlds speeches
Transcript: This House Believes that slum tourism does more harm than good
Mr. Chairman. Adjudicators. Ladies and gentlemen. This proposition would have you believe, that slums, are only about poverty. That slum tourists fetishise poverty. That, the, that this, ladies and gentlemen misrepresents people. This misrepresents the culture of slums. This misrepresents that fact that people might want to experience that culture of slums. And in the process, economically help, economically develop these areas. Help the people living in those slums.
They tell us that this culture is so awful. They tell us, they have the audacity to compare the culture and lives of people who live in slums to sex tourism. That is disgusting. That isn’t right. These people have culture and a life that has value. They’re not animals in the zoo. People can engage with them and experience, experience a life of them as well. This is, so.
Team Ireland have brought you a case layered of 3 points:
Direct economic benefits
Indirect economic benefits
Beneficial changes in perception
And we’ve done this under the team line: ‘that engaging with the slums is socially and economically empowering’
I’m going to look at 2 questions that have come up in this debate. One, are there long term economic benefits to slum tourism. And secondly, is slum tourism dehumanising.
What I will prove now is how we have brought you a series of concrete benefits that outweigh the harms they brought up. And the harms they’ve brought up are actually, are actually, benefits disguised as harms or are harms that aren’t actually caused by slum tourism but are actually part of what, are of what, slums are.
So firstly on this issue of (inaudible)
Are there economic benefits to slum tourism?
They brought us some analysis about seasonality. We responded, we talked to, we responded that which that idea is of why we can’t distinct what people can say, why people can’t work other jobs, we got no response so we’re going to assume that they conceded the seasonality response.
Throughout their case, they failed to prove how the how poverty is exacerbated by poverty. They never proved that harm so we believe that (inaudible) from the start of this debate that it’s neutral and therefore the benefits that we bring you show how we better economically for them.
Throughout all of their debate, they’ve told us that firms are motivated, like the proposition told us that firms are motivated by profit. We agree. That’s why they want to provide an authentic experience. (Inaudible) would have to provide tourists with a real experience that they that would give them something that they would want to go home and tell their friends about. That when they go on Tripadvisor and compare these some people would say ‘oh no, this was one of my like very I’m very like organisation that’s very commercial, whereas this group brought you like a very real experience’
The proposition has in essence rested their case on economics on the ground of this (incomprehensible) analysis to do with criminal enterprises. The second speaker told us that, they actually, they say actually they kinda conceded about that our analysis on investment. But he’s like ‘well yeah, they will happen in some areas but it wont happen everywhere’. What they’re conceding is that benefits do exist in some places, and that other places won’t have no benefits and they’ll still be affected by problems to do with, you know, criminality that is as a result of, you know, living in a slum. It is not a harm brought about by slum tourism. So we don’t think this is relevant.
So on this criminality, as we’ve told you, policing is, like, going to become better. Because it is going to be a part of a development strategy. Areas are going to want to have better policing so that they can incentive tourists to come to them so they can economically develop that area and economically develop that slum because obviously states, which are rational, are going to want their economies develop.
Go ahead: (POI)
People go to slums because it is distinctively just which tends to be centred around poverty. If I wanted to experience the football culture of Brazil, why didn’t I go to Copacabana beach.
And why would you go to slums where some of the best football players in the world originated from. Why are there special tours in Brazil that bring you to slums to show you where certain Brazilian foot players were born and the streets which they lived and trained. Could you give us an answer to that? (Rhetorical)
Like, they, like, there they gave us the response that how these places can sometimes be concentrated, we told you that that is a concession. They misrepresented our case by just saying that crime didn’t exist, we do understand that crime exists but we don’t say it is a problem with slum tourism.
We say criminality is a harm that is a wider harm that is under status quo, and we don’t think it stops slum tourism by the very nature of the fact that people go into slums and that they engage with them. We also, like, don’t think that there is a tension between saying, you know, ‘I want to experience a culture’ and they said like ‘oh people won’t want like a safe experience, there’s no incentive to put in investment’. There’s no contradiction between saying as a tourist, ‘I want to experience a culture but I also want to be safe’. And governments are aware of this and they invest in that regard.
They told us that gangs are going to, like you know, take all the Mooney themselves like, we don’t think that’s a rational thing that you go into a slum and you buy water like off a stand or like you buy a trinket to bring home or you buy some food, that all of those organisations are run by gangs. We don’t think that’s a rational thing to say. So like, they gave us like, the example of a criminal gang, note they have no example to back this up. We think it’s untrue.
The proposition like, like asks in a POI like if there is development, why is there slums? That is as illogical as saying ‘well, we’ve been investing in this slum as a government for 2 years, they’re still a slum, we better stop’. We don’t think that makes any sense.
So in conclusion to this point, we have proved that economic benefits exist and that these benefits make life better for slum dwellers. That we’ve shown that the harms that they brought are actually benefits or they’re no way related to slum tourism. So therefore our argument on economic analysis wins.
Now onto the issue of ‘is slum tourism dehumanising?’ To which we say it isn’t.
Like, they said in our third, they misrepresented us in our third speech by saying how that we said that everyone is going to join an NGOs. No we didn’t. We said that some people, most likely a minority of people, are going to have experience that can fundamentally change the way they view the world and how they view that area and that might make them want to go home and help.
On this side of the house, we have faith in humans, we have faith that experiences shape humans, and that an experience, like a slum tour, may lead you to like help the area you’re in a bit more, and not go home and say ‘ah Jaysus, what like, you know, my life is great I don’t want to help that area anymore’.
Like we brought you analysis about narratives and like we say what happens in slums is that people see like, when they go to slums, that awful things are happening in those slums. Where it is incentivised to governments to make change, to provide people with empowering narratives. Now that they’re developing, they’re becoming a serious economic player, who now that government has to take seriously and engage for, and they can no longer be shut out.
This empowerment leads to community groups, it leads to organisations who would have control engage in the narrative, and empower this area.
Like, like, they brought us like responses to deal with how, they told us how people (incomprehensible) like poverty. But we’ve told you throughout our case, people go for other reasons. People who go, we also don’t take this image of this western tourist going with his camera and is like viewing his (incomprehensible), like we say the fact that people can respect tourist sites. We look at the way people dress when they go to the Vatican, we look at the way people dress when they go to temples. People respect peoples’ culture, like that is a rational thing to assume, that people have respect for other cultures, that people aren’t awful, that people aren’t like unhuman and have no respect and would fetishise poverty.
Like they talked to us about he narrative, we say we could tackle this. (Incomprehensible) when perceptions of what slums are. We say those perceptions exist under their, like under like status quo, like sorry under their side of the house as well. Because like when you see (incomprehensible) is the slum you have, what you hear about is what you hear on television, we say that can be directly challenged when you go visit slum, ladies and gentlemen.
So ladies and gentlemen, engaging with slums is socially and economically empowering.
Incredibly shocked that proposition lost this debate
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