Transcript ANT204Y - University of Toronto

Outline
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Why study tourism?
Scope of tourism
History of tourism
Types of tourism
– “fun in the sun”
– Aboriginal tourism
– Sex tourism
Outline:
• Issues:
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Health
Commodification
Authenticity
Nostalgia
Neo-Colonialism
Imperialist Nostalgia
Why study tourism?
• Affects most countries and peoples of the
world, either as hosts or as guests
• Tourism advertising a major generator of
Western ideas/images of the “Other”
• Impact of tourism on receiving societies is a
subject of debate
• Questions of identity, racism in tourist/host
encounters, new form of imperialism, etc.
History:
• Hunter/gatherers travelled to meet seasonal
sustenance needs and chose to travel for
social gatherings
• Agriculture moved to a more sedentary life
style with centralised control, movement
became a privilege of the elite classes
• The Grand Tour of Continental Europe (late
15th century)
History:
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Secularisation of elite society
Interest in scholarship, science, languages
Political alliances between aristocrats
Travel with a tutor-advisor
Similar connection between travel and elite
status in China and Japan
History
• 1840s a Methodist minister named Thomas
Cook
• day excursions to the countryside for
labouring classes
• democratisation of travel
• moral and health reasons
• overnight trips to Wales and Scotland
History
• Using new steam technology for longer
trips
• 19th century success of Thomas Cook and
other travel companies
• expansion of travel to all parts of the world,
by middle class people of more and more
nationalities
History
• Democratisation of travel paralleled
democratisation of education and politics in
much of the world
• Common theme of modern travel -“freedom”
• 20th century automobile, roads, motels
• British Overseas Air Corporation 1950s jet
travel
Scope:
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International visitor arrivals (80% tourists)
Under 70 million in 1960
Over 500 million in 1993
696.8 million in 2000 (tourist arrivals per
World Tourism Organisation)
• US$477 billion in tourist receipts (2000)
• Largest industry and growing.
Anthropology of tourism
• Holistic and comparative approach
• Cultural display, performance and interaction and
its location in wider spheres of global capital
• Transnational flows of people, goods and images
• Symbolism, public spectacle, art forms, racism in
host/guest interactions, economic or
environmental impact, representation
“Fun in the Sun” tourism.
• Diversion/recreation seeking tourists.
– Escapist, hedonistic, often no respect for host
country and population.
– Resorts often foreign owned.
– Low skill job for residents of host country,
management etc. from overseas
– Smiling, friendly “native”
– Ads suggest the Caribbean/Tropics an
“aphrodisiac”
Aboriginal Tourism
• Land base has been eroded, subsistence economy
less and less viable
• turn to tourism to generate income
• “cultural tourism” (Parker, 1994)
• blending of tourism product with Aboriginal
language, religion, dance, music, arts and crafts
and the “ability to coexist with Mother Nature”
• Examples in Australia, Africa, Caribbean
Aboriginal Tourism
• Income potential depends on relative degree
of control over sites/industry
• Demand for inexpensive souveniers restricts
artistic innovation
• Sacred sites trampled
• Graffitti
• Demand for “authenticity”
Sex tourism
• Diversionary/recreational tourists
• Thailand most well known example
• Viet Nam war and military bases, soldiers
on “R and R”
• Poverty, particularly in rural areas
• HIV/AIDS
Effects of Recreational/Diversion
• Unskilled service employment
• Infrastructure for tourists not locals
(example, model Carib village in Dominica)
• Waste, pollution
• Symbolic -- world as “our” playground;
“brown” people as servants; sex tourism;
mystification of actual living conditions
Effects of experiential/existential
• Potential for respected roles (translator,
artist, guide)
• Symbolic - required to enact “premodern
selves”
• Intrusion
• Potential to drain local events of meaning
• Commodification of culture
Nostalgia
• lost youth (Japan’s “SilverMoons,” engage
in youthful activities on vacation, return to
place visited in youth)
• life other than alienated life of developed
world
• Imperial nostalgia -- regret and desire for all
that has been destroyed through colonialism
or industrialisation (Renato Rosaldo)
Nostalgia
• Eco-tourism
• Creation of “heritage sites”
• Creation of theme parks: Polynesian
Cultural Center in Hawaii, Ancient City in
Bangkok, Momoyama Castle near Kyoto
• Model Carib village (Dominica)
Video: Cannibal Tours
• What are the tourists hoping to find?
• Identify some of the ethnocentric attitudes
that the tourists.
• What are the tourists hoping to find?
• How do the people living along the Sepik
River view the tourists?