Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
In spite of the enormous importance of tourism in the world economy and its great significance for students of social change and culture contact, the anthropology of tourism has only really developed since the 1970s. Until that relatively recent past, tourism was not regarded as a central or even serious field in anthropology, yet it is a fascinating subject which raises a number of theoretical questions at the very heart of anthropology.
If one defines tourism simply as travelling for pleasure, certain interesting characteristics of tourism as a special form of social relations emerge:
1 Tourism implies transience. It is a form of temporary *nomadism in which tourists step out of their normal life and social setting, and interact with natives on their home grounds. In Jafar Jafari’s terms, the tourist space is the intersection of the tourist’s extraordinary life with the native’s ordinary one (Jafari 1987).
2 Tourism is characterized by encounters between strangers who do not expect a long-lasting relationship and whose transactions tend to be instrumental, limited in their aim, not repeated, and, hence, open to mutual attempts at manipulation for short-term gains (a situation often defined as being cheated or exploited).
3 Tourists and natives are almost always quite different from one another in culture, language, religion, social class and a variety of other social and cultural characteristics. Indeed, it is often these very differences that make natives interesting to tourists. Ethnic tourism especially is a search for the exotic other.
4 Because of these cultural and social differences between tourists and natives, tourism is a form of ethnic relations where communication is frequently impeded or truncated by language barriers and multiple forms of misunderstandings and breeches of normal rules of interaction. Tourist relations are thus commonly unchartered or subject to simplified or truncated codes of interaction, such as the use of pidgin or sign language. Mutual stereotypes, irritation and low expectations often result, but also pleasure and amusement at the unexpected and unfamiliar. Tourists and natives make a spectacle of themselves to each other, in ways that are often more self-conscious than in normal day-to-day interaction.
5 Tourist-native interactions are not only qualitatively truncated but spatially segregated in most cases. The vast majority of tourists concentrate in a limited number of ‘points of interest’ and in a small range of specialized facilities (hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, means of transport). A few tourists seek, however, to penetrate beyond this tourist frontstage.
6 Tourist-native interactions are characterized by countervailing asymmetries. Tourists almost always enjoy more leisure and discretionary income than most natives. The bulk of tourists come from the rich countries or from the privileged classes of the poorer countries (Turner and Ash 1976). Tourist wealth and high status are often resented by natives, and put tourists in an advantageous position. On the other hand, natives can take advantage of tourists through their much greater knowledge of local conditions, prices, services and the like.
7 Many tourists seek both an escape from their normal life and an authentic experience of the exotic (in such matters as climate, fauna, flora, architecture, archeology, cuisine, music, and ‘local colour’). However, the presence of tourists frequently compromises the authenticity of the tourist experience (MacCannell 1989). Thus most tourists resent other tourists, and are irritated at being treated as tourists, yet also seek each other’s company for security, and exchange of information and experience.
8 The tourist quest for authenticity generates what MacCannell called ‘staged authenticity’, that is, cultural artefacts, performances and behaviours that will be accepted by tourists as authentic or at least a reasonable facsimile of the pre-tourist situation. Sometimes, staged authenticity (e.g. theatrical performances, concerts, dances, sculptures, weavings, pottery) can lead to a cultural renaissance of native traditions, to a renewal of ethnic consciousness, and even to the invention of new traditions and new identities.
Tourism, in short, can produce extremely complex situations of culture change and shifting ethnic boundaries, both phenomena of great interest to anthropologists. In the modern world, tourism, along with permanent migration, has become one of the most dynamic sources for the destruction, blending, modification and creation of culture. Tourism is a special form of temporary migration that puts different peoples, their languages, their artefacts and their thoughts in massive contact with one another. Inevitably, tourism affects many aspects of life beyond what one usually thinks of as tourism: tastes, styles, trade, politics, gender roles, race and ethnic relations, and many other domains of daily existence. To ignore tourism in our accounts of culture contact in the twentieth century is probably as great an omission as to ignore *slavery in the eighteenth century or *colonialism in the nineteenth. Indeed, tourism can even be seen as a mirror of anthropology itself: both constitute a quest for the other. In a sense, ethnic tourism is amateur anthropology, or anthropology professional tourism. Perhaps, in the end, we all yearn to achieve better self-understanding by looking at others.
PIERRE L.VAN DEN BERGHE
See also: complex societies, world system
Further reading
MacCannell, D. (1989) The Tourist, New York: Schocken
Nash, D. and V.L.Smith (1991) ‘Anthropology and Tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research 18 (1):12–25
Smith, V.L. (ed.) (1989) Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
Turner, L. and J.Ash (eds) (1976) The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery, New York: St Martin’s Press
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