Tourist Studies recent issues

Many homes for tourism: Re-considering spatializations of home and away in tourism mobilities

Hui, A. — 2009-03-24

Tourism mobilities have long been spatialized as circular structures emanating from a primary home that is opposed to a space of `away'. Increasingly complex personal mobilities and experiences with multiple homes, however, challenge the assumptions on which this spatialization of tourism rests. This article utilizes an analysis of travel memoir narratives of return home and second home mobilities to deconstruct the oppositions within traditional spatializations of tourism, revealing in the process the way in which the everyday and tourism are entangled and interactive. Memoir authors construct complex relationships between spaces and places, wherein second homes can inspire new tourism practices at both unfamiliar locations and primary homes, and returning to previous homes can involve tourism of and at home. A consideration of these relationships reveals the difficulty of labeling mobilities as essentially touristic and suggests possibilities for new spatializations, ontology and methodologies that leave room for many homes for tourism.

`Dwelling' with ecotourism in the Peruvian Amazon: Cultural relationships in local--global spaces

Jamal, T., Stronza, A. — 2009-03-24

This article argues for a perspective to ecotourism development that is not determined solely by academics, capitalistic markets, conservationists or NGOs, but also by locally defined and culturally embedded relations and meanings. We start with a theoretical critique of ecotourism development and conservation at the intersection of the macro-global and micro-local levels. Insights from the existential philosopher, Martin Heidegger (1889—1976) help identify spaces and relationships in natural area destinations that illustrate the paradox of ecological modernization. A longitudinal case study of a community-based ecotourism initiative in the Peruvian Amazon is used to illustrate our argument. Local residents work in partnership with a private tour company to market and operate the lodge, but negotiations go beyond splitting profits or commodifying resources. Members engage in and resist tourism-related changes in multiple ways. Heidegger's notions of dwelling and care (concern: Sorghe) introduces a way of understanding such performative ecotourism spaces.

Beyond the visual gaze?: The pursuit of an embodied experience through food tourism

Everett, S. — 2009-03-24

Food tourism provides a conceptual vehicle for pursuing a more culturally aware tourism agenda. Findings from participant observation and in-depth tourist interviews visiting sites affiliated to two Scottish food tourism initiatives illustrate how analysis of such places can contribute to work on postmodern touristic consumptive activity and embodied experience. Food tourism research writes the body into tourism, thereby moving discourses away from dominant concepts of visualism towards non-representable forms of knowledge. However, the research also found that in order to meet an increasing demand for experiences that bring producer and consumer together, viewing windows are being installed at sites that sanitize the experience. Therefore, the concept of `new' postmodern forms of tourism activity is problematized by addressing the implications surrounding this paradoxical situation of `post/modernity'; where a (post) tourist is encouraged to internalise a place through its food, yet is simultaneously subject to a form of regulated `tourist gaze' reminiscent of more `Fordist' and modernist modes of tourism experience.

The value of authenticity in residential tourism: The decision-maker's point of view

Mantecon, A., Huete, R. — 2009-03-24

This article argues that the main social agents involved in the residential tourism sector do not perceive the `search for authenticity' as a tourist need that demands their attention and promotion. Authenticity has not been identified as a key factor in attracting tourists. Authenticity could have an important influence on the behaviour of people who choose the Costa Blanca in the Province of Alicante, Spain, as the area in which to buy a second/holidays home. Results obtained from qualitative research, including 37 in-depth interviews, are presented here in order to examine how the local stakeholders perceive the role played by authenticity in attracting visitors to Alicante. In the light of the findings discussed, we try to understand the meaning and the possibilities given to the `authentic' tourist experiences on offer within the context of the residential tourism system of the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

Introduction

Evrard, O., Doquet, A. — 2009-03-09

Balinese identity as tourist attraction: From `cultural tourism' (pariwisata budaya) to `Bali erect' (ajeg Bali)

Picard, M. — 2009-03-09

In this article, I describe how I became interested in tourism and how I went about studying it, before expounding where the study of tourism in Bali led me. Tourism neither `polluted' Balinese culture (as some of its critics would have it) nor entailed its `renaissance' (as the proponents of `cultural tourism' are prone to claim). What happened is that the focus on `cultural' tourism convinced the Balinese people that they have a `culture', something precious and perishable that they perceive as a capital to be exploited and as a heritage to be protected. As it was being manipulated and appropriated by the tourism industry, their culture became not only a source of profit and pride, but also a cause of anxiety for the Balinese, who started wondering whether they were still authentically Balinese. Thus it is that tourism provoked an overriding concern about identity amongst the Balinese — about what they call their `Balineseness'.

An interview with Jean Didier Urbain: Tourism beyond the grave: a semiology of culture

Doquet, A., Evrard, O. — 2009-03-09

The nation state as an identifying image: Traditions and stakes in tourism policy, Touraine, France

Cousin, S. — 2009-03-09

This article focuses on how tourism policy composes and recomposes a history and a territory, how representations are produced and how are they perceived and drawn upon by different categories of the population. The article explores in what ways tourism policies are used in the context of everyday heritage tourism in Loches, a small town in Touraine, France. It is argued that the invention of a local identity for tourism is directly connected to an established national past and myth that, like the new created territories, act as the frame for local identity. In this article, I also explore the role of the tourist and the place of local citizens suggesting that tourism policy is constructed with disregard for a significant section of the town's population and even appears to be able to manage without tourists. Finally I suggest that the symbolic efficacy of cultural tourism is not to be found in the reality of tourist practices, but in the role of identification and legitimation which tourism plays for the local authorities.

In the tomb of Tutankhamun: Orchestrating mysteries and curiosity under guidance in the Egyptian Art Museum

Grimaud, E. — 2009-03-09

The rooms devoted to the tomb of Tutankhamun inside the Egyptian Art Museum in Cairo are an exemplary laboratory in which to observe a wide range of relationships visitors have with artifacts: from the most expeditious visit to the most meticulous investigation. This article shows how the funerary furniture of the Pharaoh has been carefully cultivated as a mystery to be deciphered and how from its excavation by Howard Carter to its display inside the museum, the enigma of Tutankhamun has taken unexpected forms, giving us a remarkable opportunity to think about the anthropological implications of assisted curiosity.

Enchantment and solidarity: Which dream does `fair tourism' sell?

Cravatte, C., Chabloz, N. — 2009-03-09

This article studies the mechanisms of `enchantment' at work in the provision of tourist services, especially in one of its more modern forms: `fair' tourism, linked more broadly to the imaginative world and practices of fair trade. The French associations that promote and put into practice this type of tourism construct a context for meeting the `other' by presenting the consumption of this service as an act of solidarity. This shaping of the relation helps to create states of `enchantment' of tourists, an enchantment that draws power from the participation in a collective project to change the world (related to fair trade) and from the connection with a small producer of the South. However, the creation of this enchantment constitutes a fragile balance between what is hidden and what is revealed, and also depends on the protagonists of the encounter in situ. Here, we study the representations and reactions of tourists through a case study from Burkina Faso. Situations of disenchantment show that the double mechanism of de-fetishization and re-fetishization at the heart of ethical tourism does not always work.

Speculators and santuristas: The development of Afro-Cuban cultural tourism and the accusation of religious commercialism

Argyriadis, K. — 2009-03-09

Within the last ten years, cultural tourisn based mainly on Afro-Cuban folklore has grown considerably in Havana. At the same time, an increasing number of foreigners are visiting the island in order to learn about religions such as santería and palo monte, both considered as having their roots in Africa. In the economical crisis facing Cuba today, religíon has become one of the most efficient way to improve one's economical situation. This fact is discussed and criticized at various levels of Cuban society. This article analyses this phenomenon, considering criticisms of mercantilism as an ambigous `category of accusation' typical of the exchanges between practitioners and of the social relations on the island in general. Based on ethnographic researches conducted in Havana, this article also addresses the classical distinction between sacred and profane. Distinctions between cultural, artistic, religious, political, emotional and economical dimensions is also discussed. We will see that those dimensions are always manifest and connected together in touristic shows as well as in religious ceremonies.

Consuming the city in passing: Guided visits and the marketing of difference in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

Cunin, E., Rinaudo, C. — 2009-03-09

This article considers the performance of difference in the tourist presentation of Cartagena de Indias, on the Colombian Caribbean coast. The authors centre their analysis on the paseo en chiva, a guided tour in a folkloristic bus, which travels from one tourist site to another, to show how the city becomes an object of consumption through which the local history and culture emerge as easily appropriable global products and signs. Principal site of the slave trade in the territory of New Grenada and contemporary incarnation of a Spanish colonial past, Cartagena is particularly congruous for consideration of the identities of the city and those within it, identities that allude to the marketing of black culture and bodies, and to the evocation of the mestizaje associated with Latin America. At the crossroads between urban and ethnic studies, this article proposes an analysis of the production of a place in which differences are (faceted as) tourist resources which can be consumed itinerantly, thus producing a history and identities which, standardized and stereotyped, in turn act upon the relation of the inhabitants to their city.

Engaging ethnography in tourist research: An introduction

Frohlick, S., Harrison, J. — 2008-11-04

Negotiating the public secrecy of sex in a transnational tourist town in Caribbean Costa Rica

Frohlick, S. — 2008-11-04

My social positionality as an alleged sex tourist when I arrived as an `unaccompanied' woman traveling to a town in Caribbean Costa Rica to study women's adventure tourism, initiated a shift in ethnographic focus to female tourists' heterosexual sexual relations with locals. Using methodology that relies upon immersion I situated myself within the community and participated in everyday life in and beyond touristic events. I interacted with and interviewed female tourists predominantly, but also local men, local women and resident foreigners. This methodology was productive but presented a major dilemma for me: Where sex is both talked about and kept hidden, I had to negotiate the many layers and performances of the public secrecy about sex that pervade and play out in this transnational town, including how to transform `data' into representation. I conclude that the immersion of the anthropologist in the everyday lives of tourists in touristic settings reveals insights into the complexity of global sexual tourism, and presents problems too.

Shifting positions

Harrison, J. — 2008-11-04

This article discusses the research methodologies used to gain an understanding of what the touristic/cottage experience meant to a group of Canadians who traveled internationally on a regular basis; and a sampling Ontario second home tourists, or cottagers. Spatial, temporal and cultural constraints prevented me from engaging in traditional models of participant observation with them. The article details how I selected my subjects; how I positioned myself in relation to them to find out what I needed to know; and how I gained insight into th affective dimensions of these experiences. I argue here that mobile populations suc as tourists prompt a continual shifting of the ethnographic `I', challenging any taken-for-granted notions of how ethnography is best done. I end with reflections o the tensions between single/multi-sited ethnographic positionings and my research with these two groups of tourists.

`An interplay at specific points': Traveling between California and Cape Town

Mathers, K. — 2008-11-04

Ethnographic research on the everyday lives of those who are privileged to travel as vacationers or on study abroad programs offers important insights into assumptions about global connections in the 21st century. This article tells the stories of two journeys between Cape Town and California. Through these narratives I explore the challenges and rewards of ethnographic work with travelers especially when this work takes seriously their lives when they are not tourists. Ethnographers of tourists face many challenges, some practical — tourists deliberately seek experiences that are independent of their everyday lives and ethnography is at its best focusing on the everyday. Others are due to the anthropologist's own uncertainty about her position as a tourist, making the anthropology of tourism a kind of native anthropology.

Picturing experience: A tourist-centered perspective on commemorative historical sites

Sather-Wagstaff, J. — 2008-11-04

While research on commemorative historical sites addresses the commodification of tragedy and the ethics of representing violent events for tourist consumption, the experiences of tourists who visit these sites are conspicuously absent. Because of this omission, our understanding of the individual and collective social significance of actual travel to commemorative places for a `heritage that hurts' is incomplete. As a means to address these concerns, this article presents how a visual and ethnographic methods-centered approach was utilized for engagement with tourists at the former site of the twin World Trade Center towers in Manhattan, both on-site and post-visit, during 2002—06. I focus specifically upon tourists' acts of `picturing experiences' at this site through both photographic activities during travel and also photo use for memory work in the post-tour everyday. In doing so, I discuss both the usefulness of and challenges with these methods as a means for working with highly mobile research participants such as tourists.

Doing ethnography of tourist enclaves: Boundaries, ironies, and insights

Schmid, K. A. — 2008-11-04

This article discusses the range of methodologies used to explore the making of tourism enclaves at Luxor, Egypt. Enclaving in tourism describes a process of segregating tourists from the local residents, to develop exclusive touristic spaces. This process has developed at Luxor since the beginning of elite tourism in the 19th century. It was apparent that both a historical and ethnographic approach would require the innovation of strategies to gather information about the contributions and resistance of key tourism actors (informal guides, tourists, tour operators, and government), to the production of enclaving. This article will examine the multifaceted approach used to gather information from and about these actors, including the benefits and drawbacks of integrating historical and ethnographic information. Investigating the production of exclusion also revealed ethical issues and other pitfalls to research.

Views from here: Working the field, looking at tourists, mapping touristic terrain

Stampe, J. — 2008-11-04

In this article, I consider the ethnographic study of tourists and tourism by juxtaposing the perspectives and positions of differently situated members of the tourist-receiving population at Lake Mille Lacs, in the upper midwestern USA. There, I positioned myself as worker at two sites — the Mille Lacs Indian Museum and Trading Post State Historic Site and the Mille Lacs Area Tourism Council's information office. From these two locations, I conducted ethnography by engaging in a range of pursuits including participant-observation, conducting surveys and interviewing both tourists and tourist workers. In discussing this experience, I critique discourses that ascribe `mobility' and `rootedness' in ways that obscure the complex realities of daily life in tourist settings. I argue that these conceptions of the positions available in tourist settings can be usefully unsettled through the practice of ethnography.

The habit of holidays

Blichfeldt, B. S. — 2008-10-13

Generally, people's decision-making processes leading to their going on holiday are defined as complex processes characterized by high degrees of uncertainty and risk; substantial expenditure; and elaborate pre-purchase information search. However, the series of qualitative interviews which this article reports suggest that it is too simplistic to define up-front holiday decision-making processes as extensive problem-solving. The interviews reveal three patterns of holiday decision-making among the Danish informants. For those informants who view holidays away from home as central to their lives, decision-making processes are `habitualized'. Those informants for whom holidays are of lesser importance rely on ad-hoc, low involvement, decision-making. Only the final group of informants, who have recently started to go on new types of holidays, engage in extensive problem-solving. Drawing on Berger and Luckman's discussion on institutionalization, this article explores why extensive problem-solving is only one of the different decision-making processes that people rely on when planning their holidays.

Depathologizing the tourist syndrome: Tourism as social capital production

Heimtun, B. — 2008-10-13

The intention of this article is to discuss and contrast two central aspects of a published interview with Zygmunt Bauman addressing the nature of `the tourist syndrome' (Franklin, 2003). First, the tourist syndrome is a metaphor for contemporary living in liquid modernity and second, tourism is referred to as `a substitute satisfaction of a genuine need' (Franklin, 2003: 214). The interview presents a critical and somewhat sceptical perspective on tourism and social life, in which the tourist syndrome is labelled a `peg community' and the tourism industry characterized as an insatiable seducer. Based on the experiences of Norwegian midlife single women, a more positive notion is suggested. Although most of the midlife single women do not seek difference as tourists, the meaning of tourism is not superficial and/or contrived. It is rather a space for bonding with significant others and about social integration in everyday life.

Violence in independent travel to India: Unpacking patriarchy and neo-colonialism

Lozanski, K. — 2008-10-13

While western women travelers to India are frequently sexually harassed by Indian men, such men are sometimes subjected to retaliatory violence. Through analyses of the sexual harassment of women travelers and the violent acts committed against Indian men by western travelers, I draw connections between the ways in which individual travelers make sense of sexual harassment and the broader discourses of patriarchy and (neo-)colonialism. Moving beyond the western women and Indian men who figure prominently in constructions of sexual harassment, I argue that both of these forms of violence reproduce a patriarchal colonialism that privileges western men through control of women travelers' mobilities and the emasculation of Indian men.

Selling New Orleans to New Orleans: Tourism authenticity and the construction of community identity

Gotham, K. F. — 2008-10-13

This article examines the process of tourism authenticity using a case study of the rise of tourism in New Orleans during the first half of the 20th century. Tourism authenticity is a process by which tourist modes of staging, visualization, and experience shape and `frame' meanings and assertions of local culture and heritage. Empirically, I examine the place promotion efforts of the New Orleans Association of Commerce to `sell New Orleans to New Orleans', to convince local people that tourism was not only a lucrative economic development strategy but constitutive of civic life and urban culture. I analyze minutes of meetings, reports, and analyses from the Association of Commerce to illustrate how elite conceptions of urban reality were woven into discourses about New Orleans community and authenticity. Theoretically, I show that the study of interplay of place promotion and authenticity construction is a useful strategy for deepening our understanding of the complex intersections of local actions and global processes in the emergence of modern tourism in the United States.

book review: Toxic tourism: rhetorics of pollution, travel and environmental justice by Phaedra Pezzullo. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press: 2007. 320 pp. US$47.50. ISBN-13: 978--0--8173--1550--4

Mroczek, K. — 2008-10-13