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HOSPITALITY, TOURISM AND MARKETING STUDIES

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CRITICAL ESSAYS IN TOURISM RESEARCH

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Additional books in this series can be found on Nova’s website under the Series tab.

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Additional e-books in this series can be found on Nova’s website under the e-Books tab.

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CRITICAL ESSAYS IN TOURISM RESEARCH

MAXIMILIANO E KORSTANJE

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EDITOR

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Copyright © 2018 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher.

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We have partnered with Copyright Clearance Center to make it easy for you to obtain permissions to reuse content from this publication. Simply navigate to this publication’s page on Nova’s website and locate the “Get Permission” button below the title description. This button is linked directly to the title’s permission page on copyright.com. Alternatively, you can visit copyright.com and search by title, ISBN, or ISSN. For further questions about using the service on copyright.com, please contact: Copyright Clearance Center Phone: +1-(978) 750-8400 Fax: +1-(978) 750-4470 E-mail: [email protected].

NOTICE TO THE READER

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The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works.

Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication.

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This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN: 978-1-53613-383-7

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

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In this book, the contributors raise some fundamental questions about the nature of tourism knowledge that are rarely asked but always assumed. Our mainstream knowledge of tourism is a bundle of generally held beliefs and these need to be deconstructed to see the deeper undercurrents making up the tourism system. One particular epistemological question that always baffled me is the validity of responses about touristic motivation and behavior that we gather from people who are not in their touristic state of mind when the survey is conducted. The contributors to this volume have shown the boldness to un-assume beliefs and opinions to propose a critical theory of tourism. This book will offer a great reading experience for the scholarly practitioners in tourism and associated areas.

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(Babu George, Fort Hays State University, US)

Critical Essays in Tourism Research offers an opportunity to revisit furtherly some of the conceptual foundations and discourses, which are taken for granted in tourism fields. Its main value lies in the incorporation of critical perspectives to the global discussions and current understanding of tourism. Juan Carlos Monterrubio Cordero (Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, Mexico)

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Over the years tourism scholars who base their innovative insights on the social sciences stand in opposition to those who exclusively rely on management and marketing as their status quo position. Maximiliano Korstanje represents the former camp by challenging the latter. In this edited book he brings together writers who share his anti-establishment views which thereby allow the multidisciplinary understanding of tourism to progress. Interestingly, some of these contributors do not have English as their first language. (Graham Dann – Professor Emeritus - Artic University of Norway, Norway)

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CONTENTS Preface

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Maximiliano E Korstanje

The Transdisciplinary Nature of Tourism Maximiliano E. Korstanje

Chapter 2

The Dark Side of Creative Tourism: A Philosophical Dialogue with Culture Maximiliano E. Korstanje, Babu George and Maite Echarri Chavez

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Chapter 5

Drinking Alcohol as a Host-Guest Mediator in the Rite of Hospitality H. Seraphin and M. E. Korstanje Assessing the Tourism Performance of a Destination: Toward a New Approach Using Cuba as a Case Study Hugues Séraphin, Vanessa Gowreesunkar, Mary Ann Dávila Rodríguez and Nevya Dávila Pagán

Modernity and Tourism Francisco Muñoz de Escalona

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The Indiscipline of Tourism Research in the 21st Century: Is China Part of the Problem or the Solution? Maximiliano E. Korstanje

Cross-Cultural Competence as a Basis of the Competitive Advantage of the United States in Medical Tourism Babu George and Tony L. Henthorne

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Index

Go Ape with (Sustainable) Style: Neoliberalizing Exurban Leisure in Leeds, UK Rodanthi Tzanelli

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A Critical Debate on the Concept of Ecological Tourism: The Russian Experience Oleg E. Afanasiev, Alexandra V. Afanasieva, Hugues Seraphin and Vanessa G. Gowreesunkar

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PREFACE

Maximiliano E Korstanje

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University of Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Tourism-research has experienced an interesting growth over the recent years. Not only in the rise of countless tourism doctorates but also in the volume of produced knowledge as well as the number of publications and specialized journals. Doubtless, paragraphing Jafar Jafari, tourism reached its zenith as a consolidated discipline while paradoxically some circles and voices show certain reluctance respecting to its epistemology (Jafari 1990). J. Tribe argues that tourism is facing a serious epistemological crisis in view of the dispersion in what is produced. Starting from the premise that tourism evolved chaotically without a defined conceptual corpus or clear object of study, Tribe coins the term “indiscipline” to explain why despite the decades of investigation tourism failed to situate as a maturate discipline (Tribe 1997; 2010). In earlier studies, we traced back the indiscipline of tourism to the rise and evolution of postmodernism which began in 70s decade and implied a great fragmentation for all epistemologies (Thirkettle & Korstanje 2013). In view of this, no less true is that the International Academy for the Study

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of Tourism, far from organizing annual meeting for their fellows, systematically miscarried any attempt to consolidate a unified epistemology that leads very well towards a clear definition in the object of study. The academy evinced two important assumption to fix agenda to all scholarship. At a first glance, it is embedded within an economic-centric viewpoint of tourism, which neglects any dialogue with other knowledges and perspectives. As growing industry, tourism showed to be an efficient instrument to boost local economies and this suggests that the main goals of tourism researchers aim to investigate, find and eradicate all problems and risks that place the industry in jeopardy. Tourism has judged by its material or economic effects instead by its anthropological roots. The economicbased paradigm lacks of any scientific basis simply because the performance of destinations the capital-owner´s profits are over valorized. The second problem seems to be the attachment to English as the only valid language to publish. The most authoritative voices in tourism not only come from English speaking countries, but also are uninterested in reading any other publications written in any other language than English. This point was critically addressed by Graham Dann (2009) who years ago interrogated on how international the Academy is? In addition, from the outset, tourism-applied research borrowed from other disciplines which were already established such as sociology, geography or anthropology, part of their methodologies and conceptual frameworks. Over more than forty years, tourism-related scholars not only theorized on the fragmentation of knowledge production, which paused tourism to become in serious discipline but also interrogated on the hegemony of economic-centred paradigms in the fields. It is tempting to say, as a growing industry tourism is considered or understood through the lens of profits it generates or at the best, a global project which emerged after the WWII end. The discussion between tourism-management and tourism-associal institution is not new. While the former signals tourism as an industry which must be protected from external threats, the latter refers to the activity as a rite of passage, which revitalizes the psychological frustrations happened in the working days. In any case, tourism not only is far from being a consolidated discipline because of its lack of epistemology, but the

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economic-centred paradigm monopolized a whole portion of what is being published in peer review journals and books. This book calls the attention to the needs of discussing critically tourism as something else than a commercial activity laying the foundations towards a new critical turn in the discipline. The project contains a bunch of high-quality chapters, authored by different scholars who confront with the complacency of Academy today. As Gilles Deleuze and Guattari put it, the values of the periphery are repressed by the idealized centre, while at the bottom what we scorn represents the touchstone of our cosmology. While systems are often based on the values of their peripheries, the status quo cements its hegemony thru the articulation of different disciplinary methods which help in its expansion. Tourism and Tourism-research here seems not to be exceptions. At the time the discipline grew and expanded towards new horizons, the power of economic-centred theory consolidated as an inexpungable value. Hence this book lumps together a set of critical essays, chapters and works which are rejected by the current positions of academy and the status quo. As the founding parents of ethnography and anthropology amply showed, tourism -as a rite of passage- serves as a mechanism of revitalization, which helps society to be united. As Jost Krippendorf observed, through tourism consumption citizens not only endorses the authority to officialdom, but also embrace the main cultural values of society. Each society develops its own forms of production as well as its own modes of leisure (Krippendorf 2010). This is the reason why the present book continues with a discussion respecting the nature of tourism as well as the diverse faces tourism is taking today. From dark to creative tourism new forms of tourism is surfacing to the extent some experts declare “the end of tourism” or the end of tourism as we know it. The first chapter explores the limitations and problems of transdisciplinary methods in tourism. Far from narrowing the fragmentation, which was originally claimed by Tribe, the adoption of new methods without a serious debate about the future of tourism, obscures more than it clarifies. The second chapter, jointly to Babu George and Maite Chavez Echarri, theorizes on the dark side of “creative tourism”. As finely ingrained in the doctrine of creative destruction, the idea of creative tourism revitalizes old

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dormant prejudices and discourses which were formulated during the colonial period. The protection for the forlorn native, adjoined to European superiority, paved the ways for the adoption of a strange Paternalism which persisted -in subtle forms- to date. The third chapter, rather, authored by this author and Hughes Seraphin, describes the role of alcohol consumption in the rites of modern hospitality. From Levi-Strauss on, anthropology devoted considerable efforts to understand the ritual of wine in contemporary French society while Jack Goody focused on the role of beer in Lodagaa tribe. This chapter centers on the role of alcohol consumption in holidays and leisure context, as a mechanism of escapement that alleviate the anxieties created by the host-guest encounter. As an ancient institution, hospitality was historically prone to reduce the risks and looming dangers not only for travelers who are not familiar with the topography and customs of the visited lands, but in hosts who little know of the newcomers. The fourth chapter, which is presented by Hugues Seraphin, Vanessa Gowreesunkar, Mary Ann Davila Rodriguez & Nevya Davila Pagan deal with the problem of “antitourist movements” worldwide. If after the WWII tourism and heritage tourism became in two major economic sectors, today the extreme (Darwinist) competition among destinations is affecting seriously the quality of the experience as well as the domestic life of hosts. Citing the example of Cuba, these experts found that the application of MCDA -multi criteria decision analysis- helps to obtaining new alternative insights on the performance of some destinations in decline. As this backdrop, the fifth chapter, which is written by Francisco Munoz de Escalona (Emeritus Research from CSIC Spain) brings the limitations of the sociologism of tourism into the foreground. As Escalona noted, tourism researchers have innovated introducing new terms and theories to an already-established dogma, which escaped to be catalogued as a socials science or a piece of engineering. The marketing of tourism not only masked the real roots of tourism, but also adopted a bunch of new definitions and innovations that ushered the discipline into an irreversible epistemological crisis. From Russia, Oleg Afanasiev and Alexandra Afanasieva ignite a hot debate around the concept of sustainable tourism giving fresh evidence to reconsider the modern understanding of eco-tourism. The fact is that tourism

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is ecological in its nature because it is inserted within nature. This tautology is embedded within the discussion of sustainable tourism as well as other spheres as sustainable development. For some reason, the specialized literature associates the concept of sustainability in terms of the direct or indirect effects of tourism on the environment. Rodanthi Tzanelli, lecturer at the University of Leeds -UK- brings reflection on the Darwinist nature of global capitalism. Based on the Go Ape Tree Top Adventure Center -a project aimed at expanding the Roundhay Park, she holds the thesis that beyond the idea of sustainability and the industry of experiences there lie some competing interpretations of ecology, which intersects the technocratic structure with eco-friendly practices. However, as she critically observes, the fact is that besides the articulation of the different theories that take environment as their main object of study, a rational economic-based viewpoint remains. Not surprisingly, in neoliberal times the material benefits, which are given by tourism or other leisure industry, lead towards complex reactions to the problems of climate change. By this token, George & Korstanje not only call the attention on “the indiscipline of tourism”, but also in the role of China in enlarging the dispersion of produced knowledge. Without any kind of critical perspective, the growth of publication in China endorsed and followed the economiccentric paradigm. To what extent China is part of the problem or solution in the 21st century is one of the topics this chapter addresses. Last but not least, George and Henthorne bring a new exploratory short chapter which places the cross cultural factors as a basis of competence in medical tourism. This not only speaks of Obama care and how expensive medicine is in the US while thousands of Americans travel abroad to receive medical treatment. At the same time, hospitals -as authors brilliantly notedare formed into a racial and ethnical hierarchy with recent migrants coming from diverse countries and zones of the world. This creates paradoxically a multicultural atmosphere for over-seas patients which deserves to be investigated. I do thank to all contributors who shared their investigations with me as well as Nova Science Publishers and the staff for the well-treatment during the process of production and publication.


REFERENCES

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Dann, G. (2009). How international is the International Academy for the Study of Tourism? Tourism Analysis, 14(1), 3-13. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London, Bloomsbury Publishing. Jafari, J. (1990). Research and scholarship: the basis of tourism education. Journal of tourism studies, 1(1), 33-41. Krippendorf, J. (2010). Holiday makers. London, Taylor & Francis. Tribe, J. (1997). The indiscipline of tourism. Annals of tourism research, 24(3), 638-657. Tribe, J. (2010). Tribes, territories and networks in the tourism academy. Annals of tourism research, 37(1), 7-33.

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Chapter 1

THE TRANSDISCIPLINARY NATURE OF TOURISM

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Maximiliano E. Korstanje*

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University of Palermo, Palermo, Argentina

ABSTRACT

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The growth of the services industry occupied a central role in order for tourism to be offered at educational establishments and well-recognized universities. However, over decades the construction of an epistemology that guides the horizons of scholars and professional fieldworkers still remains as a pending issue. The current chapter centers on the limitations of tourism to consolidate as a maturate discipline. It is unfortunate that the economic-centered paradigms monopolized a whole portion of publications while the Academy failed to situate as a source of consult for researchers and fieldworkers.

Keywords: tourism, social sciences

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epistemology,

research,

transdiciplinarity,


INTRODUCTION

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Over the recent decades, many professional fieldworkers and tourismled researchers interrogate on the factors, which historically contributed to the maturation of a discipline as a serious option. Originally, many hypotheses flourished, which ranged from the admiration of tourism scholars by other disciplines to the youth of tourism as an independent career. Despite the volume of the produced knowledge, tourism has not been consolidated as a discipline. For positivists, the modern Science corresponds with the needs of explaining the external world. The nature of science rests on giving some plausible explanations about the surrounding events one perceives. From its inception, Science was based on three basic pillars: a) experimentation, b) the accessibility to sources and informational dataset and c) the possibilities to infer general laws that explain the reasons and effects of such events. Emile Durkheim (2013) invited his readers to imagine society as a thing, as an object of study, which should be methodologically grasped through the application of a specific technique (rationality). After the arrival of phenomenology, which replaced the main paradigms of positivism, scholars adopted the individual perception as a reliable source towards knowledge production. Based on impressionism as a guiding force, hermeneutics proposed a new path which focused on meaning and not measuring (Merleau-Ponty, 1964; Ryle 2009). Per this viewpoint, hermeneutics rested on two clear axioms. On one hand, the causality of facts is not given by, nor limited to observation –as positivism precludes- but to the individual interpretation. In this vein, Clifford Geertz (1973) continues the discussion left by Ryle respecting to the dissociation of understanding and interpretation. As Geertz puts it, while a person winks the eye to an unknown other this simple act seems to be subject to two contrasting interpretations. It can be a type of insinuation towards seduction or simply a nervous tic. This happens because the same events can be understood in different ways in view of the much earlier cognitive system of the receiver (Geertz 1973). On another hand, Ryle acknowledges that the whole is greater than the sum of all its part. This moot point, which was widely discussed in

The Transdisciplinary Nature of Tourism

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the fields of epistemologists during years, raises some interesting points such as, what is the difference between disciplinary and transdisciplinarity?, is tourism a type of maturated science? Created originally by the combination of two or more disciplines to give an accurate answer to certain posited questions, transdisciplinarity operates in contexts of complexity, uncertainness, and limitations in the accessibility of the sources. The transdisciplinary approach takes a variety of methods which come from other disciplines to offer fresh solutions to unresolved practical problems. In this token, some experts have adamantly claimed that tourism –not only because of its complexity or its volatile nature, needs from a transdisciplinary approach to escape beyond preconceived stereotypes, which are created by the market-oriented paradigms or what specialists dubbed as “economic-centric viewpoint.” One of the goals of this chapter intends to discuss to what extent transdisciplinary may resolve the epistemological problems of tourism and the state of fragmentation that the discipline faces today. Though interesting studies have devoted considerable time and efforts in dilucidating the roots of tourism less attention was given to the limitations of transdisciplinarity. To some extent, in a hyperglobalized society knowledge is previously negotiated by a dense network of experts, professional and fieldworkers. The adoption of multi-disciplined or multidisciplinary approaches to expand the current understanding of tourism seems to be of paramount importance. (Santana-Talavera, 1997; Barreto 2004; Mota, 2004; Castrogiovanni, 2007; Nechar Castillo & Panosso Netto, 2011). However, at a closer look, the concept may obscure more than it clarifies. As stated, this chapter revolves around the current crisis of epistemology in tourism fields while reminding the reasons behind the dispersion of the produced knowledge.

DEBATING ON THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF TOURISM

Nowadays some voices have alerted about the risks of the uncontrolled growth of tourism research. Despite the increasing number of publications in peer-reviewed journals, books and doctoral dissertations, the discipline

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faces a high degree of fragmentation (Tribe, 1997, 2005; 2009; 2010; Panosso Netto, 2007; Escalona 2010). At a first glimpse, there are no firm grounds respecting neither the nature of tourism nor its effects in society. The question whether Jafar Jafari (1994) raised the urgency for scholarship to embrace the scientific-centered platform not only remained open by his followers, but also it was misjudged. The number of publications seems not to be a key factor that ensures the consolidation of a discipline. With the benefits of hindsight, over more than four decades scholars failed to erect the babel tower that buttress tourism as a leading topic. Instead, the discipline not only lacked for a shared epistemology but also a unified object of study to explain the phenomenon. Some critical works suggested that transdisciplinarity fitted as a ring to the finger, in order for the state of fragmentation to be enlarged. At the time, tourism research devotes resources to form an all-encompassing model to study tourism, it explains nothing. Paradoxically, the interests of fieldworkers to reverse fragmentation, -far from solving the problem, aggravates it. Epistemologically speaking, the notion of transdisciplinarity obscures more than it clarifies in tourism fields (Escalona 2010, Ascanio 2010). Nonetheless, others experts contend that the states of inter or transdisciplinarity vary contextually on discipline to discipline or at the best, to its degree of maturation, its socio-economic background and the functionability within society. This means that disciplines are gradually consolidated when the society endorses credibility to their outcomes. To wit, transdisciplinarity can be only applied in maturated disciplines as sociology, geography, psychology but not in tourism (Korstanje 2013, 2014). In the opposite direction, other scholars agree that tourism is in conditions to be considered as a serious discipline as sociology or anthropology. As this backdrop is given, transdisciplinarity orchestrates a new epistemology, which offers emerging solutions and responses to the dilemmas of industry (Jafari & Aeser, 1988; Jafari, 1990; 2005; Coles, Hall & Duval 2006; Tribe, 2009). From the outset, tourism nurtured from several disciplines such as anthropology (Graburn, 1983), sociology (MacCannell 1976; Cohen 1984), geography (Mitchel & Murphy, 1991; Britton 1991; Williams & Lew 2014),


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psychology (Pearce 1982), political science (Richter, 1983; 1989), economy (Krippendorff 1984) and history (Towner, 1985). Quite aside from the advances all these lines of investigation and the traction gained to date, a countless number of waves, schools and sub disciplines disputed their own definition and meaning of tourism. This led us to question, to what extent is transdisciplinarity part of the problem or the solution? Doubtless, here two contrasting perspectives collide. For the European tradition, which was historically conditioned by the studies of Jost Krippendorff, tourism serves as a mechanism of revitalization that not only alleviates citizens from the psychological frustrations but helping society to keep united. Beyond any time and culture, almost all civilizations introduced travels in their cosmologies as instruments for escapement. Through the articulation of these rites of passages civilizations expanded their frontiers at the same time leisure played a leading role connecting the centre with its periphery (Krippendorff 1984). This conception of leisure travels and tourism was overtly rejected by American sociology, which focused on tourism as a mechanism of control. Unlike Krippendorff and Swiss school, which envisaged tourism as a social activity, geared to enhance the social bondage, American sociologists describe tourism within the socio-economic backdrop of modernity. The obsession for consumption leads very well towards depersonalized forms of connections, where the alterity is commoditized to meet the desire of consumers. In the mid of this mayhem, tourists are not really interested to discover new landscapes, peoples and cultures but in validating their own previously-assumed stereotypes. The “Other” was simply commoditized according to the tourists´ cosmologies (Maccannell 1976; Debord 1988; Chambers, 2009). As a result of capitalist society and not from much deeper historic processes, American sociology frames the origin of tourism to WWII end (MacCannell, 1976; Debord, 1998; Meethan 2005). Of course, as Korstanje (2013) observed, though the American school´s diagnosis is validated once the fieldworker enters in modern destination like Disneyworld, no less true is that it has some limitations, which merits to be discussed. Methodologically speaking, American sociology neglected or at least took a partial gaze of history, which led to think tourism surfaced after the

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rise of modernity and industrialism through nineteen and twentieth centuries. Not surprisingly, modernity posited a reified form of consumption that distinguished modern tourism than other types of ancient travels or leisure practices. Here two assumptions should be done. Firstly, the theorists of tourism never turned the attention to ancient history, in which case they would gain further knowledge of others ancient forms of tourism. Rather, their gazes delved in Medieval Times, which was historically characterized by inter-feudal conflicts and extreme climates fraught of hostility. The violence among feuds was the key-factor that determined the lower mobilities historians found in medieval times. While historians enthusiastically toyed with the idea that there was no earlier forms of tourism before modernity, sociologists understood tourism as a pure modern phenomenon, neglecting the possibility to come back in the threshold of time to study others versions of leisure industry. In consequence, tourism, whose roots date back to industrialism, was unilaterally conceived as a unilineal activity with irreversible and alienatory effects on daily life. In this way, not only MacCannell (1976) but also Meethan (2005) glossed over the intersection of travels and tourism with civilizations as Babylonians, Romans and Sumerians that fleshed out similarly-minded forms of tourism than us. Strictly limited to Grand Tour as founding event of modern tourism, American sociologists accepted a biased explanation of tourism, which lasted up to date (Korstanje 2013). As Nogues Pedregal lamented, the lack of credibility of tourism research comes from the original position of American sociologists who defined this activity as an alienatory industry tended to sell dreams or what is worse, a naïve activity which leads to narcissism (Nogues Pedregal 2009). At the same time, the negative imprint revolving around tourism prevented the classic sociology to understand tourism beyond the prejudices of its own paradigms. Moreover, since tourism was deemed as a unit of business, which is part of a large system, this paves the ways for the rise of an economic-centered discipline, more interested in what policy makers proffer to protect the interests of capital-owners than in understanding tourism as it really is. The economic-centered platform was prone to tourism-management, profitsenhancement or tourist behaviour to boost the performance of destinations.


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Working exclusively to find the problems of industry, or the external risks that may place the activity in jeopardy, the economic-centered platform devoted time and resources in publishing guidebooks for students and policy makers. Over more than four decades, applied research rested on the effects of tourism –as an economic industry- instead of discussing its nature. These good practices manuals focus on what is good for tourists, the economy even the community, situating them as therapists of tourism. We use the term Therapists of tourism here to denote the emerging criticism on psychology, which faced a substantial shift of paradigm in the turn of century. To cut the long story short, therapists today work not to change the structural asymmetries of society, which affect their patients –as for example, poverty, bullying, depression, or crime- but also develop in them a resilient disposition to achieve a better adaptation to the hostile enviroment. Ethically the reasons of suffering are never altered but perpetuated while the patient is forced to adapt its inner-world to others wish. This represents a soft disciplinary mechanism of submission, which prevents the social change. Needless to say, the same applies for the epistemology of tourism research. Those researchers who are interested in studying tourism or hospitality are trained to be good policy-makers that advice governments or stake-holders about the best affordable courses of actions to boost the activity. That way, tourism is never questioned while communities are educated to adapt their organizations to the economy of tourism. Lest regulated by governments, policy makers emphasize on tourism seems to be the best of our worlds. This instrumental meaning moves towards raise-funded research to find alternative answers enrooted in the “ought-to-be” logic. Most certainly, the precautionary principle, which aims to locate rapidly and mitigate external risks, corresponds with a one-sided interpretation that never resolves the grassroots problems of tourism. The needs of adaptancy in climate change, instead of coordinating efforts to struggle against climate change, appear to be an example among many others of how economic-centered paradigm works. Third, J. Tribe (2010) calls the attention on the indiscipline of tourism as the main reason for knowledge dispersion while the urgency to created added-value to destinations –as products- impeded the formation of a unified

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Though tourism-research has gained fame recognition –in view of the credibility of produced theory- it does not suffice to consolidate a shared epistemology. The fragmentation of tourism explains by its polysemic nature as well as because tourism seems to be an object very hard to grasp. The borders between tourism and mobilities are in dispute today but equally important, defining tourism as an instrument of control seems not to be adequate.

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and all-pervading definition of tourism. In this respect, Graham Dann (2009; 2011) is not wrong to say that IAST (International Academy for the Study of Tourism) elaborated scattered studies in a splendid isolation with the rest of academy, whereas English was adopted as the only lingua franca. This not only covered a lot of high quality publications but also created an intellectual masturbation which remained closed to the dialogue with other voices. In consonance with Dann and Tribe, we argue that the lack of argumentative consistency in tourism research exhibits the rise of complexity in an ever changing and mobile environment but equally important, management-centered disciplines monopolized the syllabuses of tourism degrees, as well as the peer-reviewed publications. The scattered nature of publications is consistent with the quest of new segmentations which are fagocitated by such an economic school. Returning to Tribe, three lines of argumentation should be easily identified,

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Though Tribe was a pioneer in claiming the fragmentation of discipline, he gives no further evidence to explain furtherly on the reasons behind. In next, we shall discuss whether tourism embraces an undisciplined logic by its volatile dynamic or to what extent is transdisciplinarity the key factors towards an irreversible epistemological crisis?

DISSECTING THE INDISCIPLINE OF POSTMODERN DISCIPLINES

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The problem is not how knowledge is produced, but the evolving contexts where the cosmology is forged. While the forms of production, science and the cosmology are inextricably intertwined, it is important not to lose the sight that in times where society integrates centralized forms of production in a unified vision of the world. This suggests that academic disciplines not only place as part of much wider imperial economies, but they are formed resulting from the social order and its respective economy. Instead of interrogating on the failure of Enlightenment as an allencompassing project, Tribe takes much attention to the phenomenology of tourist experience but fails to describe the background of postmodernity as the main reasons towards informational fragmentation. The so-called “indiscipline of tourism,” as we propose in this chapter, evolved through a decentralized form of production surfaced after the Arab-Israeli war. At a closer look, one might realize the science has evolved into three differentiated stages. As stated in the introductory section, the scientific thought is determined by three basic pillars: The inference of laws, the replicability of the data and the explanation of phenomena. The sources and processes should be duly documented and the results should be capable of being repeated by another researcher. In addition, science should, by observation, permits the comprehension and explanation of the variation and connection of the variables of the problem. Thus, all scientific research begins with a question, which is answered by following a method. For a long time, some positivists, unfamiliar with the contributions of the Viennese School, introduced relativity as the touchstone of the scientific project. Per relativity, there was no one impression of facts, but many as persons exist. Henceforth, science was determined not by the used methods as in earlier days, but to what extent obtained results reach the principle of falsifiability. This suggests some radical changes in the epistemology of capitalism since outcomes are more important than involving procedures. Such an

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epistemological confusion posed relativity as the main source of applied research, leaving the inchoate disciplines towards fragmentation. To put this in bluntly, science historically has traversed three facets which were strongly associated to the forms of production of the societies where it flourished. The first is called ‘1st state’ and is characterised by the isolation of those variables which are studied, generally in laboratories, and which seek to learn about the laws which govern the universe. Physics is one of the sciences which operate under the principle of direct observation. The environment, in this type of situation, is totally controlled. The scientist should always conduct experiments in the present in order to draw inferences about the future. However, ‘2nd state’ science is totally different. Under certain conditions, the grade of repeatability cannot be isolated in a determined frame of time and space, and the researcher must ‘reconstruct’ the causes of the problem from the past. Within this classification are the socalled social sciences, which include psychology and sociology, among others. As capital expands its influence, breaking down the former notions of time and space with globalization, knowledge is produced by a great variety of research centres with few links between them. Their results are so dispersed that there is little or no dialogue between the different schools of thought. The most established disciplines accuse newer bodies of knowledge of not being able to infer laws, and this becomes a motive for their rejection. Given the general laws of science, it is of interest to know that historical evolution of science has changed through the years. We may explain our model of ‘The three phases of science’ as follows: From antiquity until the end of the middle ages, mankind was interested by questions concerning the connection between people and its cities. His economy was purely a subsistence economy linked to cattle farming and primary agriculture. There was an important link between a man and his territory and lineage, as there was no concept of salaried work as we know it today, or in other words the possibility of a person to choose where, for what wage, and for whom he would work. The disciplines which governed life were philosophy, astrology, medicine and astronomy among others. We term this phase ‘the primary production of knowledge.’ In the late middle age, we enter into a second phase, which we term ‘the secondary production


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of knowledge’ in which the Industrial and Cromwellian Revolutions have left their mark. Work and the relationship of a person with his lineage started to lose their strong linkage, due to the consensus that labour should be sold according to the conditions of the context. Little by little man ceased to be subject to God, his city, and his master in order to become part of the capitalist adventure based on speculation, control of the results, and calculation. During this process, from the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century, new disciplines emerged. These included psychology, anthropology and sociology. These new disciplines were totally orientated to the study of man, but rather than seeking the answers to abstract universal questions, they were specific with emphasis on industrial work, poverty, and development, for instance. The ‘social sciences’ entered into conflict with the established disciplines, and so sociology confronted philosophy, and psychology confronted medicine (and psychiatry). Without doubt, we inevitably begin to see a fragmentation in the method of generating and interpreting knowledge. These forms of the production of science cannot be studied outside the context of the standardization of the modern means of production in general. Systemic standardization (that is, the possibility of the accumulation of comparative data, as defended by the positivists) was directly proportional to mass production. Society and human behavior begin to be considered as a systemic whole, where there are inputs, processes, and outputs which indefinitely feedback into other systems. Social interaction is the conceptual base which these new sciences claimed to study. Nevertheless, the situation changed radically towards the end of 20th century, or to be more exact in about 1970 when capitalist countries began to realize that they could not guarantee serial production forever in a sustainable way. This was due to the energy crisis provoked by the ArabIsraeli War, in which industries had to introduce a new form of consumption so that capital, which had been born out of the Industrial Revolution, could become electronic. The production of capital for the purchase of goods did not now seem to be as important as the opposite situation, where goods become a pre-condition for the production and general accumulation of money. The classic relationship is replaced by symbolic mediators, such as money, generating a total solipsism, or the view that the self is the only thing

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that really exists. We may call this third state the ‘fragmented stage of knowledge’ in which the new disciplines (communication, journalism, tourism, gastronomy, management and publicity, for example) begin to gain ground in comparison with second stage disciplines such as sociology. As two of the main characteristics of post-modernity have been social fragmentation and subjectivity, these new forms of knowledge have been oriented towards consumption and the aesthetic. These new values of society are rejected by the already established second stage sciences (Harvey, 1989). It is tempting to say that sociology and anthropology claim that tourism is a science which does not have its foundations in serious reason. These are the same claims that sociology had confronted from its own predecessors. In order to summarise this model and enable the reader to achieve a greater understanding of the phenomenon, we might synthesise the main aspects which distinguish third stage sciences as follows:

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1. They consider social reality as a product, which can be very well segmented according to consumers` needs. 2. They follow parameters which are similar to market engineering. 3. Their considerations and findings are isolated, and cannot be integrated into a coherent whole. 4. They show great fragmentation or lack an academic base to orientate research. 5. Information plays an important role in the construction of their discourse, but is not integrated. 6. They appeal to multi-disciplinarity but their results are mere secondorder explanations. 7. They are purely descriptive. 8. They are strongly influenced by the aesthetic and appearance. 9. They focus on experience as their principal strength, but lack an integrated. In other terms, as they define as an abstract form of thinking, these new disciplines can express principles, which do not have any real direction. These new post-industrial sciences are incomplete projects, which are aimed at explaining what must be done, instead of focusing in the fact. They are centered on effects,


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not reasons. Tourism has consolidated as a discipline in a moment where the concept of Truth was broken into pieces. This is the reason why, it keeps serious difficulties to produce unified concepts.

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Beyond the hot debate revolving around tourism-as-social institutions vs. tourism-as-industry lies the point of what tourism means. While the former signals to tourism in intersection with economic and social forces, which is often oriented to revitalize those frustrations occurred in working days, the latter signals to a globalized industry of services upsurged in the mid of 60s decade. From our end, tourism should be defined as a rite of passage, oriented to orchestrate the interplay between contrasting values as pleasure and displeasure, in order for society not to be desegregated. Put this in other way, tourism seems to be as a dream-like travel where all frustrations are revitalized. Hence tourism should be discussed as something older and complex but a simple combination of technological factors happened through industrial revolution (Korstanje & Busby 2010; Korstanje 2010; Korstanje 2013; Thirkettle & Korstanje 2013). This deserves further attention in future approaches. In contrast with Tribe and his followers, we hold that the discourse of complexity as the precondition to adopt transdisciplinarity in tourism seems not to be enough to overcome the epistemological crisis of discipline. While tourism-related scholars overvalorized the scientific-based platform –paragraphing Jafari- they misjudged that neither the time of maturation nor the number of publications were factors towards scientific maturation. To set an example, psychoanalysis became in a science in almost a couple of decades simply because Freud provided with a firm epistemology and methodological grounds that guided the discipline, revealing this is not a question of time or the volume of publications. In tourism fields not only the International Academy for the Study of Tourism (IAST) systematically failed to form a unified epistemology but also in reversing what Tribe dubbed as “the indiscipline of tourism.”. Since many scholars adduced, this problem derived from the

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nature of tourism, others confirmed that transdisciplinarity would be a good remedy for the illness. In this respect, the indiscipline of tourism would be shortened introducing transdisciplinarity as a vehicle to a new epistemology. Contrariwise, our proposition goes in another direction. In the current chapter, we have argued that the roots of the indiscipline at the time we laid the foundations for intersecting epistemology with economy. Like many others disciplines born in the mid of a decentralized mode of production, which started through 70s decade, the fragmentation was based strictly on a solipsist epistemology or interpretation of events, triggered by postmodernity. Those disciplines, which were emerged in former centuries -so to speak- under the auspices of enlightenment, where the truth was the unique and immutable object, successfully developed a clear and definable methodology whereas the new emerging (postmodern) disciplines experience a great dispersion in their epistemological bases.

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REFERENCES

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Ascanio, A. (2010). El objeto del turismo:¿ Una posible ciencia social de los viajes?. Pasos: Revista de turismo y patrimonio cultural, n. 8(4), pp. 633-641. Barretto, M. (2004). “Relações entre visitantes e visitados: um retrospecto dos estudos socio-antropológicos.” Revista Turismo em análise, n 15(2), pp. 133-149. Britton, S. (1991). “Tourism, capital, and place: towards a critical geography of tourism.” Environment and planning D: society and space, n 9(4), pp. 451-478. Castrogiovanni, A. C. (2007). ”Lugar, no-lugar y entre-lugar: los ángulos del espacio turístico.” Estudios y perspectivas en turismo, 16(1), pp. 525. Chambers, E. (2009). Native tours: the anthropology of travel and tourism. Long Grooves, Waveland Press. Cohen, E. (1984). “The sociology of tourism: approaches, issues, and findings.” Annual review of sociology, pp. 373-392.


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Coles, T., Hall, C. M., & Duval, D. T. (2006). “Tourism and postdisciplinary enquiry.” Current Issues in Tourism, n. 9(4-5), pp. 293-319. Debord, G. (1998). Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (Vol. 18). London, Verso. De Landa, M (2006) A new Philosophy of Society: assembling Theory and social complexity. London, Bloomsbury. Durkheim, E. (2013). Durkheim: The Rules of Sociological Method: And Selected Texts on Sociology and Its Method. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Escalona, M. De. F. (2010). “Epistemología del Turismo: un estudio múltiple.” Revista Turydes, n. 3(7), pp 1-20. Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity (Vol. 14). Oxford, Blackwell. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays (Vol. 5019). New York, Basic books. Graburn, N. H. (1983). “The anthropology of tourism.” Annals of tourism research, n 10(1), pp. 9-33. Jafari, J., & Aaser, D. (1988). “Tourism as the subject of doctoral dissertations.” Annals of tourism Research, n15 (3), pp. 407-429. Jafari, J. (1990). “Research and scholarship: the basis of tourism education.” Journal of tourism studies, n. 1(1), pp. 33-41. Jafari, J. (1994). “La cientificación del turismo.” Estudios y perspectivas en turismo, n 3(1), pp. 7-36. Jafari, J. (2005). “Bridging out, nesting afield: powering a new platform.” Journal of Tourism Studies, n. 16(2), pp. 1-5. Korstanje, M & Busby, G. (2010) “Understanding the Bible as the Roots of Physical Displacement: The Origin of Tourism.” ERTR: e-Review of Tourism Research. Volume. 8, Issue 3. Korstanje M (2010) “Formas Elementales de la Hospitalidad.” RBTUR: Revista Brasilera de Pesquisa em Turismo. Volumen 4, Número 2. Noviembre 2010. (pp. 86-111). Korstanje, M. E. (2013). TURISMUS SISTEMAE: epistemología del viaje onírico. IJSSTH, n 1(4), pp. 24-35.

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Korstanje, M. E. (2014). “Critica al Concepto de Internacionalización de Douglas Pearce.” ROSA DOS VENTOS-Turismo e Hospitalidade, n 6(1), pp. 177-120. Krippendorf, J. (1984). Holiday makers. Oxford, Heinemann-Butterworth. MacCannell, D. (1976). The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class. Berkeley, University of California Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Sense and non-sense. Evanston, Northwestern University Press. Meethan, K. (2005). “Tourism in global society. Place, culture, consumption.” Relaciones: Estudios de historia y sociedad, n. 26(103), pp. 270-277. Mitchell, L. S., & Murphy, P. E. (1991). “Geography and tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research, n 18(1), pp. 57-70. Mota, K. C. N. (2004). “La integración multidisciplinar en la educación del turismólogo.” Estudios y Perspectivas en Turismo, n 13(1-2), pp. 5-23. Nechar Castillo M. & Netto-Panosso, A. (2011). “Implicaciones epistemológicas en la investigación turística.” Estudios y perspectivas en turismo, n 20(2), pp. 384-403. Pedregal, A. M. N. (2009). “Genealogía de la difícil relación entre antropología social y turismo.” PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, n 7(1), pp. 43-56. Panosso Netto, A. (2007). “Filosofía del turismo: una propuesta epistemológica.” Estudios y perspectivas en turismo, n 16(4), pp. 389402. Pearce, P. L. (1982). The social psychology of tourist behaviour. New York, Pergamon Press. Richter, L. K. (1983). “Tourism politics and political science: A case of not so benign neglect.” Annals of Tourism Research, n 10(3), pp. 313-335. Richter, L. K. (1989). The politics of tourism in Asia. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press. Ryle, G. (2009). The concept of mind. London, Routledge. Talavera, A. S. (1997). Antropología y turismo:¿ Nuevas hordas, viejas culturas?. Barcelona, Ariel.


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Thirkettle, A. & Korstanje, M. (2013) “Creating a new Epistemology for tourism and Hospitality Disciplines.” International Journal of Qualitative Research in Services. Volume 1, Issue 1 Mayo 2013. (pp. 16-33). Towner, J. (1985). “The Grand Tour: a key phase in the history of tourism.” Annals of tourism research, n 12(3), pp. 297-333. Tribe, J. (1997). “The indiscipline of tourism.” Annals of tourism research, n 24(3), pp. 638-657. Tribe, J. (2005). “New tourism research.” Tourism Recreation Research, n 30(2), pp. 5-8. Tribe, J (2009) Philosophical Issues in tourism. Bristol, Channelview. Tribe, J. (2010). “Tribes, territories and networks in the tourism academy.” Annals of Tourism Research, n 37(1), pp. 7-33. Williams, S., & Lew, A. A. (2014). Tourism Geography: Critical Understandings of Place, Space and Experience. Abingdon, Routledge.

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THE DARK SIDE OF CREATIVE TOURISM: A PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUE WITH CULTURE

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Maximiliano E. Korstanje1, Babu George2 and Maite Echarri Chavez3 1

University of Palermo, Argentina; Int. Society for Philosophers, UK; Fellow at CERS University of Leeds UK 2 Fort Hays State University, US 3 University of La Habana, Cuba

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ABSTRACT This manuscript interrogates the epistemological limitations of creative tourism, which is framed technically within “cultural tourism”. Discussing the old prejudices and paternalist discourses of colonialism, where “science” developed an uncanny sentiment of protection and submission for aboriginals, “cultural tourism” emulates old forms of domination, in a context of extremes and economic crisis. If creativity only works in contexts of scarcity, it would be interesting to understand

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capitalism as a cultural project that shows some problems to understand the “non-European other” and environmental resources.

Keywords: culture, scarcity, commodities, colonialism, cultural tourism, creative tourism

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INTRODUCTION

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Over recent decades, cultural tourism captivated the attention of many anthropologists, field-workers, politicians and policy makers as a valid instrument towards development and economic enhancement. In part, creative tourism not only helps communities to better their economic situation, but sometimes results from an ever-increasing competitive climate, which is originally fostered among tourist-destinations to gain more potential segments (Lindroth & Ritalahti, 2007). Although the concept of creative tourism is still vague, further studies suggests that interaction and inner-reflections allow genuine experiences that create “self conscience” (Tan, Kung & Luh, 2013). In basis to the rise of tourism, some tribes, which were historically debarred from economy, would obtain further profits from cultural tourism. As Smith (2012) has brilliantly documented, cultural tourism was based on the host-guest encounters. Dean MacCannell, a mostfamous American anthropologist, argued convincingly that modern tourism emulates an eternal quest for novelty that leads to “authenticity”. In contemporary societies, consumers need from obtaining unique experiences, which remind them how exceptional they are. In that way, tourism revitalizes the psychological frustrations experienced while working times (MacCannell, 1976). However, MacCannell cautions, some paradoxical situation emerges because at the time tourists look for authenticity, what they finally consume is far from being genuine and authentic (MacCannell 1973; 1976; 2001). As this backdrop, John Urry (2002) complements MacCannell´s account highlighting to tourism as something else than leisure-practices generallydriven in hedonism. Rather, he opts for defining tourism as a resulting

The Dark Side of Creative Tourism

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expression of a preexisting cultural matrix that is enrooted in a much deeper socio-economic matrix. While gazing represents an attempt of possessing others, culture plays a vital role defining what should be gazed or ignored. In his book co-authored with Scott Lash, he observes modern economies have accelerated not only their mobilities but also good-exchange process in view of a much deeper dynamic of commoditization, where goods were emptied in their functionality. In this discussion, they acknowledge that we live in an economy of signs and spaces, where the psychological needs are created and instilled to consumers. Since local resources have been exhausted, economies appealed to decentralized forms of production providing each commodity with a sign to obtain further attractiveness. Equally important, culture is thematized according to sophisticated tactics of marketing and destination-management to crystalize a globalized economy that centers of symbolism and hyper-consumption (Lash & Urry, 1993). This begs some interesting questions that remains open in the specialized literature such as, is cultural tourism a vehicle towards centreperiphery dependency or an instrument used to discipline the non-western other?, is creative tourism the continuation of colonial discourses or a valid attempt to make from the aboriginal life a better place?.

HOW TO READ OUR ARGUMENT

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This conceptual discussion in this essay review can be read in different ways, but this map will help readers to gain the same common-thread argument. The first section touches a preliminary approach on the intersection of cultural consumption and modern capitalism, whereas in a second section, the concept of leisure and creative classes are placed under the critical lens of scrutiny. If Veblen taught us how the economy of scale produced “a leisure class”, Florida did the same describing the rise and expansion of a new class, enmeshed in creativity and multi-culturalism. The fact is that changes on how classes are formed denote substantial shifts in the economic system, as well as the means of production. Despite the criticism of Marxian scholars, creative tourism offers a valid solution for

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many human organizations that have been historically relegated from privilege positions in society further discussion is needed on the role of creative tourism in a society where local resources have been depleted. In this context, creative tourism exhibits the core of a paradox. While it poses as an efficient solution for locals, at the time it exhibits the symptoms of decline, not prosperity. In a futurist post Darwinist world where all struggle against all only to survive, creativity would be a vital force to be in the game, but this is the case for what the concept of creativity as it was formulated by capitalist thinkers should be at least reconsidered. Though this piece can be framed under the literary genre of essay-review, interesting thoughts flourish for future applied-research.

PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION

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The nineteenth century witnessed how the discourse of paternalism adjoined to anthropology cemented Europe´s domination over its periphery (Harris, 1971). This does not mean obviously that anthropology has direct responsibilities for the cruelty of colonial order, but at some extent, the resulted fieldworks, as well as notes of first ethnographers were politically misused to know the weakness of aborigines. Most certainly, colonial officers not only were familiar of the ever-increasing produced ethnographies of the epoch, but also alluded to anthropology to show the supremacy of Europe over other cultures (Korstanje 2010; 2012). In parallel to this, anthropologists not only accepted the likelihoods aboriginal cultures were in bias of disappearance but they renovated the duty to document, collect and stock all relics before this disappearance takes room. As a result of this, as Harris noted, Europe (adjoined to anthropology) fleshed out an uncanny “paternalism”, where the non-western other should be protected but in doing so, neither anthropology nor colonialism accepted the native voices far from its subordination to European ideals (Korstanje 2012). From that moment onwards, the interest for culture and ethnocentrism were inextricably intertwined. This dilemma accompanied not only the interest for “otherness” in ethnology but also permeated the fields of tourism


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as well. Cultural tourism represents this old prejudice enmeshed with the noble savage principle (Buege 1996; Nussbaum, 1995; Ellington, 2001; Pratt, 2007; Guidotti Hernandez, 2011). In previous works, Korstanje (2012) has toyed with the idea that “cultural tourism” hides an ethnocentric discourse where the others are subject to western stereotypes. Besides, the current discourse supporting “cultural difference” exhibits serious problems to understand the autonomy of others. Not only, European paternalism resisted the threshold of time, but legitimized the expansion of central powers producing an ethical quandary. The interests for the cultural difference were legally adjoined to “the domination” imposed to agrarian economies. As Riesman puts it, Empires asked for the introduction of an “other-oriented” paradigm to legitimate the dispossession remote lands, but in doing so, paternalism was an ideological instrument of domination which operated in two different senses. On one hand, it reminded aboriginals how inferior they are, but on another, it invited them to “adopt civilization”, as the only possible path (Riesman, 1953). This suggests assumptions of professor Geoffrey Skoll, Emeritus at SUNY Buffalo, who explains that paradoxically the interests for “the Other” -who does not look like me- and imperialism are inextricably intertwined (Skoll, 2014). As the previous argument given, some voices have called the attention on the needs of analyzing the remaining discourse behind “cultural tourism”, as a paternalist continuation of European hegemony over worldwide (Lippard, 1999; Tzanelli 2007; Korstanje 2012). While embracing Marxian paradigms, anyway, we might speculate that benefits of cultural tourism in boosting local economies are left behind. For the sake of clarity, some tribes obtained further benefits and profits from “cultural tourism” that facilitated their autonomy from central administration. Nonetheless, following J. Comaroff and J Comaroff (2009), we feel the importance to discuss to what extent cultural tourism is triggering further dormant conflicts when states imposes taxes to locals. There is an evident resistance from nation-state to allow the financial independency of those cultures which were kept under their control during years. While aborigines get further income from cultural tourism, which is helpful to overcome poverty and discrimination, nationstate exerts pressure to absorb that produced-wealth through taxes. In this

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respect, the paradox formulated by Dean MacCannel remains open and unresolved. Oddly, tourist-delivering societies need from tourism to avoid the levels of fragmentation and alienation, proper of capitalist exploitation at the time tourist-receiving nations adopt tourism to improve their economies. While first world tourists are needy from authenticity, what they really find is commoditized forms of culture offered by natives. To resolve this problem, some anthropologists suggested that “creative tourism” would be a first step in the direction to fill the political vacuum left by contradiction of cultural tourism. Even, in creative tourism hosts and guests play a coactive role helping locals while creating a climate of reflexibility that leads towards further understanding and less alienation. To put this slightly in other terms, the borders between tourists and locals are being gradually blurred. In this context, Korstanje (2012). Tzanelli & Korstanje (2016) and Tzanelli (2004; 2006; 2013) in different approaches certainly evinced the ethical limitations of cultural tourism to bolster a fluid dialogue with nonwestern other. The spirit of paternalism is conducive to a privileged class, the elite which slides its responsibilities for criminal acts, genocides, violence perpetrated against wayward natives during colonization. While status quo plans programs for “cultural recovery”, little is known about the oppression faced by aborigines. Nicole Guidotti Hernandez has exerted a brilliant critique to “cultural tourism” as an ideological mechanism of indoctrination, which covers part of real story, nuancing the cruelty of nation-states. There is a type of “unspeakable violence” that is endorsed to privilege elite by means of different allegories as history, museums, nationalism, even tourism. Those visitors -in historic sites- are far from grasping the complexity of events, or the reasons for a battle, they reconfirm their attachment to the cultural values of nation-states instead. No less true is that, new products of tourism has emerged over the recent decades. These segments do defy the classic sense of beautiness, which corresponded with sun and beach products. Nowadays, many tourists launch to visit sites of mass death, poverty or slums, as well as hot-spot zones of war and terrorism in order to appreciate something news that allows further escapement from the humdrum routine they are. The aesthetic sense of landscapes alluded to


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beautiness as a positive value, but this does not happen in the new forms of tourism. It is safe to say “creative tourism” can be framed under the typologies of new segments simply because it shares with dark tourism, the needs for policy makers to impose low-costs projects that help overcoming the current stock and market crisis. As Comaroff & Comaroff noted, ethnicity is the only commodity not only requests low level of investment, but also can be profitably exploited. In times of crisis, not surprisingly, creative tourism offers a fertile ground to develop more sustainable institutions and practices. Because of time and space, we are unfit to address commonalities among slum, war, doom and dark tourism with creativetourism as well as making an exhaustive review of specialized literature. Rather, in the next section we will discuss critically the role of culture and creativity as vehicles towards individualism and solipsism. In a seminal book entitled Le Nouveau Luxe, Yves Michaud conceives the rise of a new luxury more abstract and emptied from what richer classes accustomed to accumulate. This new luxury consists in outstanding “experiences” oscillating from Safaris in Africa, expensive cruises for remote islands towards the visit to a dangerous place. Starting from the premise that this luxury of experience operates from individualism, Michaud holds the thesis that buyers appeal to their power of authenticity not to socialize with others, but to consolidate a class of “chosen peoples”. Since experiences are individual and never can be totally shared, he adds, cultural tourism situated as the main commodities of new richest elites to confirm how special they are. Under some circumstances, cultural consumption and the quest for authenticity may very well lead towards arrogance (Michaud, 2013).

One of the authorative voices in the study of commodities as the touchstone of capitalist economy was German economist Karl Marx. Though he was widely cited and replicated in many studies, his argument was historically biased by his followers (Skoll, 2014). In this respect, Marx found brilliantly that the hegemony of capitalism was not given by money

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THE CONCEPT OF CREATIVE CLASS

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or trade, but by the concept of capital, which means a substantial transformation in the labor respecting to medieval times. Since capitalism rests on the commodity-exchange, one might pay heed to the fact, commodity is formed by goods created by human labor. However, the costs structure of this commodity represents a minimal part of workers´ effort. It is unfortunate that workforce is paid of wages that are legally consigned by states. This is the reason why Marx believed nation-state and capitalism were inevitably entwined. The price of production contains a “surplus value” which is a marginal income for capital owner. This suggests the thesis further commodities are exchanged in the market, more precaritized the rank-and-file workers (Marx & Engels, 1959; 1990; Marx 1992). For Marxists who are staunch enemies of culturalists, culture plays a leading role as a part of ideology, legitimizing the frustrations faced by these dispossessed workers. Under the illusion of cultural consumption, one embraces the subjugation of capital owners since the dichotomies of class struggle remains unresolved (Skoll 2014). Therefore, the material asymmetries of capitalism are ideologically replicated by “culture”. Sandra Harding in her book entitled The Science of Question in Feminism says that classic philosophy failed to resolve the problem of objectivity, but at the same time, the division between “scientific knowledge”, and lay-people knowledge accelerated the creation of a romantic view of science. Empiricists first, and positivists later, coordinated efforts to situate science as free-value observations ignoring its influence from social background. This produced a paradox which is expressed in the following terms. While the researcher only accesses to true by means of others (for example through ethnographies, interviews or open-led questionnaires), there is no reason to suspect from the credibility of its outcome, unless by the fact that “this other” is culturally determined by the same traits, belief and stereotypes, this researcher want to unpuzzle (Harding 1986). This opens a hot-debate in regards to the objectivity of science, as well as the limitations of research to explain what lies behind ideology. Applied the same to tourism fields, not surprisingly, research suggests that “creative tourism” is a bless not only for locals but for tourists, but this diagnosis results from what tourists and locals say, forgetting sometimes people lie or simply are incognizant of the inner-


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world. In this context, the present essay review though polemic and informal, exerts a radical criticism to the preexistent conceptual framework in order to expand the current understanding of the issue. In addition, Max Weber (2009) presented an interesting diagnosis of the problem of creativity which merits to be unearthed. In his initial assessment, the legitimacy of law rested on expectative between two or more sides. Any actions request from counter-action, leading to parts to interaction. In view of that, he distinguished three subtypes of social actions as legal rational, charismatic and traditional. While legal rational signals to the use of rationality to impose a system which is based on instrumentality and rule charisma poses an affectual disposition that engenders creativity (Weber 2009). Assumption like this has been introduced brilliantly by epistemologist Manuel de Landa (2006) who suggests in his book a new Philosophy of Society that society works by the combination of two contrasting forces, the process of territorialization whereby rules are structured, and deterritorialization, which effaces the old structures in view of new paths. Centered on assemblage theory, de Landa argues convincingly that social order expands by the alternation of cooperation and conflict. To set an illustrative example, at the time capitalism deposits its trust in nationstates devoting considerable resources to delineate geographical boundaries, mobilities (even tourism) present global landscapes which not only defy the notion of national-being but also weaken the state legitimacy (de Landa 2006). If further attention is given the same applies for culture. At the time, we delineate the contours of culture to form the spirit of collectivity others who do not share our traits are automatically excluded. Philosophically speaking, creativity contains the gene of self-destruction, since they are activated in context of chaos and disorder. It is important not to lose the sight that the concept of creativity should not be dissociated from the meaning of class. The economic system is based on the formation and crystallization of many subgroups, which are associated in form of contrasting classes. Thorstein Veblen, American economist, signals to “leisure class” as the derivative class surfaced by the rise of industrialism. Those rules that characterized the production in Middle Age sets the pace to new patterns, where production was subject to symbolic

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features self-oriented to confer legitimacy some classes over others. For Veblen, though societies are formed by means of diverse finely-ingrained classes, two of them prevail: leisure and productive classes. The legitimacy of the former one associates to the right of expropriation which consolidated in the right of property enrooted in the common-law (Veblen, 2007). In recent times, Richard Florida used Veblen´s development to say another new class is rising, “creative class”. In this respect, Florida contends that globalized societies produce new decentralized circles of authorities that permeate the ways organizations are formed. If the society in times of Veblen was associated to leisure consumption, now creativity fulfilled such a place. Organizations are now being educated into a culture of creativity to boost further marginal profits at lower costs. Nonetheless, these so-called benefits have some unseen risks. Though numerous studies validate the belief that creative people are more tolerant than others, no less true is that new kinds of pathologies as distress, uncertainness, or insomnia arise (Florida 2002). What is clear in this discussion is that any class derives from an economic process, so, creative or leisure classes are socially constructed terms that should be hermeneutically deciphered. In a world fraught of uncertainties creativity posits as a valuable discourse widely-accepted in politicians, policy-makers and tourism researchers. In more stable living conditions, as the World of our grand-parents, creativity was unnecessary, but now, creative situates as the mainstream cultural value of postmodern capitalist societies. In fact what creativity covers, seems to be the work-force precaritization. Some post-Marxian scholars have criticized the role of creativity in globalized economies. To wit, David Harvey confirmed that the oil embargo dated in 1972 was the epicenter for a society of consumers passes to a new stage of productions, where individualism prevails. Since West experienced a serious stock and market crisis as a result its sources of energies were blocked, marketing-mongers asked to think new alternative pathways. The introduction of segmented demand, as opposing to the economy of scale, was a rapid solution to avoid a wider social fragmentation. The idea of a “Creative culture” left behind the fact that we live in a more competitive society dotted with slim resources.


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In consonance with Zygmunt Bauman (1988; 2013) and David Harvey (1989) one might surmise that the economy of scale has suffered radical shifts where productions have been fragmented into a much more liquid realm where actors enter in an extreme competence each other. The atmosphere of security of well-fare state has gone for embracing a new type of social Darwinism that emulates the Hobbesian axiom of “war of all against all” (Korstanje, Clayton & Tzanelli, 2014; Korstanje 2015). Whenever resources in common are exhausted, competition is the only currency-exchange among stakeholders (Schumpeter, 1975; Landes 1998; Heilbronner, 1999; Thurow, 2001). In order to ensure sustained competition, capitalism adheres to the “discourse of creativity” not only to ensure added value but also to valorize the skills of its participants. In so doing, workers are pressed to compete in precaritized markets where the survival of the smartest is the main cultural value (Korstanje 2015). This is one of the worries that accompanied Richard Florida in his seminal book, The Rise of Creative Class (2002) to question the problems of creativity in the modern world. Creativity is reimagined as a capitalistic virtue; the power of such reinterpretation being that it enslaves workers with the promise of opportunities to be creative and reap the extra rent associated with the same. However, far from being a radical detractor, Florida understands that postindustrial societies generate new types of decentralized authority. Organizations are now being educated into a culture of creativity to boost further marginal profits at lower costs. Nonetheless, these so-called benefits have some risks. Though numerous studies validate the belief that creative people are more tolerant than others, no less true is that new kinds of pathologies as distress, uncertainness, or insomnia arise. Both exponents Veblen and Florida envisaged capitalism expanded by exploitation, though from different angles, the former featured “leisure class” as a parasite class, whereas the latter framed creativity as the end of scale economy, and the passage to a more decentralized form of production. What is clear in this discussion appears to be that any class derives from an economic process, so, creative or leisure classes are socially constructed terms which merit to be hermeneutically deciphered. This raises a more

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pungent question, what is the role of creative tourism in this diffusing process?

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In the recently-published Encyclopedia of Tourism (edited by Jafar Jafari and Honggen Xiao), S. Yamashita (2015) defines “cultural tourism” as program “in which tourists appreciate tangible and intangible aspects of culture at a given destination, from architecture, visual arts, dance performances, festivals, cuisines, to history” (Yamashita, 2015: 1-2). The quest of experiencing cultural tourism seems to be associated to an individual experience, which if viewed negatively may react in inter-ethnical conflict. Some scholars think that modern tourists are subject to an oppressive climate of alienation and control, for them cultural tourism would serve as a escapement mechanism to help them appreciating other landscapes and human environments (Timothy & Nyaupane, 2009). By the way, in cultural tourism, the respect for differences takes a center stage, connecting host cultures with the visitors` idiosyncrasy (Richards, 2007; Germann Molz 2012; Den Dekker & Tabbers 2012). It seems to be incorrect to judge tourist behaviour with the codes of other decades, simply because tourism is mutating to new forms, escalating to unimagined forms by the introduction of high-technologies (Germann-Molz 2012). This climate of on-going instability appeals to the use of creativity to fix day-to-day problems. As Richards & Raymonds pointed out, this is the context which offers a fertile ground for the acceptance of creative tourism. The co-active participation in the production of a shared object mediates between hosts and guests. Their creative potential is developed by the experience of living as, or being part of local culture (Richards & Raymond, 2000). It was unfortunate though the parallelisms between cultural and creative tourism abounds in tourism literature, less is known respecting to this new segment. The contours of this object of study not only remain fuzzy, but also lacked of a clear definition of how authenticity evolves (Richards & Wilson, 2006).


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As we have noted, experience plays a vital role narrowing a bridge which otherwise would be impossible but this is not enough. Studies in creative tourism should focus on something else than the profit-oriented perspective (Richards, 2011; Richards & Wilson 2006; Jelincic & Zuvela (2012). For some scholars, creative tourism goes beyond the hegemony of “tourist-gaze” already denounced by Urry. Visitors are prone to different activities producing a close attachment with the native other. Since creative tourism centers on authentic experiences it resolves the pathologies of modernity and the unresolved discrepancies between hosts and guests proper of cultural tourism. At a closer look, creative tourism should be contemplated separately to cultural tourism. While the former is based on “creative capital” dotted with small targets, the latter signals to existing heritage consumption, which appeals to larger groups of tourists. The coactive role played by locals engages further reflexibility and understanding. In this token, creative tourism helps to care the sustainability of the soil as well as all non-renewable resources (Ohridska-Olso & Ivanov, 2010). For the sake of clarity, the concept of creative cities was widely studied by M Alvarez (2010) as an efficient strategy in order for tourist-destinations to gain distinction respecting to other products, or by Scott (2006), and Florida (2003) to denote urban spaces characterized by ethnic tolerance and a fluid dialogue with the other. Those cities where creative class is prominent not only turns out as a leading city (in branding process) but more openminded citizens are developed. Per these studies, creativity alludes to further tolerance to frustration, which inevitably leads towards a considerable reduction of inter-ethnical conflict. In this vein, Greg Richards adds, creativity is a useful resources that helps locals to boost their incomes and economies or in other case revitalize the glitches generated by capitalist economies, but what is more important is the possibility to overcome cultural barriers, stereotypes, racism and prejudices that often lead to conflict. The global financial crash occurred in 2008 poses a great dilemma for the industry since it should be re-invented. Beyond a relational perspective, creative tourism offers instrument towards progress and development that gives to locals and tourists new skills in their quest of

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Weaves new networks to get authentic experiences. Establishes programs of development to bolster a fluid dialogue among nations. Allows easier circulation of knowledge and skills otherwise would be monopolized by privileged groups. Develops social capital, in significant ways. Revitalizes local economies and solves the glitches created by economic forces. Adopts new forms of ‘sensitive hospitality’ that is more open to refugees, exiles, and needy people in general. Further jobs or incomes for marginal communities.

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unique experiences (Prentice 2001). In other conditions, it exhibits a platform to discuss new segments of market (McRobbie 2010) or even yielding open societies interested for the ethnic difference (Florida 2002). Among the benefits of this new trend we can find that creative tourism:

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These above-mentioned points are examined by Martha Jusztin (2012) who explains that modern tourists are motivated by the quest for uniqueness. Being part of something special, as the work of art creation, painting, or the participation of cooking classes are activities first-world tourists are interested to perform. Neither these needs not only escape to the logic of market, nor the profit-oriented interests. Some detractors of creative tourism claim that unless the obsession for authenticity or the quest of novelty is controlled, the possibilities to produce standardized experiences diminish (Richards & Wilson, 2011). Quite aside from this, Florencia Cueto Pedrotti (2012) writes that the process of learning rests on the needs of both parts in a creative exchange. Say, one of the aspects of the current educational crisis is given by the lack of interests both shows on what is learnt. Not only creative tourism allows overcoming obstacles like this, but hearing the other is a good option to understand other cultures. Tourism has expanded to all corners of this world by the mouth-tomouth recommendations. Lay-people, unlike in the past, are more open to new experiences and cultures accepting multiculturalism as never before.


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Once again, although specialists have discussed how faster creativity may revitalize the local resources in the midst of economic crises, less attention was given to its relational nature. As Jelincic & Zuvela (2012) documented, in those places characterized by higher levels of conflict, creative tourism is used to undermine the in-group hostility. Per these researchers, creativity should go beyond the pejorative label of consumerism where it is associated by some specialists. A first glance reveals that it is something else than a mere marketing tool. In part, while one side is not native of the visited place, the other introduces the newcomer to its culture. This cultural meeting facilitates the things for locals to revitalize their own identity. The problem, anyway, lies whenever fieldworkers face resistances or the interests of community are opposed to investors. This concern validates Richard Florida’s assumption that those success cities whose brands have been globally consolidated have more opportunities to embrace creative tourism than others which lack of the necessary symbolic capital to prosper. This explains the reason why under-developed cities fail to develop creative tourism. Globalization produces hybrid forms of aesthetic existences where cosmopolitanism alternative immaterialities are molded. As M. Meskimmon overly agrees,

a

Imagining ourselves at home in the world, where our homes are not fixed objects but processed of material and conceptual engagement with other people and different places, is the first step toward becoming cosmopolitan. Art is specially able to convey the intimate relation between the material and the conceptual that this requires, invoking the contingency of home by positioning us at the nexus of the real and the imaginary, while using the sensory force of object, image, and spaces to engage memory, desire, and cognition” (p. 8).

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To cut the long story short, there is a more substantial rupture, which promptly-accelerated by global art, articulates a cosmopolitan imagination so that people gain further understanding of others but at the same time, there are some dangers to the difference to be commoditized into standardized acritical products (Meskimmon, 2011). Ultimately, L Marques (2012) gives

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further details on the fieldwork conducted in Siby (Mali). In such a community, the practices of creative tourism exists much time earlier than the term was coined by Florida or Richards. Not only the success of this type of tourism depends on a rich cultural legacy where cultural products can be elaborated and sold, but to the necessary technological breakthroughs that helps to foster a decentralizing form of authority. As a result of this, the fusion between consumption and production resulted in new channels of power that correct arbitrariness or autocratic regimes. However, if creative tourism is not duly regulated, some negative effects threaten the local environment. As noted, Marques adds, the quest for authenticity opens the doors for the adoption of new branding-related strategies, but in so doing, places are commoditized and subordinated to a financial dependency of periphery respecting to centre. By this way, the fieldwork of den Dekker & M. Tabbers (2012) documented how creativity and attractiveness were two sides of the same coin, which work together to gain further positioning in international market. Those small communities or places where creativity flourishes, have further potentialities to become in a tourist destination than densely-populated urban cities, where the indifference for strangers prevail. To understand why this occurs, one may pay attention to the fact that citizens in larger cities are more insensible to the presence of Otherness or disinterested by cultural issues.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF CREATIVE TOURISM

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As stated, contemporary society is coping with a lot of risks and dangers that were created by the same technology Occident developed (Beck, 1992; Giddens 2009). Is culture or creative tourism as fertile ground to revitalize the capitalist economy in post-crisis context?. In this section, we will discuss to what extent creative tourism propose an alternative paths to face the current crisis but at the same time its argument rests on some epistemological flaws. On another hand, it is tempting to say that investments in culture are often low cost but the rewards often outpace some of the most lucrative industries for any business man.


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What it all takes is an exclusive misappropriation of our common heritage and the cultural resources contained within it. Cultural consumption has widely expanded its scope to eat into economies that would otherwise have collapsed (Comaroff & Comaroff 2009; Korstanje 2012; Ashworth 2013). May be, a suboptimal existence is considered better than valorized death as an idealist. The fact is that culture is a social construct invented to homogenize dispersed ethnicities into the same territory. Cultures, for their sustenance, have to channelize creativity in ways that do not destabilize their roots. In view Guidotti Hernandez`s account, Nation states are formed under process of differentiation and its economic re-organization of territory. At the same time, nation-states administrate racism and sexism to control their citizens, who under some circumstances may defy the economic conditions that sustain the class hierarchy. A much broader selective memory narrates some events or over-exaggerates certain aspects of politics while silencing others. Thus heritage plays an ideological role protecting the interests of status quo (Guidotti-Hernandez 2011). Secondly, to what extent, people adopt heritage or creative tourism voluntarily, or are pressed by other reasons to do it, are the main question to be discussed in this section. Quite aside from this, in the Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett focuses on the decentralization of production accelerated by late-modernity. Changes and creativity are pondered as positive values because in this way, capital owners maximize their profits reducing costs. The precariousness of work encouraged by liberal market poses workers as co-manager of their own risks (Sennett 2011). Following this, we have no clear way to answer whether creativity is part of the problem or solution. Christopher Lasch has paid heed to the effects of limited work in the individual psychology. Capitalism has expanded thanks to two combined factors, decline of labor opportunities, and the conception of security (Lasch 1991). Our obsession for creativity relates to the needs of gaining resources in the competence of all workers against workers the liberal market needs. Two prominent scholars, Peter Taylor Gooby (2004) and Robert Castel (2000; 2010) have alarmed on the problems generated by the expansion of lifeexpectance and the introduction of new technologies to enhance production.

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Though, capital-owners duplicate their profits, the work-force played a passive role in the access to produced wealth. The state of welfare, Taylor Goody adds, declined its capacity to protect citizens because of two main reasons. On one hand, the technology given to expand the life-expectance prompted the aging population to the extent an ever-smaller active workforce was taxed to grant the well-functioning of state. On another, technology made that employer job vacancies were notably reduced; and of course, a limited workforce entails lower costs for producers. As the previous argument given, postmodern economies are based on the exploitation of signs instead of the goods. Scott Lash and John Urry elaborated a constructive criticism that helps understanding how latecapitalism expanded worldwide. Economies now produce signs, not goods, which are circulated by a global market system in view of the decline of local resources. To what extent the concept of culture is conducive to this elusive process is one of the most pungent aspects of detractors of cultural tourism. A Colombian coffee or a scotch whisky only can be pondered as high-quality product, whether the paradigm of nationhood is not questioned (Lash & Urry, 1993). In this token, R. Tzanelli explains that capitalism homogenized the cultural divergence into more packaged products, which are fabricated to fulfill the demands of international global travellers. In this process, the local view or their expectations are not taken seriously into considerations (Tzanelli 2004; 2006; 2013; 2014), the concept of cultural tourism decontextualize the identity of locals to be re-framed according to what tourists desire (MacCannell 1992; Virilio 2006). As it was studied by Jennifer Germann-Molz (2012), the concept of intimacy and instantaneity correspond with the needs of imaging others per my own whims. In the same way, machines can be switched off or on, social relations are designed not to cause serious problems to businesses. Any talk, through the virtual space, starts and ends when I want. This assumption begs some interesting questions: say, how can we explain the obsession of West for cultural differences? Is creative tourism paving the way for the understanding of others, or their exploitation, among others? One of the most important limitations of creative tourism consists in fixing the symptom without tackling off the sickness. If capitalism places


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the planet and its security in danger, is more creativity part of the solution or a new problem? To put this in bluntly, creativity corresponds with innovative results in case of scarcity, crisis or risky-situations. It is not doubtful that a world where creativity flourishes is a more dangerous and limited world. Creativity seems to be called when prosperity is limited. But beyond this discussion, basically creative tourism ameliorates the negative effects of capitalism but without correcting the main cultural core that determine the existent state of exploitation over local and human resources. Culture is being commoditized to yield low-cost new products which can be consumed by an international demand in Europe and US. Last but not least, capitalism has been imposed on the basis of two combined pillars, distinction and social Darwinism. In his seminal book, Social Darwinism in American Thought, Hofstadter understands that the expansion of capitalism was feasible by the introduction of Darwinist ideals. As a doctrine originally coined by Sir Francis Galton, Social Darwinism proclaimed that the egalitarianism of races was a utopia. The fieldworks of biologists of the caliber of Darwin suggested that as species, races should struggle to survive. These emerging tactics of adaptation evinces the more virtuous race, in which case, its supremacy can be measured by the level of produced wealth. Therefore, Western societies in general and Anglo-Saxons in particular claimed to be as a superior ethnicity respecting to other cultures. Anglo-Saxons, in this plot, not only are stronger, smarter, than other groups, but are naturally situated on the top of a pyramid towards an evolutionary progress. Intelligence and creativity were two of the factors that supported this thesis. From that moment on, social Darwinism not only gained great traction in social sciences but also reputation up to the advent of Nazism. The end of WWII changed the ways eugenicists envisaged ethnicities, but the ideological core of social Darwinism remained. Capitalism adopted the principle of competence with a double aim. First and most important, in order for working classes not to coordinate efforts to struggle against capital-owners, social Darwinism was conducive to forge an platform of extreme competition. Workers alienated by the ideological apparatuses of state should not acquire of a shared conscience that leads them to be familiar with their deprivations.

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In this context, creativity delineated the frontiers between those who are saved and doomed. The question whether creativity destroys social ties to situate medieval peasant in connection to their internal desires still seems to be an interesting point of discussion triggered by some historians as Robert Castel. Most certainly, readers would realize that values of social Darwinism are not limited to market but they are enrooted in the heart of Western thought. Realities shows as Big Brother or in films as Hunger Games, participants enter in the field to struggle in egalitarian conditions. Despite they valorize their own skills and opportunities to win, they ignore only one will be the winner. Participants not only use their creativity to defeat the other, but construct false expectations. Paradoxically, they never should realize about the lower probabilities to reach success because it implies the end of competence. With the passing of time, the dark side of truth imposes. The glory of few is based on the ruin of whole (Korstanje 2015; 2016). This suggests that tourists coming from first world not only reinforce their own ethnocentrism respecting to the underdeveloped world but also assume that western values like income, money, work, and class are naturally positive while backwardness, wilderness, and poverty, are naturally bad. What is valuable for the gaze of the first world tourists are the creative pursuits of the third world nationals: yet, these creative pursuits have no value outside of the touristic economy. The cultural products of the first world capitalism, on the other hand, have value within and outside of the tourism economy. For our viewpoint, creative tourism based on the cultural ingenuity of the third world, because of its impossibility to reduce conflict between the project of the modern state and the aboriginal life, because of its incentives to foster historically evolved master-slave relations, has ignited renewed critique. Is creative tourism truly creative in making a just and fair world? The answer is No, at least based on its current practice. Let us clarify social Darwinism is not limited to creative tourism, it remains present in many spheres of public life. From the social scientist who send its manuscript to top-tier journals, ignoring the rest towards youth people who struggle for getting a job in the liberal marketplace, competence become in the main cultural value of this society. In addition, the belief in social Darwinism suggests the progress of society is given “by the survival


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of the strongest”, which reflects an elite “of chosen people”. The world of Darwinism explains why only few win while the rest loses everything. The competence is feasible because participants in the game over-exaggerate their skills to defeat. Whether narcissist invests in the self the promise of glory, participants fail to cooperate with others to change their unfavorable situation (Korstanje 2016). Sometimes, reminding how good a first-world tourists live before others who had no such luck reinforces an ethnocentric discourse of supremacy over underdeveloped nations. What would be important to debate is to what extent, creativity resulted from the uncontrolled exploitation of environmental and material resources. It feeds back a spirit of exclusion centered on the paradigm of social Darwinism. Based on literature drawn from a wide range of disciplinary areas, polemically, we have theorized the social and economic roots of cultural and creative tourism. In sharp contrast with the limited specialized literature, we offer an alternative understanding of this important topic that is integrative and holistic. There is a curious way various other contemporary practices related to tourism embody elements of creative tourism. Actually, creative tourism is a methodological framework with which the value of these practices can be captured. Here two main assumptions should be made. Firstly, since what we express in this essay it is a personal stance, it can be validated by the adoption of future applied-centered investigations. But secondly and most important, tourism-researchers who adamantly support “creative tourism” are putting the cart before the horse. This happens because “creative tourism” is viewed as an instrument (for a better situation) instead of symptoms of environmental degradation. As anthropology widely showed, imagination and creativity are efficient natural weapons inherited to predators that are more acute in context of crisis. What is important to remind is that creativity and creative tourism have recently up-surged as a direct consequence of the current state of crisis that ushers capitalist societies in an atmosphere of extreme competence, individualism and Darwinism.


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The original worries of anthropology (as well as founding parents of sociology) that industrialism overrides aboriginal cultures served implicitly as precondition to preclude that Europeans situated in a upper-ladder in the pyramid of evolution. In its inception, social scientists precluded, Europe developed similar institutions to natives, which were improved once Europeans adopted trade and rationality as the main vehicles towards development. In the turn of twentieth century, this idea still remains in the ideological core of Occident. This paper does not represent any attack to any scholar or way of thinking, but exhibits a constructive bridge between two contrasting sides to orchestrate an all-encompassing model to understand creative tourism. For one voices creativity will help from making this society a better place, whereas as in the opposite pole, others hold the thesis creativity seems to be an instrument of discipline. To us, both arguments are flawed. Though the meaning of creativity is positively valorized by popular parlance, no less true seems to be that creativity denotes “scarcity” of nonrenewable resources. The world of our grand-parents set the pace to a new more risky stage of production where uncertainness and competence prevail. In this context, as Richard noted, creativity would help communities to improve their living conditions, but this represents only the tip of iceberg. Modern globalized capitalism not only precaritized the workforce, accelerating a climate of Darwinism where all enter in competence with others for a job, but also creative tourism represents an ethnocentric view which is historically enrooted in an old European Paternalism. The epistemological problems of creative tourism consists in its functionality to status-quo. First world tourists, far from being interested in the “non-western other”, appeal to reinforces their own sense of supremacy. The otherness reminds not only the exemplarity of Europeaness as well as the western institutions as democracy, trade and capitalism as the best ideals towards wonderland but also renovates the lay-citizens` trust in their authorities. Doubtless, creative tourism as many other emergent sub-types surfaces in conjuncture of crisis, instability and precariousness not only naturalizing


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competence as a main cultural value, but covering the responsibilities of European countries in the colonial process (by dispossessing the periphery from their wealth and resources). Our thesis held in this text is that “cultural tourism and creative tourism” denotes an ideological continuance of centerperiphery dependency, a much deeper issue which merits to be discussed in next layouts. Last but not least, Omi & Winnant (2014) rehearse an smart argument to denote Anglo-centrism have no terms for referencing “White-Americans” while other groups as Afro, Latins or Asian are very well labeled as AfroAmericans, Latinos, or Asian-Americans. The hegemony of Anglos is based on its capacity and resources to mark others. To put this in bluntly, the criterion used to classify essentialized others corresponds with the needs of seeing the in-group as normal. Segregation starts at time the neighbor is considered other different than me. In view of this, the adoption of culture to highlight commonalities and differences, not surprisingly, is determined by a global system of consumption aimed at perpetuating the difference which is socially imposed. By the articulation of difference, a subtle but not for that less powerful ethnic discrimination is imposed. This is the reason why, the obsession for cultural authenticity, which is promoted by cultural tourism, is far from being an attempt to accept the “Other”. The quest for cultural tourism seems to be a projection, how Occident molds this “nonwestern Other” should be.

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Weber, M. (2009). The theory of social and economic organization. New York, Simon and Schuster. Yamashita, S. (2015). “Entry Cultural tourism”. Encyclopedia of Tourism. Editors, Jafar Jafari & Honggen Xiao. New York, Springer, 1-2.

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Chapter 3

DRINKING ALCOHOL AS A HOST-GUEST MEDIATOR IN THE RITE OF HOSPITALITY

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University of Winchester, Winchester, UK University of Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

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ABSTRACT

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Although over the recent years the studies in gastronomy and culinary heritage have advanced considerable steps worldwide, less attention was given to the role of alcohol consumption in the sacred-rite of hospitality. From Levi-Strauss on, anthropology devoted considerable efforts to understand the ritual of wine in contemporary French society while Jack Goody focused on the role of beer in Lodagaa tribe. This chapter centers on the role of alcohol consumption in holidays and leisure context, as a mechanism of escapement that alleviate the anxieties created by the hostguest encounter. As an ancient institution, hospitality was historically prone to reduce the risks and looming dangers not only for travelers who are not familiar with the topography and customs of the visited lands, but in hosts who little know of the newcomers. Doubtless, there are some hints that alcohol consumption plays a vital role in the configuration of the alterity, following the mainstream cultural values of West.

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INTRODUCTION

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Keywords: guest-host encounter, risks, travels, alcohol, consumption

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Over the recent years, specialists, therapists and psychologists have paid attention to the role of alcohol consumption in society. In some cases, the specialists alert on the alcohol abuse and the effects in responsible driving habits (Keller 1962; Park 1983). At a closer look, alcoholic drinks, anyway, dates back from 5.400 BC, or even earlier, in times when humans opted for sedentary forms of organizations. Quite aside from this, what is more than important to discuss is the intersection of Alcohol consumption and Western civilization as well as how it is used in the rites of passage, such as holidays, baptisms, celebrations and even through media events. To put this slightly in other terms, alcohol consumption and hospitality are inextricably intertwined (Korstanje 2017). The act of traveling supposes not only certain degree of trust, but also opens the doors for the rise of innumerous risks simply because the traveler is unknown of the visited landscapes. In the same way, hosts never know the real interests of the lodged guests. Hence, it is safe to say that the guest-host encounters wakes up some fears which are regulated by hospitality. One of the elements that legitimate the welcome to strangers is the offer of alcoholic drinks and welcoming toasts. This sign marks the epicenter of friendship between two or more sides while it serves as a sedative instrument to promote a festive climate. Many cultures, as Lodagaa in Africa (Goody, 1995) or the rituals of wine in France (Levi Strauss, 1969) exhibit a prone to bring drinks to aliens as a sign of good-will gesture. More interesting studies in tourism fields explore the gap created in some societies where alcohol is prohibited. While the tourists are welcome or encouraged to consume alcohol and other drugs, locals are strictly banned (Moore, 1995). Since first world tourists are considered as fresh-income generators for many peripheral destinations, authorities invest them with specific rules, which sometimes are contrary to local habits. This causes a climate of resentment or discontent very hard to prevent, which unless regulated leads very well to extreme manifestations of violence and anti-

Drinking Alcohol as a Host-Guest Mediator in the Rite …

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tourist behaviour (Dogan 1989; Bruner 1996; Teye, Sirakaya & Somnez, 2002). At some extent, policy makers allude to the model of “bubble tourism” as it can be observed in many Muslim countries in order for the security of tourists to be strengthened, but over the recent decades specialists have paid heed on the negative effects these types of models in local communities (Din, 1989; Kadt, 1992; Judd and Fainstein, 1999; Britton, 1982; Funck, 1999; Ross, 1991; Brunt & Courtney, 2000; Harrison, 2004; Smith, 1989; Mc-Naughton, 2006; Griffith and Sharpley, 2012; Vukonic, 2010). In his book, Terrorism, tourism and the end of Hospitality in the West Korstanje (2017) argues that “the bubble system,” seems to be resting on a clear contradiction, in view of the restricted hospitality the model offers. Though stimulating mass-consumption, relax and pleasure-maximization for first class tourists, the fact is that there is no genuine dialogue with the alterity, in which case, these kinds of destinations are fertile target of terrorist attacks. As the previous backdrop, this chapter is intended to discuss critically the role of alcoholic drinks or alcohol consumption to equal the status of hosts and guests, in egalitarian conditions of existence. Equally important, one of the most prominent paradoxes of tourism consists in producing an asymmetry between the different classes that form hosting society. This means that not only this is exactly the way hospitality works, confronting with Derrida´s account, but also confirming while some guests are certainly invited to enjoy from hosting hospitality, others are inevitably ignored. It is important not to lose sight that Derrida alerted that two types of hospitalities coexisted, conditional and unconditional. While the former signals to the conditional protection for those who can pay for that, whereas the latter refers to the unconditional acceptance of the others, without asking anything in return or exchange (Derrida, 2000). But what does mean without asking anything in exchange? Derrida advances considerable firm steps in his analysis, saying that unconditional hospitality rests on shaky or utopian conditions, in view of the fact it contradicts the nature of nation-state (Derrida, 2000). At a first glimpse, since securitizing the life within the borders of city is the main goal of states, it is almost impossible to confer hospitality without asking

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anything in return. In which case, what is clear is the political root of hospitality, which should be validated by migration officers at airports and frontier positions. We hold the thesis that, hospitality contains four elements which are entwined in the different cycles performed during the stay.

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At the time, food incarnates the cycles of production, which are vital for the well-function and prosperity of economies, alcohol-drinking is often associated to show friendship towards (the) newcomer(s). Besides, various anxieties that take hold during the trip are undermined by alcoholic drinks. Sex alludes to the fertility of a society, which serves as the future workforce for the years to come, while violence delineates the borders of community. Not surprisingly hospitality shares the same etymological origin than the term hostility.

HOSPITALITY AND MORAL VALUES

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The civilizatory process rests not only on cultural values but also on the role of morality which precedes the law-making. As discussed, the act of giving support to travelling strangers connects directly with the world of ethics which sorts the rank of rules as well as what can be done or banned. However, these fabricated norms never are unilineal or homogeneous in their application. For example, at the time states devote resources to prohibit some deviant behaviour others equal in importance are glossed over. Governments implement campaigns to drive and drink responsibly, but at the same time, movies -as Rapid and Furious- encourage speeding as a form of status. In sum, civilizations are based on the articulation of contrasting moral messages, which are emanated by the ruling elite according to its interests. As Emile Durkheim puts it, the social system draws its symbolic


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borders in view of forces and counter-forces, pitted one against the other, where the rule –at the time of its application- paves the ways for deviance. By this way, Michel Foucault (2001) acknowledges that the efficacy of discipline is not based on the violence or coactive pressure exerted over the bodies in strictu sensus, but also in the possibilities to activate internal institutions, with the end of mitigating the effects of external threats. In other words, the vaccine can be metaphorically compared to a risk, in the same manner, the threat points to a virus. Since the vaccine is an inoculated virus, nuanced by the application of discipline, the threat are found and mitigated by capitalism to maintain the productive system (Foucault 2003; 2009). In a nutshell, nation-states stimulate “a disciplined consumption” of alcohol internally, which denotes the privilege class status, while others lowerclasses are prone to abuse from alcohol as a mechanism of escapement (like in industrialized societies) or morally discredited to reach to it. What some pundits and specialists leave behind is that the rite of hospitality connotes a line of exclusivity, which orchestrates the sense of rational control with Sacrifice. With some hindsight, we should discuss in depth further definitions of hospitality as something else than a simply industry, as part of specialized literature does. Hospitality should be understood as an allencompassing institution oriented to forge inter-tribal alliances for two or more kinships to achieve a coordinated system of defense in warfare, or traveler-exchange circuits in peacetimes. Hospitality not only survived over centuries, but also regulates the level of anxieties and risk perception in the host-guest meeting. While traveling abroad, we are pressing to get away the security of home, which means we remain afraid on the unknown but at the same time, hosts need to know our intentions and biographies to know further who would be lodged or rejected. Broadly speaking, hospitality enables a process of selection, which is politically determined. See for example the issuance of visas whose etymology comes from videre (lat) which means “to see.” Let´s explain readers that the term visa stems from the Latin Visum enrooted in Videre. This explains at least the functionability of videre, which is used to scrutinize the aliens. As Derrida brilliantly noted, two questions arise at the time the state confers hospitality, who are you and what do you want?

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OF HOSPITALITY, DIALOGUES WITH DERRIDA

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In this section, we shall discuss the main advances and limitation of the classic work Of Hospitality authored originally by Derrida in dialogue with Anne Dufourmantelle, poses his main ideas revolving around hospitality. At some extent, he is in the correct side by confronting with Plato about the role of foreigner in society. In the dialogues of Plato, the foreigner is frequently presented as the one who asks about others. As a consequence, the foreigner shakes the rein of dogmatism about being in which he is and the world where he does not lie. Derrida considers as guests those who come accompanied by a different language and culture from that of the host community. A difference like this not only reminds us of our own prejudices but also reelaborates a new sense for our societal institutions. These issues threaten paternal hegemonies and question the significance of hospitality. However, in his work The Sophist Plato refers to foreigners as outsiders who do not speak and share my understanding; needless to say that this thesis is in sharp contrast to Parmenides´s turn of mind who argued that the universality of knowledge does not recognize other languages or nations; to be or not a stranger seems to be circumstantially irrelevant. How do we interpret this? Hospitality is offered, or not offered, to a foreigner and his personal properties. Under the same context, we understand the world from questions of knowledge and experiences that others bring to us. The stranger splits our world into two parts. It is often assumed that our identity is born in the heart our family, city or nation; however for Derrida this is not possible since our identity is formed by the inception of “others.” This way, only outsiders know, see, and ask for an explanation about our customs and habits beyond the limits of ethnocentrism. If we look down on others who look different from us, then we also despise ourselves. Derrida suggests that the question is conceptually linked to the foreigner. Like the foreigner, the question may (or not) be hosted; in some occasion the question would be welcomed but under another situation may be rejected. This way, we may bring our hospitality before a question. But does it make sense to interrogate when the host does not allow


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it in the first place? This question, which Derrida repeats throughout his book, is a broadly abstract metaphor that symbolizes the restriction that often faces a stranger when he is far away from home. To be more exact, in The Apology of Plato, Socrates spoke to the citizens and judges and argued that he does not understand the language of the trial. Socrates is declared not guilty by himself since he does not share the same rhetoric as the judges. Socrates faced the Athenian court of law as a “Foreigner.” Following this, Derrida maintains that, “among the problems we handle here, there is a foreigner who unable to speak the language of the host country, may be rejected or injured without any type of defense.” The language of the host interrogates violently and suddenly since it imposes the home owner's interpretation. Therefore, the foreigner is forced to adopt another tongue which is not the one he usually speaks or writes. The host’s translation is part of his very own abode and, according to Derrida, it is precisely the point where the possibility of hospitality takes place. On his classic book On Hospitality, Derrida treats the rights of the foreigner as the conceptual pillar of West. If we wish to think in one instance about the power of the name, once more, we will find a paradox since hospitality does not apply to a foreigner without a name, patrimony, or family. To be more exact, anonymity lies excluded from hospitality because nobody offers lodging to a person who is not recognized, at least through the name. Following the same point of view, Derrida affirms that this is the strict difference between foreigners and others. It remains to be seen whether migration and tourism are under the same category. Therefore, two types of hospitality surface accordingly: the absolute and conditioned. In this sense, “the absolute hospitality demands the host to open the proper home not only before foreigners but also before anonymous Travellers who are unknown for me. This way, I am obliged to let them to enter but to ask reciprocity.” In order to resume the discussion, a couple of conditions are needed to make hospitality possible: what is your name? And where do you come from?. As a consequence, Derrida is convinced that the rights of the foreigner are within hospitality itself. If a foreigner arrives at a country, he is immediately subjected to the host laws even when they would be unknown

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to him. Each foreigner is constructed from the host country’s “ethos.” Based on Hegel’s explanation, the Right is determined by the family, the bourgeoisie society, and the Estate; these limits create a liaison between hospitality and hostility. At first instance, hospitality means certain protection, whereas hostility refers to the violence directed to xenos (those who do not belong to our group). If we analyze this matter from a Kantian perspective, we must also admit that the moral is constituted internally in relation to the ego, therefore the police is legitimated to search us even in psychological terms. Derrida clarifies this issue by arguing that hospitality is due to “the Right,” which is always conditional. For instance, a guest may be very well lodged under the principle of hospitality even when he remains as the foreigner but he is obliged to respect the laws of the locale where he is currently lodging. If not, the reciprocity between the guest and the host will be “breached.” Aside from this point, Derrida affirms that “the relationship with a foreigner is ruled by the right, for being the right part of justice.” However, how do we fully understand Derrida when he claims that “there is no hospitality?” Moreover, how do we interpret his concept of justice? If rights are within us, then we may reckon justice according to our proper views. If such is the case, why does Derrida claim that there is no such thing as hospitality? On the one hand, hospitality invites us to break rules by marking powers, limits and authorities while, on the other hand, the other transgresses of his laws. It does not mean that the foreigner should be jailed and considered a criminal unless the unconditioned hospitality contradicts the foundation of his own reception. In other words, hospitality works paradoxically in two different senses: one by affirming the social order through the law, and by not subjecting the law to common citizens, it transgresses the notion of universal citizenship. At a closer look Derrida intends to discuss the role of language in conjunction with birth and death. An exile always carries the maternal language which is present not only in life but also in death. For this reason, the immigrants are faced with a dilemma, whether to return to their native land or to stay. Derrida refers to the story of Oedipus. Oedipus died as a selfimposed outcast, away from his land; beyond any law or rights. His


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daughter, Antigone, did not know the exact place where her father passed away. It looks as though he wished to depart but left traces to guide his beloved daughters in finding his corpse. Indeed, Oedipus’ legend is useful for Derrida to explain his thesis about the foreigner. Simply, the foreigner goes in the city like an emancipator, occasionally he intends to create new laws. He comes from the outside, from abroad. Then, the host allows the foreigner to lodge in the former’s home after receiving the pertinent invitation. This strange moment seizes the host through the manipulation of the secret. All appears to be as if the father (pater familiae) becomes a prisoner of his own power and authority. Particularly, this situation makes it clear that we are hosted by “the other” whom we invite to enter our home. For Derrida, hostility is one of many ways to regulate an undesired guest (considered as parasite). Finally, he decides to tackle hospitality from the standpoint of the philosophy of language. The author maintains that there are two senses of speaking: the strict and wide. If we think of our tongue in a wide sense, Derrida says an Israeli intellectual bourgeois has to do with me more than a French Policeman. In this case, the language does nothing to do with the nation. Otherwise, if we apply the strict sense (conditioned hospitality), an Israeli bourgeois will be more of an occasional meeting to Derrida than a French worker. Not only does this example help Derrida in explaining how hospitality may be applied but also delineates the different classifications that come from such application. But this looks to be a surface expression of a much more deep-seated issue; in fact, a hospital in combination with a hotel synthesizes both types of hospitalities. Whereas at hospitals patients (strangers) are usually seen without any restriction in regards to patrimony or origin, at hotels consumers or guests are welcomed in a time-frame wherein they should vouch for their stay by their patrimony (conditional hospitality). Another example that explains the difference between unconditional and conditional hospitality is the Nation State’s treatment of migrants and tourists, respectively. This will be the main point of entry in the section to come.


INTERROGATING ON HOSPITALITY

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As already discussed throughout earlier parts of this review, traveling or touring not only assumes a proof of trust, where both parts compromise not to hurt the other, but the respect for local laws, though they were different to travellers´ background. This begs a more than interesting question, is globalization a fault line that reproduces long dormant conflicts?, or are these inter-ethnic conflicts the result from a (forced) encounter? To respond these points, we have to delve in the text authored by Araujo Perazzolo, Capellano Dos Santos and Pereira (2013) who showed how the rise of globalization, adjoined to the technological breakthroughs, accelerated mobilities and the contours between friendship and rivalry. Some tourists develop stronger attachments to territory, which may be real or imagined, but what is more than important hospitality situates as an important rite by fostering a spirit of camaraderie, which is the precondition for tourism. Complementarily, Castrogiovanni (2007) discusses tourism within the anthropological framework of rites of passage. As an imagined construal, the tourist-space not only interpelates to a linguisticreintroduction, Castrogiovanni adds, but changes to something else than a geographical space. Touring defies the rational western logic in the creation of a new dialogical bridge of sematic oppositions. These duals such as good vs. bad, order vs. disorder, high vs. low, include a communicative redemption of objective-subjective consumption, which leads very well towards a hierarchal order. For example, heritage-sites are interpreted as object only subjectively, if either, tourists and curators share the same sign. Castrogiovanni ignites a hotly-debate framing tourism as a part of semiotics. This is particularly important because it reflects the connection of tourism with hospitality. From its inception, a whole portion of the specialized literature in tourism and hospitality fields focused on the importance of “commercial hospitality” towards the well-functioning of the industry (Lashley and Morrison, 2001; Santos Filho, 2008; Gallarza and Gil, 2008, Nadeau et al., 2008). Henceforth, the position respecting to alcohol consumption was critical, emphasizing on the negative aftermaths of alcohol abuse (Moore 1995; Lyons & Willott 2008; Munar & Oi, 2012; Santos &


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Paiva, 2007). No less true is that the abuse of alcoholic drinks paves the ways for the rise of chronic illness, adjoined to risky situations where tourists place their life in jeopardy or expression of violence and racism. As inhibitor of social control, alcohol may wreak havoc when it is not officially regulated and monitored. This seems to be the case of alcohol-tourism in the sunny and paradisiacal Greek islands. Nonetheless, it was unfortunate, scholars paid little attention to the role of alcohol, as a mediator between the self and the otherness. Originally, Eric Cohen (1972) pivoted interesting efforts in exploring tourism as something else than a commoditized version of leisure. For Cohen, tourism inscribes to a subtype of hospitality where hosts and guests negotiate their fragile identities. For some reason, in tourism fields the economic-oriented view monopolized a meaning revolving around “being hospitable” as a valid asset to enhance the profits. As Korstanje widely showed, hospitality is far from being a mere industry, it consists in an ancient institution which situated as the core of Western Civilization. Over former centuries, Europe not only colonized the non-western World by the incentive of travels and overseas projects but cultivated a paternalist spirit respecting to the native to legitimate the territories, lands and economies in far-flung empires (Korstanje 2017). This point is of paramount importance to understand why Europe and the United States installed discretionary and selective forms of mobilities, where not all strangers are welcomed. In fact, at the time first world tourists are encouraged to visit the world, migrants and asylum-seekers are certainly deterred. As O´Gorman (2007) noted, while developed-nations construct several physical and symbolic barriers to prevent the entrance of strangers, liberal capitalism encourages good-exchange, trade and tourism as a forms of mobilities that shortened the ethnical differences among cultures. Following Derridean theses, O´Gorman calls the attention that conditioned forms of hospitality, which are enrooted in the logic of global capitalism, produces further centreperiphery dependency, opening the doors for more radical expression of violence as terrorism or local crime. Senior lecturers Andrews, Roberts and Selwyn examine with accuracy the conflictive and instable nature of hospitality, a point which remains unchecked by specialized literature. Since tourism needs from political

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stability, nobody visits a destination where its integrity cannot be protected. The cultivation of spaces of hospitality is possible by means of the introduction of erotic element, which is enrooted in the genesis of hospitality.

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In ancient times, the laws of hospitality were considered not only sacred but as a fertile ground to strengthen the social cohesion between humans and Gods. The Roman Myth of Faunus exhibits this ambiguous the dark side of hospitality. The story tells that Faunus invites Heracles to eat and drink at a banquet, the ambitious King plans to kill the hero while sleeping. At the time Heracles discovers the dark plan, he implacably assassinates the King. Both stories assume two important things. On one hand, hospitality connotes the host and guest´s vulnerabilities looking to resolve the conflicts that antecede such an encounter. On another, the risks of coming through the unknown landscapes are undermined by “a sign of good gesture.” The banquet offered to strangers symbolizes not only a tie between two parties but also the mandate of God who will protect us once in the hereafter. As stated, widely employed as a form of communication, in Ancient Europe, hospitality keeps two contrasting interpretations: hospitality as-a-religious institution and hospitality as-political-institution. The former perspective allowed the temporal passage of travelers and aliens as messengers of gods. In the same way they were treated, we would be treated on the last of our trips, the death. Unlike capitalist culture which adopts a higher-secularized understanding of hereafter, Ancient tribes developed the idea that death was a continuum of life and people should experience through diverse obstacles to reach the eternal life. The benevolence of Gods giving shelter to the soul or food depends on how we treated others in the earth (Korstanje 2017). In consonance with the above noted terms, F. Amuquandoh has done interesting fieldworks in Gahan, Africa. Per his outcomes, many African tribes embrace the belief that traveling strangers are divine entities which are protected and delivered by Gods. Any offense against their dignity or


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attack represents an insult against their sacred-authorities. These tribes strongly believe that natural disasters, fires, or drought are the direct result of the lack of hospitality. As Jack Goody observed (1995), far from any speculation, modern ethnographers have discovered that religiosity is the key-factor to ensure hospitality. He cited the case of Lodagaa, a well-known African tribe, where strangers are served with beers and other drinks to celebrate hospitality. If the ritual is not rightly performed, they scare that demons curse the tribe affecting children or the integrity of younger members. Both examples provided by Goody and Amuquandoh evince two important connotations. Clearly, the tribal world is subject to a much deeper process of gift-exchange, which characterizes the rise of reciprocity. Secondly, hospitality seems to be something else than a simple industry, it poses as the centerpiece of many cultures across the world. In other terms, hospitality is a mechanism to domesticate the otherness, where locals pay homage to Gods their loyalties. In the same way, aliens are treated during their travels, Gods will assist us in the afterlife. Gustav Visser (1991), in a seminal paper, recognizes that food represents the sign of life as well-gesture given to others to reaffirm the selfness. Basically, since food is vital for civilizations, hospitality confronts with the luck tribal hunters will have in their next hunts. The complex core of hospitality is deciphered by Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens. In this seminal text, Huizinga explores the concept of agonal-competence as the necessary interplay for the conformation of culture. Beyond the borders of the city remains the uncertainness, what is shapeless. In this token, games are forms of entertainment which represents an inoculated violence, less destructive cities face daily in battlefronts or in warfare. As a form of disciplined conflict, games often meet the needs of destruction in spectorship. With the benefits of hindsight, Huizinga`s comments in this respect are useful because he found that the rite of hospitality, far from what popular parlance thinks, rests on a long-dormant conflict which may very well surface suddenly. Per his erudite insight, there is a lot of stories where warriors attacked others in the rite of hospitality because of misunderstanding or excess of alcohol (Huizinga, 1964).

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The same is confirmed by Korstanje & Olsen (2011) who analyze several horror movies plots. The sense of evilness results not only by the impossibilities of state to protect travelers, but by the lack of hospitality. Indeed, the major of terror plots start with a rogue who never reveals its real interests. He, she or they invite(s) young travelers to enjoy from banquets, food, drinks and women. Once they are sleeping they are suddenly hosted, tortured or even killed. These specialists conclude that the sense of security, which is invested by the figure of Leviathan, validates the law-respect as a necessary condition for citizenry. Whenever the vulnerabilities of visitors are affected a wider sentiment of terror surfaces. Last but not least, Spanish Philosopher Daniel Innerarity (2008) said that the pact of hospitality should be equaled to risk perception. While nobody is prepared for those disrupting events that alter our routine, the same applies for travelers. The quest of riskzero society entails a complete lack of interests for the alterity, because we are educated in a culture that does not tolerate the cultural difference. To wit, hospitality not only ascribes to instable terrains, but interpelates us as society. This happens because hospitality rests on two conceptions, divinity and protection. Travelers should be protected without anything in return, because they need help, nothing more nothing else. Since both constructs a symbolic bridge based on the truth, Innerarity argues that the rise of recent risks and eternal panics are the direct results of our lack of respect for alterity (Innerarity 2008).

ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION

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A vast range of literature traces the historical root of alcoholism to date. An explosion of alcohol-abuse have alerted to scholars to the endemic situation citizens are in industrial societies. It is not surprising that attitudes over years toward drinking vary on culture, but social conditions of life exert considerable influence on drinking as an instrument of relax, entertainment or even escape (Camargo et al., 1997; Donato et al., 1997; Blocker, et al., 2003; Dooley & Prause 1998; Drummond, 1990; Bushman, 1997; Park and Grant, 2005; Meloche and Stanton, 2009). Anthropologists understand that


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drinking may very well stipulated as embedded within a rite, which is often connected with entertainment or escapement. Above all, drinking alludes to reciprocity and solidarity with others in egalitarian conditions of existence; oddly in moments when these rituals are not duly controlled by state, violence surfaces. Some approaches have tilted to say that the malleability and flexibility of controls in leisure places impede stricter protocols of securitization, laying the foundations for pathological and antisocial practices that leads towards total disinhibition even violence. Many study cases suggests that tourists are in risk or attacked when alcohol-consuming is not properly monitored (Andriotis, 2010; Carr, 2002; Hese et al., 2008; Forsyth, 2006). Quite aside from this, there is fascinating interlink between alcohol-consumption and hospitality which needs further discussion (Lugosi, 2007). Written with elegant style, Roy Rosenzweig presents a book, which was entitled Eight Hours for what we will, where he traces the roots of alcoholdrinking within the industrial transformation in the United States. Many European workers, who were arrived to US, came drank to work. This supposed a big problem not only for capital owners who were seriously concerned by the low productivity but also in officials who arranged massmigration as a new labor force to stimulate production. Based on the case of Worcester, Massachusetts US, Rozensweig argues convincingly that unionization has not serious consequence for labor in this city because of the mass-migration and multi-ethnicity affluence. The arrival of Irish and French-Canadian workers allowed certain type of shy cooperation but Swedes erected a symbolic barrier not only with their neighbours but with others rank-and-file workers. The articulation of spaces to drink, to talk and leisure activities undermined the cultural barriers posed by ethnical differences. Saloons not only integrated the newcomers into American culture, but also resolved part of the problems of alcohol-consumption and socialization in a definitive manner. Since the abuse of alcohol was not conducive to production, saloon provided with a limited time to drink, alternating not only the importance of American values but also from industrial work. While the consumption level varied on state, the fact was that leisure was introduced as a way of pushing alcohol out of working place.

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The reduction of working hours to 8, combined by other benefits was efficient instrument to regulate the alcohol-consumption. If one thing makes humans equal is alcohol (Rosenzweig, 1994).

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“As a norm of equality and solidarity, treating rituals implied resistance to individualism as well as acquisitiveness. Indeed, the whole saloon-going experience affirmed communal over individual and privatistic values. After 1800, historian W J Rorabaugh notes, drinking in groups … became symbol of egalitarianism. All men were equal before the bottle. For some, to be sure, saloon-going was a solitary experience, but for most it was a group activity.” (Rosenzweig, 1994: 61)

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Certainly, Ritchie, Ritchie & Ward (2009) have found conclusive evidence to acknowledge that alcohol-related behavior depends on other secondary variable as age, gender, nature of work, financial security, and cultural habitus. Although some persons, like students interact very quickly with this substance, a more deep-seated culture of alcohol-drinking is cemented with time. This connotes a serious risk for social health and students in general, while once graduated some of they experienced serious problems with alcoholism. Anyway to cut the long story short, what is the use of alcohol in hospitality-led contexts?. Anthropologically speaking, the multiplication and expansion of alcohol-places relates to the needs of suspending the logic of exploitation workers suffer in their daily life. In fact, alcohol drinking, in some way, can be equaled to a “wonderland,” where frustrations, restriction and deprivations are faded away. The substance of Ethanol was historically used for sedative uses, to replicate a limonoid spaces where frustrations disappear. Therefore, it is not surprisingly to witness how people who had insomnia recur to drink alcohol as a sleeping-inductor. No less true is that sleeping and tourism have much in common. Both not only revitalizes the frustrations occurred in working days, but also propose an idolized fantasy which never takes place in reality. No less true is that alcohol is overtly dispensed in leisure spaces such as airports, as well as prestige wineries or shops-selling beverages. In such a context, airports serve as a great space of discipline where travelers are classified according to their purchasing


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powers. Those who are legally validated to travel as professional businessmen, tourists, or journalists are rechanneled under the rite of hospitality, offering to them banquets, food, sex and alcohol, but those who are not qualified to enter as mass-migrants or other undesired guests run another contrasting luck. The alcohol-consumption shows a world of contradictions between have and have-nots. While moderate consumption is not only widely-valorized but is a mark of status for drinkers, its abuse, otherwise, is catalogued as a result of psychological frustration or an impossibility of self-control. In the rite of hospitality, alcohol reminds how special the guest is. By drinking the traveler not only affirms its privilege status or class, but also takes part of chosen people. The nation-state allowed the entrance of these first world newcomers while paradoxically others less desired are rejected, jailed or deported. It seems to be as though the rules of mobilities are not the same for all. Alcohol consumption is given to reinforce a privilege status respecting to other debarred classes.

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CONCLUSION

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The fact that alcohol still plays a role as host-guest mediator in the rite of hospitality shows the attachment of human being to tradition. As the American psychologist Stanley Hall once said, ‘Man is largely a creature of habit, and many of his activities are more or less automatic reflexes from the stimuli of his environment’. That said, if we approach the topic of this study merely from a hotel (part of hospitality and also part of the chain of gastronomy) point of view, this book chapter also highlights the ambidextrous nature of the hospitality sector. On the one hand, the fact that alcohol is still a mediator in the host-guest mediation indicates how deeply the hospitality sector is anchored in tradition. On the other hand, the fact that robots are now introduced in the sector (by Starwood Group for instance), to serve customers shows that the sector is also looking toward the future. As people are now travelling different places for experiencing diverse cuisines all over the world and are looking for authentic experiences, and in this endeavor the gastronomic experience, in highly diverse ways, is playing

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Park, C. and Grant, C. (2005). “Determinants of positive and negative consequences of Alcohol consumption in College students, alcohol use, gender and psychological characteristics.” Addictive Behaviour. Vol 30: 755-765. Ritchie, C. Ritchie, F. and Ward, R. (2009) “A good night out: alcohol related behaviour in young adults.” Worldwide hospitality and Tourism Themes. Vol.1 (2): 169-193. Rosenzweig, R. (1994) Eight Hours for what we will. Workers & leisure in an industrial city, 1870-1920. New York, Cambridge University Press. Ross, G. (1991). “The impacts of tourism on regional Australian communities Regional.” Journal of Social issues. Vol. 25: 15-21. Santos Filho, J. “Hospitalidade no Brasil Imperio: a visao o naturalista George Gardner.” Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em turismo. Vol. 2 (2), pp. 3-19. Santos, A. D. O., & Paiva, V. (2007). Vulnerability to HIV: tourism and the use of alcohol and other drugs. Revista de Saúde Pública, 41, 80-86. Smith, V. (1987). Guests and hosts. Madrid, Endymion. Teye, V., Sirakaya, E., & Sönmez, S. F. (2002). Residents' attitudes toward tourism development. Annals of tourism research, 29(3), 668-688. Visser, M. (1991). The Rituals Dinner. Toronto, Harper Collins. Vukonic, B. (2010). “Do we always understand each other?. in Noel Scott, Jafar Jafari (ed.) Tourism in the Muslim World (Bridging Tourism Theory and Practice, Volume 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 31-45.

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ASSESSING THE TOURISM PERFORMANCE OF A DESTINATION: TOWARD A NEW APPROACH USING CUBA AS A CASE STUDY

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Hugues Séraphin1,, Vanessa Gowreesunkar2,†, Mary Ann Dávila Rodríguez3,‡ and Nevya Dávila Pagán4,¶ 1

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Programme Leader Event Management, Department of Applied Management Studies, The University of Winchester, England 2 Lecturer in Tourism Management, Marketing and Communication, The Mauritius Institute of Education 3 Adjunct Professor, Department of Business Administration, Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, Puerto Rico 4 School of Public Administration, Universidad de Puerto Rico en Rio Piedras

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[email protected]. [email protected]. ‡ [email protected]. ¶ [email protected]. †

H. Séraphin, V. Gowreesunkar, M. Ann Dávila Rodríguez et al.

ABSTRACT

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Tourism is an important economic activity in Cuba. The island is the second most visited of the Caribbean and is ranked as second in the ‘Big 6’ (Séraphin & Dosquet, 2016) based on its tourism performance in the region. Among the factors that account for this success are the years of socialist government, the US imposed trade embargo, and the restructuration of several core economic principles within the island community. In contrast, recent studies on Caribbean islands reveal that when the multi-criteria ELECTRE method is applied to assess tourism performance, the ranking differs. Based on this observation, it is plausible to suggest that an evaluation of the tourism performance of Cuba using multi-criteria ELECTRE method might provide new insight on the tourism direction of the destination; the rationale being to understand whether Cuba will be able to maintain its leadership and position in the ‘Big 6.’ With this as background, the main objective of this study was to investigate the tourism performance of Cuba using the multi-criteria ELECTRE method. This conceptual research paper based on literature review therefore adopts a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) approach and applies the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). Specifically, the study focuses on how the performance of Cuba are assessed using a MCDA framework and the criteria chosen are explained. Methodologically, the study is conducted in three stages; the first stage looks into a list of indicators contributing to the competitors of islands in the Caribbean; in the second stage, tourism indicators applicable to Cuba are identified; the final stage utilises the results of the first two stages to feed into a framework and examines the performance of Cuba based on a set of indicators and criteria derived from empirical evidences. The application of the MCDA was helpful to establish the success factors at the destination whereas the Blakeley Model was helpful to establish the weak areas impeding the performance of the destination. In so doing, the present study contributes to the body of meta-literature in the field of tourism and the multi-criteria ELECTRE method. At the methodological level, it represents the first application of ELECTRE method in a post conflict, post-colonial and post disaster destination. From an academic point of view, this paper contributes to the body of meta-literature on tourism in Cuba which, at the moment, remains rather limited. Finally, the study sets the groundwork for the assessment of tourism performance using the MCDM method in postcolonial, post conflict and post disaster destinations. The study ends with few recommendations and a note on future research.

Keywords: Cuba, tourism, performance, MCDA, competitiveness

1. INTRODUCTION

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Assessing the Tourism Performance of a Destination

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Across Europe many destinations (Barcelona, Cambridge, Dubrovnik, Florence, Oxford, Rome, Stratford-on-Avon, Venice, and York) are voicing (protests, graffiti and physical intimidation) their concern regarding the development of the tourism industry. These destinations under anti-tourist anger are already planning to monitor tourists and tourism more closely either by limiting the number of visitors; limiting cruise ships; introducing new tourism taxes and fines; having special patrols; encouraging tourists to visit other parts of the country that are less visited; restricting some places to tourists; ensuring that tourism is an enriching experience for visitors and hosts alike; encouraging tourists to visit beyond the central sights; diversifying tourist activities; reducing seasonality and addressing the needs of the local community (Coldwell, 2017; http://www.huffingtonpost.com; Tapper, 2017). The reasons for this rise on anti-tourism are due to the fact that the large number of tourists visiting some destinations is putting the UNESCO World Heritage status at risk; tourists are affecting the quality of life of locals and particularly killing neighbourhoods; putting at risk the sustainability of the tourism industry of the destination (http://www.huffingtonpost.com; Leadbeater, 2017); the tourists are not respecting the cities, history, arts and inhabitants by defacing the surroundings, dumping thrash, buying counterfeit goods, sitting anywhere and spending very little money particularly day-trippers (Buckley, 2017; Leadbeater, 2017). For Tapper (2017), a tipping point has been reached. Despite the fact Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy are leading destinations in terms of number of visitors and income generated by the tourism industry, can they be considered as well performing destinations? In order to answer this question regarding the performance of destinations, we are going to choose Cuba as a case study. After the Second World War, tourism became a major economic sector for the Caribbean (Espino, 2015 cited in Gayle & Goodrich, 2015). According to Rettinger and Wojtowicz (2014), the Caribbean region draws its unique selling proposition from its cultural characteristics and the most popular tourism destinations are the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Aruba,

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Jamaica, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico (also known as the ‘Big 6’). When it comes to this part of the world most people think about sunny, white beach paradise islands, colourful cocktails and lively music (Séraphin, 2011; Sheller, 2004). However, because the region is very diverse, not all the islands are vested in the branding and marketing of paradise (Sheller, 2004: 23). For instance, Haiti and the Dominican Republic have two different images. On the one hand, we have one of the most visited island of the Caribbean (The Dominican Republic), and on the other hand, Haiti, still branded as an unsecure destination (Séraphin, 2011; Higate & Henry, 2009), and as a place where the worst is always likely to happen (Bonnet, 2010). As for Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean (Espino, 2015 cited in Gayle & Goodrich, 2015) and the second most visited one with 3.001.958 visitors (CTO, 2015), the years of socialist government and the US imposed trade embargo made the Cuban experience unique in the Caribbean (Espino, 2015 cited in Gayle & Goodrich, 2015). Ranked as second within the ‘Big 6,’ and as the island receiving the highest number of visitors in the Caribbean (at least 1 million visitors per year according to Séraphin & Dosquet, 2016), it would seem that Cuba is a competitive tourism destination with good tourism performance. Competitiveness of the destination, in this case, is mainly explained by the number of visitors on the island and hence the ability of the destination to maintain its market position and share and/or improve upon them through time (d’Hauteserre 2000). However, it is worth noting that the competitiveness of a tourism destination is not solely determined by number of visitors and market positions. Models of destination competitiveness have shown that other factors are also important while determining the competitiveness of a destination. For instance, according to Hassan (2000), a destination’s ability to create and integrate value-added products that sustain its resources while maintaining market position relative to competitors is perceived as competitive with good tourism performance. Likewise, Dwyer and Kim (2003) propose that competitiveness of a destination is rather about the destination’s ability to meet visitor needs on various aspects of the tourism experience, or to deliver goods and services that perform better than other destinations on those aspects of the tourism experience considered to be important by tourists.


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Based on these observations, it may be argued that tourism performances have mostly been determined by testing competitiveness models See for example, Dwyer and Kim (2003), Ritchie and Crouch (2003), Heath (2003), Crouch (2008), Gowreesunkar (2012) among others. In contrast, a tourism study conducted by Botti and Zaman (2015, cited in Séraphin & Dosquet, 2016) on some islands of the Caribbean (Barbados, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Haiti) showed that when applying the multi-criteria ELECTRE method, tourism performance and ranking can be different and may not necessarily reflect the reality, as shown by conventional competitiveness models. The multi-criteria ELECTRE method is one of the most cited models in tourism competitiveness studies. It is both an approach and a body of techniques designed to help people make choices in accordance with their values in cases characterized by multiple, noncommensurate and conflicting criteria (Bogetoft and Pruzan, 1991). The multi-criteria ELECTRE method works with a list of criteria developed by Ritchie & Crouch (2003 cited in Botti & Peypoch, 2013) and it integrates all relevant factors that might typify the competitiveness of a destination (Botti & Peypoch, 2013:108). Therefore, based on empirical evidences, and in particular on the work of Botti and Zaman (2015 cited in Séraphin & Dosquet), it is legitimate to investigate how Cuba is performing as a destination. With this as background, we propose the following research questions:  

Based on a multi-criteria approach, can Cuba be considered as a competitive destination? How can tourism performance be improved for the benefit of Cuba?

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From a management point of view, the underpinning objective of this study is to start an investigation regarding the potential leadership of the ‘Big 6’ by Cuba, since the USA lifted their embargo on the country in 2016. Making assumptions on future trends regarding the production and consumption pattern in tourism is important. However, what seems to be more important is to understand how future trends may affect the management of tourism. In fact, there is a need to bring a degree of control

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and certainty to business management processes in tourism as well as providing desired returns for destinations (Cooper and Hall, 2008: 348). From an academic point of view, this Book chapter contributes to the body of meta-literature on tourism in Cuba which at the moment remains rather limited (Table 1). From a methodological point of view, this conceptual book chapter based on literature review adopts a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) approach. As a result, the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and particularly its application to the tourism industry will be central in our research. The notion of ‘blind spots’ developed by Blakeley (2007) and applied to tourist destinations by Séraphin, Gowreesunkar and Ambaye (2016), will also be an important driver of this study. To address our research questions, the book chapter will be structured combining the findings of two research papers and a book chapter: Séraphin, Gowreesunkar and Ambaye (2016) on ‘blind spots’ in tourist destination; Botti and Peypoch (2013) on the application of MCDA in a tourism context; and a book chapter (Espino, 2015 cited in Gayle & Goodrich, 2015) on tourism development in Cuba. The first section will address the historical background; Cuba and its tourism industry; Cuba and the Caribbean tourism industry; the branding of the destination and finally academic research on the destination. This section will be followed by the conceptual framework that covers MCDA methods and tourism destination competitiveness. The Methodology section will focus on how the performance of Cuba will be assessed using a MCDA framework and the criteria chosen will also be explained. Results and recommendations will be drawn from the application of the methodology developed. The final section proposes a conclusion including areas of future research. It is very important to highlight the fact that in this paper Cuba is just a case study. The key point of this paper is the range of criteria that can be used to assess the performance of a destination. This book chapter was motivated by raise of anti-tourism in many European destinations.

2. CONTEXTUAL FRAMEWORK 2.1. Historical Background

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By 1957, tourism was the second most important sector of the Cuban economy (Espino, 2015). The destination accounted for over 21% of all tourist arrivals in the Caribbean (CTO, 2015). Between 1960 and 1975, international tourists stopped visiting Cuba as the revolutionary government of that prevailing time discouraged visitors, as they associated tourism with the capitalist economy. As a result, the tourism industry came to an end in Cuba in 1962, especially when the USA imposed a trade embargo on the island restraining travel to Cuba by US citizens and residents. Thus, no major investment was undertaken by the government between 1960s and 1970s. However, with the new government, the situation changed in the mid1970s. The setting up of the Institute Nacional del Turismo (INTUR) in 1976, followed by Cubanacan in 1987, significantly changed the tourism landscape in Cuba; the mission was to develop national and international tourism (Espino, 2015 cited in Gayle & Goodrich, 2015).

2.2. The Tourism Industry in Cuba

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To make up for the loss of the American tourists who account for the largest group of visitors to the Caribbean, Cuba has turned towards Canada and Western Europe. During the 1980s, international tourists to Cuba increased faster than the Caribbean area. The popularity of Cuba was partly due to its price advantage over other Caribbean destinations. During the 1980s, many hotels and tourist resorts were built in Cuba. This was partly due to the Law-Decree No 50 enacted in 1982, a joint-venture law that opened the door of the tourism industry to foreign capital. Up to 49% foreign ownership can operate in Cuba (Espino, 2015 cited in Gayle & Goodrich, 2015). A study conducted by Rettinger and Wojtowicz (2014) shows that tourism performance in Cuba is a debatable topic. The study states that one of the main challenges facing the development of the tourist sector in Cuba

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is sustainable tourism, which is arguably based on the environmental, the economic, the cultural, and the social sphere. The environmental area includes all issues associated with the protection of the natural environment. This is especially true of regions experiencing significant tourist traffic – regions such as Cuba’s coastline. Controversial decisions in this area include the decision to expand Varadero’s tourist at the expense of its coast and the construction of two causeways linking the Cuban mainland with Cayo Coco and Cayo Santa Maria. The economic condition is both directly and indirectly associated with the development of the Cuban tourist sector. Cuba is dependent on market conditions in foreign countries and the creation of tourist enclaves with little potential for broader multiplier effects has not really benefitted the island. This includes cases such as Varadero, Cayo Coco, and Cayo Santa Maria. The cultural value, which serves as a key element in the tourism offer has a tendency to become commercialized and local identity is lost. Programs such as ‘Authentic Cuba’ in order to protect the island’s cultural heritage, has not been too helpful with mass tourism. The social aspect of Cuban tourism relates to growing disparities and conflicts within Cuban host community and society. This is also recurrent in many other island destinations and the exploitation of host community in island tourism has been reported in the studies of Jurowski and Gursoy (2003), Nunkoo and Ramkissoon, (2008) Gowreesunkar et al., (2010) among others.

2.3. Cuba and its Destination Management Organisation (DMO) Branding

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Branding is basically all about the process by which messages are conveyed to the consumers and potential consumers (Park, 2014). The American Marketing Association (1960) proposed the following definition of a brand: “A name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors.” According to a study conducted by Adeyinka-Ojo and Nair (2016), destination branding is


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a way of disseminating the uniqueness of a destination identity through differentiable features from other competing locations and the name is relatively fixed by the actual geographic name of the place. A brand identity is made of three parts (Saint-Hilaire, 2005): 1. Name

2. The logo

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The name is the core of the identity. In general, the brand name is kept for ever unless an exceptional change occurs or if at international level the name is not suitable

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A logo is a key component of brand identity and provides instant recognition for a brand. Since logos visually represent what the brand is and what it stands for, they have the potential to serve as a focal point of connection for customers by communicating and reinforcing a brand's core values (Park et al., 2013). Logos can therefore be viewed as a form of visual communication to the customers and it transcends international boundaries and language barriers (Pittard, Ewin & Jevons, 2007). The logo should be able to communicate organisation’s objective to its target market, be memorable and should easily be associated with the corporate or brand name (Morgan, Pritchard and Pride, 2011; Marti, 2008). The logo should also embody the firm's uniqueness and value and should yield customer brand commitment and improve the firm performance, while contributing to favourable interaction between the firm and its customers (Park, Eisingerich, Pol & Park, 2013; Wang, Hernandez, Minor and Wei, 2012). In a tourism context, Hem and Iversen (2004) argue that destination logos should match the organisation they represent, that is to say: Their identity; uniqueness; value, as well as essence and objective (Morgan, Pritchard & Pride, 2011; Marti, 2008). It is all the more important in tourism as they can influence tourist's destination choice (Gallarza, Saura and Garcia, 2002). The design depends of the cultural context and might change each time the context changes (Saint-Hilaire, 2005).

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3. Slogan/Catching phrase

Figure 1. Cuba DMO logo.

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Firms change their slogan/catching phrase regularly (every 5, 10 or 15 years) as it needs to reflect the positioning of the firm. For example, the Cuban DMO adopted the slogan: ‘Autentica Cuba’ and the logo below (Figure 1):

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A study conducted by Séraphin, Ambaye, Gowreesunkar and Bonnardel (2016) on the framework to determine the right color and design of a logo, revealed that the Haitian DMO logo is not very efficient, due to the logo and the slogan which are not telling the narrative of the destination. The same could be said about Cuba. That said, in terms of destination visibility, it seems that there are three kinds of strategies adopted by the Caribbean DMOs regarding the design of their logo: a) Some moved from an idiosyncratic identity based logo to a universal ‘sea-and-sun’ stereotyped one; b) Others took the opposite strategy; c) The third category has adopted a neutral and stylised logo that does not refer to identity or ‘sea-and-sun’ stereotype. The Cuba is in this third category of destinations. Regardless, further research is needed to identify the role of customers and their change of expectation, taste and behaviour as the main variables (Doyle, 2002; Quek, 2012) in the branding strategy of tourism organisations in Haiti (and in the Caribbean).


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2.4. Analysis of Number of Visitors in Cuba (2003-2014)

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Data from the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) 2003-2014, show that the number of visitors to Cuba increased almost steadily (Figure 2). The average number of visitors to Cuba per year between 2003 and 2014 was 2,446,092. According to Caribbean Tourism Organization (2016), the European market is one of the most important source market in Cuba. Cuba has 23.1% of the 5.2 million arrivals in the Caribbean. Of this market, 1.1 million arrivals are from the United Kingdom; representing 25.2% of the market for Cuba. As for the standard deviation over the same period, it equates to 348003.65 which shows a relatively steady evolution as explained earlier. Hence probably the reason why Cuba has since 2005 managed to sustain its position as the second most visited destination of the Caribbean (Table 1).

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Figure 2. Number of visitors to Cuba (2013-2014).

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Table 1. Ranking of Cuba as a tourist destination (2003-2014)

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The Dominican Republic is the most visited island of the Caribbean with 5,141,377 visitors in 2014 (CTO, 2015), followed by Cuba with 3,001,958 visitors (CTO, 2015). The difference in terms of number of visitors equates to 2,139,419. As for the third most visited island of the Caribbean, Jamaica, it received 2,080,181 visitors in 2014 (CTO, 2015), in other words, 921,777 less visitors than Cuba (Table 2).

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Table 2. ‘Big 6’ of the Caribbean (2014)



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Table 3. The ‘Big 6’ and the evolution rate of the number of visitors (2003-2014)


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In terms of evolution rate (2003-2014), Cuba is the second best performing destination of the Caribbean way behind the Aruba, the new member of the leading destinations of the Caribbean (Table 3). Based on the fact that: (1) the gap between Cuba and the Dominican Republic in terms of number of visitors in 2014 equated to 2.139.419 visitors (2) and that the difference in terms of evolution rate is 1.12% in favour of Cuba, it is likely that the Dominican Republic is going to retain its leadership for a few years.

3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

3.1. MCDA

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Botti and Peypoch (2013: 109) explain that ‘MCDA is a general term for methods providing a quantitative approach to support decision making in problems involving several criteria and choices.’ Botti and Peypoch (2013:108) also explain that what tourists are doing when selecting a destination for their holidays: ‘Tourists who wish to enjoy a satisfying experience try to select one destination from a set of n possible alternatives and on the basis of m criteria’. A MCDA could be considered as a method falling under QCA.

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Taking the example of countries economic performance, Vis, Woldendorp and Keman (2007) pointed out a few research gaps in the field of comparative analyses: First of all, they are very limited. Second, most comparative analyses research rely or a single case study. This approach is not rigorous as ‘studying single cases hardly help to discern best practices’ (Vis et al., 2007: 532). As a result, Vis et al., (2007) are promoting the fuzzyset theory combine with ideal type analysis as a potential solution to address the lack of good practice in terms of comparative analysis. ‘This approach provides more precise information on the case under investigation (...) and is easily interpretable (Vis et al., 2007: 537). As for Stokke (2007), he completes the list of advantages of using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) by adding the fact that this technique can help the investigator to consider more cases than he would usual do. For instance, Chang, Tseng and Woodside (2013) used this technique to analyse 645 self-administered questionnaires. For Ordanini, Parasuraman and Rubera (2014), QCA makes better sense of the data in research contexts. To the list of benefits of this method can be added achieving accuracy and generalisation (Woodside and Baxter, 2013), it is more informative and structured (Loane & McNaughton, 2006). Last but not least, this method can be applied to a variety of areas like education (Schneider, Bentrop & Paunescu, 2010); health (Chang, Tseng & Woodside, 2013); ICT (Loane & Bell, 2006); hospitality (Ordanini, Parasuraman and Rubera, 2014), in B2B context (Woodside & Baxter, 2013), countries economic performance (Vis et al., 2007), politics (Stokke, 2007) to name a few. If Ordanini, Parasuraman & Rubera (2014) introduced QCA into a luxury hotel context to investigate how customers’ perceptions of new service attribute influence adoption intentions in order to evidence that QCA can help make better sense of the data in research contexts, it is however very important to highlight the fact, QCA is not the only research technique advocating the use of more than one source of information or data. The ELECTRE method developed by Ritchie and Crouch (2003) integrates all the relevant factors that might typify the competitiveness of a destination, namely: Core resources and attractors; supporting factors and resources; destination management; destination policy, planning and development; qualifying and amplifying determinants. (Ritchie & Crouch, 2003 cited in


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Botti & Peypoch, 2013). This method is one of the most cited in academic research related to tourism (Botti & Peypoch, 2013). The ELECTRE method is part of a more general term for method providing support for decision making in problem involving several criteria and choices, namely MultiCriteria Decision Analysis (Botti & Peypoch, 2013). Still in a tourism marketing context, Séraphin, Gowreesunkar and Ambaye (2016) used the Blakeley Model (2007), a multi-criteria model to determine the blind spots of Haiti as a tourist destination. Séraphin, Ambaye, Gowreesunkar and Bonnardel (2016) also developed a multi-criteria model for Destination Marketing Organisation to determine the right color for their logo. Woodside and Baxter (2013) in their quest to achieving accuracy and therefore the possibility to generalise results, pointed out that Case Study Research (CSR), degrees-of-freedom analysis (DFA), fs/QCA and decision system analysis (DSA) are tool helping to achieving excellence in the quality of results. It is legitimate to wonder whether MCDA can reach this level of accuracy. Woodside and Baxter (2013) used DSA in a context where manufacturers, distributors and customers were involved in the decision. In other words, many stakeholders involved in decision making. To some extent, this tool presents many similarities with MCDA. We can also come to the conclusion that QCA, a method theorized by John Stuart Mill in 1843 and popularised by Ragin in 1987 (Kan, Adegbite, El Omari & Abdellatif, 2015) and used in many sectors opened the door to many other approaches, stream of thoughts and more importantly, accurate and precise research tool.

3.2. Tourism Destination Competitiveness (TDC)

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Competitiveness in the tourism industry is a growing interest area. Research conducted by Botti and Peypoch (2013) showed that in 2002, 9 academic papers about destination competitiveness were published. In 2012, 42 papers were published in that field. In 2003, Ritchie and Crouch developed a well-established model that typifies the competitiveness of a destination (Andrades-Caldito, Sanchez-Rivero & Pulido-Fernandez, 2013

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cited in Botti and Peypoch, 2013). The model is based on five competitive components as shown is the figure below (Figure 3). In Figure 3, ‘Cs’ are the criteria that contribute to the competitiveness of a destination and ‘a’ are the alternative destinations. We are going to adapt this approach to our research objectives.

Source: Botti & Peypoch (2013).

Figure 3. Tourist multi-criteria decision framework (5 criteria and 6 alternative destinations).

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3.3. Competitiveness Models

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Emerging in the 1990s, tourism researchers began to consider how destination competitiveness ought to be understood and measured. The general models that have been developed indicate that there is an extensive list of determinants that are relevant. Considering the historical evolution of tourism destination, Crouch and Ritchie (1999) were the first researchers to study the nature and structure of destination competitiveness. Their


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conceptual model (Ritchie and Crouch, 2003) comprises factors of destination competitiveness clustered into five main groups and comprising 36 destination competitiveness attributes. Dwyer and Kim (2003) also proposed a general model of destination competitiveness, but their model considers national and firm competitiveness theory as well as the main elements of destination competitiveness and many of the variables and category headings identified by Crouch and Ritchie. (Dwyer et al., 2004). The latter directly relates to destination competitiveness and comprised certain generic characteristics borrowed from Porter’s model. Crouch and Ritchie (1999) therefore argue that tourism destination competitiveness was determined by four components; core resources and attractors, supporting factors and resources, destination management and qualifying determinants. The core attractors and supporters relates to the attractions, the accommodation, the ancillary services, transportation and all facilities for tourism. The third component, destination management, focuses on activities that could influence the other components, first by enhancing the appeal of the core resources and attractors, secondly by reinforcing the quality and effectiveness of the supporting factors and lastly by adapting the constraints imposed by the fourth component which is the qualifying determinants. The authors also claimed that, in absolute terms, the most competitive destination is one which brought about the greatest success; that is, the most well-being for its residents on a sustainable basis.

4. METHODOLOGY

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Research into destination competitiveness has helped to build an understanding of its

4.1. Approach

Based on the different research methods and tools discussed so far in this book chapter, we can come to the conclusion that in this qualitative

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Stage 1: Identifying indicators

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research, we are adopting a bricolage approach, making us bricoleur. The present study therefore borrows from this bricoleur philosophy, given that it deploys interconnected methods that are pieced together to produce the result. In the present case, it makes use of secondary data derived from literature review and selected case studies to arrive at its conclusion. A case study methodology allow for an exploration of the conceptual nature of the relationship between key destination competitiveness variables and a tourism destination’s stage of development. This methodology seems to be workable in cases where competitiveness is studied (Wilde and Cox, 2008). This approach applies moving between disciplines and using different tools, methods and techniques to construct meaning out of data (Hammond & Wellington, 2013). To be more explicit, we have deconstructed this approach into different stages:

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Table 6 (below) provides information about the criteria and indicators that will be used to assess the competitiveness of Cuba. As the basis for this present research, the criteria derived from the conceptual model of Crouch and Ritchie (2003) was employed for several reasons. The research upon which the model is based is the most extensively reported and cited in literature. The model was developed as a general model rather than as a situation-specific model. Thus the model was designed to be generally relevant to any destination and tourism market. The extensive articulation of the model reported in Ritchie and Crouch (2003) makes this conceptual model of destination competitiveness the most amenable to implementation by the tourism industry. Therefore, for each criterion, we provided some indicators using academic research on tourism in the Caribbean. Gay (2012) in his research provided a detailed list of indicators that contribute to the


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Source: The authors.

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competitors of islands in the Caribbean. Séraphin, Gowreesunkar and Ambaye (2016), they provided a list of indicators that essential for the sustainable development of the tourism industry in post-colonial, post conflict and post disaster destinations. They used Haiti (an island in the Caribbean) as a case study. As for Laitamaki, Torres Hechavarria, Tada, Liu, Setyady, Vatcharasoontorn and Zeng (2016), they provided specific examples of indicators drawn from research based on Cuba. The assessment framework below is therefore perfectly suitable to assess the competitiveness of a Caribbean destination like Cuba (Table 4). The framework below (Figure 4) summarises the research question and objective of this book chapter:

Figure 4. Identifying the competitive criteria and indicators of Cuba.

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Stage 2: Features of the destination

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This second stage is based on literature review. This research approach ‘gives an overview of what has been written about a particular field or topic (...) Findings can be reported thematically with judicious use of sub-headers’ (Hammond & Wellington, 2013: 99-100). The findings will help us to identify which indicators are evidenced by Cuba (Table 6; Figure 6).

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Ritchie and Crouch Model (2003) Criteria Supporting factors and resources (C1) Gay (2012) Indicators Transportation infrastructure (quality airport/road network) (C1.1) Reception of tourists is good (C1..2)

Core resources and attractors (C2)

Destination policy, Destination planning & development (C3) management (C4)

Qualifying & amplifying determinants (C5)

Qualified and motivated Staff (C3.1)

Water supply (C5.1) Sanitary conditions (C5.2) Safety (C5.3) Value for money: (accommodation/excursio ns/restaurants/shopping (C5.4) Reasonable taxes (C5.5)

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Human needs met (C3.2) Sense of community (C3.3)

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Large degree of economic and political autonomy (C4.1)

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Quality accommodation/excu rsions/restaurants (C2.1) Nightlife infrastructures (C2..2) Availability activities (C2..3) Séraphin, Gowreesunkar & Ambaye (2016) Indicators Education of tourists (C1.3) Laitamaki et al., (2016) Indicators Education and training of tourism industry employees (C1.4)

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Table 4. Multi criteria decision framework to assess the competitiveness of Cuba

Conservation of cultural assets and biodiversity (C3.4)

Suitable leadership (C4.2) Waste management Food safety (C5.6) Safety Plan for natural disasters and atmospheric conditions (C5.7) Risk Management (C5.8)

4.2. Literature Review 

Holan and Phillips (1997)

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This paper that dates back nearly 20 years highlights among other things the lack of skills of employees working in the industry as well as the lack of managerial skills, hence the reason why the government encourage international companies to build and manage hotels and other facilities in the country. Henthorne and Miller (2003)

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Cuba has a very rich culture with its dance and music (Rumba, Mambo and Cha-cha). In terms of accommodation, the destination offers a range of option at a rather good standard. This was made possible thanks to the opening of the country to foreign investments. Autonomous state enterprises or parastatal enterprises appeared in the late 1980s. Internal infrastructures are also fairly good. The country has many international airports and one of the best highway systems of the Caribbean. One of the greatest resources of Cuba for tourism is the quality of its human capital. Cuba’s population is one of the most literate and educated in the developing world. The Cuban health care system is also excellent. However, the country is short of some equipment like casinos. Also, the biggest competitive obstacle facing Cuba is the lack of shopping opportunities. The latest two indicators are very important to attract American tourists. As some other destinations in the Caribbean, Cuba is perceived by American tourists as a dangerous destination.

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Miller, Henthorne and George (2008)

This research paper completes the previous by adding that the current political context is also an asset for the development of the tourism industry, as the current leader of the country is quite in favour of entrepreneurship and liberalisation of the economy. Hence the development of training

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programme in the tourism industry, research programs, industry strategy and economic policy in place. This article also indicates developable beaches, architecture, vintage automobiles, Cuban art and craftsmanship, knowledge of history as part of the assets of the country.

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The tourism industry in Cuba has also created a form of segregation between locals and tourists as a tourism policy prohibits Cubans from frequenting the resorts. Also, the tourism industry triggered the development of prostitution. Sanchez and Adams (2008)

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Romeu (2014)

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Due to opening of Cuba tourism to United States citizens, Romeu (2014) stated that “the market will need to find a new equilibrium, as the largest consumer of tourism services in the region meets for the first time in nearly fifty years the region’s largest potential producer” (P.). The consequences of this opening are: Caribbean vacations will be repriced, and new tourism consumption patterns will emerge across all destinations and visitor countries. Cuba-US bilateral tourism would increase overall arrivals to the Caribbean. This flow will likely drive tourism in Cuba to full capacity although much is unknown about short-run supply constraints. Visitors currently vacationing in Cuba would be redirected toward neighbouring countries.


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4.3. Stage 3: Feeding the Framework Using the Results of the Literature Review

Source: The authors.

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The literature review on the development of the tourism industry in Cuba clearly shows that this industry is going from strength to strength. If the destination is quite competitive in some areas like equipments and staff education and training in other areas like positive social and economic impacts on the local population, there is room for improvement (Figure 5).

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Figure 5. Competitive criteria and indicators of Cuba.

5. FINDINGS, DISCUSSIONS, LIMITATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1. Findings

Overall, Cuba is performing rather well:

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The destination is doing rather well when it comes to C1 and C4. The destination is average for C2 C3/C5

The overall good performance of Cuba revealed after using this MCDA approach need to be associated with what we already know about the destination good performance in terms of number visitors. Qualitatively and quantitatively the destination is performing well overall. However, in terms

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of limitations, our research could not address all the criteria of our MCDA approach due to a lack of academic research on Cuba as a tourist destination, hence the gaps in Figure 5. That said, in the areas where Cuba is not performing that well, it would be interesting to identify the ‘blind spot’ that impediment the performance of the destination.

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5.2. The ‘Blind spot’ and the Blakeley Model

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The Blakeley Model was applied in research to address the question of how people learn or resist learning when their organisations go through change (Blakeley, 2007: 23). In so doing, two companies which were going through intensive culture change programmes were used as case studies. According to the Model, learning seems to constitute paying attention to a cue and changing behaviour (Blakeley, 2007: 27). If there is no change in the pattern, this is when blind spot is developed (Blakeley, 2007: 28). ‘Blind spots’ are areas where we resist learning and prevent us from adapting learning (Blakeley, 2007: 22). The Model suggests that learning often emerged through a stop-start process (Blakeley, 2007: 35) and proposed four main drivers of people’s attention and learning:  

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Self-esteem (preserving, protecting and enhancing self-esteem); Psychological comfort (the drive to achieve emotional well- being and psychological Comfort. This also includes the drive to meet my underlying needs such as being liked; gaining influence; helping others. It is when we are meeting our underlying needs that we feel most fulfilled and comfortable); Goals (achieving my goals) Values (affirming and protecting my values in the world)

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The Blakeley model is particularly relevant for situations that have stagnated for a long time and where changes are required. There is a general consensus that staganation occurs when there is resistance to learn in the


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event of changes and people defend themselves against learning when the content of that learning is in some way uncomfortable or threatening to the self. Research has shown that prolonged experiences of poverty or powerlessness tends to generate learned helplessness which in turn leads to a cessation in the exploration of the environment or engaging in learning related behaviour (Mal, Jain & Yadav, 1990; Teodorescu & Erev, 2014). According to the Blakeley Model, failure to learn then results in blind spots which can be defined as ‘a regular tendency to repress, distort, dismiss or fail to notice information, views or ideas in a particular are that results in…[failure] to learn, change or grow in responses to changes in that area’ (Blakeley, 2007: 6). There are many barriers to learning in any given economic system, some of which are systemic (e.g., lack of opportunity, a culture that does not support learning, lack of exposure to environmental change). When an individual (or system) fails to learn, representations and understandings of reality no longer function effectively as changes that have taken place in the environment fail to be incorporated into the learner’s mental representations of the world (Barr, Stimpert & Huff, 1992). In order to understand how to overcome blind spots, it is important to appreciate the process of learning as a holistic, embedded and contextual experience (rather than limiting it to something specific such as the process of acquiring information or the acquisition of a skill). Learning, according to this model, comprises four key processes: paying attention to a cue, experiencing emotions, sense-making and generating behaviours in a way that results in new or changed beliefs, behaviours or emotional orientations (such as increased self-confidence or openness to change). This is not a linear process: for example it is not unlikely that emotions can be experienced first which trigger a change in behaviour and it is only afterwards that one makes sense of the event and only then that one consciously notices the original cue. Furthermore, noticing a cue, experiencing emotions, making sense and generating behaviour in response to the cue need not involve learning – indeed, these mechanisms simply describe the ongoing information processing characteristic of all human consciousness. Learning only results when the

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individual notices new and different cues, or makes sense of cues in a way that generates new constructs, beliefs, emotions or behaviours. When individuals pay attention to familiar cues, experience customary emotions, make sense and take action in ways that involve no change then they are in the comfort zone, drawing on existing knowledge and skills in order to survive and achieve goals within the environment. When they pay attention to new cues, learn new emotions in relation to cues (e.g., increasing self-confidence in relation to a skill), make sense in ways that expand understanding and change behaviour, they step outside of the comfort zone and into the learning zone; here they start to experience a range of emotions, depending on how novel the learning or how threatening to the self. Emotions associated with the learning zone include excitement, anxiety, frustration, anticipation, optimism, disappointment, hope, joy and fear. If people do not step outside the comfort zone and engage with these emotions however, they do not learn; consequently one of the most important skills of learning is the effective handling of the emotions. The greater the ability to do this, the greater the learning that takes place; this then contributes towards the expansion of cognitive, emotional and behavioural resources that fit learners for the complex, changing world in which they live. Application of the Blakeley Model allows the identification of blind spots, that is, areas where people or organisations resist learning and prevent them from adapting learning (Blakeley, 2007: 22). The Blakeley model also offers a participative approach to find solution to the blind spots using a stop-start process (Blakeley, 2007: 35). The Blakeley model is quite flexible.

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the human aspect needs to be fixed (a sense of community needs to be developed and the locals need to be able to dream); and finally, Haiti needs visionary leaders (the right context needs to be put in place and the ‘yes, we can spirit’ encouraged). It is the improvement of the well-being of Haitians that is going to lead to the improvement of the performance of Haiti as a destination. Subsequently, micro-businesses and SMEs in the industry will have an impact on the national economy. It is a one way relationship. In poor countries like Haiti it is important to address the human condition first. At this point, a valid question would be whether or not the above results could be applied to Cuba. In other words, can the results be generalised to a different destination? Hammond and Wellington (2013: 81-82) explain that despite the fact ‘there is less agreement on the extent to which generalisations can be offered (...) a study becomes relatable when there is enough background detail, appropriately presented, to enable the practitioner and/or fellow researcher to recognise a case as similar to their own’. Thus, Gowreesunkar, Van der Sterren and Séraphin (2015) provided evidence that despite the geographical distance, Haiti and Mauritius have many similar issues regarding entrepreneurship in their respective tourism sector. As for Séraphin and Butler (2013), they provided evidence that Haiti and Kenya have many common issues regarding the management of the tourism industry partly due to the impact of slavery. And finally, Séraphin, Butler, and Gowreesunkar (2013) established a connection between Haiti, Kenya and Mauritius in terms of issues faced by their tourism industry. Based on the above, we can come to the conclusion that post-colonial, postconflict and post-disaster destinations are facing similar issues for the development of their tourism industry and very often suffer from a deficit of image (Séraphin, Butcher & Korstanje, 2016).

CONCLUSION

This study utilized the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) method to assess the performance of tourism in Cuba. The main objective was to understand whether Cuba, as the second most visited destination of

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the Caribbean, could be considered as a well performing destination beyond what we already know about the destination in terms of number of visitors. Unlike previous competitiveness studies which made use of conventional models to determine performance of tourism, the present study took a somewhat different approach and utilised the multi-criteria method. The overall result reveals that Cuba is performing rather well as a tourism destination and this positive result could be attributed to supporting factors and resources (represented by C1) and destination management (represented by C4) of the model. Ultimately, the application of the MCDA helped to develop new insights on the performance of Cuba, as a tourism destination. To the list of criteria used in this book chapter to assess the performance of a destination (Table 4) could be added: the preservation of the lifestyle of locals; and the interaction locals/visitors. Future research could look at how an ambidextrous management of tourism could contribute to improve the performance of destinations.

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Chapter 5

MODERNITY AND TOURISM Francisco Muñoz de Escalona*

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CSIC head scientist (ret.), Madrid, Spain

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ABSTRACT

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The doctrine of tourism is neither sociology nor economics; it is a mix of both social sciences, but with hegemony of the first. It is so for nearly a century due to the abandonment of its first entrepreneurial approach. The marketing contributions that took place four decades ago seemed to have recovered such an approach, but it was not so since those who applied it fully assumed the sociological approach focused on the tourist. Sociologism is now hegemonic, to the point that it has incorporated other similar approaches such as structuralism, anthropology and social criticism. From this derive somewhat abstruse approaches and a terminology plagued by innovations lacking a meaning that is not merely academic. The present chapter is dedicated to combating such excesses.

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Keywords: modernity, tourism, attraction, destination, authenticity

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[email protected].

Francisco Muñoz de Escalona

THE MODERNITY PROCESS

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Modernity is the daughter of the Enlightenment, an elitist movement that in the eighteenth century changed the European societies anchored in the feudal tradition replacing stratification by individuality, revealed truth by reason, agricultural by industrial, rural by urban, absolutism by democracy, local by global. With modernity, Reason, Criticism, Productivity, Market, Knowledge and Technology are enthroned. In modern societies, everyday life is governed by impersonal institutions nucleated by the nation-state and the capitalist mode of production (CMP), both designed by the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. Feudal society rooted in local life gave way to translocality, and with it, to a growing globalization. Modernity is seen in terms of the triumph of metaphysics, which finds in logical truth the foundation of a world conception in perpetual and forced improvement. Modernity is inherent to continuous progress. It is the consequence of a historical evolution in which there are stages of progress and stagnation that have resulted, until now, in a spectacular accumulation of theoretical and technological knowledge generating so unsuspected riches in the past that led Karl R. Popper to proclaim that modernity offers humanity the best time in its history. Modernity is a process in which the economic, social, political, and cultural aspects are interrelated and interpenetrating shaping the zenith of bourgeois society, capitalism and a political organization, the nation-state with supranational aspirations that seeks to expand to become global.

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POSITIVE AND PERVERSE EFFECTS OF MODERNITY

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Many believe that the ideological force of modernity, legitimized by the myth of indefinite progress, has made it possible to clearly demonstrate its positive effects, especially as a result of technological development together with the increasing mobility of production factors including work force. It is

Modernity and Tourism

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obvious that increased competition and the raising division of labor on a global scale increase productivity and wealth. But many others argue that these obvious positive effects mask their many negative effects, including the despotic and impersonal nature of the world market, which enables a relationship of domination and exploitation of some countries over others as it had previously established it of men over others and of localities over others. The truth is that modernity generates a mix of positive and negative effects that materialize in a blatantly proselytizing literature in favor of and against, from which it is not possible to isolate oneself and, much less, to delineate a balanced and true opinion. Technological progress, improvement in nutrition, body hygiene and public health have extended life expectancy, but they have also brought an alarming population aging, especially in the more urbanized countries, together with increased atmospheric pollution and deterioration of the natural resources that put at risk the habitability of the planet. Among the positive effects of modernity, we must also emphasize the overcoming of distance with its logical correlation of what Marshall MacLuhan (1911-1980) correctly called “global village” to refer to the globe. The great and growing achievements that modernity is making possible in the overcoming of distance are the cause that men and women move by land, sea and air in a frequent and continuous way. The drawback for many thinkers is that different cultures influence each other in such a way that many of them are already on the verge of extinction. The conservation of biodiversity and the diversity of cultures are endangered by modernity, which for others is no more than the inevitable cost of the positive effects it brings.

TOURISM AND ITS MASSIVE GLOBAL EXPANSION

As already mentioned, modernity is overcoming distances and thereby promoting the flow of people on Earth. Not so long ago, in Spain there were towns in which its inhabitants had never come out of their towns, especially

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women. Today his descendants often come to other towns and cities relatively far away for different reasons: work, shopping, health, recreation, etc. Even, if they can, they spend their holidays in far and remote places. It is what we have come to call mass tourism. There are writers who argue that tourism exists since prehistory. Maximiliano Korstanje (W), for example, states that “in order to understand how tourism works and overcome contradictions [...] we need to minimally study the role of travel and knowledge in different cultures by making inferences and intercultural comparisons.” This same prolific Argentine author (2011) considers that “tourism as an institution or social fact can be explained by analyzing the mythologies of the four cultures that have formed Europeanness: GrecoRoman, Judeo-Christian, Celtic and German-Nordic. Each of these mythological structures contributes to the formation of modern tourism.” Faced with such demanding approaches, typical of sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, hermeneutics and philosophers, economics, a science that moves more at ground level, allows to understand tourism as the displacements that men and women carry out for the purpose of satisfying some need. It also allows us to speculate that these displacements were made since there were sedentary societies, which increased from the 6th century BC., coinciding with the beginning of what Karl Jaspers (2017) calls axial age and the appearance of the first urban nuclei from the 4th century BC. However, the economistic explanation of tourism is very minor and therefore undervalued by the international community of experts, which is comfortably installed in a sociological treatment of the issue, to the point that the specialized literature is steeped in an inveterate psychologism. Among the experts we can distinguish two groups, one, the dominant one, those that makes high praises to the phenomenon, and another, minority, but very prestigious, that fight it as if it were a pernicious plague. Among these stands out the American author Dean MacCannell (Washington, 1940), a landscaping professor for more than 20 years at the University of California at Davis. His stellar work is “The tourist: a new theory of the leisure class,” published in 1976 and republished in later years considering that it has achieved a remarkable sales success. Chilean researcher Robinson Torres


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(2008) argues that “this book is totally current and theoretically interesting because it systematizes a nascent branch of sociology, which is the tourism sociology. In fact, it is perhaps the first systematic exposition of a conceptual body that can be called “tourism sociology.” It seems that the young sociologist Torres does not know that there has been a tourism sociology for several decades, the most outstanding writers being the Swiss Walter Hunziker and Kurt Krapf, in whose treatise of 1942 postulates that the study of tourism is a sociology applied with sporadic contributions of economy. Having said this, and returning to MacCannell, it must be said that this author intends to establish a theory of modernity, which, as we have already seen, questions the value of commodities, which, according to the teachings of classical economics, depends on the production process costs (inputs, labor force, etc.). Therefore, according to MacCannell, commodities only have value based on the “experience” they produce to their buyer. For MacCannell, as Robinson Torres points out, “touristic experiences are cultural experiences, that is, the value of these, ultimately emanates from the tourists and their cultures of origin, as well as from the cultures present in the places where the touristic visit takes place,” since “leisure is built from cultural experiences” (MacCannell, 2017). In Robinson Torres’ words,

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“based on this premise, MacCannell is nurtured by the Erving Goffman’s microsociology (1922 - 1982) to study the tourist’s ritual behavior in public places. [E. Goffman, 2006]. In doing so, he explains how it is the tourist’s behavior which establishes that certain places become “tourist attractions” from certain signs. In this the ‘tourist,’ a ‘sight’ and its ‘markers’ interact, since the touristic attraction is ‘an empirical relationship between the tourist, a sight and a marker.’ Once a place has been valued from the experiences it delivers to the visitors, this becomes an attraction. Later, touristic rituals are established around it: they are ‘marked’ and ‘sacralized’ by the local inhabitants, their municipalities and all the institutional apparatus of touristic promotion, thus arising the first signs of tourism and more globally touristic destinations. MacCannell points out that some sights are so spectacular that they do not need to be marked by

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anyone: they have value in themselves. And therefore, around these attractions, is that behavior and sacralization rituals of touristic sights take place, generating social and cultural spaces that give life to true ‘touristic districts’ where the tourist’s social life and experience unfolds, a new experience which is the result of modernity.”

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We have resorted to such an extensive quotation because the author clearly states the essence of MacCannell’s work and, also, because it ends up alluding, nothing more and nothing less, to modernity. Because the fact that the work The Tourist, in the end, is a reflection on society in its current stage of modernity in which the author thoroughly exposes those who, in his opinion, are some of its most perverse effects, among which he cites, preferably, tourism and tourists. Since his reflection is done within the framework of his notion of culture and with reference to his concept of cultural experience it is required to judge the work cited in its own context.

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THE NEW MACCANNELL’S LEISURE CLASS

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MacCannell’s undoubtedly successful work appeared on the publishing market in 1976 edited by Shoken Books. In 1989, the second edition was released and edited by Lafayette and ten years later appeared the third, foreword written by Lucy R. Lippard, translated into Spanish by Elizabeth Casals and edited by Melusina in 2003 and in 2017 with a cover of Juan Garcia in which reproduces the cartoonist stereotype of the current tourist, with his sports clothes, his cap, his sunglasses, his shoulder bag, his guide and his inseparable camera. The cover is thus somewhat humorous, because through it the designer intends to advance the critical spirit that permeates the whole work. The writer who wrote the foreword of the 1999 edition, a specialist in visual arts like the author who is a specialist in landscaping, writes in her foreword entitled Looking on: combined with Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers, the 1992 collection of essays in which the author cemented his role as a preeminent


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scholar of tourism, The tourist remains invaluable to scholars and interested (¡!) spectators alike.

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Lippard confesses that she was impressed by the reading of the two works quoted by MacCannell and that she therefore tried to avoid at all costs returning to them to rid herself of her tyrannical dependence, since in her opinion “few of the questions it poses have been resolved and many more have been added.” Lippard admits that tourism is already or is on its way to being the first industry in the world, but, as all those who believe it, hide that it is not “an” industry but a heterogeneous and irregular conglomerate, a business only joined by the link of being at the tourist’s service, that consumer that compulsively consumes outside his usual place of residence, during his time off from work or professional duties. Therefore, adds Lippard,

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Now there appears to be a social mandate: everyone must go somewhere else and spend money in someone else’s home, so that everyone living there will be able to go to someone else’s home and spend money, and so on.

She says so with respect to the consumer or tourist. With regard to the place where the offer oriented to the tourist is located and by which is known the complex that both form as tourist destination and tourism offer, she writes with a certain glimpse of rejection:

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where there are no attractions to grasp, no history, theme park, no beaches, no mountains, no luxury, no picturesque poverty, straw attractions are created.

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And she ends up writing as frightened: “Where will this end?” A question made without doubt from that same intellectual and moral rejection that can be answered saying that there is no doubt that “this” will never end, and that it will not end because “this” has only just begun and because “strolling” around the Earth is an atavism consubstantial to the animals that have locomotive limbs, which, in the case of man, is a rational animal

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conscious of himself, his past, his present and that has before him the unknown of a future in which death is crouching. An animal that, like the others, feels needs and curiosities, and that needs and curiosities impels him to move whenever he can around the globe to satisfy them in the most satisfactory way possible. The enthusiast foreword writer not only calls tourists to those who stroll around the world, but also are, in her opinion, and MacCannell’s, refugees, immigrants and all those who move from the dominated periphery to the centers of dominant power, at which point she quotes MacCannell, who writes “emerging dialectics is between two ways of being out of place.” It is obvious that if the latter are also included among the tourists the identification of these characters, already problematic, is so blurred that the most sensible thing is to consider that there is no inhabitant of the Earth that is not a tourist, which perfectly explains that MacCannell intends to reflect on the spirit of our time by focusing on tourists, which is the same as saying, in the whole humanity and in the way of life imposed by modernity. In other words, for MacCannell tourism is inherent to modernity. Because modernity has generated such a generalization of individual and group flows going from one place to another that such behavior has already ceased to be characteristic of the elites to be a patrimony of humanity. The definition of tourist has always been problematic but today, in case of admitting MacCannell’s proposal, not only is problematic as in the past, but, simply and plainly, does not exist, rather, it lacks of possible identification since we are all or can be tourists for the simple fact of going from here to there by any reason. Despite such a flagrant vagueness, MacCannel tries to identify the tourist as “an early postmodern figure, alienated but seeking fulfillment in his own alienation (...). The need to be postmodern can thus be read as the same as the desire to be a tourist,” understanding by postmodernity “the mere leisure of the theoretical class” (?) In his work MacCannel manages to pay attention to things that usually go unmentioned. Work, for example, is for him “the leisure’s defining pole” since the work of some can be the leisure of others when it becomes a display, a show, an attraction, an incentive for those who are not engaged in


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business activities. MacCannell, who has the supreme courage to study tourism together with revolution as the two opposing poles of modern consciousness, cannot be surpassed. The tourist accepts things as they are while the revolutionary proposes to change them. We repeat, MacCannell does not seek to study tourism but modernity through tourism. The analysis of modernity leads him to enter the field reserved for tourism researchers and it is in such a field that he gets truly original contributions, something that, as Thomas Kuhn acknowledged in 1962, is what to expect from those who enter a scientific field from a different one or as new young researchers who are not respectful of the corpus that direct their teachers. So much so, that Lippard ends her foreword by saying that thanks to MacCannell’s work, “all of us, even those who stay at home, have had to see ourselves as players in this game (sic) that is changing the world.” This being so, how is not going to be tourism the first industry in the world? No, it is not the first, tourism is the only industry in the world because it includes all other industries.

TYPOLOGY OF INCENTIVE IN MACCANNELL

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Since the end of the nineteenth century, the tourism literature has been studying almost exclusively hospitality services. Transport services, which together with hospitality make up what we have called tourism facilitation services, one of the inputs of their production, are relegated among scholars, something that can be explained because the study of transport has a community of experts that generates works of true excellence. But the incentive services, the input without which tourism is not possible, have been left in destitution in a guilty way by the community of tourism experts. In our 2003 work, El Turismo explicado con claridad (Tourism clearly explained), 2nd part of Autopsia del Turismo (Autopsy of Tourism), we devoted three dozen pages to the urgent matter of incentive and its not less urgent typology. In Chapter IX of this paper we wrote the following:

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I call incentives to goods or services, whether or not goods, with which a subject meets the needs that require planning, first, and then perform a circular displacement. I can express it in another way: the incentive is the correlate, exogenous and objective, of those needs that, being by their very nature, endogenous and subjective, can be felt, among others, by those who live at some distance from their location. Although obvious, we will say that without incentive the planning (production) and subsequent realization (consumption) of a displacement, linear or circular, is not conceived. The treatment that I gave to displacements in the previous chapter leads me to suppose that the subject of a displacement behaves according to the wellknown model of homo economicus, characterized by the strict subjection to the own rules of logic that preside the satisfaction of needs (the so-called efficiency or economic rationality, both productive and consumptive).

The typology that we proposed in this work is as simple as this:

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The city The countryside From the spontaneous to the intentional

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Our dedication to theoretical tourism research began in 1985, nine years after the publication of The Tourist. We want to say with this that we had the obligation to know this work. If we had known it our contribution to the incentive typology would have picked up the one proposed by MacCannell, who would have enjoyed our most sincere recognition. Because, also the aforementioned work is, as we have said, an essay on modernity rather than on tourism. Even though it has been assumed by some as the first work dedicated to tourism sociology is also a highly valuable contribution on attraction (incentive in our terminology) and its classification. We used to say in our writings that incentive does not receive the attention it deserves in the specialized literature, especially if we compare it with the one that receives facilitation, especially hospitality. But after knowing MacCannell’s work we are forced to rectify. And not only to rectify but, above all, to recognize that our typology is highly similar to that of MacCannell. We agree with this author in recognizing that the city is the incentive paradigm.


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He writes in a very expressive way the Paris case, to whose study he devotes nearly 20 pages of the cited work. Paris is treated as “the origin of the alienated leisure,” entering, before its monuments, its peculiar offer of visits to the sewers, the morgue, a slaughterhouse, a tobacco factory, the government printing office, a tapestry works, the mint, the stock exchange and the supreme court in session, among others no less unique in their ordinariness. He is not unaware that among the most popular tourist attractions are monuments, tombs, primitive people and the rural world, but recognizes that urban life in all its facets, among which certainly emphasizes the production of goods and public services, is one of the most powerful visitor attractions. MacCannell is convinced that “tourism is an alternate strategy for conserving and prolonging the modern and protecting it from its own tendencies toward self-destruction.” For example, ground zero at Hiroshima, the site where Kennedy was assassinated in 1964, the cremation ovens at Dachau in Germany, ground zero of the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001, Tlatelolco or The Three Cultures Square in Mexico DF. (1968), Tiananmen Square in Beijing (1989) and so many places where similar tragic events took place. All this is presented in The Tourist as attraction sources for visitors, i.e., as destinations or tourist complexes. In a tourist complex, according to MacCannell, evaporation of basic social relations takes place just as modernity brings with it the alienation of man from his work, since

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Modern Man is losing his attachments to the work bench, the neighborhood, the village, the family, which he once called “his own,” but at the same time, he is developing an interest in the “real life” of others.” The modern disruption of real life and the simultaneous emergence of a certain fascination for the “real life” of others are the outward signs of an important social redefinition of the categories “truth” and “reality” now taking place.

In his personal view of the world, modernization of labor relations, history and nature itself, separates them from their deep roots of centuries, from tradition, and transforms them into pure performance and cultural

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experiences tailored to the tourist’s mentality, something that is the same process that operates in daily life transforming into a “performance” and in a fetish, life in cities and rural areas, including the domestic life of tradition. Modernity stages everything in order to give the sensation of authenticity, an authenticity always artificial in which one escapes from a naturalness always imitated. After discussing the Paris case, MacCannell completes his typology of incentives with museums, parks, tradition and history, and finally addresses the problematic of what he calls “staged authenticity” an expression with which approaches to the explanation we wrote in 2003 under the heading “From the spontaneous to the intentional.” Thus, everything that attracts or can attract tourists either exists without anyone proposing it for attraction purposes or is proposed with this precise intentionality. In any case, with all this we enter into the complex show business in its broadest sense, including the display of the most diverse, picturesque, repulsive, novel or showy productive activities mentioned above. Mario Vargas Llosa (2012) dealt with the latter in the context of culture and its supposed decay at the service of what he calls “show civilization.” Following T. S. Eliot (1988 - 1965) in his 1948 classic work (1984 Spanish edition), Vargas cites his definition of culture: “Culture is not merely the sum of several activities, but a way of life,” that is, clarifies Vargas, “a way of being in which forms matter as much as content.” Culture, says the novelist, “is something prior to knowledge, a propensity of the spirit, a sensitivity and a cultivation of the form that gives meaning and orientation to knowledge.” Therefore, culture is clearly differentiated form science and technology, and it is confused with religion since culture is formed therein. Religion has always given man answers to his most basic questions, where we come from, where we are going and what our mission is in the world. Thus, religion provides us with a frame of reference, gives us the necessary resignation to life adversities and protects us from the desperation they cause. And this will continue to be the case, even though we have turned away from it in daily practice since, like all cultural events, religion acts coercively and unconsciously on our social behavior (Emile Durkheim 2012).


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Nevertheless, there are those who maintain that modernity, and above all, postmodernity, have caused a degradation of culture so that its manifestations, oriented in a commercialized way towards the mere spectacle that attracts tourist visits, only offer substitutes for everything that in the past was original and authentic. Tourism and/or postmodernity, MacCannell asks, conceived in the most positive possible way as a (perhaps final) celebration of distance, difference or differentiation, ultimately liberate consciousness or enslave it? Is it a utopia of difference as Georges Van den Abbeele (1962-1915) said in 1980, or does it trap consciousness in a seductive pseudo-empowerment, a prison house of signs? The author does not answer these questions and therefore believes in the need to apologize. With the foregoing questions he enters the favorite field of deconstructionist. French philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and the like, a field which young sociologists and anthropologists devoted to tourism are so keen to enter, to which they have been contributing with a bunch of prestigious works full of scholarship and surprisingly elegant and novel terms, but whose usefulness, in order to increase the scientific knowledge of tourism, leaves much to be desired. They only serve, in the best of cases, to accumulate credits with which to thrive academically and editorially. MacCannell’s conception of the tourist attraction and its structure deserves special mention. Because attraction also has its corresponding dose of structure. He defines the tourist attraction as the relationship established between the tourist, the sight and the marker. The tourist does not need to be re-defined. The sight seems to be something like the vision that the subject tourist has or can have of something unique. On the other hand, the marker is the role played by the guides, the signage, the intentional documentaries and souvenirs made from sight data and even advertising oriented thereto. It is clear that without tourists there can be no attractions. MacCannell thus repeats one of the most frequent cliché in conventional literature, that tourism production is synchronized with tourism consumption because tourism occurs at the same time as it is consumed, by the tourist, of course.

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THE SO-CALLED “TOURIST EXPERIENCE”

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For some years scholars have found the novel concept of the so-called “tourist experience” and take it and bring it to articles, congresses, symposia and even books, to the point that, in effect, today it has become a fashion that sweeps all and may have no end. The concept is a derivative of another that has been displaced by it. We refer to the concept of “tourism product.” The tourist experience is conceived as the true tourist product. Manuel Rivera Mateos (2012) writes that tourist experiences seem to be increasingly identified as the true tourist product today, while the offer of tourist services, even of quality, is no longer enough to achieve full satisfaction and psychological well-being of tourists and consumers.

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Rivera states quite strongly and without restrictions that tourist services should no longer be considered as they have been considered until now, that is, as tourist products, which the new doctrine has dethroned and replaced by only one, by the unique and true, the so-called tourist experience. In addition, Rivera illustrates us with a true revelation, that the tourist offer is one that seeks to achieve full satisfaction and psychological well-being of its customers, the tourists, something that has the colorless virtue of being something common to all offers either tourist or non-tourist. However, he adds that “tourists” are considered “consumers,” which is an annoying redundancy, since conventional doctrine strongly insists that the tourist is the consumer paradigm. Let us not overlook the claim, which Rivera attributes to Vogeler and Hernández (2002), according to which “in tourism are not really sold products but are sold experiences,” a phrase with which the authors cited forget, or seem to forget, that experience is the real product because, as Rivera writes below, “the tourist [...] wants to escape (sic), discover, enjoy and connect with local people and their customs; rather than buying tourist packages they buy stories to live and to tell.”


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That is, what the tourist demands are tourist experiences, in other words, the tourist offer or the true tourist product. We have suppressed in the square brackets of the quote that Rivera refers, in fact, to the tourist who seeks tourist experiences, a phrase that hides, in his opinion, the unexpected fact that there are tourists who do not seek tourist experiences, but must be an illusory fact. Let’s say Experience (from de Latin experientĭa, derived from experiri, “to check”) is a form of knowledge or ability derived from observation, participation and experience of an event coming from things that happen in life, a knowledge that is collectively produced. It is also said of that person who has advanced knowledge about something or someone.

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The concept of experience, in a colloquial sense, generally refers to procedural knowledge (how to do something), rather than to factual knowledge (what things are). Philosophers treat knowledge based on experience as “empirical knowledge” or as “a posteriori knowledge.” Experience, then, is obtained by the fact of having witnessed, felt or known something. It is the form of knowledge that is produced from experiences or observations.

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In particular, that Latin word from which it comes is composed of three distinct parts: the prefix ex, which is synonymous with “separation”; the verbal root peri-, which can be translated as “try,” and the suffix -entia, which is equivalent to “agent quality.” Other uses of the term refer to the prolonged practice that provides the ability to do something, the event experienced by a person and the general knowledge acquired through the situations experienced. For example: “The boss asked me if I had experience in this type of business and I had to tell him the truth,” “The experience gained in ten years of work was vital to success,” “The team needs an experienced player who is capable of guiding young people.” One of the areas where the term “experience” is most important is in the job market. And it is so because companies when they launch personnel selection processes prefer, in most cases, to hire those candidates who have

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great experience in the areas they want to cover. Experience can be demonstrated in the curriculum through the positions previously covered by a worker in other similar entities. In this sense, it must be said that when experience is what is fundamentally valued, it is the professionals who have been working for years who have priority over the youngest who are beginning their career.

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The human being and some other animals have the capacity to acquire knowledge from experience. This knowledge is linked to how to proceed (know how to do something) and to the empirical. Therefore, it is an a posteriori knowledge (acquired after the experience itself).

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The usefulness or value of experience will depend on each person. Experience is usually associated with maturity or age: the older, the more experienced. However, not all older people know how to capitalize that experience and transform it into useful knowledge.

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In the same way, the term in question is also used within the scope of sexuality. In this case, it is used to refer to the knowledge and skills that anyone has in that field and has been acquiring over time and through the various relationships that have maintained with one or several people during that. However, in this field, the term experience is used in the same way to refer to situations that have never been experienced and which are carried out to discover new types of pleasure, or simply, to discover sex itself. Thus, for example, when any young person loses his or her virginity he or she is said to have had his or her first sexual experience.

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In everyday language, an experience is a circumstance or an event which, because of its characteristics, is transcendental or worthy of note in a person’s life: “Having lived five years abroad was a very important experience for me,” “Being robbed is a traumatic experience for any individual.” And even, eating from a set menu at a restaurant can be considered as a gastronomic experience. In the latter case it is a tourist experience, of course, but it seems to imply that the mere expression of tourist experience indicates in itself that it has been rewarding, never mortifying.


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After knowing the MacCannell’s work that we are judging, we believe that it was this author who joyfully discovered the tourist experience concept, but we are surprised that Rivera does not mention it in the abundant bibliography supposedly consulted to write the work cited. MacCannell uses two different expressions with the same meaning, is that of tourist experience and cultural experience. This is because he considers the tourist experience as a cultural experience. The first chapter of his work has the title of Modernity and the production of touristic experiences. In it, the author writes with no hidden bluntness that “increasingly, pure experience, which leaves no material trace, is manufactured and sold like a commodity,” a phrase in which a certain veil of rejection is seen to the fact that “in modern society man is related to others only through the objects he produces” rather than interpersonally. MacCannell cannot repress his rejection of the fact that modernity, the product of capitalism, commercializes everything, even human work itself, a belief with which is included in the tradition of the Marxist dogma. According to this tradition, the man without work has no value and the object that he creates as a producer, that is, the object that mediates in social relations, is a mere symbol. This is how the author makes clear that modernity degrades human society based on the fact that man is the supreme value and that his commercialization destroys him. Experience acquires in MacCannel’s work an enormously outstanding role as we can deduct from the phrase that we transcribe next:

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The value of such things as programs, trips, courses, reports, articles, shows, conferences, parades, opinions, events, sights, spectacles, scenes and situations of modernity is not determined by the amount of labor required for their production. Their value is a function of the quality and quantity of experience they promise.

And then adds: Even the value of strictly material goods is increasingly similarly derived from the degree to which they promise to form a part of our modern experience ... The old-style material type of commodity retains an

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important position in modern society only insofar as it has the capacity to deliver an experience [...] The commodity has become a means to an end. The end is an immense accumulation of reflexive experiences that synthesize fiction and reality in a vast symbolism, a modern world.

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We repeat, that once again it can be felt a cryptic critical rejection of modernity, and of course of tourism as a prominent outgrowth of it, in MacCannell’s work.

REJECTION OF MODERNITY

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Every new era has ended up having its detractors although it was celebrated by small minorities in its beginnings. Modernity has not been an exception. In the eighteenth century it was welcomed with joy by the entrepreneurial class but the great mass of the people sometimes rejected it with violence. The utopian socialists criticized the danger that modernity entailed as a generator of unemployment and misery in the large industrialized cities. Marxism, self-considered as scientific socialism, developed a doctrine condemning bourgeois modernity because it reifies and alienates man for the sake of the commodity fetishism. The French writer Georges Bataille (1897 - 1962) attacked its foundations in his work La part maudit, published in 1949. His attack focused on the search at any cost for the utility and profit that permeates all modernity and indefinite progress. As a counterpoint suggests the model of primitive cultures, where wealth has its social function in ritual spending and in the loss of orgies, parties, sports and funerals. His paradigmatic institution is the potlatch, social institution of certain extinguished societies that consists of a massive destruction of wealth carried out as a coercive social challenge through which, who celebrates it, accumulates prestige and power and who rejects it falls into social discredit. Modernity responds to application of the rationality that conquered humanity in its struggle to overcome conscious indigence. It induces progress understood as a guarantee that in the future the satisfaction of needs


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will be carried out at least as in the present and, if possible, more efficiently. The market, son of the division of labor, and its derivative, capitalism are the institutions in which rationality was embodied and which have presided over the progress in which modernity is the stage of our days. It is surprising that being modernity the consequence of rationality presents objections, which its critics present as complete amendments. These critics do not realize that there are indicators that although do not disapprove them in an absolute way they do so in a very substantial part. We have now pass from chronic food shortages to such a degree of abundance that astonishing amounts are discarded every day, and unthinkable a few decades ago. Life is longer today than it was not so long ago, and it is said that its duration will continue to increase over a century of age. Housing has significantly improved with constructive innovations that have made it cheaper. Houses are supplied with water and waste disposal, which has resulted in a substantial improvement in hygiene. Medicine and disease remedies have dramatically evolved. It is not necessary to continue, but all this must not hide that our terrestrial habitat is undergoing a worrying deterioration in view of the future habitability of the same. Man as such is freeing himself from the biblical curse that he must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. The continuous technological improvements have made production today more efficient and less labor intensive than a while ago. And it will be even more so in the near future with the increasing robotization. All this frees labor and human participation in the generation of utilities. Leisure increasingly replaces business. The man freed from work is reduced to being a mere consumer because he not only has to live, but he also has to swallow what is produced to continue “feeding” production. And for this, it is not enough to satisfy the needs, you have to “produce” them as well. Thus, modern life is like a bicycle: if it is not moving, it will fall over. As Bertrand Russell (2017) writes, Between man and other animals there are various differences, some intellectual and some emotional. One chief emotional difference is that human desires, unlike those [other] of animals, are essentially boundless and incapable of complete satisfaction.

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This evidence is leading to a radical change of humanity and therefore it is comprehensible that there are intellectualized minorities who are alarmed and intend to warn others as new prophets that if the observed trends continue humanization will be stopped with all its consequences. Such convictions are hampering sociological research due to the neoconservative ideology. Many of its followers are convinced of belonging to a new left: the conservative left.

AN IDEOLOGICALLY INCORRECT FINAL THINKING

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Not only primitive societies, but also those of the classical world, emphasized leisure over business, to the extent that the former was a source of dignity and prestige while the latter conferred indignity and discredit. In 1883, Paul Lafargue (1842-1911) published a controversial work that was considered “a true war machine against bourgeois and capitalist society of the late nineteenth century,” in which he denounced the “appalling consequences” of wage labor and work in general, but above all of “love” to work that has taken over the minds of the workers themselves. This author, who was Karl Marx’s son-in-law because of his marriage to Laura Marx, considers that this “dogma” of work means a loss of the working class revolutionary perspectives and at the same time the main obstacle in the fight for a different society. On the other hand, an industrious repentant Bertrand Russell wrote “The praise of idleness,” wherein he states that “Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.” (Paragraphs taken from F. Savater, 2016). We published in a booklet on Labor Relations, edited by the Publications Service of the Complutense University of Madrid, # 17, a work entitled Economy of leisure and unpaid work, wherein we said that in ancient times leisure activities were reserved for the leading classes. The other classes dealt with the business activities. The violent leisure activities (war, sports)


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and the creative (arts, thinking, lyric, music). The business activities consisted of the peaceful and resigned work of obtaining or transforming utilities aimed at satisfying the vital needs of both the business and leisure classes, in this case even the needs derived from their privileged status. Leisure, derived from the Latin otium has a first meaning, that of rest. In 1899, the American economist Thorstein Veblen conducted a valuable research on what he called the leisure class in which he writes: The term “leisure,” as here used, does not connote indolence or quiescence. What it connotes is non-productive consumption of time. Time is consumed non-productively (1) from a sense of the unworthiness of productive work, and (2) as an evidence of pecuniary ability to afford a life of idleness.

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As seen from the economic point of view, leisure, considered as an employment, is closely allied in kind with the life of exploit;

The social institution of leisure class is understood by Veblen (1971) as the outgrowth of an early discrimination between employments, according to which some employments are worthy and others unworthy.

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Well, a century and two decades later leisure is no longer a privilege of opulent and powerful minorities and is becoming socialized in a progressive way as it spreads throughout society, a society of workers in which all its components develop activities considered useful and that, depending on them, have the right to put them aside and have free time to spend on whatever they consider appropriate. Such a beautiful horizon is obscured by a collateral phenomenon, that of mass unemployment, that generates serious social problems, which are softened in some countries in a more acceptable way than in others.

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It should be noted that modernity, characterized by its productivity efforts, defends itself from the consequences of leisure by inducing those who “fall” in it through promoting alternative activity offers, which involve considerable expenses, that is, consumption patterns of utilities that revert in the productive system, whose extreme versatility recycles this expense in the creation of new businesses and new opportunities for spending and consumption. Leisure fuels business, a business whose productive efficiency grows on the basis of successive technological innovations including robotization that derive in new batches of human producers towards leisure. Is the leisure of our days creative? Is it the otium cum dignitate that the Classics talked about? There were always minorities as well as nowadays, who spend their leisure time on creative activities. The masses, as always, spend their leisure time on recreational activities, among them tourism. The offers of the tourism business world are most varied and ranges from the educational ones to the destructives passing through a narrow intermediate range. Is there something therein that distinguishes our society from the past ones?

REFERENCES

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Abbeele, G. van den. (1980) Sighsteers: The Tourist as Theorist. Diacritics, vol. 10, diciembre (cit. por MacCannell, ob. cit.). Bataille, G. (1987) La parte maldita, precedida por La noción de gasto. [The Doomed Side]. Traducción de Francisco Muñoz de Escalona. Icaria. Barcelona. Durkeim, E. (2012) Las reglas del método sociológico [The Rules of Sociological Method]. Alianza. Madrid. Eliot, T. S. (1984) Notas para una definición de la cultura [Notes towards the definition of Culture]. Bruguera. Barcelona. Goffman, E. (2006) Frame analysis: los marcos de la experiencia. Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Madrid. Jaspers, K. (2017) Origen y meta de la historia [The origin and goal of history]. Acantilado. Barcelona.


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Korstanje, M. (2011) Mitología y turismo. La exégesis como interpretación hermenéutica [Mythology and Tourism: exegesis as hermeneutic interpretation]. Estudios y perspectivas de turismo. vol. 20 no. 6. Korstanje M. s.f.: Wikipedia: Dean MacCannell. Kuhn, Thomas S. (2006) La estructura de las revoluciones científicas.[The Structure of Scientific Revolution]. FCE México. Lafargue, P. (2011) El derecho a la pereza. [The right to lzzyness]]. Maia Ediciones. Madrid. MacCannell, D. (2017) El turista: una nueva teoría de la clase ociosa [The Tourist: towards a new theory of Leisure Class]. Editorial Melusina, Barcelona. Hunziker, W and Krapft, K (1942) Grundiss der Allgemeinen Fremdenverkherslehre [Grounds towards an industry of foreigners]. Poligrasphishe Verlag. Zürich. Muñoz de Escalona, F. (2000) Economía del ocio y trabajo no remunerado. [Economy of leisure and non paid work]. Cuaderno de Relaciones Laborales, nº 17. Muñoz de Escalona, F. (2003) El turismo explicado con claridad. [Tourism explained with acurracy] LibrosEnRed. Montevideo. Edición digital http://www.eumed.net/ libros-gratis/2007c/310/indice.htm, como 2ª parte de la obra en dos volúmenes Autopsia del turismo, del mismo autor. Rivera, Manuel (2013) Turismo responsable y relaciones interculturales en el contexto de la globalización. [Responsible tourism and intercultural relations in the global context] En Rodríguez, L. y Roldán, A. (coord.). Interculturalidad: un enfoque multidisciplinar. I Jornadas sobre Investigación e Innovación para la Interculturalidad. Córdoba, Universidad de Córdoba, p. 187-212. Russell, B. 2000 El elogio de la ociosidad. [In Praise of Iddleness] Edhasa, Barcelona; 2017 El poder. Un nuevo análisis social. RBA Barcelona. Savater, F. (2016) En defensa de la vida ociosa, [In support of leisure life] diario El País, 31 de Julio.

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Torres Salinas, R. (208) Reseña de El turista: una nueva teoría de la clase ociosa de Dean MacCannell. [Review The Tourist: towards a new theory of leisure class] Sociedad Hoy, núm. 14, pp. 99 – 101. Vargas Llosa, M. (2013) La civilización del espectáculo. [The Civilization of Spectacle] Santillana. Madrid. Veblen, T. (1971) Teoría de la clase ociosa.[The Theory of Leisure Class], FCE. México.

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Translated from Spanish: Antonietta Adami Rasotto [email protected], graduada en Boston University, Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology (1982) y en la Escuela de Traductores e Intérpretes. Estudio Internacional Sampere, Madrid. Professional Masters in Translation and Simultaneous Interpreting.

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Chapter 6

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A CRITICAL DEBATE ON THE CONCEPT OF ECOLOGICAL TOURISM: THE RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE

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Oleg E. Afanasiev1,*, Alexandra V. Afanasieva2, Hugues Seraphin3 and Vanessa G. Gowreesunkar4

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Russian State University of Tourism and Service, Moscow, Russia 3 The University of Winchester, UK 4 University of Technology Mauritius, Mauritius

ABSTRACT

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The present chapter explores the conceptual limitations of ecotourism as well the state of fragmentations the specialized literature shows. In this study, the authors are investigating eco-tourism as an action that aims to protect the environment, while exploring new cases studies that could be used as examples of good practice. Modern understanding of ecological tourism and sustainability orientation in many ways make it necessary to reconsider the traditional ideas about what types of travel should be considered ecotourism. The tourist motivation is not determinant of the

*

Corresponding Author: [email protected].

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sustainable programs policymakers and experts should follow, but only the desire of tourists expressed in marketing programs and campaigns. Ecotourism should be something else than what tourists crave. In 2017 The United Nations (UN) declared The International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. However, this does not mean destinations adopt sustainable plans in the years to come. We hold the thesis that the discourse of sustainability in tourism is ideologically influenced by a profit-centered paradigm more interested in the business than in protecting the environment.

Keywords: ecotourism, eco-colonialism, forms and types of ecotourism, ecotourism classification, sustainable tourism, cases of ecotourism in Russia

INTRODUCTION

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Today, the paradigm of sustainable development has fallen into discredit because of its distorted diagnoses that will sooner or later lead toward religious undertones; in fact, everybody believes in it, everybody knows it, but there are no clear indicators of what a sustainable economy means. The fascinating promises of sustainable development were never fulfilled but also the developed nations failed to expand the economic growth to the Third World. What is equally important, the same happens with ecological tourism. The state of fragmentation of produced knowledge and the inconsistency of research outcomes adjoins to the rise of many disperse definitions and meaning around the term. In this vein, there is a gap between Russia and the West, that’s what we (the authors) want to discuss in this chapter. To some extent, this does not mean that Russia is unfamiliar with what is being done in Occident, but western scholars not only are interested in the insights of their Russian colleagues but also are reluctant to read others works than those which are written in English. Hence they neglect how Russians have organized their ecological programs and protocols employing tourism to promote “good practices”. The Russian experience is, in this case, vital to expanding the current understanding of this slippery matter. So the chapter aims at studying conceptual approaches to identifying the role,

A Critical Debate on the Concept of Ecological Tourism

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significance, and the functions of ecotourism in modern society, the consideration of controversial questions of terminology and categorization of this very topical direction in the theory and practice of tourism activities. While the modern tourism industry, as Bjork (2000) puts it, encourages the eco-friendly paradigm, the local demands select green destinations to stimulate the preservation of the environment. For many countries, ecotourism is the main branch of the national economy. Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nepal, Kenya, Thailand, Madagascar and others are examples of such countries, their experience is well described in a number of publications (for example W. Brockelman & P. Dearden, 1990; K. Lindberg, J. Enriquez & K. Sproule, 1997; G. Wallace & S. Pierce, 1996; and others). Ecotourism has also involved to the tourist market such territories as the Arctic and Antarctic (A. Tuohino & A. Hynonen, 2001). On the one hand, this opens up new opportunities for the tourism industry, but, on the other hand, it creates new threats and challenges as well as contains many theoretical and conceptual problems. Last but not least, human beings seem to be excluded from green destinations, since many of these sites are untouched by the man´s hand. J. Higham and A. Carr (2003) indicate that such a situation hinders the effective and sustainable development of ecotourism due to the uncertainty of the bases of its policy, planning, and development at the core of the whole segment of tourist activity. As the British anthropologist Tim Ingold (2000) brilliantly observed, the eco-friendly projects as preservation parks or reservations are not contemplating the human presence as an option. For the modern cosmology, the rational man was enthralled as the administrator, if not the corruptor, of natural life, situating as something else than animals. This is based on “the dwelling perspective”, which is opposed to the “relational perspective” of hunters and gatherers. This point will be discussed in depth in the next lines.

THE CONCEPT OF ECOTOURISM

The relations between the society and nature were subject to different ebbs and flows. As a creation, the man cannot prosper nor exist without

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nature, or at the best beyond her resources. The transformative capacity of culture not only forces the natural borders of the environment but sometimes alter the balance among processes, relations and the ever difficult interplay of ecology with culture (J. Steward, 1955; M. Sahlins, 1965; E. Vaida & R. Rappaport, 1968, etc.). The introduction of the term “cultural adaptation” to tourism research corresponds with the need of understanding the effects of services industry in the local environment. In this respect, the concept “cultural landscape”, which emerges in the mid of twentieth century, interrogates on the awareness of integrating human activity in a more ecobehavior. However, it was unfortunate that nations and governments found serious limitations at the time of implementing ecological guidelines to preserve destinations, but not everything is lost. In our opinion, implementing the methodological foundations of the new concept of sustainable development in practice is the way to this. Tourism as a sphere of human life is also directly related to the mechanisms and principles of nature use since based on various resources involved in this form of economic activity. First of all, let’s explain to readers that one of the first definitions of ecotourism comes back from 1965 when D. Hetzer defines it as “a kind of activity based on natural and archeological resources”. This ranges from the observation of birds and wildlife towards reef caves, fossil species and archeological sites (D. Hetzer, 1965). Mexican Economist H CeballosLascurain (1987) introduced the term ecotourism to signal a new conceptual model which is based on the rational use of natural goods as well as the renunciation to the hyper-consumption and the unsustainable exploitation of the soil and forests. Ceballos came across with different meanings and definitions, calculating more than 30 to the 80s decade. Nowadays things came worse to worst. At a closer look, one might distinguish many synonymous or similar terms revolving around ecotourism such as ecological tourism, eco or bio-tourism, wildlife tourism, nature tourism to cite some. Although ecotourism is widely cited and noted in many professional publications, less is known respecting to its intersection to the “sustainable practices” (P. Björk, 2000; D. Fennell, 2001; P. Wight, 1993). In parallel, others scholars strongly believe that the main goals of sustainable


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development consist in reaching a clear-cut understanding of wildlife (R. Blamey, 1997; R. Buckley, 1994) whereas in some other studies the role of natural environment occupies a central position (G. Hvenegaard, 1994). As stated, some voices alerted on the ambiguity of the definitions as one of the major problems ecotourism finds today (D. Fennell, 2001; D. Fennell & K. Ebert, 2004; D. Weaver & L. Lawton, 2007). The prolificity of studies led to more than 100 different meanings of eco-tourism creating an state of anarchy at the time of entering in the field or conducting a professional fieldwork. Hence P. Valentine (1993) classifies a list of 18 definitions sorted according to the use in the specialized literature while S. Edwards (1998) and colleagues calculate almost 25 different meanings. Returning to Bjork (2000), regardless the number of definitions revolving around this concept, a whole portion of studies suggests that ecotourism exhibits the visit to virgin territories, untouched by the man or at the best a visited territory in certain (controlled) conditions of exploitation. One of the most all-pervading models was presented by D. Fennell (2001), who conducted a content analysis of 85 existing definitions of ecotourism. H. Donohoe & R. Needham (2006) have accomplished a similar work. They have developed a methodology and conducted a content analysis of 30 definitions of ecological tourism by the following criteria: stability, conservation, monitoring and assessment of environmental impact, educational function, environment impact minimization, the size of enterprises providing ecotourism services, ethics, responsibility and awareness of tourists, focus on nature conservation sites (natural parks) and natural areas, management, satisfaction of cultural needs, impressions, orientation to nature, volunteering. This suggests that in the Western scientific theory the concept of “ecological tourism”, without one unified definition, boils down to a set of basic principles that distinguish this type of activity. None of the isms appeared in the twentieth century has been more harmful to nature than tourism. Research carried by Lawrence, D. Wickins, & N. Phillips (1997) suggested that ecotourism was experiencing a “crisis of legitimacy” to achieve perceived environmental and economic goals while K. Lindberg & B. McKercher (1997) described ecotourism as an emerging industry whose

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capacity to perform the stated tasks is unclear. For some reason, there is a widespread array of interests in ecotourism by the side of the demand, which was not crystalized in good practices by the side of the supply. This means that beyond the rhetoric capacity of capital owners, eco-tourism remains a discourse which very hard to implement in the field. In this token, E. Carter (2006) suggests that eco-tourism legitimates the capitalist lifestyle that associates to hyper-consumption which generates serious risks for the envinroment. Among these risks, as he indicates, policy makers and specialists of all stripes are concerned by the overload in the territory and its physical effects over the local community. Per the findings obtained by M. Well and K Brandon (1992), after the evaluation of 23 integrated nature conservation projects, the main reasons behind the failure of ecotourism are the seasonal factor, lower wages to the staff and specialists, as well as deficiencies in the profits produced by the rise of maintenance costs. These points have been validated by other interesting studies, which moved many voices to say that eco-tourism seems to be a continuation of older forms of colonialism (eco-colonialism) (E. Cater, 1993; C. M. Hall, 1994; M. Mowforth & I. Munt, 2003). They toy with the belief that eco-colonialism denotes not only the exploitation of untouched resources but also in the complete commoditization of cultures, peoples and natural resources in view of an demand which is molded by the marketing-related campaigns. Despite the invested financial aid, the gap between First and Third World enlarged. In the periphery, underdeveloped nations appeal to tourism to improve their economies, sometimes even compromising their natural resources. Paradoxically, the first world tourists are interested to visit these types of sites while their nations daily increase the production of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Following this example, K. Lindberg & D. Hawking (1993) contend that though ecotourism would be a sustainable and fresh alternative to protect local environment no less true is that it remains as a leisure activity, which is based on the organizations of tours that affect the local community. In perspective, one of the methodological limitations of applied research lies in the fact that the programs of eco-tourism are based on what the tourist wants, instead of what should be done. Administered in open or closed-ended questionaries many of the studies published in top tier


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journals indicate the expectances and perceptions of visitors as a source of information to elaborate eco-friendly projects but without exploring further on the real impact on nature (R. Buckley (1994), G. Wallace & S. Pierce, 1996; P. Björk, 2000; H. Donohoe & R. Needham, 2006; P. Eagles, 2001; D. Newsome & et al., 2002, and others). G. Wallace & S. Pierce (1996) present six fundamental principles related to minimizing the negative impact of both the infrastructure and the number of participants, raising awareness and educational opportunities, supporting conservation, democratization (participation of all stakeholders in decision-making processes), providing opportunities for local residents. D. Newsome, S. Moore & R. Dowling (2002) argue that ecotourism distinguishes five components (characteristics): the natural environment, environmental sustainability, education, income and benefits for the local population and the satisfaction of all participants in this type of activity. Definitions of ecotourism, given by different authors are based on the fact that ecological tourism is predominantly carried out in natural areas untouched by economic activity. The bulk of definitions of ecotourism, given by different authors, are centered on the fact that ecological tourism is predominantly carried out in natural areas untouched by economic activity. Nevertheless, ecotourism when dully regulated by experts may bring positive implications for community such as,  

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The awareness of a mindset that enhance the commitment of hosts with ecology Private or Public investors give further financial aid to develop more sustainable destinations. Provides financial benefits and empowerment for local people; Respects local culture; Supports human rights and democratic movements (P. Wight, 1993; M. Honey, 2008; A. Tuohino & A. Hynonen, 2001).

In some conditions, anyway, the obsession for protection may very well lead to disastrous consequences (Afanasiev & Afanasieva, 2017). This is going to be discussed later on.

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ECOTOURISM: COMPONENTS AND CLASSIFICATIONS

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The discourses revolving around ecotourism often allude to “virgin territories” where there is no human presence (natural state) or the soil does not show signs of economic exploitation. The same curiosity that characterizes the fieldwork of scientists in protecting native species accompanies tourists. However, less attention is given to “urban ecotourism”, which is amply organized in urban environments (for further details see, D. Weaver, 2005). The concept of sustainability should be understood beyond the green paradigm and applied to other manadministered contexts. All these points were never explored by the profitcentered paradigm, which focused on the global demands instead of integrating other indicators towards more sustainable products. While the growth of eco-destinations is unquestionable less is known respecting what ecotourism really means. For the sake of clarity, those visitors who travel to Niagara Falls or Yellowstone National Park are eco-tourists simply because they are visiting a site reserved for ecological exploitation, but the same cannot be said if the same visitors go towards Chicago. This begs the question why a city is less ecological than a farm? At a first glimpse, the purpose of the tourist plays a leading role in the configuration of marketing plans which are carefully adjusted to what those tourists are looking for. The main categories in the field include recreational ecotourism, cognitive tourism, educational ecotourism and scientific tourism. While Recreational eco-tourism signals to look for unique and exotic natural objects located in reserves and national parks constructed to emulate a direct contact between humans and nature, scientific tourism refers to the organization of tours where what can be or not gazed is previous determined by the scientific knowledge. This happens, for example, in the Galapagos Island. Instead, the two other types converge in the needs of rationalizing the wildlife species into the categories of westerners. This represents a problem because eco-tourism –in some occasions- glosses over a vast range of other leisure motivations and real experiences visitors obtain after their sojourn.

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Figure 1. The types of ecotourism: a classification model.

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All these, as well as many other types of natural ecological tourism, do not always fit within the framework of widely accepted understanding of ecotourism. Unfortunately, there is lack of world’s and Russian studies attempting to generalize the entire range of ecotourism activities. Figure 1 presents classification of ecotourism types depending on the motivation factors and quantity of tourists. On the chart, each type of ecotourism is estimated and placed in proportion to the prevailing motifs (axis X), mass character (Y axis) and approximate estimates of the share of tourists participating in their implementation in the world (circle diameter). Totally we have selected 16 types of ecotourism, the most popular and widespread in the world.

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1. Cognitive-educational types of ecotourism are carried out mostly in mass and group forms: rural tourism, tourism on the objects of the nature reserve fund and the World Natural Heritage, event-based ecotourism, as well as such less massive types as polar tourism (polar cruises) and tourism in places of ecocatastrophe. 2. Recreational-cognitive types of ecotourism, which can be defined as hobby-ecotourism, are carried out most often in individual and small-scale forms: bicycle tourism, hunting and fishing tourism,

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mountain tourism, gathering tourism, eco-voluntourism, naturism, and volcanic tourism. 3. Scientific types of tourism are carried out mainly in individual and small-scale forms for research purposes: birdwatching, wildlife tourism, jailoo-tourism.

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The variety of directions of ecotourism activity is not limited by the types and forms considered. Nevertheless, the proposed model allows an idea of existing and popular ecotourism products among consumers (Lian 2005). Lastly, as Y Lian (2005) observed, multidisciplinary research, which comes from different national background and language is preferred to arrive at “all-encompassing” models that expand the current understanding of the phenomenon. Indeed, the experiences of national and international tourists diverge. It is important not to lose the sight of the conceptual myopia of English speaking fieldworkers who sometimes adopt West-centric paradigms in their studies (Korstanje 2017). As mentioned previously, the scholars tend not to be interested in not written in their mother tongue. We shall discuss the main limitations and strongholds of the Russian study cases that remain unnoticed by the ethnocentric Anglo-Saxonworld.

RUSSIAN CASES OF ECOTOURISM DEVELOPMENT

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The ecological tourism development in Russia is inextricably connected with specially protected natural areas. Many trips to nature reserves and national parks in Russia, originally planned as eco-touristic, have a number of serious environmental shortcomings. For example, often tourists are brought to the site of the tour by helicopters or boats with gasoline engines, frightening animals and polluting ponds. Only a few programs include active involvement of visitors in environmental activities. The educational aspect in Russian ecotourism is still poorly developed – the excursion or tour often demonstrate the sights, exotic “wonders” and “beauties” of nature, but don’t provide comprehension of environmental problems and active participation


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in their solution. In general, there are not many “absolutely positive” examples of ecotourism development not only in our country but all over the world. Rather, we can talk about the successful implementation of certain specific principles of ecotourism. In Russia, the original steps were oriented to introduce the needs of encouraging a more sustainable consumption to revitalize tourist destinations through the end of the 90s decade, when the USAID program was taken into effect. Meanwhile, TACIS project was adopted in Karelia. Several international projects have also been implemented (funding from USAID, WWF, TACIS, DANSI, UNDP, the Ministry of Environmental Protection of Norway, Finland, Germany, etc.) for the development of ecological tourism in Russian specially protected natural areas. The projects have been accomplished in the key regions of Kamchatka, Primorsky and Khabarovsk Krai, the Amur Region, the AltaiSayan Ecoregion, the North Caucasus, the North-West of Russia, Baikal, and Central Russia. There is a noticeable increase in the interest of Russians to travel to the unique natural corners of their country. Kamchatka, Baikal, Altai, and Karelia are the most popular regions of domestic ecotourism. The same regions are of greatest interest of foreign ecotourists traveling to Russia. Over the recent years, the number of tours-expeditions undertaken by Russian tourists to Putorana, Taimyr, Yakutia, Chukotka, Commander and Kuril Islands, the most remote and inaccessible regions of the country, has increased. The UNESCO World Heritage List includes 11 Russian natural sites: the virgin forests of Komi, Lake Baikal, volcanoes of Kamchatka, Golden Altai Mountains, the Western Caucasus, the Lena Pillars, Putorana Plateau, Wrangel Island, the Curonian Spit, the Ubsunur Hollow, Central Sikhote-Alin. In these regions, exactly ecotourism can help nature conservation, employment growth and socio-economic development. Still further, many other exciting destinations for ecotourism are available in Russia. Separate examples of successful ecotourism development practices are described below (Figure 2).

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Visiting Newborn Seals

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People can communicate with newborn seals only in two places on the planet. One such unique place is in Canada, near the Magdalena Islands, another – in Russia, in the ice of the White Sea in Arkhangelsk region. Each year the harp seals return here at the end of winter. In the beginning of spring a female of the harp seal, as a rule, give birth to one baby seal. Every year this unique natural phenomenon attracts people. Newborn baby seals are rightfully considered to be one of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. And this is one of the unique tremulous wonders of the world, which people can admire. Visiting the seals is not only an unforgettable experience, but also a real help to baby seals. The tour includes accommodation in the ecohotel, a helicopter excursion over the Arctic ice fields, a walk on skis, on foot or by snowmobile.

Eco-Tours to Wrangel Island

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Wrangel Island is one of the most incredible places on Earth. He remained physically beyond the human grasp for several centuries. The harsh Arctic sheltered it reliably from curious researchers. This is a peculiar museum of Arctic flora and fauna. Here is the world’s richest collection of “cold-resistant” plants. Here are the largest in the Eastern Arctic seabird colonies and the only remaining large nesting colony of Snow Geese in Asia. In the seas washing the islands, walruses rest and gain strength, and on the coast, they form the largest rookeries in the Arctic. Here, as in the maternity home come the white bears of Chukotka and Alaska for the birth of the offspring. The island’s territory has never completely been flooded by the sea and has not been covered by glaciers. The landscapes have preserved the appearance of the Beringian land. The most convenient period for visiting island is from mid-May to the end of July, when here is polar day and relatively warm (up to + 3 ... 5o C). Travel Club “Special” offers unique ecotours to Wrangel Island, which includes sea excursions on boats “Zodiacs”, cognitive lectures and presentations, visits to polar meteorological stations,


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etc. Movement on the island is carried out on quad bikes or off-road vehicles. Excursions are organized in such a way that the land of the reserve remains untouched, preserving its natural appearance.

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Figure 2. Examples of successful Russian ecotourism development practices.

The Crane Festival at the “Crane’s Homeland”

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Every autumn, from September 5 to September 25-29, the Crane Festival takes place in the Crane’s Homeland Reserve (“Zhuravlinaja Rodina”) in Taldom district, Moscow Region. This is an organized excursion program for children and adults, which registration opens ahead of time. Guides tell about the habits of cranes, and then show cranes flock on the reserve’s fields. Excursions on the marshes are also conducted here. Tourists can see a beaver dam and listen to a story about the formation of peat, unusual marsh plants, wandering lights and ancient beliefs. In the same period, a holiday of the cranes’ farewell is carried out. It is named “Goodbye, see you!”. It is a holiday for children and adults and a way to convey to many people the importance of preserving all the components of wildlife – forests, swamps, birds and animals. Birdwatching activities are also periodically

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carried out in the wildlife sanctuary – observation of bird in their natural habitat (e.g., owl direction finding).

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REGIONAL MARKETING STRATEGY – A MECHANISM FOR ENSURING SUSTAINABILITY IN THE ECOLOGICAL TOURISM DEVELOPMENT

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Many regions of the world have significant potential for the development of ecotourism. The rational use of natural resources, the corresponding specialization of the economy with the active involvement of local communities, unique sights and a series of popular event-based ecotourism activity are the general mechanism for the ecotourism development in the region. These programs succeed when integrated into a much broader plan, which paves the ways for the creation of a regional marketing strategy. The main parameters of such a strategy for the region are offered below. The ecotourism marketing regional strategy as a mechanism for its sustainable functioning is designed to determine the strategic directions and forms of its development and management. First of all, it is necessary to create a working group with extensive powers in planning, cataloging and certification of ecotourism facilities, to hold a series of meetings or seminars with the participation of representatives of all the most important stakeholders: representatives of protected natural areas, nature conservation organizations, regional committees for conservation of nature or natural resources of settlements and municipalities, tourism business, regional and municipal tourism authorities and similar structural units and organizations. The main tasks of such meetings and seminars are: a) to bring together representatives of various sectors for determining main strategic goals of the regional ecotourism development, analyzing the current status of the resource base and the level of the ecotourism development, and outline ways to improve it; b) to identify opportunities, prospects, risks and threats of various forms and directions, models and strategies for regional ecotourism development in the context of


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municipalities; to develop a unified strategy for the formation of an ecotourism environment; c) to establish cooperation among various interested groups, to form a committee for the ecotourism development; d) to determine the preferred scenario for regional ecotourism development and a specific plan of activities to achieve and maintain the desired level and character of ecotourism; to develop a system of image strategic initiatives to promote the region as an ecotourism center, etc. All stakeholders should be subject to a clear plan, widely negotiated and discussed for the interests of all to be met. Each activity should be thought according to the gathered information as well as the responsibilities of all involved parts. In addition, it is necessary to provide a system for monitoring the implementation of activities planned in the strategy, assessing their impact, and, if necessary, mechanisms for improving the strategy. The strategy is a dynamic process designed to achieve sustainability in the ecotourism development in a particular region.

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CONCLUSION

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Nowadays, ecotourism is a buzzword. One of the limitations of ecofriendly projects consists in the lack of articulation between theory and practice. There are many reasons to bridge the advances of academicians with the experience of policy makers, but two of them are more important to discuss. On one hand, scholars investigate and socialize their outcome closed in their ivory tower. On another, the variety of definitions and different connotations on the term obscures more than it clarifies. At the current stage, Russia offers an interesting example to the world of success projects though eco-destinations advance as snail pace. This chapter emphasized on the heterogeneity of approaches, discussions, and bibliography to reach a new understanding of the issue. To cut the long story short, the variety of forms of demand and consumption on the market of tourist services, caused by the reduction of the segment of mass tourism and the expansion of the individual tourism segment, today allows to introduce on the market fundamentally new tourist products that should be positioned

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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as an ecological essence, which means change the conceptual background on ecotourism. This chapter discussed critically the main limitations and problems of specialized literature, emphasizing on some recommendations which shall help in reversing eco-tourism as an ideological discourse.

We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Maximiliano Korstanje who had donated his time in editing and proofreading this chapter.

REFERENCES

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Steward, J. (1955). Theory of culture change. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Tuohino, A. & Hynonen, A. (2001). Ecotourism – imagery and reality. Reflections on concepts and practices in Finnish rural tourism. Nordia Geographical Publications, 30(4), 21-34. Valentine, P. (1993). Ecotourism and nature conservation. A definition with some recent developments in Micronesia. Tourism Management, 14(2), 107-115. doi: 10.1016/0261-5177(93)90043-K. Vayda, A. P. & Rappaport, R. A. (1968). Ecology: cultural and non-cultural. Introduction to cultural anthropology, 488-499. Wallace, G. N. & Pierce, S. M. (1996). An evaluation of ecotourism in Amazonas, Brazil. Annals of Tourism Research, 23(4), 843-873. doi: 10.1016/0160-7383(96)00009-6. Weaver, D. B. & Lawton, L. J. (2007). Twenty years on: The state of contemporary ecotourism research. Tourism Management, 28(5), 11681179. doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2007.03.004. Weaver, D. B. (2005). Mass and Urban Ecotourism: New Manifestions of an Old Concept. Tourism Recreation Research, 30(1), 19-26. doi: 10.1080/02508281.2005.11081230. Wells, M. & Brandon, K. (1992). People and Parks: Linking Protected Area Management with Local Communities. Washington, DC: World Bank, WWF and USAID. Wight, P. A. (1993). Ecotourism: Ethics or Eco-sell? Journal of Travel Research, 31(3), 3-9. doi: 10.1177/004728759303100301.

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Chapter 7

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GO APE WITH (SUSTAINABLE) STYLE: NEOLIBERALIZING EXURBAN LEISURE IN LEEDS, UK Rodanthi Tzanelli

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University of Leeds, UK

ABSTRACT

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This chapter considers the proposal to develop three theme parks centering on a variety of outdoor activities (such as rock-climbing, ropejumping and trampolining) in the Northern city of Leeds, UK. The proposal, which signals a turn towards collaboration between public (Leeds City Council) and private (the independent “Go Ape” outdoor activities company) partners, complies with neoliberal patterns of “exurban tourismification” and the concomitant provision of leisure opportunities for predominantly affluent visitors and locals. The study examines such developments from the viewpoint of “sustainability”, by questioning the very meaning and stakeholder conceptions of the term. Its “critical” lens is therefore more attuned to notions of individual and collective welfare within and around leisure rituals, than a critique of industrial ideology. By stressing the presence of conflicting agendas of sustainability in the social field in which the “Go Ape” controversy takes place, I endeavor to show

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that critiques of ideology (“neoliberalism”) are analytically and practically unhelpful when not paired with an appreciation of what is socially possible (hence positively sustainable) in context.

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Keywords: cinema of attractions; environmentalism; exurban tourism; field of movement; irrealism; Leeds; leisure; McDonaldization; neoliberalism; phantasmagoria; sustainability; theme park; tourismification; UK

INTRODUCTION

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The Northern English city of Leeds1 is experiencing its own evolutionary moment on the Darwinian scale of global urban development and competition, and its City Council is not taking a back seat on this front. In 2016, the Go Ape Tree Top Adventure Centre was advertised as a forthcoming development in the expansion of leisure at Roundhay Park, one of the biggest urban parks in Europe (Turner, 15 October 2016). The Park, which is the leafy pride of North Leeds, is bordered by the suburb of Roundhay to the west and Oakwood to the south, two of the more affluent areas of the city. Stretching across about 700 acres, including two lakes, two adventure playgrounds, two cafes, a skate park, sports pitches, and the famous Tropical World2 with its surrounding gardens (all owned by the Leeds City Council), Roundhay Park is visited weekly by tourists and schools as a leisure and educational attraction (Roundhay Park, undated). For reasons outlined below, this plan had to be scrapped and a new location had to be chosen for the development of the Go Ape leisure facilities. 1

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Leeds belongs to the Yorkshire and Humber region, with a ceremonial county in West Yorkshire. With population of 781,700, according to the 2016 figures from the Office for National Statistics, it also ranks second in whole UK before Sheffield (a south-eastern neighbour), York (to the north), Newcastle-upon-Tyne (to the north east) Manchester (to the south-west) and Liverpool (to the western-most part of the North). 2 One of the UK's most popular garden tourist attractions and home to the largest collection of tropical plants outside Kew Gardens, the Tropical World at Roundhay Park is reminiscent of colonial practices of species taxonomy that turned into a national visitor attraction. Today, the Tropical World is regularly visited by schools, so it has attained educational value for future generations (for more information see Tropical World, undated).

Go Ape with (Sustainable) Style

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However, the broader original plan to construct three such theme parks still stands. I endeavor to show that the rationale underlining the overall planning, as well as its relevance to contemporary lifestyle mobilities are simultaneously locally relevant and globally applicable as key moments in an interpretative “sustainability” conundrum. There is little doubt that, in an era of theme park cloning for mass consumption, the Go Ape project bears the potential to put Leeds on the map of global urban retreats. Indeed, it is even suggested that the number of 21st century visitors to such entertainment complexes is slightly higher than those of international visitors to Spain, China, Italy and the UK engaging in straightforward tourism activities (Whatt, 2010, p.224). However, we should also read the smaller letters in this enterprise, to realize how it may alter balances between technocratic, social and environmental complexities in the area – incidentally, all pointing to site selection and re-planning. Technocratically the project hits all the right keys when it comes to lifting the city out of recession traps and an impeding “hard Brexit”: as generally in urban tourism, the urban core dominates the metropolitan area in terms of creative consumption (Richards & Wilson, 2007; Ashworth & Page, 2011), investment in peripheral projects potentially doubles up economic returns and redistributes cultural recognition across different urban life-worlds. The three planned Go Ape entertainment sites in Leeds might also compensate for any lack of historic interest in the city with innovative leisure close to nature, by providing a seemingly revamped “eco-friendly” touristic experience of rope and artificial rock climbing, walking in the woods and communing with nature. But how is this project going to come to life (which, for example, infrastructural, natural and societal/human resources have to be in place for this to happen)? Indeed, I proceed to argue that at the heart of this initiative stand competing interpretations of “sustainability”: as a technocratic/managerial structure, replete with labor implications and opportunities (Whatt, 2010); as an environmentally-friendly project; as an organized alignment with global practices of well-being in leisure and tourism; and as an initiative that will not damage social ecologies in the area. Conceptions of sustainability are still haunted by neoclassical economics, which, especially in the case of environmental imperatives,

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supplant ideas of “ecosystemic resilience” and “critical natural capital preservation” (i.e., prioritizing preservation of irreplaceable natural resources) with economic returns (Begűm, Devine & Rigby, 2004, p.280). If we add ideas of inter-generational equity and urban ecology, including its volatile visitor ecologies and mobilities to notions of ecosystemic resilience, we end up with a more enlarged vision of sustainable development, which conforms to the rules of complexity. However, in an era of accelerating neoliberal expansion, local or even national administration often cannot afford to avoid this move from socio-cultural to economic returns altogether. Consequently, instead of delivering uncompromising criticism, critical theory ought to consider what it is possible to rectify within socio-cultural constraints, without turning into an accomplice in neoliberal structuration (see Brouder & Ioannides, 2014, p.422). Admittedly, this may land social theory on inhospitable grounds. Note for example the initial public statement made by Councilor Lucinda Yeadon, Leeds City Council’s Executive Member for the Environment and Sustainability:

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Due to ongoing significant reductions in government funding, we are always looking for new ways to be enterprising and the work that we plan to undertake at the three sites underlines our ongoing commitment as a council to help ensure that each attraction continues to thrive and offer visitors from the city and beyond a great experience for many years to come. Our recent investment in Tropical World which has seen visitor numbers rise by 45% compared to pre-development is a great example of what can be achieved by investing in one of our sites to raise the quality, boost income and in the long-term save money for the council. This is something that we now want to replicate again at Tropical World, Lotherton Hall Bird Garden and Home Farm, Temple Newsam (Turner, 15 October 2017).

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So, realistically, it all translates into cash – or, better, forms of “capital”: to enhance local facilities; generate new jobs and new landscapes of social interaction; and finally, produce a local version of the global/urban “experience economy” (Pine & Gilmore, 1999) for the benefit of the city’s prestige and regional, national and global networking (Larsen & Urry, 2008).


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No such ambition can evade criticism, including reactions from those it claims to benefit in the long term. Naturally, we may note that different interest constituencies cast as “stakeholders” or “beneficiaries” will read different things into such a venture. Thus, for example, a petition appeared on Change.org to stop this project from going ahead because of its potential to destroy what Roundhay Park represented for many decades: a haven from the noisy urban life of Leeds and a little paradisiac escape for families and other groups seeking respite from busy mid-week environments (Davis, 1996: 411; Clavé, 2007). Framed as the potential loss of a real, earthly utopian spot to the demons of business-orientated development, the petition gathered over 3,000 signatures and was sent to Councilor Yeadon. A relevant article in the Yorkshire Post (Lavery, 13 October 2016) had previously initiated a vivid conversation amongst readers on the benefits and problems of having such a multi-sited development in the area, including risks for its potential users. For example, plans to build a high-wire adventure course featuring aerial zip wires and rope walks raised concerns about noise and traffic problems. A BBC report featured Richard Critchley, Chair of Friends of Roundhay Park saying: “We are frightened that we are commercializing and selling off the park bit by bit” (ibid.) Since these events, local Council policy-makers decided to revise their plans and remove Roundhay Park’s Ram Wood from the Go Ape development (BBC Leeds & West Yorkshire, 31 January 2017). However, Ben Davies from Go Ape, which has 29 sites in the UK and 12 in the US, said “the company had had ‘numerous requests’ for the attraction in Leeds” (ibid.). The current location for the creation of a Go Ape Park is Newsham Temple, another green estate in Leeds owned by the Council. It is obvious by now that the project is structurally embedded in local technocratic planning, and despite any obstacles posited by residents, it is going ahead somewhere. Reminiscent of the development of creative hubs in world cities, one may argue that Go Ape signifies Leeds’s progressive societal “McDonaldization”: an adaptation of modes of operation of the McDonald’s restaurants chain to creative service organizations; by extension, the rationalization and serialization of production-consumption chains and accompanying patterns of socialization in our postmodern lifeworlds

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(Ritzer, 2010). Other arguments would favor the power of creativity to shape both creative labor expertise and consumption activities in the city in more open and highly unpredictable ways (Lash & Urry, 1994; Richards & Wilson, 2006; Richards, 2014). A constant across all these theses is the need to address leisure and tourism development in fair and sustainable ways. The chapter’s geographical focus is how the urban-rural “fringe” as a leisure/tourism venue known as the “exurban” (loosely translated as “outside but from the city”) connects to concerns over development and sustainability in more immediate ways. To consider this conundrum, which informs how knowledge economies of the leisure-tourist range come into being, I enact two exploratory journeys, with a focus on Leeds. These journeys mobilize camera techniques and ways of seeing (à la Berger, 2008), inspecting the city and the Go Ape initiative from below and from afar (Szerszynski & Urry, 2006; Nicolini, 2009; Tzanelli, 2011): the first journey (outlined in the second section of the chapter) “zooms out”, globalizes our perspective, to consider Leeds and the overall venture in the grand scheme of contemporary capitalist structuration. In this section I consider pressures placed upon the city and its City Council to follow universal patterns of neoliberalization, which sustain and reproduce competitive relations with neighboring urban formations. Though symbolically locked into global structuration, the second journey (section three) “zooms in”, to consider, not only what Go Ape truly stands for as a business philosophy, but also what this might produce upon implementation in Leeds’s lifeworlds, which are reluctantly globalized by means of “tourismification”. Incidentally, by “tourismification” I refer to the generation of fleeting and solidified imaginaries of place and culture in commercialized settings, where consumption is “staged” from above but also co-produced by visitors with unpredictable consequences (Edensor, 2001; Jensen, 2013). Thus, although the term refers to tourism as a practice, an imaginary and an industry (Salazar, 2009), it also embraces adjacent industrial practices and formations we associate with visitor economies in theme parks and cinematic phantasmagoric complexes in the city (Featherstone, 1991; Sassen & Roost, 1999; Bærenholdt & Haldrup, 2006; Donald & Gammack, 2007).


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ZOOMING OUT: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON LEEDS

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Although in this section I consider seriously the argument that neoliberalization is a “variegated, geographically uneven and pathdependent process” (Brenner, Peck & Theodore, 2010: 327), I also want to show how the city of Leeds devised a creative response to its challenges over the last few decades. One of the abandoned and crime-infested cities of the Thatcher era, Leeds experienced a construction boom in the 2000s, with the creation of many high-rise apartment blocks in the center to cater for staff working in an emerging business and service sector. The plan to decentralize business and redistribute capital outside the metropolis and across to the country’s other urban areas, especially in the less developed North (Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield etc.), revitalized British financescapes (Lash & Urry, 1994, pp.193-195 & pp.213-222). At the same time, the emergence of Leeds as a major regional economic player modified human mobility patterns in the city, increasing both daily commuting and part-residential patterns in the city center, where most finance businesses would be located. Today the city has the most diverse economy of all main UK employment centres, with the fastest private-sector jobs growth of any UK city and the highest ratio of public to private sector jobs (at 77%) of all the UK's Core Cities (Leeds City Council, undated). At the beginning of 2015, Leeds appeared to have the third-largest jobs total by local authority area with 480,000 in employment and self-employment. Ranked as a “gamma world city” (e.g., a city linking smaller economic regions into the world economy) by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network cities (Wayback Machine, 2013), Such restructuring also brought about changes in the social makeup of the city’s suburbia, with poor neighborhoods being excluded from expensive lifestyles and exurban residents now displaying more complex consumer and producer characteristics: earning incomes from urban jobs but appreciating smallscale government services; or, wanting outdoor recreation opportunities but viewing local tourism mobilities with a degree of suspicion (as causes of noise, littering and overcrowding) (Davis, Nelson & Dueker, 1994, p.45; Weaver, 2005: 31). The poor and the rich occupy mostly separate lifeworlds

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in Leeds and there is little question concerning the profiles of prospective Go Ape clientele (Davis, 1996, p.404). The development of rural-urban fringes (commonly known as exurbs), whereby urbanity encroaches upon village lifestyles, is constitutive of global post-industrial cultural landscapes. Such fringes are (a) structurally speaking, spatialized edges in the city’s built development and (b) functionally speaking, outer spaces of daily commuting zones (McKenzie, 1996). In such contact zones, tourism and, more generally, leisure patterns follow post-Fordist production-consumption cycles (Weaver, 2005). Organizationally, this involves business mergers and collaborations, including theme parks, tourist shopping villages, protected areas on the borders of the city, golf courses and touring facilities. The original selection of Roundhay Park for the construction of the Go Ape theme park conformed to this organizational and structural fusion of facilities for visitors. But it also brought center stage problems of collision, rather than collusion, between “country” and “city”, thus highlighting the need to achieve sustainable growth for the benefit of both human populations and the environment (Daniels, 1999). There are also other issues to address, especially with regards to the original Ram Wood development of a Go Ape resort. Most of the Roundhay development was supposed to upgrade “empty grounds” visited only by hard-core walkers. Nevertheless, concerns over sound pollution or environmental modification, though the easiest to capture the public imagination, are probably the least damaging to consider. One may note that Roundhay Park commenced its life as a modified landscape for local outdoors consumption, so further modification would not necessarily do “damage”. More important is the intrusion of business into the community’s common space, where environmental heritage with a social angle is concerned. Roundhay Park was created by an Act of Parliament, which was passed on 21 June 1871, passing the land on to the City Council (Roundhay Park, undated). Part of the Park’s public inauguration was to donate to localities a gift of leisure, thus designating a few square miles as common space for free walks and family or friends gatherings. The commercialization of parts of this space erases this history, thus taking away from locals what


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they thought of as part of their area’s autonomous biographical record. There is an issue of self-governance in play, which can only be affected by the intrusion of the business sector. Hence, when the Go Ape initiative is put in regional and national perspective, technocrats and businessmen are confronted with serious questions regarding sustainable communal wellbeing or local collective welfare (Haybron, 2008). Local collective well-being clashes with industrial development of the region as a whole, as well as with the professional design of visitor wellbeing and the generation of new labor opportunities through new projects. Yorkshire is a tourist attractor due to its dual natural beauty and creative industrial involvement. Recent figures reveal that, between 2009 and 2015, Yorkshire’s Film and TV Industries generated an annual turnover of £424m across 590 creative businesses (an increase of 247% against the UK average of 118%) with Gross Value Added (GVA) increasing 242% in comparison to a UK average growth of 120%. Sally Joynson, Chief Executive at Screen Yorkshire, suggested that the region slowly develops into a leader in the spectacular national economy – a statement backed by the rise in prospective film tourist visitations in Yorkshire and Humber, and the fact that the sector already supports about 12,000 jobs and has a turnover of just below £1.1 billion (McWatt, 20 June 2017). Notably, however, Leeds itself does not stand as a film tourism attractor in the region. Its urban makeup appeals more to urban flâneurs and bon viveurs of the business-commuter type, with exurban weekend visits appealing to families and couples as a more recent independent development (Rubin, 2009). Meanwhile, the UK economy follows the fast pace of neoliberalization associated with other equally developed nations of the Global North. This translates into an intensification in regional competition (Daskalopou & Petrou, 2008; Lederman, 2015), which sets the city of Leeds against other neighboring urban formations, such as the city of Sheffield, and other strong neighboring tourism players, such as the historic city of York. Next to this major heritage tourism destination, Leeds can only showcase its own industrial heritage, which nevertheless is currently underused in the visitor economy, whereas its buoyant artscenes, replete with galleries, museums and alternative artstyles, also meet their match in York.

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The search for alternative sources of prestige, or ways to augment those established (re)sources that are already regionally and nationally soughtafter, came to the fore with the city’s bid to become the 2023 European Capital of Culture. The competition, which “brings together nations from across Europe to build connections and explore issues that affect us all wherever we live” (Leeds 2023, undated), was won by Glasgow in 1990 and Liverpool in 2008. Placing Leeds’s bid among other UK bids, the venture to win the title commenced in 2014 and was rooted in the city’s “culture strategy” to transform lifestyles and living/working standards “for the benefit of the whole city, not just the city centre” (ibid.). If anything, this made the establishment of Leeds as a regional cultural center “to the extent to which [it] house[s] leisure and entertainment industries” a priority for local administration (Featherstone, 1991, p.96). But it also revealed how communal well-being should inform Leeds’s cultural policies, so as to create a sustainable long-lasting brand for future generations. In such circumstances, the development of exurban tourism facilities to complement such initiatives located in the urban core is not entirely unexpected, if also not entirely welcome by locals. The idea of a locally sustainable spectacular economy figures as an oxymoron, when placed in the woods, but so is the development of a theme (manufactured) park (natural resort). Note that Leeds’s 2013 bid team commissioned I am a Spark, a film set to promote its bid further to residents, businesses and communities across the city and beyond. The video features actor David-O delivering a powerful monologue, highlighting the culture and can-do attitude of Leeds – a move towards branding communal action as a form of creativity. Showcasing a mixture of traditional arts and culture interspersed with contemporary arts groups to promote Leeds as a 21stcentury city (I am a Spark, 11 September 2011), the video is representative of Gunning’s (1990) conception of “the cinema of attractions”: a fusion of exhibitionism with technologically manipulated display and the prevalence of direct address to viewers. I return to this concept later in the chapter, to explore its centrality in Go Ape’s online advertising, which can only be superimposed onto the themed natural surroundings of a park. For the moment, it helps to highlight that, for Leeds, a “deficit” in “cultural capital”,


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which in the worst post-Brexit scenario might translate into a “deficit” in “network capital” or global connectivity (Larsen and Urry, 2008), can be eliminated with the development of what is known as “exurban” attraction zones. We can see how the spectacular display of communal “can-do” clashes with the networked (administration-with-business) “must-do” of development. The hospitality amalgams provided in exurban areas make the construction of a theme park in them a potentially profitable venture, replete with sustainable possibilities in terms of job generation. Both Roundhay Park and Temple Newsham are embedded in exurban sites, allowing a compromise between access to urban markets and rural land, which is owned by the other major investor in the project: the Leeds City Council (Weaver, 2005, p.25). Comparable to airports (ibid.), such sites can be developed to “non-places” in Augé’s (2008) original term, places emptied of their symbolism and histories and filled with the phantasmagorias of supermodernity (Hollinshead, 1998; Urry, Elliott, Radford & Pitt, 2016). The functional adaptation of former traditional tertiary services to postmodern services catering for fleeting visitors is bound to alter embedded ways of experiencing place as lived space (Weaver and Lawton, 2001). I stress again that the imminent “abstraction” (Augé, 2008, p.67) of a site that served for over a century for communal gathering has been one of the main points of contention in the Roundhay “protest”. Such “protests” may replicate in other areas earmarked for similar development (Temple Newsham could be the next candidate), so we cannot pass the Roundhay controversy in silence when it comes to sustainability debates. The case complicates more when we turn attention to Go Ape’s business statement that it caters for human socialities in a safe “adventurous” environment, thus allowing visitors to co-create place as lived experience through various kinesthetic performances. Hence, before we conclude on the sustainability of the overall venture, we must have a closer look at the philosophy and design of the Go Ape business.

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ZOOMING IN: GO APE WITH STYLE

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With 29 locations in the UK and 12 in the United States, Go Ape is the business venture of the Mayhews family (Bearne, 22 February 2016). Set up in 2002 with inspiration from the couple’s holiday in France, it grew as a theme park enterprise so much, that today it can be compared with lucrative touristic ventures in remote countries such as Japan, where artificial islands serve as leisure zones next to overpopulated urban centers or the phantasmagorias of Las Vegas and Disneyland. Much like such Asian artificial resorts (Davis, 1996, p.413), Go Ape consolidates the symbolic reorganization of natural landscapes, thus prioritizing the user’s imaginative connectivity to nature. It helps to bear in mind that the rise of simulations in East Asian countries in the form of picturesque village resorts, predominantly for mature tourists, was built on European notions of holiday and resort marketing (Hendry, 2000, p. 19; Favell, 2015, pp.150–151). The late nineteenth-century amusement park industry connected to thrillorientated facilities that supplanted agricultural exhibits with technological development and then also themed attractions, such as Oriental bazaars (Whatt, 2010, pp.222-224). A leap back to discourses of eco-friendly themes suggests an alternative course (currently favored by the Go Ape venture): European conceptions of the environment, as both a resource to tap into and a value to preserve and conserve, foreground the development of tourism as a leisure activity (Urry, 1995). Here the global informs the particular in ways that cosmopolitanize locales in cities such as Leeds (Robertson, 1992; Beck, 2016). Specifically, the submerged European connection sustains a business stylistics, which enmeshes past modern practices of leisure, while also allowing for their postmodern interpretation in meta-realist or irrealist frameworks. By “metarealism” I refer to the global rise in simulations we associate with Disneyland parks. By “irrealism” I refer both to the production of specific versions of reality and therefore policy (e.g., Go Ape defined by business as a leisure or touristic activity by reference to particular histories of tourismleisure - Rose, 1999), and the co-production of reality by visitors, who create


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their own experiences of what is real (Goodman, 1978; Ateljevic, Hollinshead & Ali, 2009). Let us focus initially on the first version of irrealism: that of the Mayhews, the creators of Go Ape. For the Mayhews, reality is concomitant with conceptions of authenticity with an environmental conscience but without clear environmentalist guidelines. Significantly, in the first stages of Go Ape’s conceptualization, the entrepreneurial couple visited the East Anglia Forestry Commission to see if they could build their inaugural adventure course in Thetford Forest Park, on the Norfolk/Suffolk border in eastern England, and their proposal was well received (Bearne, 22 February 2016). However, reality as authenticity was also connected to the plurality of human experience. Note that the overall Go Ape idea has been to allow visitors to activate the inner child, and thus to be carefree tourists for a few hours in a day, before becoming worrisome urbanites again (Dann, 1977 & 1989). Thereafter, irrealism would transform into meta-realism and environmentalism would disappear in their business plans: in addition to expanding Go Ape into the US, the couple also launched in 2014 “Air Space”, an indoor trampoline business in two locations (Wolverhampton, West Midlands, and East Kilbride in Scotland). More explicitly orientated towards combinations of sports activities with childhood memories, trampoline gaming engages visitors in adrenaline-pumping rituals usually reserved for children. All in all, the Mayhews’ business design capitalizes on notions of familial life-course but does not introduce in its philosophy the neo-vitalist ethics of environmentalism we find in strong sustainability models (e.g., those prioritizing inter-generational equity and/with ecosystemic resilience). The natural setting of such activities is significant: not only does Go Ape provide a malleable “textual surface” onto which visitors can construct their own experiential scenarios, it defines the material contours of a field of movement – a point to which I return below. In terms of scenario, far from reversing human evolutionary history, the brand-signifier (“Go Ape”) suggests a conscious (re)turn to a physical utopia that humans had to modify to create sustainable living for their species. But in postmodern contexts, human needs were supplanted by desires and customer demands, so a

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business has to cater for a variety of prospective requests to return to this inhospitable utopia in safe ways. The customer pool does not contain just children or families and adventurers but also corporate businessmen who want to “go ape”. As the Go Ape founders claim, the prospect of enjoying a “collective experience” appeals to “families, groups of friends, stag parties, corporate groups - actually we take over £1m per year from corporate business” (Bearne, 22 February 2016). The Mayhew’s visitor is a very advanced animal, an “Ape” with social skills. Indeed, the brand’s focus on character building in a potentially collective context but outside the social routines of everyday life is at pace with contemporary “First World” calls to develop an aesthetically reflexive self (Stanley, 2002). This educated self (undoubtedly, more affluent than selves inhabiting the “developed periphery”) knows what to consume and how to appreciate the beauty of consumption as a social activity that makes humans better in body and soul (Giddens, 1990 & 1991; Lash & Urry, 1994). All in all, the Go Ape brand adheres to a quintessentially individualistic philosophy of well-being as autonomous and subjective selection of pleasure, but filters it through universalized understandings of life satisfaction and positive affect (Sumner, 2000). To do so, Go Ape prioritizes the individual’s propensity for experiencing various moods in a safe environment in which physical risks can only be (safely) staged (Beck, 2009; Haybron, 2005). Here we must return to the first component of irrealist brand-making, which will lead us to the ways visitors experience the forthcoming parks’ “field of movement”. Rudolf Laban (1966) suggests that all bodies exist in socio-cultural spheres around them, in which they create movements (what he terms the “kinesphere”). These movements have directionality (they strive towards some point of the world around them) and intentionality (they have goals humans connect to desires). The human body forms a symphony with mind and soul, so as to comprehend the socio-cultural events and objects of the environment (“sphere”) it inhabits and in which it moves (Schiller (2008, pp.432-433) calls this, after Laban, the “kinesfield”). To put this in context: orchestrating movements with the help of ropes, rocks, tree branches and nets in the sphere/field of woods in the Go Ape adventure, forms an attitudinal style, a final bodily “pose”, which can only change if


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the body assumes “a new direction” towards the environment it inhabits (Laban, 1971). This philosophy, which informs a stylistics of well-being, is based on European ways of seeing and consuming the environment without necessarily attending to issues of conservation and sustainability. For its advertising, it has to borrow from the resources that sustain phantasmagoric complexes around the world: to at least adapt the principles of the early “cinema of attractions” to its context. Note that Gunning’s concept mobilized silent film techniques to hypothesize about the ways imagemaking bolsters advertising; then connect this to the fact that Leeds claims possession of the oldest surviving silent actuality film, Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) recorded by French inventor Louis Le Prince on family activities (BBC Entertainment & Arts, 23 June 2015). Not only does such a historical connection link the Roundhay area to the city’s spectacular European heritage, it showcases family mobilities as its core value. Attractions of this kind are experientially rich but not always environmentally conscious. All we have to do is visit the business’ official website: loaded with images of people engaged in safe-risky activities, the pages advertise a peaceful green outdoors that visitors can transport to their inner worlds. Rampant exhibitionism is coupled with direct textual address to prospective visitors, who can now tailor their own adventures online: “I want to experience…[select from Tree Top Adventure, Tree Top Junior, Nets Kingdom, Forest Segway, Zip Trekking Adventure] at [park location], on [date], with [participants]” (Go Ape, undated). Davis (1996, p.403) argues that, as parts of a global media system, theme parks thrive on “themed environments” – that is, fully designed, highly coordinated land with all services and performances provided in house (see also Zhang & Shan, 2016, p.5 on China for comparisons). However, I would contend that the “McDonaldization” (Ritzer, 2010) of the Go Ape adventure is only superficial: the exhibited movements on the website’s photos and slides may correspond to pre-packaged leisure mobilities, but the real bodies performing them have the capacity to produce different sensibilities and different versions of the same setting (Schiller, 2007). The same principle applies to the virtual traveler (website visitor), who can imagine the adventure in numerous different ways. The scenarios are

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framed by the slightly modified natural environment in which they take place – as others note (Benedikt, 2001), every service and event in the experience economy becomes themed, as though it were part of an endless carnival. Yet, unlike the standard “cathedrals of consumption” (Ritzer, 1999), the already established Go Ape parks do not appear to welcome shopping facilities within them. One may wonder for how long this arrangement will last without some regulations in place. The only firm conclusion one may draw from the current situation draws attention to the blended nature of the enterprise (local/public and business/private), which posits a fairly standard question concerning decision-making balancing. When “experience” is superimposed onto concerns over the maintenance of inter-generational capital, including physical resources and residential wellbeing, local administration ought to consider a bigger futural picture: of residents “going ape” with anger because of sound pollution; of business encroaching upon local assets and decision-making; and of the streamlining of “good experiences” exclusively to fleeting clientele, crowding and littering today, departing tomorrow, and ultimately generating the need for production of surveillance technologies to avert all sorts of “risk”.

CONCLUSION: NEOLIBERALISM AND SUSTAINABILITY

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Following my observations from the three-section analysis above, I suggest that it is unhelpful to consider the Go Ape controversy in Leeds with a single view in mind, a monologue on sustainability. For each stakeholder or deliberative group involved in relevant decision-making processes so far (Leeds City Council, local residents, activists and the Go Ape business), different priorities produce different definitions of the key concept and value of being sustainable in one’s endeavors. Inevitably, each party partakes in different forms of practical action, which often conflicts with those upheld by other parties. Taken as a “deliberative event”, instigating considerations over the future of protected areas and the development of exurban leisure and tourism, the “Go Ape controversy” highlights limitations and opportunities within scholarly research on critical tourism studies. More


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specifically, in this chapter I explain why critiques of ideology (“neoliberalism”) alone do not provide constructive suggestions when they are not paired with an appreciation of what is socially possible (hence sustainable) in context. Even with this in mind, policy and theory hit upon another definitional hurdle concerning selections between utilitarian or individualist notions of what is sustainable. At the same time, critical theory is not here to concede to the angels of neoliberalization. Therefore, I conclude the analysis with notes on the dangers and promises held by such exurban development in Leeds. These include economic, cultural and political modifications to the chosen sites for development and the city of Leeds as a whole. There are, for example, some well-founded concerns that public-private mergers in business may result in the acquisition and “colonization” of public space by the latter, thus divesting the former of a voice in decision-making (Davis, 1996, p.407). Likewise, the expansion of the theme park industry outwards, to the peaceful suburbs and villages of the “Greater Leeds”, may eventually undermine older city forms, “recasting [them] as variations in a theme park” (after Sorkin’s (1992) book title and thesis). Alongside any modifications to the areas’ original urban ecologies, there might be changes to its physical ecology: some scholars insist that, in contrast to their overall positive economic impact, theme parks have a negative impact on the environment (Clavé, 2007; Swarbrooke, 2007). Finally, though it has been noted that climate change does not affect the theme park visitor economy as a whole (Whatt, 2010; Zhang and Shan, 2016), the sector remains exposed to the ebbs and flows of the global economy. What will happen to Go Ape’s localization of business, if the UK loses its economic embeddedness in the European Union? These questions can be answered in different ways, highlighting that pathways to change and development are highly unpredictable in contemporary economic, political and cultural contexts; that localities should not reject change without giving it careful consideration, including envisaging the imposition of conditional clauses on business when it comes to local space use; and that partaking in a new creative economy can generate opportunities for future generations, local or migrant.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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I am grateful to Majid Yar for his proof-reading and commentary.

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Schiller, G. (2008). From the kinesphere to the kinesfield: Three choreographic interactive artworks. Leonardo, 41(5), 431-437. Sorkin, M (1992). Variations on a theme park: the New American City and the end of public space. New York: Hill and Wang. Stanley, N. (2002). Out of this world: theme parks’ contribution to a refined aesthetics and educational practices. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 21(1), 24-36. Swarbrooke, J. (2002). Development and management of visitor attractions. Massachusetts: Butterworth-Heinemann. Szerszynski, B. and Urry, J. (2006). Visuality, mobility and the cosmopolitan: inhabiting the world from afar, British Journal of Sociology, 57(1), 113-131. Tropical World (undated). Retrieved from http://www.roundhaypark. org.uk/tropical-world-leeds/. Turner, A. (2016, October 15). Roundhay Park is set to get a Go Ape Tree Top adventure park. Retrieved from https://leeds-list.com/culture/ roundhay-park-is-set-to-get-a-go-ape-tree-top-adventure-park/. Tzanelli, R. (2011). Cosmopolitan memory in Europe’s ‘backwaters’: rethinking civility. Abingdon: Routledge. Urry, J. (1995). Consuming places. London: Routledge. Urry, J., Elliott, A., Radford, B. & Pitt, N. (2016). Globalisations utopia? On airport atmospherics. Emotion, Space and Society, 16, 13-20. Wayback Machine (2013). The world according to Gawc 2010. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20131010004859/http://www.lboro. ac.uk/gawc/world2010t.html. Weaver, D. (2005). The Distinctive Dynamics of Exurban Tourism. The International Journal of Tourism Research, 7(1), 23-33. Weaver, D. and Lawton, L. 2001. Resident perceptions in the rural-urban fringe. Annals of Tourism Research, 28(2): 286-296. Whatt, A. (2010). The global theme park industry. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism, 2(3), 220-237. Zhang, W. & Shan, S. (2016). The theme park industry in China: a research review. Cogent Social Sciences, 2, 1-17.

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THE INDISCIPLINE OF TOURISM RESEARCH IN THE 21ST CENTURY: IS CHINA PART OF THE PROBLEM OR THE SOLUTION? Maximiliano E. Korstanje*

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Department of Economics, University of Palermo, Argentina

ABSTRACT

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Over the recent years, China has been considered an economic power, for some analysts, even displacing the US from its hegemonic place. In parallel, Chinese universities have situated at the top of already established academic ranking such a QS or the higher education. In this vein, tourism seems not to be an exemption. This chapter deals with the rise and expansion of Chinese scholars in tourism-related studies as well as their main limitations at the time of conducting applied-research. This chapter discusses to what extent Chinese academicians echoed the original vices Westerners failed to resolve. Meanwhile, we lay the foundations for a new epistemology of tourism in Asia.

*

[email protected].

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Keywords: tourism research, development, China, Asia tourism, epistemological crisis

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In his seminal book, Culture and Imperialism Senior lecturer Edward Said (1993) reminded that an empire can be easily found looking at its two main pillars, arts, and science. The cultivation of arts and knowledge were historically achieved by the end of reaching a state of technological supremacy in view of the successive military campaigns. This suggests that the ideological core of imperialism needs from the alterity to construct a mirrored image of itself. Colonialism imagined a non-western “Other” as inferior to Europeans but at the same time, as an ethical agent dotted with noble customs. While non-westerners were esteemed as irrational and lazy, even in many cases compared to “children”, they would be civilized under the condition that western lifestyle and leisure practices were adopted. In that way, the global economic powers systematically developed a system of knowledge, which somehow legitimates their supremacy over the periphery (Hardt & Negri, 2001). The dialectics of domination -between the center and its colonies- seems not to be politically determined. The industry of travels delineated the borders between civilization or an “exemplary center” and its profane periphery. As the previous argument given, it is safe to confirm that China is gradually replacing the United States at the monopoly of higher education standards as well as the primacy in the editorial market. Chinese professional researchers are now placed in the top of academic rankings as well as taking part of the top-tiered journals in tourism and hospitality. The Polytechnic University of Hong Kong was recently cataloged as leading educational institution in leisure and tourism careers and degrees (see further details at QS ranking). At the same time, China is admirably pressing the longestablished tourism journals to accept a standardized volume of papers as never before. Some of the most cited profiles in tourism and hospitality are

The Indiscipline of Tourism Research in the 21st Century

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associated with a Chinese university. Unlike Latin America, where the epistemological academic discussion reached its zenith though it failed to gain recognition in view of the limited economic resources or what is worse, the linguistic barriers, China offers a fertile ground for exporting professional education in tourism and hospitality fields to other continents. Equally important, China over few years has saturated not only the academic offering with the multiplication of postgraduate masters and doctorates worldwide, but also with publications placed in peer review journals (Lam & Xiao, 2000; Xiao 2000; Du 2003; Guangrui, 2003; Zhang & Fan 2006; Huang & Hsu, 2008). As Z. Guangrui (2003) notes, over the recent years China started a campaign to open to the world not only aimed at enhancing the international investment in tourist and leisure-led projects to buttress the domestic economy but also a whole portion of scholarship which took tourism as its primary object of study came from the outside of China, which means former British colonies as Hong Kong or even in the productions of Chinese-born scholars appointed in main universities of English speaking nations. Although –during a long time- tourism was a concept relatively less known by the majority of lay-citizens, no less true is that the industry endorsed support to the growth of the economy in the turn of a new century. Following Jafari’s model, Tourism-Research in China passed from the advocacy to the precautionary platform, earlier than launching towards its maturation, which is expressed by the volume of published books, Doctoral theses, and papers in peer review journals. Despite this growth, China failed to resolve what Tribe dubbed as “the indiscipline of tourism”. Basically, he holds the thesis that knowledge-production in tourism fields acquired a disorganized direction, where chaotically knowledge-production fragmented in many pieces. As a result of this, the emergent scholarship not only experienced some problems to forge an all-pervading model to get a shared epistemology but also was unable to bolster a fluid dialogue between the Academy for the study of tourism and the emergent researchers (Tribe, 1997; 2010; Xin, Tribe & Chambers 2013). This moved Korstanje, Mustellier & Herrera (2016) to stress that the indiscipline of tourism comes very well from the introduction of relativism, which confronted seriously

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with the ideals of Enlightenment after 70s decade. The Academy played a passive role in the articulation of a solid platform that discusses furtherly the nature of tourism as well as the epistemological foundations for the next generations. The present chapter centers on the caveats and conceptual problems in tourism research in China. As this backdrop, Chinese scholarship adopted an economic-centric paradigm in tourism research, which inevitably led towards the lack of a critical turn in the discipline. Today, though Chinese scholars saturate almost all top ranked journals with their publications, even locating their authoritative voices as professional editors or in the advisory board list, it is important not to lose the sight Chinese institutional mimicry the same steps than Americans and Europeans Universities in applied research. The current chapter does not represent an attack to tourism research in China, which should be certainly admired in the view of the rapid growth experienced in little time, but rather, it explores critically the myopia of a business-oriented paradigm not only as created in the US but as it was adopted in China. For some reason, the sociology of tourism and the radical turn have little influence in publications in China. Unlike in Western nations, where the sociology of tourism (stronger than in China) adopted a critical view, in Asia sociologists introduced a moderate position respecting the industry. Basically, our Chinese colleagues were unconcerned on the negative effects of tourism embracing enthusiastically the profit-oriented paradigm. For some reason, Chinese scholars are fully obsessed to gauge the citation impact and implementing other metric instruments than elaborating a long lasting model to understand the issue (Coles, Hall & Duval, 2006; Korstanje & Seraphin 2017). China has fallen short in elaborating a unified epistemology of the discipline. As a result of this, a countless variety of definitions and meaning are in dispute. The indiscipline of tourism reveals not only the borrowing of theories and methods from other disciplines but the manifest impossibilities to create durable paradigms that explain the evolution of tourism.


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TOURISM, PARADIGMS, AND PLATFORMS

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The founding parents of the discipline ignited a hotly debate revolving around the origin of tourism (Towner & Wall 1991; Korstanje & Busby 2010). As Neil Leiper (1983) brilliantly observed, the etymology of tourism seems not to be clear but further efforts in dissecting history help in understanding its complex nature. Different schools confronted to impose their own interpretation of the origin of tourism while to date no agreement was achieved (Korstanje 2007). Although the interests for tourism history have continued in the threshold of time, specialists acknowledged tourism industry derived from the industrial revolution and the end of WWII. As an interplay of many combined factors such as the technological breakthrough and the labor benefits brought by worker unions, tourism become in a growing industry while globalization laid the foundations for its expansion (MacCannell 1976; Walton 1997; Kevan 1993; Uriely 1997). A whole portion of scholars agree that tourism and modernity would be inextricably intertwined (Meethan 2001; Urry 2002a; 2002b; Urry & Larsen 2011; MacCannell 1976). Notwithstanding, the majority often gets wrong. Historians never went beyond the epistemological borders of Middle Age, where peoples were unable to travel, by gathering reliable information respecting to how ancient travelers developed a similarly-minded form of tourism. To put this slightly in other terms, from its outset tourism research centered the interest in history -but inadvertently- glossing over that there were other forms of ancient tourism found in the culture of empires as Sumerians, Romans, Babylonians and so forth (Korstanje, Mustellier & Herrera 2016). Argentinian sociologist, Nicholas Montironi argues convincingly that in normal conditions that facilitated the surfacing of tourism was conducive to encourage physical displacement of thousands of citizens as a novel form of escape, emulating leisure goals that place the citizens asunder from their daily humdrum routine. This leads towards a quest for sociality with others that harmonize the social cohesiveness. Secondly, the needs of playful experiences signal to the possibility of emulating new roles, figures, and experiences, which remain unknown to us. In this token, the fictionalization

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of reality denotes the desire to break away from the ruling norm. At the time tourism fulfills an educational function, the sense of temporal escapement is epitomized as a rite of passage. The interaction of these three elements paved the ways for the right of practicing tourism in the main economic powers (Montironi, 2016). As the previous argument given, tourism-research rested on the needs of delving in history to precise the roots of the industry while other voices devoted their efforts in studying the effects of tourism at destinations. The debate, ultimately, was torn between tourism-management and tourism-associal institution (Cohen 1988; Ryan 1991; Echtner & Jamal 1997; Pearce & Buttler 1993; Higgins Desbiolles 2006). While the former signaled to the steps of marketing specialists, which are self-oriented to protect tourism as a commodity, the latter focused on tourism as a mechanism of escapement, which is functional to the capitalist logic (MacCannell 1973; 2001; Tzanelli 2004; Gibson 2009). It was unfortunate that this dichotomy overlooked the possibility to introduce a much deeper epistemological discussion that describes the meaning of tourism and its functionality in the diverse spheres of modern life (Korstanje & Busby 2010; Korstanje & George 2015). Doubtless, it is safe to say that Jafar Jafari (1990) gained fame and recognition as a well-accomplished scholar over the last decades because of his introduction of the four platforms (advocacy, precautionary, adaptancy and knowledge-based). He traces back a continuum that describes with accuracy not only the evolution of this industry but also the positions of locals according to its effects in the territory. His stance dangles an evolutionary dynamic to understand tourism (Jafari & Ritchie 1981). The advocacy platform valorized some positive aftermaths of the industry in local economies such as profits, job creation and the multiplying factor effects whereas the precautionary one centres the attention on those material asymmetries and negative effects hosts face. The mix between either represents a new novel platform Jafari dubbed as “adaptancy platform”. As he overtly writes, the future of tourism research moves towards the maturation of discipline which is crystallized by the rise of the knowledgebased platform. As founding editor of one of the most prominent journals in tourism -Annals of Tourism Research- Jafari compiled an increasing number


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of studies, essays, applied-research and ideas that ushered him in the discovery of an all-encompassing model (Xiao, 2013). As Korstanje critically discussed in earlier works, though Jafari never said that the maturation of the discipline should be strictly oriented to the reproduction of publications but in the formation of a shared epistemology, his followers and proponents toyed with the belief that further books, publications and produced knowledge contribute to the maturation of tourism as a science (Thirkettle & Korstanje 2013). Far from achieving this goal, these decades of bibliography-production generated a climate of dispersion that led towards the “indiscipline” noted by the critical scholars. It is tempting to say Chinese scholars never interrogated on the needs of discussing an alternative epistemological platform for tourism, laying the foundations for the same vices the Academy failed to tackle off. Psychoanalysis become a science in almost fifteen years, simply because his father Sigmund Found gave a defined epistemology which identified faster a clear object of study. Over more than forty years, tourism is being undermined by other disciplines in view of its inconsistencies to define what tourism means. It is important not to lose the sight of time and the prolificacy in publications are not enough to mark the maturation of a discipline, as Jafari’s followers mistakenly assumed.

THE INDISCIPLINE OF TOURISM

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As stated throughout other sections, John Tribe, current editor in Chief of Annals of Tourism Research, originally envisaged that the fragmentation of knowledge as well as the trivialization of the discipline as native and amateur was some of the nightmares of the founding parents. The problem laid in the fact that instead of constructing a sustainable net of experts that sets agenda in Tourism Research, the Academy mired in a bonfire of vanities that prevented the maturation of tourism as a serious discipline. In this respect, Tribe (1997; 2009; 2010) laments not only the Academy monopolized knowledge production behind researchers’ back, which created an ever-increasing fragmentation on the grounds these academicians

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operate. Unless otherwise regulated, this “indiscipline” prevents the formation of a clear epistemology to posit tourism as a serious academic discipline. To cut the long story short, Tribe’s criticism was finely-ingrained in a wave which is not entirely happy with the economic-centred paradigms. In the classic book, Philosophical Issues in Tourism, he holds the thesis that applied research not only received support but also was monopolized by managerial disciplines. Citing Giddens, Tribe coins the term “run-away tourism” to denote those liberal forces that situated tourism as an “out-ofcontrol” discipline. Instead of studying tourism as a scientific object, managerial literature emphasizes on the possibilities to enhance profits and business in the main international tourist destinations. In this respect, the nature of tourism not only is disputed by many schools and waves, but social sciences have adopted their own definitions around the term. For Tribe, one of the determinant aspects for the trivialization of tourism depends on the prejudices and stereotypes in the social imaginary that depict tourism as a naïve activity (Tribe 1997). Equally important, it is vital to discuss the dissociation in the applied methodologies, which gives priority to tourists as the only unit of study while other voices are silenced. Through the articulation of questionnaires and interviews, scholars preclude that what tourists say is the only valid truth. To some extent, since researchers are based on the economic-lend paradigm, tourists seem to be the only authoritative voices to infer scientific laws. However, beyond this so-called veil of objectivity remains the needs of gathering information to implement marketing plans and programs oriented to enhance the performance and profit of tourist destinations. In consequence, professional fieldworkers left behind the fact that sometimes there is a dissonance between what interviewees say and what they really do. Sometimes, lay-people even lie to protect their interests while in others cases they are unfamiliar with the inner-world. Hence tourism-related methodologies involve redundant and obtrusive methods, which are oriented to validate earlier hypotheses or by confirming previous suspicions. Not only these methods obscure more than they clarify but also recruit under and post-graduate students as professional field workers. As a result of this, researchers fail to obtain determinative conclusions that expand the understanding of what they study. Although


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interesting studies are at odds at the current hegemonic position of Academy, they are discarded as written in a foreign language. When we signal to “foreign language”, we say other than English papers. Anglo-centrism is embedded in the World of tourism academy from its inception. At this stage, others interesting approaches proffer a path-breaking diagnosis on the role of Academy in view of its indifference to adopt other than English languages in the agenda (Dann 2011) or even erecting a wall to protect the economiccentred viewpoints over other voices in dispute. This discussion between tourism-management and tourism-as-a social institution seems not to be new. The fact is that both emerged from contrasting contexts and evolved towards different horizons. While the former signals to the needs of promoting “best practices” to salve the hosting community, the latter focuses on tourism as a social dynamic, which is enrooted in a wider system, the society. Particularly both positions have cultivated proponents and detractors but leaving behind those further calibrations regarding the object of study of tourism is at least needed. To our end, tourism should be typified as a rite of passage, or in terms of Krippendorf, a mechanism of escapement self-oriented to revitalize the frustrations happened during daily-life (Krippendorf 1982). Last but not least, Chambers and Rakic (2015) recapitulate on the efforts to place tourism-management under the critical lens of scrutiny but taking special attention to the grounds of discipline. Though they acknowledge tourism research experienced a serious crisis, not everything is lost. After all, fieldworkers face new challenges and problems which need immediate scrutiny. Chambers and Rakic introduce the notion of “frontier” as a fringe between the known and the unknown. At the time, an object is illuminated or simply academicians shed light on a certain aspect of their object, other open questions surfaced. Far from being a problem as many colleagues preclude, this is the essence of scientific paradigms. The legitimacy of academic disciplines centers on its capacity to explain facts or giving the underlying background to gain purchase in the explanatory capacity. Over years, these frontiers have taken mutable and negotiable forms, which crystallized in the maturation of the discipline. Here is where “We go again!”. Despite the volume of published works, tourism is having some

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problems to consolidated as a maturated option as the founding parents thought. This happens in part because of the discourse -which is commoditized by left-wing scholars, many of them who are beyond tourismin defining tourism as an alienatory instrument of control while the centerperiphery dependency is strengthened. It is important not to lose the sight of the fact that we have to find new paradigms to discuss tourism as a connected area of investigation towards new hypothesis in the years to come.

APPLIED RESEARCH IN ASIA TOURISM: THE CASE OF CHINA

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Though the epistemological concerns of tourism were widely expanded in Westerners (Botterill 2001, Weaver & Oppermann 2000; Coles, Hall & Duval 2006; Holden 2004), less attention was given in China, or at the best, not with the same intensity than West. Let’s explain to readers that the tourism research in China followed the dynamic originally described by Jafari in his texts. Strictly based on the effects of the industry in local landscapes, the emerging net of specialists worked hard to frame indicators and explanatory models that assist policymakers to measure tourism and its impact on culture (Huan & Hsu 2008). After all, it is not accident that Honggen Xiao, one of the prominent voices in Hong Kong, wrote a tribute to Jafari which is entitled “Jafar Jafari: the platform builder”, published in 2013 at Anatolia. Doubtless, a whole portion of scholars who theorized on tourism and advanced considerable steps in these decades are not from Continental China, but they come from Hong Kong. They not only are heavily influenced its colonial past but also are well versed in English, the language of the far-flung overseas empire which ruled the island before passing to China. Returning to how Xiao understands Jafari’s account, the evolutionary account of tourism plays a leading role in explaining not only the research maturation but also Jafari’s engagement to grasp tourism. For Xiao, Jafari provides with an all-encompassing theory that describes the functionality of the different systems and subsystems within tourism industry.


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“Building on and extending this holistic approach, Jafar’s evolutionary account of advocacy, cautionary, adaptancy, knowledge-based, and public platforms has added texture and historical depth to our understanding of tourism in terms of policy, development, and industry practices. In particular, his elaboration of a “public platform” for tourism calls for “the formation of a badly needed public standing that will help it assume its legitimate position—side by side with other industries and institutions, in both local and global circles—and enjoy the support it deserves …” … Notably, his holistic approach and evolutionary account have in turn served as platforms for tourism education, research, and knowledge advancement. (Xiao, 2013: 292)

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Through the articulation of policies which were oriented to monitor the evolution of tourism, an argument that fits with tourism-management paradigm, Jafari evinces how tourism functions -this point adjusts exactly what Xiao thinks-. Though implicitly put it, understanding how tourism works lays as the precondition to know further on what tourism is. This instrumental viewpoint paves the ways for a concrete and specific way of defining tourism, which accompanied Chinese scholars during years. In a more than an interesting chapter, Zhang Guangrui (2003) explores critically the sociocultural foundations in China to accept a one-sided view of tourism blurring the borders between management and the critical turn. Owing to its diverse nature, an interdisciplinary call is necessary. As late-comer in the international arena, China enthusiastically embraced tourism as “an economic activity” whose interpretative models were determined by the “what to do premise”. The first experiences in research were given by the action of public institutions such as The Economic Development Research Centre under the auspices of CASS and CNTA. Since China situated as an economic power worldwide, tourism would serve as a strategically to contribute to GDP. The countrywide tourism increasing demand captivated the attention of professional fieldworkers who introduce the development theory as a chief model. In consequence, researchers involved rapidly not only in applied research but in concrete plans to mitigate the negative aftermaths of tourism. From 1995 onwards, diverse argumentations revolving around the costs and gains of tourism to promote the development

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of agrarian zones was of paramount importance in the dissemination of knowledge. The premise of development theory explains that tourism helps non-industrial towns in the poverty relief. Rural tourism gives an opportunity of local to abandon the state of pauperization at the time new lifestyles coming from modernity are widely adopted (Su, 2011; Bowden 2005; Zeng & Ryan 2012). As E. de Kadt (1984) observed, tourism serves as a mechanism towards development in those countries which have not shared a past of exploitation and political submission, which affected their democratic institutions. In other terms, tourism helps people in bettering their life. This ethical stance arrived not only to the specialized journals but conditioned the ways tourism was dealt by researchers. The development came across with serious problems at the time of being implanted in nondemocratic cultures. In this vein, Sofield & Li (1998) argue convincingly that Communism, after Mao’s revolution, was historically pitted against the commoditized form of heritage consumption as tourism or leisure activities. Particularly in China, hence, heritage tourism research went through paths unknown to other countries. The higher degree of internal inter-class polarization contrasted sharply with an expanding globalization which ushered China to a faster modernization. Not only moved by its ideology but by a totalitarian government, heritage was univocally packaged and disseminated to the nationwide silencing and pushing some complexities and dissident voices to the periphery. Unlike some western observers, who suggest Chinese culture remained static, Sofield and Li add, socialism fleshed out an “aesthetic” of politics which was enrooted in heritage while many other discrepancies in the ways this heritage is lived were covered. This begs the pungent question to what extent, tourism research -by the influence of Communism- derived a pro-status quo sociology which impeded the rise of a critical turn. Is communism conducive to forge a tourism-management perspective instead of accepting other theories? To address this above-noted point, Huang & Hsu (2008) review more than 500 papers published from 2000 to 2005. Though China became in an economic power and the destination for many segments, professional research remains in its infancy. In lieu of delving into critical aspects of tourism, one of the main topics chosen by researchers is attractiveness,


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resources for development and other derived themes. Tourism planning and development are key factors in the impulse and expansion of tourism education in China, as well as in many Asian nations. Rather than prioritizing quantitative-led methods, Chinese researchers often prefer qualitative orientations. Ultimately, Bao, Chen & Ma (2014) claim that the progress of China in tourism fields depended on the economic reform dated in 1978 wedded to an idiosyncratic opening to West. Today, the number of tourism institutions reaches 1.115 records while the tourism-career students are circa 599.880. Such a rapid expansion does not reflect in a fluid dialogue between Chinese scholars and colleagues in western cultures. The most influential theoretical frame coined by Chinese counterparts comes from former colonies as Hong Kong or from scholars living in English speaking cultures. Besides, the most important Chinese tourism journals cover themes associated with visitor or tourist behaviors, which is followed by marketing, destination and tourism planning. This is directly found as a result of the influence of western educational institutions, which developed an economiccentered paradigm exerting a heavily influence in tourism research in China. Tsang & Hsu (2011) publishes a seminal article entitled “thirty years of Research on Tourism and hospitality management in China”, at the prestigious journal Int. Journal of Hospitality Management. Per their outcomes, though tourism rose exponentially in last decades, colleagues and pundits are not familiarized with tourism research in China. A vast review of published material since 1978, authors accept that “consumer behavior” gained extreme popularity in academic careers and institutions as the main research topic. In parallel, instead of conducting solely authorship, Chinese are prone to associate with others in long lists of authors to place their works in top-ranked journals. As a promising power in Asia, China overrode the role of Japan in tourism graduating rates as well as an interlocutor with Western nations. Chinese researchers have been strategically placed as authoritative voices in many of the fields associated to management and marketing disciplines. Although the discussion around the limitations and challenges of China in a not-so-distant future sounds very interesting, the chief goal of this chapter goes in outlining the fragmentary nature of tourism research in

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China. We analyzed some caveats introduced at the time, the western ideals around development is borrowed from the United States and England. To wit, China developed an economic-matrix paradigm which inherited the long-lasting vices of English speaking nations, which include an obsession for developmental issues, the interest for tourism-management theories as well as a manifest impossibility to encourage a radical view on tourism. The question whether in Western cultures sociology played a leading role as the “watchdog” of the critical turn in tourism -not only emphasizing on its alienatory nature but also in the disrupting effects of modernization- in China the rise Communism impeded a more flexible theoretical platform to place tourism under the critical lens of scrutiny. At the time, sociology prevented from tourism to be a serious maturated discipline in the global West, China evinces the opposite paint. The political discrepancies between some scholars and the violations of human rights by Beijing administration soared. Still further, Professor Michael C. Hall resigned to his membership in the Academy for the Study of Tourism precisely in 2004 when Beijing was selected as a venue for a tourism meeting sponsored by IAST prior to the Olympic Games celebrations. Hall, in his site of Academia.edu, replied that China vulnerated many of the political rights of citizens and he of course never would accept a type of academic imperialism (for further details see https://canterbury-nz.academia.edu/CMichaelHall). This opens the doors for a new political discussion respecting to the political influence in the configuration of a global tourism-networking ethos. Aside from the polemic, what is clear is that China adopted many of the limitations unresolved in tourism research, such as the epistemological crisis of an Academy that does not dialogue with the rest of academicians, the adoption of English as the only ruling language, and finally a much complex state of fragmentation which unfortunately impeded the formation of a steady framework to professionalize tourism research worldwide.

CONCLUSION

The adoption of research in China follows aesthetic parameters oriented to mimicry the western state of tourism but with focus on measuring instead


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of explaining. Henceforth, citations impact captivates the attention of many scholars in China as the main criterion of scientific status. To put this in bluntly, echoing Anglo-readers who prioritize citations over others criteria, Chinese scholars are seduced to think the maturation of tourism depends on the number of citations the specialized top-ranked journals have in other important sociological magazines (Xiao & Smith, 2006). Precisely the same ideological discourse that led Anglo-Saxons to the academic disaster, in China prevails. In former decades some voices emphasized on the number of publications as a precondition towards the maturation of the discipline. Today, such a notion sets the pace to the citation impact factor. At the bottom, one of the most troubling aspects of tourism research, which is oriented to economic-based model, seems to be the obsession with measuring rather than explaining the facts. However, this represents a deepseated issue which deserves further investigation. Neither the increasing size of publications nor the citation factor corrects the original vices of tourism research that has resulted in the lack of a clear epistemology to overcome the critiques of other disciplines; unless by the introduction of a critical approach China is doomed to repeat the involuntary errors of Tourism Academy.

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Coles, T., Hall, C. M., & Duval, D. T. (2006). Tourism and post-disciplinary enquiry. Current Issues in Tourism, 9(4-5), 293-319. Dann, G. M. (2011). Anglophone hegemony in tourism studies today. Enlightening Tourism. A Pathmaking Journal, 1(1), 1-30. De Kadt, E. J., (1984). Tourism: passport to development?: perspectives on the social and cultural effects of tourism in developing countries(No. 338.4 KAD). New York, UNESCO. Du, J. (2003). Reforms and development of higher tourism education in China. Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 3(1), 103-113. Echtner, C. M., & Jamal, T. B. (1997). The disciplinary dilemma of tourism studies. Annals of tourism research, 24(4), 868-883. Gibson, C. (2009). Geographies of tourism: critical research on capitalism and local livelihoods. Progress in Human Geography, 33(4), 527-534. Guangrui, Z. (2003). Tourism research in China. Tourism in China, Lew A, Yu L, Ap J and Z Guangrui (eds). London, Routledge, pp 67-82. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2001). Empire. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Higgins-Desbiolles, F. (2006). More than an “industry”: The forgotten power of tourism as a social force. Tourism management, 27(6), 11921208. Huang, S., & Hsu, C. H. (2008). Recent tourism and hospitality research in China. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, 9(3), 267-287. Jafari, J. (1990). Research and scholarship: the basis of tourism education. Journal of tourism studies, 1(1), 33-41. Jafari, J. (2001). The scientification of tourism. In Hosts and guests revisited: Tourism issues of the 21st century, Smith V.L & Brent M, Elmsford, Cognizant, pp. 28-41. Jafari, J., & Ritchie, J. B. (1981). Toward a framework for tourism education: Problems and prospects. Annals of tourism research, 8(1), 13-34. Kevan, S. M. (1993). Quests for cures: a history of tourism for climate and health. International journal of biometeorology, 37(3), 113-124.


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Korstanje, M. (2007). The Origin and meaning of Tourism: an ethimologycal study. E-Review of Tourism Resarch, 5(5), 100-108. Korstanje, M., & Busby, G. (2010). Understanding the bible as the roots of physical displacement: the origin of tourism. E-Review of Tourism Research, 8(3): 95-111. Korstanje, M. E., & George, B. P. (2015). The media or the message? An examination of myths as resources to understand the tourism phenomenon. International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 4(2), 122-141. Korstanje, M. E., Mustelier, L. C., & Herrera, S. (2016). Understanding the indiscipline of tourism: A radical critique to the current. Global dynamics in travel, tourism, and hospitality, 208. Korstanje, M., & Seraphin, H. (2017). Revisiting the Sociology of Consumption in Tourism. In Routledge Handbook of Consumer Behaviour in Tourism and Hospitality. K Dixit (ed). Abingdon, Routledge, pp. 16-25. Krippendorf, J. (1982). Holiday makers. Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann. MacCannell, D. (1973). Staged authenticity: Arrangements of social space in tourist settings. American journal of Sociology, 79(3), 589-603. MacCannell, D. (1976). The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class. Berkeley, University of California Press. MacCannell, D. (2001). Tourist agency. Tourist studies, 1(1), 23-37. Meethan, K. (2001). Tourism in global society: Place, culture, consumption. Basingstoke, Palgrave. Montironi, N (2016). Sociology of Tourism and leisure time. Buenos Aires, Editorial Autores Argentinos. Lam, T., & Xiao, H. (2000). Challenges and constraints of hospitality and tourism education in China. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 12(5), 291-295. Leiper, N. (1983). An etymology of “tourism”. Annals of tourism research, 10(2), 277-280. Pearce, D. G., & Butler, R. W. (Eds.). (1993). Tourism research: Critiques and challenges. London, Taylor & Francis.

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Ryan, C. (1991). Tourism and marketing—a symbiotic relationship?. Tourism Management, 12(2), 101-111. Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and imperialism. New York, Knopf. Sofield, T. H., & Li, F. M. S. (1998). Tourism development and cultural policies in China. Annals of tourism research, 25(2), 362-392. Su, B. (2011). Rural tourism in China. Tourism Management, 32(6), 14381441. Thirkettle, A., & Korstanje, M. E. (2013). Creating a new epistemiology for tourism and hospitality disciplines. International Journal of Qualitative Research in Services, 1(1), 13-34. Tribe, J. (1997). The indiscipline of tourism. Annals of tourism research, 24(3), 638-657. Tribe, J. (2009). Philosophical issues in tourism. Bristol, Channel View Publications. Tribe, J. (2010). Tribes, territories and networks in the tourism academy. Annals of tourism research, 37(1), 7-33. Towner, J., & Wall, G. (1991). History and tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 18(1), 71-84. Tsang, N. K., & Hsu, C. H. (2011). Thirty years of research on tourism and hospitality management in China: A review and analysis of journal publications. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 30(4), 886-896. Tzanelli, R. (2004). Constructing the ‘cinematic tourist’ The ‘sign industry’of The Lord of the Rings. Tourist studies, 4(1), 21-42. Uriely, N. (1997). Theories of modern and postmodern tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 24(4), 982-985. Urry, J. (1992a). The tourist gaze “revisited”. American Behavioral Scientist, 36(2), 172-186. Urry, J. (1992b). The Tourist Gaze and the Environment'. Theory, Culture & Society, 9(3), 1-26. Urry, J., & Larsen, J. (2011). The tourist gaze 3.0. Sage. Walton, J. K. (1997). Review Articles: Taking the History of Tourism Seriously. European History Quarterly, 27(4), 563-571.


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Xiao, H. (2000). China’s tourism education into the 21st century. Annals of Tourism Research, 27(4), 1052-1055. Xiao, H. (2013). Jafar Jafari: the platform builder. Anatolia, 24(2), 288-296. Xiao, H., & Smith, S. L. (2006). The making of tourism research: Insights from a social sciences journal. Annals of Tourism Research, 33(2), 490507. Xin, S., Tribe, J., & Chambers, D. (2013). Conceptual research in tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 41, 66-88. Zeng, B., & Ryan, C. (2012). Assisting the poor in China through tourism development: A review of research. Tourism Management, 33(2), 239248. Zhang, W., & Fan, X. (2006). Tourism higher education in China: Past and present, opportunities and challenges. Journal of teaching in travel & tourism, 5(1-2), 117-135.

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CROSS-CULTURAL COMPETENCE AS A BASIS OF THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF THE UNITED STATES IN MEDICAL TOURISM Babu George1, and Tony L. Henthorne2 1

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ABSTRACT

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This chapter is an attempt to extend the construct of cross cultural competence into the domain of medical tourism. One of the bases of competitive advantage in international medical tourism is cross cultural competence. While medical treatment in the U.S. is inherently expensive, cross cultural competence could act as a compensating lever. The U.S. hospitals employ a racially and ethnically diverse workforce, many of whom are recent migrants from different parts of the world. This makes overseas patients feel “at home” while they are admitted for treatment in



Corresponding address: [email protected].

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the US hospitals. The authors provide a theoretical basis for further development of this debate.

Keywords: competitive advantage, cross-cultural competence, medical tourism, United States

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Previous assessments of the national competence of the United States in the medical tourism field have been centered primarily on the cost of treatment (George & Henthorne, 2010; Korstanje, & George & Henthorne, 2009; George, 2014; Lor & George, 2014). The present study attempts to refocus the debate on national medical tourism competence to the hitherto neglected dimension of cross-cultural competence, i.e., the capacity of a system and its constituent components to interact effectively with systems and people of culturally diverse backgrounds. Multiple studies have documented that cross-cultural competence is a key expectation that patients have of any healthcare system. This is true even in the case of patients utilizing telemedicine (George, 2008; George & Henthorne, 2009) or even for cultural minorities within a country (Henthorne, Salgaonkar, & George, 2009). The United States is an amalgam of a wide range of migrant cultures (Fearson, 2003; George & Shyamsundar, 2008). The U.S. health care system employs a more socio-economically and culturally diverse set of human resources than anywhere else in the world and its processes are deliberately designed, built to be culturally sensitive (Lor & George, 2014). A system’s richness of cross-cultural capital coupled its unparalleled technological robustness, availability of a myriad of touristic opportunities, and the presence of world class amenities, should have established the U.S. as one of the most sought after medical tourism destinations in the world. Yet, this is not the case. While it is quite understandable why the U.S. is not the choice destination of the most cost conscious medical tourists, it is clear why quality sensitive medical tourists with complex medical needs often overlook the U.S. for services.

Cross-Cultural Competence …

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The change in perspective discussed in this paper helps deflect debate to the failures in leveraging competitive advantage rather than the criticism that the system is inherently incompetent. The role of transnational health care alliances and strategic outsourcing as a cost cutting option, as well as enriching the cross-cultural competence of the system, is ripe for discussion.

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COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN MEDICAL TOURISM

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Michael Porter (1990) exhorted that national prosperity is a function of the capacity of its industries to innovate and upgrade rather than that of natural endowments contained therein and that challenges faced by a nation are drivers rather than impedimenta to its competitive advantage. He added that differences in national values, culture, economic structures, institutions, and histories facilitate a nation’s competitive success. Yet, he desisted from classifying any of these elements as naturally endowed resources. Porter stressed the word ‘industries’ and noted that no nation can hope to be a leader in more than a handful of industries. Porter’s counter-classical view was a revolution in thinking and became very influential within a short span of time. Analysis of competitive advantage based on the notions developed by Porter, however, has become somewhat problematic in the evolving business climate of the 21st century. For instance, Porter did not adequately anticipate the dynamic changes resulting from revolutions in technology. The allpervading presence of technology has grossly transformed products and service information goods. It is not that the five forces identified by Porter have become less important, rather these forces have become unpredictable and unclassifiable. In highly networked economies, clear demarcations do not exist and longer term predictability has become impossible. Despite these limitations, Porter’s “Diamond of National Competitive Advantage” model still remains one of the best analytical tools to assess the competitive advantage of nations.

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The four corners of Porter’s diamond (factor conditions, demand conditions, strategy, structure, and rivalry; and related and supporting industries) also define the medical tourism industry’s environment. Let us see briefly how each of these relates to medical tourism: Factor conditions: This refers to labor supply and infrastructure and how these are leveraged for competitive advantage by the medical tourism industry. In terms of the quality of labor supply and infrastructure, the U.S. has one of the highest rankings in the world. The weakness resides in the matter of quantity – insufficient quantity results in longer waiting times, higher prices and is a key reason for outbound medical tourism from the U.S. Demand conditions: This refers to the nature of demand for the products generated by the medical tourism industry. A significant and sustaining domestic demand, according to Porter, is the key to success. Beyond question, sustainability is assured by ample domestic demand for the existing health care system. Due to a variety of reasons, however, demand conditions are not favorable to inbound medical tourism. Strategy, structure, and rivalry: This refers to the regulatory conditions within which the medical tourism industry and businesses within it operate (their ‘degrees of freedom’ of operation), the strategic positioning of the industry, and the extent of competition among businesses within the industry. Currently, medical tourism is not a major focus of U.S. clinics. Tactics and operational plans have been developed but not to a sufficient degree to attract inbound medical tourism. Due to sufficient domestic demand, most hospitals have adopted a callous attitude towards medical tourism. Regulatory conditions are evolving slowly (eg. health insurance providers are beginning to include a medical tourism option in the policy coverage). Related and supporting industries: This refers to the advantages the medical tourism industry enjoys when it coexists in geographical proximity with related and competent industries that broadly contribute to its value chain. The basis of competitive advantage of a nation in a particular industry might reside in one or a few of the above dimensions (Porter, 1988). For instance, highly trained and patient-friendly clinical staff could be the basis


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of competitive advantage in medical tourism for one country (factor conditions) while regulations that permit the use of certain novel techniques for treatment might be the basis of competitive advantage for another country (strategy, structure, and rivalry). Other bases of competitive advantage might include inimitability, customizability, innovation, brand equity, product quality, low cost, differentiability, etc. To make a more comprehensive definition, Porter subsequently introduced into the diamond the role of governments as well as chance events, which are equally relevant in medical tourism.

CROSS-CULTURAL COMPETENCE AND MEDICAL TOURISM ADVANTAGE

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Linkages between culture and competitive advantage have been extensively studied (Hall, 1993; Meehan, Gadiesh, & Hori, 2006; Fiol, 1991; Barney, 1986). Most studies reviewed herein viewed culture as either a national or organizational entity. Only a few definitions characterized culture in terms of cultural diversity and the resulting competence. However, there are studies in general agreement that differences in cultural values impact competitive advantage (Cox & Blake, 1991). The traditional view of competence in medicine as a ‘detached mastery’ of technical knowledge is a huge challenge standing in the way of respectfully delivering health care to increasingly diverse populations (Tervalon & Murray-García 1998). Cultural competence in health care refers to the ongoing process in which the health care provider continuously strives to effectively work within the cultural context of the client. It is the intersection or common ground between cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skill, cultural encounters, and cultural desire (Campinha-Bacote, 2002). In the present study, cross-cultural competence represents the next level of this process: i.e., the service provider strives to work within the cultural contexts of diverse clientele groups and cater to those whose needs are culture-bound in some significant way. Essentially, it lends a meta-cognitive aspect to culture.

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In addition to cross-cultural knowledge and skills, sensitivity to the norms of other cultures is a significant component in cross-cultural competence. Abbe, Gulick, & Herman (2007) conceived cross-cultural competence / intercultural competence as being closely related to language proficiency and regional expertise. Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity embraces two major phases in the development of cultural sensitivity in an individual – a progressive movement from the ethnocentric stage to the ethno-relative stage (Bennett, 1993). Initially, cultural competence emerged as a strategy to address racial-ethnic disparities in domestic health care in the U.S. Increased cultural competence was presumed to eliminate socio-cultural barriers to care (Betancourt et al., 2003). Cross cultural competence is a factor condition. It could also be an element of strategy. From a strategic perspective, it is in the interest of the medical tourism businesses to strengthen, highlight, and leverage the benefits a cross-culturally competent health care system would provide. Cultural competence can reduce the cost of transactions and promote more enduring relationships. It can also enhance a country’s attractiveness for an additional inflow of superior talent (doctors, biomedical engineers, bio scientists, nurses, etc.) from overseas. Cultural diversity is known to result in creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. These are important bases of competitive advantage. In summary, cross-cultural competency adds value to strategy, regardless of choice of strategic alternative (cost leadership, differentiation, or focus). As previously noted, the U.S. enjoys one of the most culturally competent healthcare systems in the world. Its problem isn’t the absence of cross-cultural resources, but their leveraging.

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How do you leverage cross-cultural competence? Continuing research informs us that strategic networking among the players who make medical tourism possible is a key way to leverage competitive advantage associated


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with cross-cultural competence. A majority of the research found that hospitals networking with other hospitals, especially in other countries, and encouraging interaction among the staff have developed better cross-cultural understandings about patients and systemic differences. Successful partnership entails imparting cultural training to all the partners. Assuredly, there is a gap between ‘culture as implicit belief’ and ‘culture as explicit behavior’ (Fiol, 1991). Even those cultures that believe in their potential to deliver culturally sensitive patient care might fail to deliver. Training interventions oriented to attitudinal change are vital in addressing this discrepancy. A neglected dimension in cross-cultural competence is minimizing the culture shock that patients face when they visit a foreign hospital for treatment, by means of activities and other interventions. Initial consultations mediated by telemedicine technologies is an avenue for gradually introducing the foreign culture (George & Henthorne, 2009). Some hospitals and facilitators in the present research have shown video presentations and given multiple briefings to their patients before their actual journey to the foreign health care provider. Many facilitators suggest that if the type of illness permits, patients and those accompanying them, complete at least one short sightseeing trip before hospitalization. In this way, cultural assimilation becomes a more tacit process. All said, none of the U.S. based medial tourist oriented hospitals in this survey highlighted their crosscultural strengths in promotional materials.

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CONCLUSION

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The present paper highlighted the importance of cross-cultural competence as an important basis of sustained competitive advantage in medical tourism. It has also touched upon the ways to build and foster crosscultural competence, including transnational partnerships, cultural immersion programs, and cross-cultural training. However, since crosscultural competence is sufficiently available as a factor condition within the

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U.S. culture, the immediate question is how to find ways to leverage it from its dormant state. Leveraging cross-cultural competence is important not only for medical tourism but also for better care for the culturally diverse domestic population living within the U.S. (Lavizzo-Mourey, & Mackenzie, 1996). Miller (1994) stressed that there are several alternative types of interpersonal moralities that reflect the meaning systems emphasized in different cultural groups, two of the most dominant types being individually oriented morality and duty-bound morality. In her view, the American ideal of health care is slanted towards individually oriented morality that stresses personal freedom of choice and individual responsibility. It is conspicuous for the lack of social control or socially enforced interpersonal obligations. More examination is required to assess how this cultural characteristic of the system impacts its overall cultural competence. This was an exploratory level qualitative analysis and researchers who aim is to advance this study should attend to such nuances. Finally, in the larger perspective, cultural competence is only a hygiene factor (Herzberg, 1968); the central motivational factor is the quality of core health care. Competitive advantage through cultural competence is limited to the extent of maintaining such quality of care and is constrained by how far one can hold competitors from mimicking such competence. In a positive vein, even as the world is becoming increasingly homogenized in terms of intellectual capital, cultural capital remains greatly inimitable.

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Hall, R. (1993). A framework linking intangible resources and capabiliites to sustainable competitive advantage. Strategic management journal, 14(8), 607–618. Henthorne, T. L., Salgaonkar, P. B., and George, B. P. (2009). External recommendations versus internal satisfaction in health care: A case study in India. Health Marketing Quarterly, 26(3), 241-249. Herzberg, F. (1968). One more time: How do you motivate employees? Harvard Business Review, 40(1), 53-62. Korstanje, M. E., & George, B. (2014). Health Cover, The Case of Martin and Carolina In Australia. Revista de turism-studii si cercetari in turism, (17), 8-14. Lavizzo-Mourey, R., & Mackenzie, E. R. (1996). Cultural Competence: Essential Measurements of Quality for Managed Care Organizations. Annals of Internal Medicine, 124(10), 919–921. doi:10.7326/00034819-124-10-199605150-00010. Lor, P. H., & George, B. P. (2014). An appreciative inquiry into the healthcare concerns of the elder Hmong women living in Alaska, USA. Journal of Rural and Community Development, 9(3), 337-347. Meehan, P., Gadiesh, O., & Hori, S. (2006). Culture as competitive advantage. Leader to Leader, 2006(39), 55–61. Miller, J. G. (1994). Cultural Diversity in the Morality of Caring: Individually Oriented Versus Duty-Based Interpersonal Moral Codes. Cross-Cultural Research, 28(1), 3–39. doi:10.1177/106939719402 800101. Porter, M. E. (1990). The Competitive Advantage of Nations. New York: Free Press. Tervalon, M., & Murray-García, J. (1998). Cultural Humility Versus Cultural Competence: A Critical Distinction in Defining Physician Training Outcomes in Multicultural Education. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 9(2), 117–125.doi:10.1353/hpu.2010. 0233.

In c. he rs

INDEX

alienation, 24, 30, 112, 115 anthropologists, 20, 22, 24, 108, 117 anthropology, x, xii, 4, 11, 14, 15, 22, 39, 40, 43, 46, 49, 66, 68, 105, 147, 187 Argentina, ix, 1, 19, 49, 171 articulation, xi, xiii, 5, 41, 52, 63, 88, 143, 174, 178, 181 Asia, 16, 98, 140, 171, 172, 174, 180, 183, 185 Asia tourism, 172 assessment, 27, 66, 72, 89, 133 atmosphere, xiii, 29, 39, 134 attitudes, 62, 70 attraction, 105, 109, 112, 114, 115, 116, 117, 150, 152, 153, 159 authenticity, 20, 24, 25, 30, 32, 34, 41, 43, 105, 116, 161, 166, 187 authority(ies), xi, 28, 29, 34, 40, 50, 56, 57, 61, 142, 155, 168 automobiles, 92 autonomy, 23, 90 awareness, 132, 133, 135, 195

is

#

Pu bl

20th century, 11 21st century, xiii, 151, 186, 189, 193 9/11, 68

A

N

ov

a

abuse, 53, 59, 62, 63, 65 accommodation, 87, 90, 91, 140 adaptation, 7, 37, 132, 153, 159 advocacy, 173, 176, 181 aesthetic, 12, 24, 33, 46, 168, 170, 182, 184 Africa, 25, 50, 60 age, 10, 44, 64, 108, 120, 123 airports, 52, 64, 91, 159 Alaska, 140, 200 alcohol, vii, xii, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70 alcohol abuse, 50, 58 alcohol consumption, xii, 49, 50, 51, 58, 66 alcohol dependence, 67 alcohol use, 68, 69, 70 alcoholism, 62, 64, 66, 68, 69

Index B

N

ov

a

Pu bl

is

he rs

backlash, 100 backwardness, 38 backwaters, 170 Barbados, 75 barriers, 31, 59, 63, 95, 173, 196 base, v, 11, 12, 142, 167 beer, xii, 49 behaviors, 183 Beijing, 115, 184 beneficiaries, 153 benefits, xiii, 4, 23, 28, 29, 32, 61, 64, 84, 135, 153, 175, 196 benign, 16 beverages, 64 bias, 22 bible, 187 Bible, 15 bilateral, 92 biodiversity, 90, 107 birds, 132, 141 Blakeley Model, 72, 85, 94, 95, 96, 102 blind spot, 76, 85, 94, 95, 96, 98 boils, 133 Brazil, 147 Britain, 103 Bulgaria, 44 bullying, 7 business management, 76 business model, 44 businesses, 36, 97, 126, 155, 157, 158, 194, 196 buyer, 109 buyers, 25

cancer, 67 candidates, 119 capitalism, xiii, xiv, 9, 20, 21, 25, 27, 29, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 43, 45, 46, 53, 59, 106, 121, 123, 186 Caribbean, 72, 73, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 88, 91, 92, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103 Caribbean Islands, 103 case studies, 88, 94 case study, 73, 76, 84, 88, 89, 102, 146, 200 cases of ecotourism in Russia, 130 cash, 152 casinos, 91 categorization, 131 cattle, 10 Caucasus, 139 causality, 2 certification, 142 challenges, 77, 131, 155, 179, 183, 187, 189, 193 chaos, 27 Chicago, 42, 44, 136 childhood, 161 children, 61, 141, 161, 162, 172 China, viii, xiii, 151, 163, 170, 171, 172, 174, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189 chronic illness, 59 cinema of attractions, 150, 158, 163, 167 circulation, 32 cities, 10, 31, 33, 34, 41, 42, 45, 61, 73, 100, 103, 108, 116, 122, 153, 155, 160 citizens, xi, 5, 31, 34, 35, 36, 40, 55, 56, 62, 77, 92, 173, 175, 184 citizenship, 56 civilization, 23, 50, 116, 172 clarity, 23, 31, 136 class struggle, 26 classes, 21, 25, 27, 28, 29, 32, 51, 53, 65, 124 classical economics, 109

In c.

202

C

caliber, 37 campaigns, 52, 130, 134, 172

Index

In c.

configuration, 49, 136, 184 conflict, 11, 27, 30, 31, 33, 38, 43, 61, 72, 89, 97 Congress, iv congruence, 146 connectivity, 159, 160 consciousness, 95, 113, 117 consensus, 11, 94 conservation, 101, 107, 133, 135, 142, 144, 163 conserving, 115 consolidation, 4 construction, 1, 12, 78, 155, 156, 159 consumers, 5, 12, 20, 21, 28, 57, 78, 118, 138 consumption, xi, xii, 5, 6, 11, 16, 21, 25, 26, 28, 31, 34, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 50, 51, 53, 58, 62, 63, 65, 66, 69, 70, 75, 92, 103, 114, 117, 125, 126, 132, 134, 139, 143, 151, 153, 154, 156, 162, 164, 169, 182, 187 consumption patterns, 69, 92, 126 content analysis, 133 Continental, 180 contingency, 33 contradiction, 24 controversial, 124, 131 cooking, 32 cooperation, 27, 63, 143 correlation, 107 corrosion, 45 cosmopolitanism, 33 cost, 34, 37, 107, 122, 192, 193, 195, 196 cost leadership, 196 Costa Rica, 131, 146 covering, 41 creative, vii, xi, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 125, 126, 151, 153, 155, 157, 165, 168 creative potential, 30

N

ov

a

Pu bl

is

he rs

classification, 10, 114, 130, 137 climate, xiii, 7, 20, 24, 30, 40, 42, 50, 165, 177, 186, 193 climate change, xiii, 7, 42, 165 climates, 6 cloning, 151 coffee, 36, 67 cognition, 33 cognitive dissonance, 100 cognitive system, 2 collaboration, 149 collateral, 125 collusion, 156 colonial order, 22 colonialism, 19, 20, 22, 134 colonization, 24, 165 color, iv, 80, 85 commercial, xi, 58, 69 commodities, 20, 25, 109 commodity, 21, 25, 26, 121, 122, 168, 176 communication, 79, 101 communication technologies, 101 communism, 182 Communist Party, 69 communities, 7, 20, 32, 40, 51, 70, 142, 158 community, 7, 33, 34, 52, 54, 72, 78, 90, 97, 108, 113, 124, 134, 135, 146, 156, 179 comparative analysis, 84, 101, 103, 199 competition, xii, 29, 37, 150, 157, 158, 194 competitive advantage, viii, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200 competitiveness, 72, 74, 76, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 98, 99, 101, 104, 167 competitors, 72, 74, 78, 89, 198 complement, 158 complexity, 3, 8, 13, 15, 24, 42, 104, 152, 167 comprehension, 9, 138 conception, 5, 35, 106, 117, 158 conceptual model, 87, 88, 132 conceptualization, 161

203

Index D

damages, iv dance, 30, 91 danger, 37, 122 Darwinism, 29, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43 decay, 116 decentralization, 35 decision-making process, 135, 164 deficiencies, 134 deficit, 97, 158 degradation, 117 democracy, 40, 45, 106 democratization, 135 deposits, 27 depression, 7 depth, 53, 131, 181 destination, 5, 21, 30, 34, 44, 60, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 97, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105, 111, 157, 182, 192 destinations, x, xii, 6, 7, 20, 31, 50, 72, 73, 76, 77, 80, 83, 86, 89, 91, 92, 97, 98, 104, 109, 115, 130, 131, 132, 135, 136, 139, 143, 176, 178, 192 destruction, xi, 45, 61, 122 developed nations, 130, 157 developing countries, 186 development, xiii, 11, 20, 28, 31, 32, 40, 44, 45, 70, 73, 76, 77, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 97, 101, 102, 104, 106, 130, 132, 133, 138, 141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 150, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 164, 165, 169, 170, 172, 181, 183, 184, 186, 188, 189, 192, 196, 200 deviant behaviour, 52 dialogues, 54 dichotomy, 176 dignity, 60, 124 direct observation, 10 directionality, 162

N

ov

a

Pu bl

is

he rs

creative tourism, xi, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46 creativity, 19, 21, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, 154, 158, 169, 196 criminal acts, 24 crises, 33 crisis, 3, 11, 19, 25, 28, 32, 34, 37, 39, 40, 46, 133, 179 criticism, 7, 21, 27, 36, 105, 152, 153, 178, 193 Croatia, 43 cross-cultural competence, viii, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197 cruelty, 22, 24 crystallization, 27 CSR, 85 CTO, 74, 77, 81, 82, 83 Cuba, vii, xii, 19, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103 cues, 96 cultivation, 60, 116, 172 cultural differences, 36 cultural heritage, 78 cultural tourism, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 30, 31, 36, 41, 43, 166 cultural values, xi, 24, 49, 52, 195 culture, vii, 5, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 54, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 68, 69, 91, 94, 95, 110, 116, 117, 126, 132, 135, 145, 146, 147, 154, 158, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 175, 180, 182, 183, 187, 188, 193, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200 cures, 186 currency, 29 curriculum, 120 customers, 65, 79, 80, 84, 118 cycles, 52, 156

In c.

204

Index

he rs

In c.

economic reform, 183 economic resources, 173 economics, 105, 108, 151 ecotourism, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147 eco-tourism, xii eco-tourism, 129 eco-tourism, 133 eco-tourism, 134 eco-tourism, 136 eco-tourism, 144 Ecotourism, 130, 131, 136, 138, 144, 145, 146, 147 ecotourism classification, 130 Ecuador, 131 editors, 45, 174 education, xiv, 15, 84, 93, 135, 173, 181, 183, 186, 187, 189 educational opportunities, 135 educational practices, 170 egalitarianism, 37, 64 elaboration, 181 embargo, 28, 72, 74, 75, 77 employees, 90, 91, 200 employment, 125, 139, 155 employment growth, 139 empowerment, 117, 135 endangered, 107 endowments, 193 enemies, 26 energy, 11 engineering, xii, 12 England, 71, 161, 184 entrepreneurship, 91, 97, 196 envinroment, 134 environment, xiii, 10, 14, 34, 65, 78, 95, 96, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 143, 145, 146, 152, 156, 159, 160, 162, 164, 165, 188, 194 environmental change, 95

Pu bl

is

disappointment, 96 disaster, 72, 89, 97, 185 discrimination, 23, 41, 125 disorder, 27, 58, 67 dispersion, ix, xiii, 3, 7, 14, 177 displacement, 114, 175, 187 disposition, 7, 27 dissatisfaction, 199 dissociation, 2, 178 dissonance, 178 distress, 28, 29 divergence, 36 diversity, 107, 195, 196 division of labor, 107, 123 doctors, 196 domestic demand, 194 domestic economy, 173 Dominican Republic, 73, 82, 83 drawing, 96 dream, 13, 97 drinking pattern, 68 drinking patterns, 68 drought, 61 drugs, 50, 70 dumping, 73

205

E

N

ov

a

East Asia, 160 echoing, 185 eco-colonialism, 130, 134 ecology, xiii, 132, 135, 146, 152, 165 economic activity, 72, 132, 135, 181 economic change, 46 economic crisis, 19, 46 economic development, 139 economic growth, 130 economic performance, 84 economic policy, 92 economic power, 171, 172, 176, 181, 182 economic powers, 172, 176

Index exurban tourism, 149, 150, 158

F

facilitators, 197 factory, 115 factual knowledge, 119 families, 153, 157, 162 fantasy, 64 fear, 96 fears, 50 fertility, 52 field of movement, 150, 161, 162 films, 38 filters, 162 financial, 23, 31, 34, 64, 134, 135 Finland, 139 fires, 61 fishing, 137 flaws, 34 flexibility, 63 flora, 140 flora and fauna, 140 fluid, 24, 31, 32, 173, 183 food, 52, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 123 force, 2, 22, 28, 33, 36, 106, 186 foreign investment, 91 foreign language, 179 formation, 7, 27, 45, 108, 141, 143, 177, 178, 181, 184 forms and types of ecotourism, 130 foundations, v, xi, 12, 14, 63, 122, 132, 171, 174, 175, 177, 181 fragmentation, ix, x, xi, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 24, 28, 130, 177, 184 framing, 58 France, 50, 67, 160 freedom, 85, 169, 194, 198 freedom of choice, 198 Freud, 13 friendship, 50, 52, 58

N

ov

a

Pu bl

is

he rs

environmental degradation, 39 environmental impact, 133 environmental resources, 20 environmental sustainability, 135 environmentalism, 150, 161 environments, 30, 136, 153, 163 epistemological crisis, ix, xii, 8, 13, 172, 184 epistemology, ix, x, 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 17, 171, 173, 174, 177, 178, 185 equality, 64 equilibrium, 92 equipment, 91 equity, 152, 161, 195 ethics, 42, 52, 133, 161 ethnicity, 25, 37 ethnocentrism, 22, 38, 54 ethnographers, 22, 61 Europe, 22, 37, 40, 41, 59, 60, 73, 99, 150, 158, 170 European market, 81 european paternalism, 23 European Paternalism, 40 European Union, 165 evaporation, 115 everyday life, 106, 162 evidence, xii, 8, 64, 84, 97, 124, 125 evolution, ix, 10, 40, 81, 83, 86, 106, 167, 174, 176, 181 exclusion, 39 exile, 56 experience, v, viii, xii, 9, 12, 14, 17, 25, 30, 46, 60, 64, 65, 73, 74, 83, 95, 96, 109, 110, 118, 119, 120, 121, 129, 130, 140, 143, 151, 152, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 169, 185, 199 expertise, 154, 196 exploitation, 24, 29, 36, 37, 39, 64, 78, 107, 132, 134, 136, 182 exposure, 95 extinction, 107

In c.

206

Index

is

Pu bl

H

he rs

G geography, x, 4, 14, 167 Germany, 115, 139 global demand, 136 global economy, 165 global scale, 107 global village, 107 globalization, 10, 46, 58, 106, 175, 182 governments, 7, 132, 195 graduate students, 178 growth, ix, xiii, 1, 3, 136, 155, 157, 173, 174 guest-host encounter, 50 guidelines, 132, 161 guilty, 55, 113

history, 5, 17, 24, 30, 41, 73, 92, 106, 111, 115, 116, 126, 156, 161, 175, 176, 186 Hong Kong, 172, 180, 183 hospitality, vii, xii, 7, 17, 32, 41, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 84, 100, 103, 113, 114, 146, 159, 170, 172, 183, 186, 187, 188, 199 hospitalization, 197 host, xii, 20, 30, 49, 50, 53, 54, 55, 57, 60, 65, 68, 69, 78 hostility, 6, 33, 52, 56, 57, 68 hotel, 57, 65, 77, 84, 91, 102, 140 human, 11, 22, 26, 30, 37, 41, 65, 66, 91, 95, 96, 100, 120, 121, 123, 126, 131, 132, 135, 136, 140, 151, 155, 156, 159, 161, 162, 184, 192 human activity, 132 human behavior, 11 human body, 162 human capital, 91 human condition, 97 human experience, 161 human resources, 37, 151, 192 human right, 135, 184 Hunter, 100 hunting, 137 hybrid, 33 hygiene, 107, 123, 198 hypothesis, 180

In c.

full capacity, 92 funding, 139, 152 fusion, 34, 156, 158

207

N

ov

a

habitat, 123, 142 Haiti, 74, 80, 85, 89, 96, 97, 101, 102, 103 health, 64, 84, 91, 101, 108, 186, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200 health care, 91, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200 health care system, 91, 192, 194, 196 health insurance, 194 hedonism, 20 hegemony, x, 23, 25, 31, 41, 105, 186 heritage, xii, 31, 35, 41, 43, 45, 46, 49, 58, 73, 78, 102, 137, 139, 156, 157, 163, 182 hermeneutics, 2, 108 heterogeneity, 143 higher education, 171, 172, 189 highway system, 91

I

ideals, 22, 37, 40, 84, 174, 184, 198 identification, 96, 112 identity, 33, 36, 41, 54, 78, 79, 80, 167, 199 ideology, 26, 124, 149, 165, 182 idiosyncratic, 80, 183 illusion, 26 image, 33, 69, 97, 100, 143, 163, 172 imagery, 147, 199

Index J Jamaica, 74, 82 Japan, 67, 160, 167, 183 job creation, 176 journalism, 12 journalists, 65 jumping, 149

he rs

images, 74, 163 imagination, 33, 39, 44, 46, 156 immigrants, 56, 112 impact assessment, 100 imperialism, 23, 145, 172, 184, 188 income, 23, 26, 38, 50, 73, 135, 152 increased competition, 107 indiscipline of tourism, ix, xiii, xiv, 7, 9, 13, 17, 173, 174, 187, 188 individual perception, 2 individualism, 25, 28, 39, 64 industrial revolution, 13, 175 industrial transformation, 63 industrialized societies, 53 industry, x, xiii, 1, 4, 6, 7, 13, 31, 46, 53, 58, 61, 67, 73, 76, 77, 85, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 101, 102, 103, 111, 113, 127, 131, 132, 133, 154, 160, 165, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 180, 181, 186, 188, 194 inferences, 10, 108 information processing, 95 infrastructure, 90, 135, 194 inner world, 163 insomnia, 28, 29, 64 institutions, 25, 40, 53, 54, 106, 123, 181, 183, 193 integrity, 60, 61 intellectual capital, 198 intentionality, 116, 162 international investment, 173 investment, 25, 34, 77, 151, 152 investors, 33, 135 irrealism, 150, 160, 161 islands, 25, 59, 72, 74, 89, 140, 160 issues, 14, 34, 45, 54, 67, 70, 78, 97, 156, 158, 163, 184, 186, 188 Italy, 67, 73, 151

In c.

208

K

N

ov

a

Pu bl

is

Kenya, 97, 103, 131 kill, 60 kinship, 69 knowledge, v, ix, x, xiii, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 26, 32, 54, 92, 96, 106, 108, 116, 117, 119, 120, 130, 136, 154, 172, 173, 176, 177, 181, 182, 185, 195, 196 Korstanje, v, vii, viii, ix, xiii, 1, 4, 5, 6, 13, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 29, 35, 38, 39, 43, 46, 50, 59, 60, 62, 68, 97, 108, 127, 138, 144, 146, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 187, 188, 192, 200 Kuhn, Thomas, 113 Kuril Islands, 139

L

labor force, 63, 109 labor relations, 115 landscapes, 5, 24, 27, 30, 50, 60, 77, 132, 140, 152, 156, 160, 180 language barrier, 79 language proficiency, 196 languages, 54, 179 later leisure, 125 Latin America, 146, 173 Latinos, 41 laws, 2, 9, 10, 55, 57, 58, 60, 178 lead, xiii, 25, 31, 97, 130, 135, 162

Index

In c.

matrix, 21, 184 matter, 56, 113, 116, 130, 194 Mauritius, 71, 97, 100, 103, 129 McDonaldization, 150, 153, 163, 169 meaning systems, 198 media, 50, 163, 187 medical, xiii, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199 medical tourism, xiii, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199 medicine, xiii, 10, 195 membership, 184 memory, 33, 170 mental representation, 95 mergers, 156, 165 Merleau-Ponty, 2, 16 methodology, 14, 76, 88, 133 methods, iv, xi, 3, 9, 76, 83, 87, 100, 174, 178, 183 Mexico, v, 115, 145 migrants, xiii, 57, 59, 65, 191, 199 migration, 52, 55, 63 mimicry, 174, 184 minorities, 122, 124, 125, 126, 192 mission, 77, 116 misunderstanding, 61 models, 51, 75, 86, 98, 133, 138, 142, 161, 180, 181 modern capitalism, 21 modern economies, 21 modern society, 121, 122, 131 modernity, vii, 5, 6, 12, 31, 35, 42, 43, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 121, 122, 123, 126, 166, 167, 175, 182 modernization, 115, 182, 184 modifications, 165 morality, 52, 124, 198 mother tongue, 138 motivation, v, 129, 137

Pu bl

is

he rs

leadership, 72, 75, 83, 90 learned helplessness, 95 learning, 32, 42, 94, 95, 96, 100 Leeds, viii, xiii, 19, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168 leisure, xi, xii, xiii, 5, 6, 16, 20, 21, 27, 28, 29, 43, 46, 49, 59, 63, 64, 66, 70, 108, 109, 110, 112, 115, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 134, 136, 149, 150, 151, 154, 156, 158, 160, 163, 164, 172, 175, 182, 185, 187 leisure time, 126, 187 lens, x, 21, 149, 179, 184 liberalisation, 91 life expectancy, 107 life satisfaction, 162 lifestyle, 98, 134, 151, 172 living conditions, 28, 40 local community, 73, 134 localization, 165

209

M

N

ov

a

MacCannell, 4, 5, 6, 16, 20, 36, 43, 44, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 121, 122, 126, 127, 128, 175, 176, 187 majority, 173, 175, 197 management, v, x, 6, 8, 12, 21, 45, 75, 84, 87, 90, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 133, 142, 145, 170, 176, 179, 181, 183, 184, 186, 188, 198, 199, 200 marketing, v, xii, 21, 28, 33, 67, 74, 85, 99, 100, 101, 105, 130, 134, 136, 142, 160, 176, 178, 183, 188 marketing strategy, 142 Marx, Karl, 25, 44, 69, 124 mass, 11, 24, 51, 63, 65, 78, 108, 122, 125, 137, 143, 151 material resources, 39

Index

N

P

Pacific, 68, 98, 185 parallel, 22, 132, 171, 183 parents, xi, 28, 40, 175, 177, 180 participants, 29, 38, 39, 135, 163 paternalism, 22, 23, 24 pathways, 28, 165 performance, x, xii, 6, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 84, 93, 97, 102, 103, 115, 178 phantasmagoria, 150 phenomenology, 2, 9 plants, 140, 141, 150 platform, 4, 6, 13, 15, 32, 37, 173, 176, 180, 181, 184, 189 pleasure, 13, 51, 120, 162 policy, 6, 20, 25, 28, 45, 51, 84, 90, 92, 131, 134, 143, 153, 160, 165, 167, 181, 194 policy makers, 6, 20, 25, 51, 134, 143 policymakers, 130, 180 politics, 16, 35, 42, 84, 182 pollution, 107, 156, 164 population, 67, 91, 93, 107, 135, 150, 168, 198 postmodernism, ix, 167 postmodernity, 9, 14, 15, 112, 117 poverty, 7, 11, 23, 24, 38, 95, 111, 182 preservation, 98, 131, 152 prestige, 64, 122, 124, 152, 158 principles, 12, 72, 132, 133, 135, 139, 163 profit, 31, 32, 122, 130, 136, 174, 178 project, x, xiii, 9, 20, 38, 139, 151, 153, 159 prosperity, 22, 37, 52, 193 protected areas, 156, 164 protection, xii, 19, 51, 56, 62, 78, 135 psychological well-being, 118 psychology, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 35 public health, 107 public life, 38 public service, 115 Puerto Rico, 71, 74

he rs

Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), xii, 72, 76, 83, 85, 93, 97 multiculturalism, 32 multi-ethnic, 63 multi-ethnicity, 63 multiplication, 64, 173 multiplier effect, 78 museums, 24, 116, 157 music, 74, 91, 125, 166 myopia, 138, 174

Pu bl

is

narcissism, 6, 44 national parks, 136, 138 nations, 24, 32, 39, 54, 59, 130, 132, 134, 157, 158, 173, 174, 183, 184, 193 native species, 136 natural appearance, 141 natural disaster, 61, 90 natural disasters, 61, 90 natural resources, 107, 134, 142, 152 nature conservation, 133, 134, 139, 142, 147 negative effects, 34, 37, 51, 107, 174, 176 neglect, 16, 130 neoliberalism, 150, 165 networking, 152, 184, 196 new lifestyles, 182 non-renewable resources, 31, 40

O

a

objectivity, 26, 178 obstacles, 32, 60, 153 online advertising, 158 opportunities, 29, 33, 35, 38, 91, 126, 131, 135, 142, 149, 151, 155, 157, 164, 165, 189, 192 otherness, 22, 40, 59, 61

ov

N

In c.

210

Index

rewards, 34 rhetoric, 55, 134 rights, 55, 56, 184 risk perception, 53, 62 risk(s), x, xii, 3, 7, 28, 29, 34, 35, 49, 50, 60, 62, 63, 64, 73, 107, 134, 142, 153, 162, 164, 166 roots, x, xii, 3, 6, 14, 35, 39, 43, 63, 115, 144, 176, 187 routines, 162 rules, 27, 50, 52, 56, 65, 114, 152 rural areas, 116 Russia, xii, 129, 130, 138, 140, 143

In c.

Q

211

qualitative research, 88 quality of life, 73 questioning, 149

R

he rs

racism, 31, 35, 59 rationality, 2, 27, 40, 114, 122, 123 reactions, xiii, 153 reading, v, x, 111, 166 realism, 160, 161 reality, 64, 67, 75, 95, 115, 122, 147, 160, 161, 176 reciprocity, 55, 56, 61, 63 recognition, 8, 79, 101, 114, 151, 173, 176 recommendations, iv, 32, 72, 76, 144, 200 recreation, 108, 155 recreational, 126, 136 regulations, 164, 195 rejection, 10, 111, 121, 122 reproduction, 45, 177 reputation, 37, 101 research, ix, x, 1, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 22, 26, 41, 66, 72, 75, 76, 80, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 94, 98, 124, 125, 130, 134, 138, 147, 164, 170, 171, 174, 176, 177, 178, 180, 181, 182, 184, 186, 188, 189, 196, 197 reserves, 136, 138 resilience, 152, 161 resistance, 23, 46, 64, 94 resources, 4, 7, 21, 22, 27, 28, 29, 31, 33, 35, 36, 41, 44, 52, 74, 84, 87, 90, 91, 96, 98, 132, 134, 142, 163, 164, 183, 187, 193, 196, 200 response, 95, 155 restaurants, 90, 153 restrictions, 118 restructuring, 155

S

N

ov

a

Pu bl

is

scarcity, 19, 20, 37, 40 scholarship, x, xiv, 4, 15, 117, 173, 174, 186 school, 5, 8, 10, 150, 175, 178 science, xii, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, 19, 26, 108, 116, 168, 172, 177 scientific knowledge, 26, 117, 136 scientific theory, 133 security, 29, 35, 37, 51, 53, 62, 64, 67 sedative, 50, 64 selective memory, 35 self-confidence, 95, 96 self-control, 65 self-destruction, 27, 115 self-employment, 155 self-esteem, 94 self-identity, 167 senses, 23, 56, 57 sensitivity, 116, 196, 199 service organization, 153 service provider, 195 services, iv, 1, 13, 78, 87, 92, 113, 114, 118, 132, 133, 143, 155, 159, 163, 192 set theory, 84 settlements, 142 sexism, 35

Index stability, 60, 133 stakeholders, 29, 85, 135, 142, 153 standard deviation, 81 state, v, 3, 4, 10, 12, 23, 26, 27, 29, 36, 37, 38, 39, 46, 51, 53, 62, 63, 65, 91, 98, 106, 129, 130, 133, 136, 147, 172, 182, 184, 198 state enterprises, 91 stereotypes, 3, 5, 23, 26, 31, 178 stock, 22, 25, 28, 115 stock exchange, 115 strategic position, 194 stratification, 106 stress, 159, 173 stretching, 169 structuralism, 105 structure, xiii, 26, 86, 117, 151, 194, 195 style, 63, 121, 162 subgroups, 27 subjective well-being, 168 surveillance, 164 survival, 29, 38 sustainability, xiii, 31, 73, 129, 135, 136, 143, 149, 150, 151, 154, 159, 161, 163, 164, 166, 194 sustainable development, xiii, 89, 130, 132, 133, 152 sustainable growth, 156 sustainable tourism, xii, 78, 100, 101, 130, 144, 145 symbolism, 21, 122, 159 symptoms, 22, 39 system analysis, 85

N

ov

a

Pu bl

is

he rs

sexuality, 44, 120 signals, x, 13, 27, 31, 51, 136, 149, 179 signs, 21, 36, 43, 44, 109, 115, 117, 136, 168 simulations, 160 slavery, 97, 124 social behavior, 44, 116 social capital, 32 social change, 7 social construct, 35 social control, 59, 198 social institutions, 13 social interaction, 152 social life, 110, 169 social order, 9, 27, 56 social problems, 125 social psychology, 16 social reality, 12 social relations, 36, 115, 121 social science(s), v, 1, 10, 11, 37, 105, 178, 189 social skills, 162 social theory, 152 socialism, 45, 92, 122, 182 socialization, 63, 153 society, xi, xii, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 16, 22, 27, 28, 34, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 56, 62, 78, 106, 110, 121, 124, 125, 126, 131, 169, 179, 187 sociology, x, 4, 5, 10, 11, 14, 40, 105, 109, 114, 174, 182, 184 solidarity, 63, 64 solution, xiii, 5, 21, 28, 35, 37, 45, 84, 96, 139, 169 Spain, xii, 73, 105, 107, 151 specialists, 3, 33, 50, 53, 62, 134, 175, 176, 180 specialization, 142 species, 37, 132, 136, 150, 161 speculation, 11, 61 spending, 73, 122, 126

In c.

212

T TACIS, 139 tactics, 21, 37 target, 51, 79 taxes, 23, 73, 90 taxonomy, 150

Index

In c.

training, 90, 91, 93, 197 transdiciplinarity, 1 transdisciplinary, vii, 1 transformation, 26, 46, 69 transport, 113, 163 transportation, 87 travels, 5, 6, 50, 59, 61, 172 treatment, xiii, 57, 99, 108, 114, 191, 192, 195, 197 types of ecotourism, 137

he rs

teachers, 113 techniques, 75, 88, 154, 163, 195 technologies, 30, 35, 164, 197 technology, 34, 36, 42, 116, 193 territory, 10, 35, 58, 67, 133, 134, 140, 176 terrorism, 24, 59, 68 terrorist attack, 51, 115 that tourism, ix, xii, 3, 4, 12, 73, 75, 77, 87, 108, 111, 117, 175, 182 theme park, 111, 149, 150, 151, 154, 156, 159, 160, 163, 165, 168, 170 Third World, 66, 130, 134, 144 threats, x, 53, 131, 142 time-frame, 57 tobacco, 67, 115 tobacco smoking, 67 tourism, v, vii, viii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 55, 58, 59, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 85, 86, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 122, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199 research, v, viii, x, xii, xiv, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 15, 16, 17, 28, 46, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 86, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 113, 114, 132, 144, 146, 147, 166, 167, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189 tourismification, 150, 154, 169 trade, 26, 40, 59, 72, 74, 77, 103

213

U

N

ov

a

Pu bl

is

UNESCO, 73, 103, 139, 186 unions, 175 United Kingdom (UK), viii, xiii, 19, 44, 49, 69, 73, 81, 102, 129, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 157, 158, 160, 165, 168, 199 United Nations, 130 United States of America (U.S.A), viii, 45, 59, 63, 75, 77, 92, 160, 172, 184, 191, 192, 199, 200 universities, 1, 171, 173 urban, 31, 34, 45, 106, 108, 115, 136, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 165, 170 urban areas, 155 urban life, 115, 151, 153

V

vacuum, 24 Vargas Llosa, 116, 128 variables, 9, 10, 80, 87, 88 vehicles, 25, 40, 141 vein, 2, 31, 130, 171, 182, 198 venue, 154, 184 violence, 6, 24, 50, 52, 53, 56, 59, 61, 63, 69, 122 vision, 9, 117, 152, 166

Index W

Y Yale University, 68, 169 yield, 37, 79 young adults, 70 young people, 66, 119

N

ov

a

Pu bl

is

he rs

war, 9, 24, 29, 124 waste disposal, 123 weakness, 22, 194 wealth, 23, 36, 37, 41, 107, 122 welfare, 36, 149, 157 well-being, 87, 97, 151, 157, 158, 162, 163, 164, 168 wildlife, 132, 136, 138, 141 wonder, 85, 164 work, 7, 10, 28, 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 42, 45, 54, 63, 64, 75, 106, 108, 110, 111, 112,

113, 114, 115, 116, 119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 133, 152, 195 workers, 20, 26, 29, 35, 63, 64, 124, 125, 178 workforce, 26, 36, 40, 52, 191 worldwide, xii, 23, 36, 49, 173, 181, 184

In c.

214