Anthropology and Tourism Industry
The phenomenon of tourism dates back to the sixteenth century as a customary for education of the sons of the aristocracy to be completed by a 'Grand Tour' in order to educate and refine themselves in the affairs of the Western World (Towner,1996, cited in Newmeyer, 2008, p5). According to Reid (2003), the tourism industry has appeared to satisfy individuals’ needs influenced by the globalization. Reid defines globalization as a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations; a process driven by and and aided by . This process has effects on the , on , on political systems, on and prosperity, and on in societies around the world.
Referring to anthropology, Nash (1996) states that the first attempt of an anthropologist of introducing the subject of tourism in the anthropology context was made by Nuñez in 1963. However, Nash and Smith (1991) say that the anthropological interest in tourism has been manifested only since 1970’s as an important area of inquiry, because of an anthropological concern with culture contact and culture change.
Smith (1980, p17) adds:
‘‘The study of tourism needs to gain more insight into the details of human lives, values and emotions as they pertain to the use of leisure time, the motivations for travel, the interpersonal conflicts that impact social interaction, the local traditions that will direct tourism to specific markets, and host reactions to outsiders’’.
Some anthropologists such as Durkheim (1915 cited in Burns, 1999) and Gennep (1908, cited in Burns, 1999) compare tourism as a sacred journey. Selwyn (1990) describes tourism as a sacred journey, comparing this activity with the totemic religion of the Australian aborigines who used totems (images of animals or plants, often carved or painted on wood or stone) to symbolize their clans. Selwyn (1990) discusses three ways in which anthropology is similar to religion: the seek to experience a sense of solidarity or togetherness by tourists (contrasting the image of near-naked tourists enjoying themselves together on a beach with the loneliness of work), the preparations for going on holiday (which resemble rites of passage in which people feel the closeness of being in a transitional state) and the fact that some touristic sites seems to be totemic (they are thought or felt by tourists to represent ‘symbolic centres’ e.g.: Eiffel Tower). The basic idea of the author is that tourists are looking for experiences which are in some respects similar to ‘religious’ experiences.
The touristic destination can have more or less impacts to the destination visited depending of the type of tourists who will visit it. Smith (1989) mentions that the tourist trade does not have to be culturally damaging because many tourists wants to forsake the ‘tourist bubble’ and look for chances to meet local people and their traditions. This type of tourists is known as backpackers or explorer tourists, people who ‘‘would witness and experience true culture, not some resort-show pastiche’’ by living with the local people (Perry 2001, p1). On the other hand, the mass tourist class (tourists who are more interested in a safe trip and usually contract package holidays by a travel agency) demands more amenities for their own benefits such as hotels, restaurants or souvenir shops, causing negative impacts in the visited destiny which normally are beaches and coast areas (e.g.: the Spanish coasts of Costa Brava and Costa del Sol) (Gonzalez, 2010).
It is also true that the tourism industry is growing by leaps and bounds as appreciated in the study ‘Tourism Vision 2020’ by the World Tourism Organization (1998), forecasts of expectations for the year 2020 in international tourism, will reach 1561 million people moving and travelling throughout the world as tourists. This figure will probably not be reached if we consider the economic situation of many emitter countries that are economically stagnant or in recession.
One of the main issues of tourism is the fact that this activity has been practised around the four corners of the earth. Cohen (2005) states that tourism is giving rise to contradictory trends: on one hand, a post-modern decline but in which something different is being sought and, on the other, a mix of tourism and exploration which is driving new tourists to explore places never visited before such as the space or the Antarctic. In the case of the space, Crouch et al. (2009) say that space stations and hotels are planning to be constructed in order to satisfy consumer’s needs, furthermore new airlines companies such as Virgin Galaxy or Space Adventures have already started sending tourists to the space, right now space tourism’s impacts do not really concern to us, but in future this type of new travelling will have negative impacts even if different worlds never explored by the humanity before. With reference to Antarctic tourism, Ward (2001, p.1) states that:
‘‘Tour operators are beginning to tap a huge and ever increasing demand to visit the Earth's last great wilderness. Both science and tourism have the potential to damage the very qualities that draw them to Antarctica’’.
Times (2007) adds that due to the tourism activity, 200 alien species to South Georgia were introduced in the Antarctica.
Tourism’s environmental impacts have been analysed above, however author will consider another type of impacts which has a lot of relevance for anthropologists specialized on tourism: the social and cultural change. Burns (1999, p102) says that there are no cultures that remain static and unchanged over time and that this cultural change is induced by two processes:
‘‘internal by evolution through invention, driven by necessities or capitalism; and external through changes forced by outside economic, political, environmental and cultural influences’’
MacCanell (1999), states that the tourists were leaving modern societies in order to find something authentic as a new experience, but often it is also hard for them to know if their experience is in fact authentic. Gonzalez (2010, p4) suggests that this fact is ‘‘an attempt to experience a few days of a reality that is hardly possible in everyday life and work’’.
Smith (1989, p47) states:
‘‘In the tourist area the consequences of tourism derive from the introduction from outside of a new sociocultural reality’’
Smith wants to explain with this statement that some native people must adapt their social systems to the desires of the tourists if they want to develop their tourism and as a consequence their economy. Examples of changes are: the creation of accessibility for tourists, the introduction of European meals in local restaurants or the recreation of local festivities or dances in specific places constructed for the tourism sector.
McLeods (2004, cited in Reisinger (2009, p22) believes that tourism and globalization destroy socio-cultural identity of the host community and its native values, traditions and ways of life. He states that everything that initially attracted tourism (landscapes, peacefulness or isolation) is gradually eroded by tourism developers (tourist resorts, apartments or commercial centres). As a consequence of this fact ‘‘locals becoming alienated from their natural and local surrounding… e.g.: tourists go fishing in ‘real’ fishing boats while fishermen work in supermarket and locals eat ‘local’ dishes in modern restaurants while watching themselves performing traditional dances in promotional videos’’.
MacCanell (1999) identifies two types of regions occurring during the tourism between hosts and guests:
-The back region: which is where the real life of the community is carried out and authentic culture is maintained
-The front region: which is where the commercial and modified performances are offered to the tourists and the area where the tourist try to get beyond in order to find the authenticity.
This division into front and back supports the popular beliefs regarding the relationship of truth to intimacy. MacCanell agrees with Smith (1989) mentioning that the tourism industry has created a ‘false back’ regions to satisfy tourist needs (e.g.: the Spanish flamenco shows which are very different of the real gipsy environment).
Another consequence which is related with the tourism industry and the phenomenon of the globalization is defined by Reisinger (2009, p19) as cultural hybridization:
‘‘Cultural hybridization implies the incorporation of cultural elements from a variety of sources within particular cultural practices’’.
This new form of culture has appeared because of the increment of the interconnections between people and places, e.g.: The Mc Donald’s chain in Moscow mixes an American fast-food restaurant into a Russian Market.
A similar process is mentioned by Burns (1999), this process is called acculturation, and it is an exchange process of ideas and products between two societies. However this process is not balanced because one of the two cultures is usually stronger and dominates the weaker one into something of a mirror image, changing some aspects of it. Burns also talk about culture-brokers, people who are involved in the acculturation process; they are mediators who are able to control or even manipulate local culture just for tourists’ purposes.
This complex phenomenon of tourism, composed by different activities gained the attention of anthology’s experts
Nash and Smith (1991) say that almost every nation seeks development capital and employment to support a growing population, seek that usually generates social change. In order to solve this problem, some academic studies are directed towards the study of the role of tourism in regional development. Crick (1989, cited in Salazar, 2006) adds that the majority of those academic studies are unidirectional, e.g.: academics who adopt a framework of political economy tend to say that metropolitan corporations and market conditions determinate the pace and shape of tourism development of the entire world, and that local factors just play peripheral roles in the process of tourism. However, Milne (1998, cited in Salazar, 2006) says that little by little the annalists are giving more attention to the roles that the factors and local agencies can play in the global processes mediating. At this point is where the anthropologists from all around the world analyse the tourism due to the fact that it is a broad activity which differs from other disciplines (Nash, 1996); and the perception, conceptualization and analysis of the cultures and societies (Salazar, 2006) . Nash also says that (1991, p84):
‘‘Anthropologists have tended to see tourism transactions as involving significant power differences in favour of the more developed tourist generating centres’’
Smith (1980) also states that the study of tourism needs to get more information about the details of humans’ lives, motivations of travel the social interaction, the host reactions to the outsiders or the local traditions that will direct tourism to specific markets.
Conclusions
To sum up, Anthropology of Tourism is one of these "new specialities" of academic studies. Since anthropology focuses on the study of human behaviour and relationships between cultures, there is no doubt that tourism is now seen as an element of human culture, which is to say that it is a part of some way of life and its context; a phenomenon that continually makes contact to groups of different origins and between hosts and guests of the different destinations, creating sometimes false scenes or ‘back regions’ of local customs in order to satisfy the desires of tourists who want to experience an ‘authentic’ situation in their lives. In addition, tourism has come to transform the lives of many peoples across the globe: Small Pacific Islands, Caribbean areas, or different parts of the Mediterranean have come to radically transform their economies and societies in order to adapt and take advantage of tourism and tourists who demands Western amenities across remote and native areas in the worldwide. The Anthropology of Tourism aims to study those processes of transformation and cultural impacts that tourism has generated about societies at a particular time in history which have become touristic destinations, reason that explains why the anthropology is relevant to the business of tourism. Therefore, the role of anthropology as a social science in understanding the human being and the different societies in which it is organized can be decisive.
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