maccannell_ dean (2001) remarks on the commodification of cultures

8/13/2019 MacCannell_ Dean (2001) Remarks on the Commodification of Cultures

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Remarks on theommodif ication of ultures

Dean Mac annel l

Much of my work is about the tourisc attraction and the motivation to leavehome, to experience otherness . I have tried to describe the 'ways Western institutions of modern mass tourism produce, and attempt to satisfy, the need for o therness. \Vhat appears before us is the spectacle of the great success of tourism toestablish itself wor ldwide , a spectacle in vvhich w e all have bit parts. But thissuccess is also accompanied by a feeling of loss of the sense of discovery andadventure that one might have experienced traveling before everything was laidout in advance by the travel indus t ry

There have been many changes in formerly remote places as a result of theirhaving become popular lourist destinations. Can tourism (or anthropology forthat matter) ever ovcrcome the awkward and difficult quality of cross-culturalunderstanding in settings that are organized for tourist visits ' And there are real,not just philosophical, pl'oblems of authenticity' Can faraway places be experienced as authentic or natural when they are constructed, artificial habitats madeentirely for tourists to visit '

A culture of tourism has emerged on a global base, with the same hotels and theSimilar theme parks at every major destina.tion. Students who came late to tourismresearch call the same cultur l complex postm.odernity.The key characteristic ofthe culture of tourism is that every place on Earth is theoretically a desUnationand every tourist destination bcgins to resemble every other destination and thattourist destinations increasingly resemble bom.e the place where the touristsare frorn.A question that emerges from this eVOlution is whether tourisnl itself, inits drive to homogenize the travel experience and the destination, will eventuallydestroy the reason to t ravd

Tourism, Whet],.er we are the tourist or the host, profoundly influences the waysw e define place Joreignness and ourselves. Tourism beg -n as an acknowledgment,perhaps even a ce [ebration, of an almost s cred connection between peoples, places,and their symbols: Switzerland and its Alps, Africa and its animals, Egypt and its

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1 Remarks on the ommodif icat ion of ultures 381Pyramids, London and its Bridge,Japan and l\-lount Fuji It will bec()me e ' -ldent tInttOllrism has ended up as something quite different.Why Leave ome

There are t Wo quite different reasons for trying to get away from it all. Sometourists leay: home for the purpose of doing notbing or having a good time,playing vvith vacation friends, relaXing in the hot springs, lying on the beach, being entertained. For some, to he a tourist can mean a week at a nearby low-budgetvacation camp, while for others it involves a distant quest for exotic nature Orcultures and the kind of travel undertaken by explorers. These latter may shun thenight life and the beaCh, undertaking visits to shrines, remote villages, and naturalmonuments, ult imately turning their vacation into a kind of work, perhaps morerigorolls than their actual work.The different varieties of tourist experience maybe correlated with the social class of the tourist, but money is not an absolutelydetermining factor. Hitchhiking s tudents from the '-Vest, with very little money,seek exotic experiences on every continenLThey have made hippie a word tha tappears in almost all the world's languages. .

- 'hat the two types of touris t (recreational vs. explorer) have m common IS theyfeel they must undertake their quest for otherness or for pleasure, away irom homeThe common denominator of tourism in all its forms is that it constitutes a breakfrom the daily distractions and responsibilities of home and work. Ideally, when thetourists are away from home and in the presence of tlie attraction, certain valuesand pleasures become a kind of total experience. This could be a sense ofabsolute freedom from care and utter relaxation on a perfect beach in tbe SouthPacific. It could be a release from ordinary social constraints at a weekend holidaymoteL It might be a near loss of self in a remote peasant village where ancientcultural traditions are still followed precisely. Perhaps it is a feeling of sublime aweat the site of a former natural or historic catastrophe or miracle-gazing upon MountFuji for the first time, or the Egyptian pyramids, for example. Such magical experiences are bracketed by the tour. They are ritually separated from everyday eXlst-ence.They are heightened moments . One goes only to return home. . .

But tourism today does not resemble the first tr ips organized by the Bntlshinventor of guided tours, Thomas Cook. The earl iest organized tours reduced thcuncertainty of travel, but the early tourists were exposed to hardships and riskssimilar to those faced by explorers and mountaineers. There areslr ik ing images ojwomen on the first Cook'sTour to Switzerland, in long skirts, Clown on their handsand knees, crOSSing glaCial crevices bridged by narroW wooden boards These images stand in sharp contrast to the motor coach s lowdown at an Alpine viewpointwi th through-the-window-only photo opportunities.

In the early days of packaged tourism, getting the -e was as much a pan of theexperience of spiritual displacement as arrival at the destination Tile tourist couldfeel the undulations of the sea or the mountain path, experience the changes IIItemperature, hear and smell sharply etched local sensations en route Progress t o ~ward a destination was a series of arrivals and departures, each constltlltlllg Itself,{Oa distinct experience. Even the nlOde of conveyance-s team railway, sailing ship,horse-dra n omnibus, r ickshaw was integral to the succession of differences one

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felt each step away from home.Today, any sense of t ravers ing space, especial ly spaCethat is marked by local distinction,is almost absent from the travel experience.Travelby air and highspeed motorways is marked mainly by the passage of t ime and thedroning of engines part ially m asked by a music system. The experiences one hasgoing between any two points on the face of the Earth are increasingly similar. Theydo not resemble earlier travel so much as they reproduce the experience of sittingin hospital waiting rooms. Now it is possible to travel around the world withoutleaving a globally unified protective envelop in which ticketing, banking, hotels,restaurants. airport lounges, shopping areas, tour buses , and the planes themselvesare utterly uniform. Only superficial decorat ive applique seeks to remind the tourist.of former local specificity: "This used to be Tahiti, or Kansas."

As travel becomes increasingly homogeneous and generic , the tourists, for theirpart, become nostalgic for any travel experience that might be claSSified as real Orauthentic.Thus, a second order of tourism is built on the first, a kind of antitourism,which promises real as opposed to touris t experiences. Tour com pany entrepreneurs provide fly-and-walk trips to the North Pole, opportunity to re trace Darwin'stravels in the Galapagos, Cannibal Tours up the Sepik River in New Guinea,ecotourism in the Yucatan, visits to Yurts in Outer Mongolia.

Even in these exotic destinations, it is still necessary to question the oppositiontraveler versus tourist . \ 'Vhen t he tourist is in an" exotic" place, the consequencesof a bus or a plane not showing up on time may be more interes ting. The touristmight have to spend the night sleeping outdoors rather than s taying in an inferiorstopover hotel or trying to nap in an airport lounge. But the facrremains that evenin the most exotic destinations, the itinerary has been worked out in advance, andthe local arrangements, however crude these may be, have been nlade by the touroperators. The villagers en route know in advance that the tourists are coming andhave prepared for them. The tourists may take a turn on the back of an ostr ich oran elephant, but mainly they ride in four-wheel-drive vehicles . Wealthy ecotouristsfrom the US vis i t ing Central America in search of unspoiled nature,authenticpri1J2itives, and undiscovered archaeological s i tes famously arrive in leather upholstered,air-conditioned Land Rovers with concert hall-quality stereo systems. This k ind ofadventuresome t ravel increaSingly resembles s taying at home f lipping throughthe p"ges of a magazine, or rock climbing tethered from above on the plywoodcliffs ;: a sporting goods shop.

7rauel, in the sense of adventure and discovery, implies selecting one's ownrOllte, using the Same modes of transportation as used by the local people , andworhng out one 's eating and sleeping arrangements on the Spot ra ther than inadvance As such, it is no,y very rare. W'hen it does Occur, the traveler on everycontine1ll is iikely to trip across and fall into grooves already well worn by tourists.The traveler would be hard-pressed to find a place anywhere in the world thatis not already set up in advance to accommodate him. In San FranCiSCO, touristsride real cable cars, not just the cute little rubber tired copies of cable cars usedby the sightseeing companies; not jus t the touris t cable cars . In Switzerland, tourists are once again conveyed to the entrance of th.eir hotel in a horse-drawn omnibus.And in Virtual Reality, the touris t no "'"'3er watches passively as Luke Skyvlalkerdefends the universe; he takes over the controls of the Millennium FalCon anddefends the uniuerse himself.

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Is t Possible to Experience OthernessWhile on Tour?

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The worldwide distr ibution of images of local places, peoples, and monum entsonce supplied much of the motive for touristic travel. The first contact a touristhad with a destination was not the place itself but with a story about it in a magazine or encyclopedia, its picture on a calendar, a colorful brochure obtained at atravel agency, or perhaps an in.formational movie travelogue or video. The proliferation of touristic imagery was great even before tJ e information age. CharlesDickens, in what appears to be hyperbole , makes a factual observation: "There is,probably, not a famous picture Or sta tue in all Italy, but could easily be buriedunder a mountain of printed paper devoted to disserta tions on it" Pictures FromItaly). Having seen a picture or read an account of the Egyptian pyramids, theS'wiss Alps,Japanese pearl divers, the Northern Lights, etc., one 'Would want to goto see for himself or herself.

This has always been the kernel of the touristic motive to t ravel the desire tobe where I am not . The motive is conditional in that it does not involve a permanent removal from one 's everyday life. It is only a temporary change premised onthe assumption of a safe re turn home.The motive may be sta ted as a simple desireto experience other peop-les' ways of life, to see a famous attraction or monumentfor oneself, to discover if a beach lives up to the claims that have been made for it.But at least in the West, there is also an element cf desire to become identifiedwith the paradoxical combination of remoteness, inacceSSibility, mysteriousness .and fame of the site. The act of touristic travel begins 'With an image, a dream, or amemory in which the tourist places himself or herself at an attraction. The actualexperience at the attraction is a different ,natter altogether.

Any thought one might have enter ta ined about getting to kno . .. the life of thenative peoples as it is actually lived, 01' discovering for oneself the: actual feelingsand textures of a falnous s tone ~ v l l or monUInent , or becoming identified \- liththe remoteness and mystery of the place, quickly give ,yay to the realizatiop thatthe dominant e lement in every tourist landscape are the tourists The others onemeets in tourist settings are other wurists and local workers whose job it is toserve tourists. The primary exp erience will not be of the place so much as it willbe a collection of often insensitive and off-thepoint reactions to the place ex pressed by one 's tello,y tourists. and forced con,iviality-forhire of touris t serviceworkers. Each tourist goes to the destination wanting :0 see it as a picture-perkctimage of itself; a perfect picture just like the one in the t ravel agency but D ) Wwith n in it. They come away with the realization that literally thousands ofother tourists have preceded them With a similar dream and millions more willfollow. Even the most remote attractions, the unspOiled highland villages of primitive peoples, accessible only to those who are willing to ,valk for several days, areentirely organized around their function as an attraction.Tourism Changes i ts Destinat ions

The past 150 years can be characterized as a period during 'Which the characterof the destination has changed radically.The changes that have occurred go well


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beyond the construct ion of hotels, airports, and restaurants to accommoda te tourists. Loca traditions are modified to make them more attractive to tourists. Religious observances are transformed into tourist spectacles. For example, the crocodile ritual performed for tourists by the Iatmul people of the Sepik region in NewGuinea has been shortened from 3 days to under 45 minutes, and performed notannually, but upon the arrival of the cruise ship.Wherever tourists are found, thereIS an emergent culture of tourism made from fragments of the local cultures thattourism destroyed.

Ae obvious effect of this evolution has been to infuse tourist destinations withanxIety-Each destination des,)erately attempts to mark and market itself as havingdlst1l1ctlOn, an identity. \Vhat occurs is not local specificity, but countless varia,t ions 011 the theme of generic locality a kind of stressful existence that might becalled "trying to be distinctive for tourists." Even places with great former distinct ion feel the need to remake themselves according to the tourist formula. In the\Vest, historic leaders and folk heroes reappear as cartoon figures; a version of aFrench meal is served at McDonald's in Paris; someone wearing a Beefeater costume hands out informational brochures in London. Every other dav or week is setaside to engage tourists in a celebration of "historic" or "mythic" events of littlecurrent interest t< local people .

There is a chancteris t ie transformatio, of places where the local and the globalare linked through tourism. First, a place of work, for example, a beach wheresmall fishing boats were hauled out, nets repaired, today's successes and failuresdiscussed and tomorro'w's activities planned, becomes a work display for tourists.The entire scene becomes an object of touristic consumption to be taken in as anexample of the picturesque with a message: work is natural; work is beautiful;Work is picturesque. Perhaps some famous people , or beautiful people members

of the international elite leisure class, discover the unspoiled beach village. Afterinitial contact bet\Veen the tourists and the locals it is no longer necessary for anyfishing or associated activities to take place, so long as some of the boats , nets, andfishermen remain photogeGically arrayed as a reminder of their former purpose.Eventually, the picturesque elements are selectively integrated into the decorat ion of the beach bars and diSCOS, which will retain a traditional seafaring theme.A place of \Vork becomes a place of enter ta inment. The f ishermen, or their children, are no'w integrated into the global economy as service workers for internat ional tourists. Every-where local practices and traditions are hollo\.vecl out thus tomake a place for this ne\V kind of work.The Culture of Tourism Is ecoming World Culture

The erosion of the specificity of tourist destinations in favor of a homogeneousculture of tourism is the result of the transformation of local economies as described above and also of the movement and displacement of millions of naturalhistorical and cultural obje cts, including the things that tourists once had to travelto see. t is no longer a Hutter of remOVing and assembling representative examples of artifacts and practices of diverse other peoples in museums of e thnology Entire human habita ts are now constructed from actual and inugined mementos of otherness. ,Vith the possible , :xception of deep wilderness and a few

Remarks on the ommodification of ultures 385

precious rel igious shrines, every tourist a ttraction now meets the tourist morethan halfway.The attractions are on tour.

This phenomenon begins, but does not stop, with the ",Vorld Tour" of the entourage and elaborate stage settings of international rock-and-roll superstars, or the"Treasures of Ancient Egypt." t extends to entire habita ts for tourists. Disneyland,a large and complex system of attractions, was once thought to be a "place," considered by many the most representative symbol of US culture . t was the onlyplace the Russian Premier, Nikita Khruschchev, asked to see w h en he vis i ted theUS during the Cold War in the 1960s. Now Disneyland itself has traveled to Franceand Japan, not to mention Florida. Some of the most famous and venerable monuments of nature and culture have been moved or reproduced in a new location.Hearst Castle on the California coast was constructed from entire palaces, abbeys,and convents purchased in Europe y the newspaper multimil l ionaire, \V'iIliamRandolph Hearst, then disassembled, crated, and shipped to the US for reassembly.Even in its original use as a home, it functioned mainly as an attraction and transformed its famous owner into a kind of tourist in his own house. The underwaterhabita t of the entire Pacific Rim, including representative species of plants andanimals, is faithfully reproduced in the massive "Ring of Fire" aquarium in OsakaThe original London Bridge has been moved to a resort t own in the Arizona desert.Even the everyday life of peasant Villagers worldwide is subject to these displacements.At "Little World" in Japan one finds entire Greek, African,Thai, ,mel AmericanIndian Villages, including some of their inhabitants, functioning as both a themepark and a living ethnological museum.

The drive to embrace everything that once secured a sense of "locality" or localdistinction, everything that was once symbolic of cultural or natural distinction, iscentral to tourism. At the end of this drive, we predictably find the reproductionand redistr ibution of markers of local i ty to the point that the local is killed by thevery desire to embrace it. The culture of tourism may eventually be seen as themillennial stage of colonialism and Empire. During the early phases of colonial ismand Empire, global powers marked their dominance by bringing things back fromcampaigns that could be displayed in the Capital. Napoleon took an obelisk fromEgypt and had it erected in Paris. The Greek (so called "Elgin") marbles are stilldisplayed in the British Museum. Of course, these objects continue to be important tourist a ttractions that seem to resemble contempo rary displaced imagery intourist se t t ings the re-creat ion o the Paris Experience in a Las Vegas CasinoHotel, for example. The difference is that the earlier displaced symbols have thedignity of marking actual historical events, however egregiOUS that history mighthave been. Their contemporary relatives mark nothing but the power of globalcapital to efface history and to construct generic localities, or to package identity.The version of tourism produced by global capital has, in effect, declared itselfas capable of producing, reproducing, buying, selling, and moving anything andanyone whatsoever to anyplace whatsoever. t does not restr ic t itself to a fewspoils of military victory. Walt Disney built replicas of the Caribbean Sea and theMatterhorn at his Disneyland in California, and at tempted to bring Abraham Lin-coln back from the dead. These displacements are of such a magnitude that it isalmost impossible to think they were conceived by humans. Only a "God of Tourism" could imagine replacing the Matterhorn, or resuscita ting a dead president.


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The drive to reproduce the past, nature, and other cultures seems to be motivated by a limitless appeti te for more otherness, but it is an otherness that isunder control, a comforting otherness, an otherness that has been domesticatedThe latex alligators at Disneyland mount feroCious attacks on boats carrying tour:ists.Thus, they respond to our ideas about the being of all igators much bett ' ;r thanthe real alligators sleeping motionless in a river or a zoo. Disney alligators are, atonce, Fnore realistic than real alligators and safe to be around. The a u t o n ~ a t 1 o n i cMr. Lincoln is shorter in sta ture than the original, delivers a boring speech, andappears to be somewhat palsied in his gestures . He comes off as quite a bit Ekeour leaders of today. He certainly does not measure up to the genius of his creatorMe Disney ,

\>;Ihen everything has been moved out of time and out of place, recontextualizedand domesticated, tourism is no longer a mere vacation activity, an enter ta inment.t beco.rnes the primary engine of myth and culture in the making. With sufficient

capital accumulation, in Las Vegas for example, or the West Ednlonton Mall inCanada, it is no longer necessary to a ttach this engine to existing social, physical,or historical arrangements.At the >;Iest Edmonton Mall (now enlulated on a granderscale at the Mall of America) one finds Parisian Boulevards, an indoor lake With

. penguins, a submarine r ide and replicas of Columbus 'S ship, a reconstruction of[\iew Orleans' Bourbon Street, performing dolphins, Siberian tigers, a 19th centuryiron bridge from England.The culture of tourism has established itself to the point[hat it is possible to create entire tourist habitats. t has become a phenomenon initself, capable of self-reproduction. Any distinction that might have once held between the resort vacation camp, t heme park, shopping mall, and the city can bebroken down by tourism. Now these various functions or sites of formerly specialized act ivi t ies have blended and merged into s ingle universal arcbitecture o fplea-sure. Constructed historical and man-made n tur l places are being built throughout the Western world and beyond, often replacing the actual historical and natural places they pretend to emulate.Does the Change in Tour ism Lead to aChange in the Mot ive to Travel?

In the \Vest, when Cook arranged tbe first group tours of SWitzerland and Egypt,\ \ 11co the first vaca t ion canlps ~ \ r e r e bui l t , the touris ts the dest inat ions , and themotives were clearly different than they are today. Tourist was a temporary iden

tity available and deSirable to the industrial middle class and upper working class.In ttl(: late 19th century members of the new middle class obtained disposableinCOI? C and some free t ime that would allow them (with the assistance of somesmart entrepreneurs) to mock up a bourgeois version of the GrandTour.This samemoment was also one of bi t tersweet alienation and nostalgia for the new industrial bourgeoisie. Comfortable at home but still alienated, the tour became theirsp.ecial expressive form. Having recently sacrificed traditions and land llse incompatible vdtl1 the requirements of career success in the industrial age, these earlytourists longed for cult' . ," ' distinction, unspOiled natural beauty, strong and authentic relations with the family, the past, the soiL Tourism, travel, sightseeing, andthe guided tour to historic and natural shrines responds to these longings and

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Remarks on the Commodif icat ion of Cultures 387

desires. The tour, as a pastiche of fragments of culture , history, and landscape, mirrored the loss and detachment the new bourgeois consciousness imagined itselfto have experienced. The greater the career success, the greater the sense of loss,the more elaborate and extensive the tour must be. The early tourists went iiterally to the ends of the Earth in search of tokens o f unspoiled nature , authen:,icity,and tradition missing in their own lives, but still visible in the lives of others.

As each place visited by the tourists increasingly resembles every other place, aprocess driven by tourism itself, the original motives no longer apply A Londonerneed not travel to Egypt to buy magnificent replicas 0: Egyptian art i facts .They areavailable for sale in the London Museum gift shop. Egypt in London (or New York,or TokyO) is becoming as ubiquitous as a Londoner, a New Yorker, or a Nihongospeaker in Egypt. Each major ci ty of the world and much of the hinter land hasbecome fully transformed by the international culture of tourism to the point thatthe ethnic neighborhoods, theme parks , shopping malls, restaurants, and naturalattractions of one 's own city and region are no more or less other than those oftouristic destinations around the world.

The everyday life of the international middle class is now fully colonized byglobal capital in a touristic cultural form.The adolescent tourist in [he US no longerdream5. of a summer bicycle tour around Europe, at least not in innocent isolat ionfrom the manipulative gaze of global capital. An entire commercial complex hasgrown up around the European-style bicycle, The.re are things to buy: spandexclothing, special shoes, smoother gear change mechanisms, sport water bottles.Moreover, there is no particular reason to go to Europe as "European-style" bicycling experiences are now marketed worldwide. The best Japanese restaurants inSan Francisco have branches in Osaka and Milan. As the places C'ne can visit increasingly resemble the place where ont: is coming from, the r,-otive for travelnecessarily becomes narcissistic Or a matter of pure vanity: ont: travels only tohave traveled.

Touris ts are evolving into pure consumers, spending hi Jions and ending up wi thnothing to show for it. When a tourist from London travels to Egypt to take in thesights the act no longer leaves any tangible trace, except perhaps in his conversations: 011 yes, I've been there." It is possible to travel around the world, seei.ng allthe important sights. spending enormous quantities of money, and return homewith nothing but a bag of dirty laundry. Nothing was produced for purposes ofexchange to be carried home, used up, or resold, Tynically and ideally, while ontour, every purchase made by the tOurist is of seryic


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First, international tourism is vulnerable as a result of its own previous SUCcessand excess. When the culture of tourism succeeds in replacing local culture, itbecomes Increasingly difficult to distinguish between destinations. The more eachplace comes to resemble someplace close to home, and the more tourist experience resembles everyday experience, the more difficult it becomes to justify travelThe Paris theme park, the Los Angeles theme Park, the Tokyo theme park, the Or:lando theme park are all operated by the same company and staffed by the samecartoon figures.The international culture of tourism increasingly resembles a kindof corporate , high-technology feudalism in which the nation-state gives way to afew tightly controlled corporations that exercise control over work, leisure, andknowl.edge of the wor ld and the place of the individual in it. The production andmarketing of experiences as the characteristic commodity of late capital ism mayhave reached the saturation point.

Second, international travel and tourism is vulnerable to increasing acceptanceof v ir tual i ty and to the realization that media images of otberness are often Super ior to actual experience. The media always get further e ind tbe scenes thanone can actuallv go as a tourist.Also, the more one travels, the more one realizesthat actual experience in tOllrist settings is always highly staged and m.anipulated.Therefore, it is n T much different from mediated experience, except that themediated exper. ience is usually better tball the so-called real experience. MickeyMouse on sc reen h enormously more ent,;rraining than the actor in the MickeyMouse suit at Disn ylanci.

Third, potentially exacerbating these in ternal problems are at least two important externalities.The first is that a relatively minor reversal in the world economycan quickly relieve the international middle class of its discretionary money. er-tainly touristic t ravel would be among the first sacrif ices the international middleclass would make. The second is that tourist destinations are also vulnerable tocivil unrest and natural disasters.The Next Tourism

How did it occur that the world's largest industry could leave itself open tocollapse at the moment of its greatest expansion? If the seeds of its destructionhave been planted, they are certainly being nurtured by its overinvolvement withthose aspects of culture that are dead and dying: with colorful peasantry, unspoiledrain forests, outmoded forms of work, with ancient Egypt, Rome, or Greece.International tourism embraces death and dying not as history but as entertainment.

Under these conditions, it would be surprising if the cultural subjects that emergefrom tourism were anything bm stillborn. On the rigbt it is becoming increaSinglydifficult for the human subject to think itself as anything different from, or otherthan, its place in an organization.There is no expressed desire except for that whichcan be satisfied by a good paying job. As organizations become larger and morepowerful , alld as every communitv is increaSingly composed of decontextualized,generiC syrrlbols of place everyday existence becomes a kind of frenzy of boredom.:In the left the subject is sUf'.Josed to be nothing more than its micro-identities(e.g., feminist, orThi d world, or gay, or heterosexual white male).The only ideological common ground is tourism. Left and right, imagination departs.The touris ts now

Remarks on the ommodification of ultures 389

depend on someone else perhaps it is Walt Disney, or the new virtual reality factories, or the police of political cor rec tness to do their dreaming for them.We shouldconsider the consequences.A life that is lived without imagination, or one in whichall the imagery is supplied by others, resembles a kind of living death.

Still, it is premature to assume that tourism has no future other than collapse.Tourism is logically self-canceling, but that does not necessarily mean th at it willgo into decline. The international culture of tourism would not be the first deathcult humankind has devised for itself.

It comes down to the question: As every destination comes increasingly to resemble every other destination, why leave home? The answer is not obvious andrequires a logic of its own, a touristic logic. Tourism literally makes one 's ownplace, one's home, into th e ultimate destination. The tourist'S home may be without style or dis t inct ion jus t another postmodern box with superficial stylingreferences to tbe local provided by a design studio. Eventually, w h en the transformation of global culture is complete, the home may be no different from any ofthe places visited on the tourist's itinerary, except for its singular designation asthe point of origin and final destination.

In such a world, rigid and homogeneous, leaving home is the only way to markit as distinct from other places; it may not be different from other places. but atleast it is the place you are from. You may never be able to change your socialposition but you can travel as a kind of simple-minded literalization of social andgeographic mobility. Real mobility is no longer technically possible once everymove takes the traveler to a place no different from the place he just left. \ ' lhat thetourist discovers is that home is deeply arbitrary even if it seems to be the pointof origin and final destination. This realization can serve either to kill tourism, sowe can start to live again, or it will make touristic t ravel all the more frenZied.\ ' lhat bet ter way of marking status differences in a world in which we must stayin our places than having vis i ted just about every place? As tourists w e comehome, making our place the most important place of all. At the same time, oursocial standing is nicely inflated without the embarrassment of a heap of statusObjects that unfortunately can also be symptoms of insecurity. O n his return home,the tourist can enjoy a kind of euphoria of pseudo superiority that is not dependent on any specific thing. He can be worldly or traVeled, which are nowentirely content free and duty free designations.Summary

Tourism has been the ground for the production of a new global culture. In thename of tourism, capital and modernized peoples have been deployed to the mostremote regions of the world . Tourism has coa ted almost the entire 'world withdecorative traces of the cultures it has consumed. Its reach is extensive, but it hasvet to find the majority of [he world's peoples. Most of the people in the world at

~ i s moment are not tourists, nor do they earn their Jiving by serving touristsThey are subsistence agriculturalists, lh-ing just beyond the reach of tourism inAfrica, Latin America, China, In..:i.d. (The persistence of cultures just beyond thereach of global tourism and capital is not to be taken for granted, however, JUSt asthe chapters in this volume make abundantly clear.)

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The quest ions that I raised in The Tourist:A New Theory o f the. Leisure Class(MacCannell. 19B9b) are entirely inappropriate and out of place when they arcapplied to this other half of the world's people , which const i tutes a living critiqueof the anxieties associated with tourism and postmodernity. Paralleling and 01'posinKthe rnovements of the tourists, during the last 25 years there has been arapid increase of the movements of nontourists from formerly remote regions ofthe world into centers of wealth and power: the African, Caribbean, and ASiandiasporas; the fl ight of peasant refugees from Central America; the migrat iuns oragricultural and other guest 'workers; Southeast Asian Boat People. The question ofwhether these peop le are haVing an authentic travel experience is an insult. Thetourist follows the officially marked path, while for the refugee and the homeless ,the marked path, the road, the s idewalk, the trail, the reserved seat on a scheduledflight. is only one way of going from place to place, and not necessarily the waythat offers t hem the least resistance. The refugee may even feel the need to stayoff the road for purposes of movement, Orto use the road for something e1se.Theymay haevest it for information, for example.They t ravel by gripping onto the skidsof hel icopters , onto sides of t rains and buses, hiding in cargo'bays of planes andboats , walking through enemy terr itory at night, hir ing smugglers to sneak themacross international borders. They do not know where they will rest Or eat, Oreven if they wiIi rest or eae They become separated from family members traveling with t hem sometimes for months or forever. They cannot be certa in of theirdest inat iOiLThese are not uirtual experiences, designed to produce a sensation ofa thrill or fear. They are real and consequentiaL The one defining certa inty is preciselr the opposi te of that of the tourist: they know they cannot return horne,

The [Ollrist can no more prove himself thail the refugee or the homeless canexist as other than proof of intense commitment to survival, t.o life. In their verydrive to represent themselves as cOlnmunity in their makeover that refers to tra-ctilion, [he places tourists live and visit all the more perfectly become namelessand placeless.

There are stil vital grounds for human celebration on a global scale, but theyhave nothing to do with the institutions of mass tourism as these have evolved.They would involve celebrating the surviVal strategies and creative adaptations ofthe immigrants displaced by the movement of global capitaL ,Ve should be tr}'ingto invent a new celebration of otherness, one that hono rs life, not death, one [hatfocuses on current creative work, not just the creative work of the past. C;-U1 'Yveacknov. rledge those among us who must rnake new homes in alien environ nents,invent new family, work, and community arrangements? Not the peoples, places,and things destroyed by industr ia l society and memorialized by modern tourismduring its first 150 years. Not the world as it used to be, but the new world that isemerging from the humus of the old, its heroes and herOines, their struggles, theiracts of epic bravery, their arts,

If 've were to do so, we would soon discover that the field of the absolute otheris not half a 'world a'way, but only a few miles, or blocks, or inches,

Contributors

Marvann Brent is a native of the eastern United .;tates, with a background inmOd'ern languages and is a Certified Travel Counselor C 1 ~ C ) in th.e travel IIldustry.In 1997 she completed the Ph.D. in Geography at the UmversILY of WaterlooOntario and served as co-editor of the 25-year Special Index Issue Annals o f ur-. R h (1999) C urrent research includes the application of ArcVIew (GIS)u r i ~ ~ . o tourism research, space tourism at International Space {--'IllversIty, and resor,morphology.Magali Daltabuit is a Mexican biological/environmentalanthropologist and fullt ime researcher at the Centro Regional de InvestigacIOnes MultJdlsClpllIlanas(Cuernavaca) of the Univers idad Nacional Autonoma de MexiCO: She has a l o n ~h'sto 'y of research and field'Work in southern .MexIco, BelIze, and Guatemala study

biocultural adaptations to rapid change. Her publications include monographsand articles on Maya women's health, nutr ition, and work, mIgratIOn and the envI-

d t1 . challenge of ecotourism. She has co-authored several papel SOfuuent, an lewith R. Brooke Thomas and Orlol Pi-SunyerMichael Fagence teaches and researches at the University of Quef'nsland, Brisbane,Australia. His principal fields of interesI [all vii thin the scope of 'J}11fISm plannmg,'With ' recent research fOCUSing on the means available in planning to Il1tnlIl11Ze the. f j ~ l o p m n t on special cultural groups sue as the Old Ordermpact 0 tounSIl1 ev - 'Amish and Mennonites,Nelson H. H. Graburn was born in England and studied anthropology at C.am-b ' 1 e McGill and the University of Chicago. Since 1964, l1e has taught Antnrolie g " 1 , h h I Curator a' thepology at the University of California, Berkeley, were , IS a _ _, _ . c _Hearst Museum of Anthropology His research mterests mclude tee ,t_udy of touriSIl1, museums, ans, identity, and representation. He Jus carr ied out neldwork 111

- - I j 1h Inuit (Eskimos) of Canad:l,apan and among the Indians 01 Canac a anc (Greenland, and Alaska.R di Hartluann teaches tourism at the University of Colorado at Denver. He rec ~ v e d his Ph,D. from the Technica Uni\-ersity of l'vlunich (lC)83) :md has beenaffiliated with the Clark University, University of California at Bcc;;:e ev, and the

. . f' L d S -eden His rese'ucb interests include sustaieabllity of recre-nlversttv'o u n W . . . Iational re-sources and spatial patterns, dynamiCS, and impacts of tourism (,eve]opment.

. h . t' of Zinlbabwe (formerlv Southern Rhodesia) whose grand-obIn Heat a na lve '- _,,- t te ed the countrv in the ]8905. After teaChing in high schools tor apdJ en s en r . i ; ~ . , ~nur.:-.';er of years and the University of Rhodes a, she became Inte e ~ e , ,ounsm

h d ' 11er tenure as Resparcil Officer at the Institute oj SOClal and Eco-esearc unng _ .. R Cll Unl'''ersitv of Durban-WestVille, KwaZulu-Natal Presently, she somIc e s e a r , , , _

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Hosts and (;-uests Revisited:Tourislll Issues of the 21 st Century

Copyright @ Cognizant Communication Corporation 2001

No p?ft of his r ublicarwfi may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by anymear..s, clccr;-o; jc. magnetic tape. mechanical, photocopying, recording, or orhcf"Wise, without permission inThe puUishc, : i n t ~ ~ h : . publisl -:r's J.g{:'ms represent that the data provided were formulated with a reasonables(cu1dard of care. Exc - a n _ . n Beene

p enl. -- (lc,J;'lsm dyn3.mics)tnch::des b:bi.io';: 'ipbc:o.l [(:fcrenccs Cp.ISBN 1-882.'>45-2 >::-2 (1-Lu-d b o ~ n d , -- ISBN 1+882345-29-0 (pbk.)J T o u ~ l s m 2, To J :.i::m .Suci.ll aspects. 1. Smith, Valene L II. Brent, Maryann, 194.4-III. S

maccannell_ dean (2001) remarks on the commodification of cultures

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