Tourism

views updated

TOURISM

The ancient Greek philosophers thought that leisure was a necessary component of human flourishing even though freedom from the demands of necessity was possible only for a few people. Modern industrialized countries have achieved economies that for many of their members facilitate leisure, or, as Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) suggested, the "non-productive consumption of time" (Veblen 1994 [1899], p. 43). In this context tourism is a form of unproductive consumption that is peculiar to the technologically advantaged. Tourism, however, also has become a major stimulus to economic production.

Purpose and Effects

Tourism is travel based on desires to relax, sightsee, appease curiosity, satisfy a sense of adventure or an adventurous self-image, compete with one's peers or colleagues, re-create images of paradise or luxury or the exotic, and escape. Tourism affects the economies and cultures of destination sites in both positive and negative ways. Those locales may organize their production activities around the satisfaction of tourists' demands for leisure, fantasy, adventure, or knowledge, activities that may operate to the detriment of local cultures.

As with any human relations involving production and consumption, even an activity centered on leisure, tourism thus calls for ethical and philosophical reflection. Only recently, however, has the phenomenon of tourism become a subject of ethical consideration, largely through its connection to other concerns, such as environmental degradation (to which "ecotourism" is one response), economic development, and cultural impacts.

Distinctions

The word tourism is derived from the Latin tornus and before that the Greek tornos, referring to a tool for making a circle (the word turn comes from the same root). Taking a tour thus implies circumnavigating, and the term tourism initially had depreciatory connotations of superficiality. In the early twenty-first century the connotations are more complex.

Tourism must be distinguished from other kinds of and motivations for travel. Economic and political migration, for example, is not new, but its increased extent is considered a significant element of globalization (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, and Perraton, 1999). Contemporary economic migration includes the journeys made by migrant laborers and travel for business purposes in a postindustrial age of transnational corporations and labor markets, prompted also by international disparities in wealth and movement, especially between less developed countries and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Political migration includes refugees from crisis or conflict areas. Tourism, in contrast, has no material imperative, although one could argue that advertising and the media create a perceived necessity for tourism.

Flâneurism, a form of consumption activity that is much closer to tourism, is leisurely and detached urban promenading among the crowds, allowing spontaneous perceptual encounters to determine the directions of one's movements and thoughts. Although the expression came from the poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), the philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is perhaps the preeminent exponent of flâneurism through his writings on walking in Paris (Benjamin 1999). Voyeurism suggests a disengaged onlooker without a commitment to the local environment and thus overlaps with many common tourist practices. At its most benevolent voyeurism is the observation or immersion experience of other cultures in a way that allows one to extricate oneself when the experience becomes uncomfortable or problematic. The observation or experience, though perhaps immersive, allows a relatively easy exit from the situation, unlike the case for members of the local culture. There is a fine line between "authentic," engaged traveling and voyeurism.

Tourism is first and foremost an industry. It is one of the largest modern industries, accounting for hundreds of billions of dollars per year, and is the most significant industry for many countries. According to the World Tourism Association, which became an executing agency of the United Nations Development Programme in 1976, tourism grew from 456 million international travelers in 1990 to more than 700 million in 2002. Tourism appeared as both a word and a phenomenon in the early 1800s in association with increases in the means of transportation brought about by the construction of roads and highways, advances in carriage technology, and the building of the railroads. The current growth in tourism is due largely to the same processes and technologies that drive and constitute globalization and its consequences, including ease and frequency of transport and the growth of information and communications technologies. Economically advantaged people increasingly seek more far-flung and diverse destinations for vacation and pleasure.

The idealized motivation driving some forms of tourism is, as the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana (1863–1952) suggested, that "there is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, it fosters humor" (Santayana 1968, p. 15). Arguably, however, tourism today is much more epistemically ordered even when it takes on authenticity-seeking or adventurous forms.

Varieties of tourism or leisure travel have been distinguished in regard to the authenticity of the experience of other cultures and places (see Boorstin 1961). Dean MacCannell (1999 [1976]) suggests that actual gradations in the search for authenticity resist polar categorizations of tourism as authentic or inauthentic. Rather, destination places, tourist objectives and perceptions, local expectations and dependencies, "staged authenticity" (MacCannell 1999 [1976], title of chapter 5), and the dynamic nature of cultural activities and artifacts render such categories indistinct. The global journeying that through the years has created "backpacker meccas" in places such as Goa (India), Kathmandu (Nepal), and Lamu (Kenya) may seem a more authentic quest for rich cultural experiences in comparison to sheltered resort vacationing (enclave tourism), in which the actual place or culture is insignificant. Authenticity, however, is framed by the tourist's cultural expectations as much as it is a property of the experience of foreign destinations. The "inauthentic," moreover, may involve a relatively benign mutual exploitation or exchange between tourists and locals.

Ethical Issues

The paradox of the authenticity-seeking traveler is that the more tourists vacation in a particular place, the more a tourism infrastructure is developed and the more that place comes to resemble the tourist's home, causing local cultural and environmental deterioration. Pico Iyer (1989) has written about the unusual juxtapositions and hybrids of different cultures one finds across the globe as a result of the forces of globalization and tourism. This paradox creates a dilemma regarding whether to visit a place or to tour at all. The question for anthropologists and environmentalists is whether it is appropriate to visit a fragile culture or a pristine environment when one's visitation contributes to its alteration. Furthermore, as a tourist destination becomes more developed and attracts increasing numbers of visitors, many tourists may look elsewhere for less-traveled destinations. As a consequence they may perpetuate the same cycle, and some overdeveloped areas ultimately may witness a decline in the visits on which their economies depend.

From the perspective of those who welcome the local tourist industry may provide much-needed income and infrastructure development, but the cycle of unmanaged tourism development ultimately places those economic benefits at risk. Although income is generated locally from the industry, the distribution of benefits is uneven, and there may be severe damage to local cultures, other parts of local economies, and the natural environment. Such considerations have generated antitourism and protourism positions, with the former generally concerned with the environmental and cultural impact and the latter with economic development.

Tourism raises specific and clear ethical and cultural concerns in regard to some of its manifestations, for example, sex tourism and reality tourism, with the latter involving poor or oppressed people inviting visitors to observe and experience their living conditions (an example of voyeurism). Opponents of tourism point to increased child labor, greater crime rates, and increased prostitution.

Tourism may contribute indirectly to resource conflicts and tensions with traditional land-use practices in addition to eroded cultural values and commodification of traditional practices. Economically it can lead to increased prices for basic goods for local people and higher costs for infrastructural development, diverting resources from other critical social sectors. Environmentally tourism may lead to the depletion of natural resources and pollution (air pollution, sewage, solid waste) in addition to problems such as coral reef anchoring, trampling, construction and deforestation, and disruption of ecosystem processes. Other common foci of criticism include the large amounts of fuel burned by airliners transporting tourists to and from their destinations, the construction of golf courses in environmentally fragile areas, and the aesthetic pollution of overdevelopment.

Proponents of tourism point to new infrastructure development for residents, greater civic participation, and reinvigoration of cultural traditions in addition to the mutual understanding and respect that may result from cultural exchange. Tourism may contribute to state revenues and foreign exchange earnings, increase employment opportunities, and help local economies grow. Environmentally tourism may contribute to new investments in conservation efforts, lead to regulatory measures and improved management practices, and provide new forms of employment. It also may indirectly involve the development of better technologies for conservation programs through technology transfer and the growth of science-based programs for environmental management.

The distinction between negative and positive effects depends principally on the specific contexts, rendering the prospects of a global management program extremely challenging. Environmental impacts, however, can have a far-ranging effect beyond the particular tourism context. This contributes another dimension to already complex ethical questions of obligations beyond borders, especially in a globalizing era.

The expansion of ecotourism is a major response to such concerns over environmental and cultural degradation and an attempt to invigorate local economies that otherwise are dependent on environmentally unsustainable practices. In some cases such practices are directly related to the tourism industry (for example, deforestation in the Himalayas for wood-fire cooking); in others the practices may be the sole (and sometimes illegal) source of income (such as rain forest logging).

Ideally, the goals of ecotourism are to combine ecological and cultural awareness with sustainable local economies and resource use and preserve local cultural identities and values. Ecotourism may include what is sometimes referred to as "scientific tourism." This form of tourism may range from volunteer fieldwork in the collection of scientific data to tourism accompanied by an ecologically informed guide. The growth of ecotourism in some areas, however, often represents a superficial assuaging of tourists' environmental concerns and expectations rather than an actual advance in conservation practices. Cheating on the ecotourism designation is common in some areas in the form of advertising regular activities, accommodations, or management practices as "eco-friendly" to attract unsuspecting tourists concerned about ecological impact. This has prompted efforts to certify and monitor ecotourism companies. Nevertheless, genuine ecologically benign tourism, even if it is possible, seeks to attract tourists to fragile places, thus re-creating the paradox mentioned above.

More recently these collective considerations have found expression in international forums. The World Tourism Organization (WTO), which is affiliated with the United Nations, has drafted a "Global Code of Ethics for Tourism" (1999). The code consists of ten general principles intended to guide "stakeholders" and supplement the tourist industry's emphasis on the market and private enterprise aspects of tourism. The WTO seeks to encourage "sustainable tourism," encompassing some of the considerations raised above. The United Nations Environmental Programme also attempts to integrate tourism considerations with international agreements such as the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

The intersection of facilitating technologies, economics, and culture, along with environmental impacts, generates ethical considerations and dilemmas involving tourism. The new directions of tourism remain to be seen as globalization proceeds. Some places focus on the tourist industry to boost economies whose other industries may be stagnating or nonexistent. However, as a result of the fickle nature of tourism and its potential for the destruction of local environmental and cultural resources there is urgent cause for concern over dependency on tourism, particularly in developing countries. Ecotourism may provide only a temporary answer to economic and ecological realities without a more closely regulated and monitored industry or different global economic arrangements. If tourism is inevitable, perhaps the best option is the development of a global regime of "sustainable tourism." The Kingdom of Bhutan may provide an educative example, as it limits the numbers of visitors per year in the name of sustainable environmental and cultural considerations while trying to sustain economic well-being.

These issues perhaps may be overcome through shared, direct experience of places such as the Nepalese Himalayas, the biodiverse rain forests in Costa Rica, and the coral reefs of the South Pacific or of the peoples of New Guinea, Lapland, and central Africa. Perhaps what is needed is an ethics of tourism that is attentive to character, obligations, equity, and rights so that the benefits of tourism may flourish without doing harm. Perhaps there is also a need for a practical ethics of tourism that can admit that sometimes it is better not to be a tourist at all.

THOMAS C. HILDE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benjamin, Walter. (1999). The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Boorstin, Daniel J. (1961). The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper and Row.

Fussell, Paul. (1980). Abroad: British Literary Traveling between the Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Held, David; Anthony McGrew; David Goldblatt; and Jonathan Perraton. (1999). Global Transformations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Iyer, Pico. (1989). Video Night in Kathmandu and Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East. New York: Vintage.

MacCannell, Dean. (1999 [1976]). The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Santayana, George. (1968). "The Philosophy of Travel." In The Birth of Reason and Other Essays, ed. Daniel Cory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Smith, Mick, and Rosaleen Duffy. (2003). The Ethics of Tourism Development. New York: Routledge.

Veblen, Thorstein. (1994 [1899]). The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Penguin.

World Tourism Organization. (2002). Tourism Market Trends. Madrid: Author.