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Globalization and International Tourism in Developing Countries: Marginality as a Commercial Commodity Victor Azarya Current Sociology 2004; 52; 949 DOI: 10.1177/0011392104046617

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Victor Azarya

Globalization and International Tourism in Developing Countries: Marginality as a Commercial Commodity

Globalization and Tourism

urrent discussions of globalization that have burst into academic and Cpublic discourse in the last few years have increasingly focused their attention on an important side-effect of the phenomenon they examine: the great rise in international tourism. Globalization is essentially a process by which an ever tightening network of ties that cut across national political boundaries connects communities in a single, interdependent whole, a shrinking world where local differences are steadily eroded and subsumed within a massive global social order (Mowforth and Munt, 1998: 12). If so deﬁned, tourism is both a cause and a consequence of globalization. It accel- erates the convergent tendencies in the world. Not only do people meet and learn from each other, but goods and services also travel and are diffused throughout the globe in order to cater to the needs and demands of the travellers. At the same time, as is discussed in this article, tourism further develops as a result of forces and needs unleashed by globalization. In the words of Wood: ‘Perhaps even more than the ubiquitous McDonald’s, international tourism symbolizes globalization not only in its massive movement of people to virtually every corner of the world but also in its linkage of economic, political and sociocultural elements’ (Wood, 1997: 2). Two years ago Michael Elliott remarked in his Time column that ‘It is tourism . . . that deﬁnes globalization, and yet you could go to a score of conferences on the global economy without ever hearing it discussed’ (Elliott, 2001: 57). This observation, doubtful even when it was made, is even less true today. The interrelationship between globalization and tourism is

Current Sociology, November 2004, Vol. 52(6): 949–967 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/0011392104046617

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rapidly gaining centre stage in academic discourse, as can be seen in the increasing number of publications on the topic and of sessions devoted to tourism in international conferences. It is true though that some social scien- tists still regard tourism as a rather ‘soft’ topic of enquiry (Crick, 1989: 311). Some even claim that the study of tourism is the researcher’s own excuse for travelling, an academic disguise for a joy ride (comments made in the World Sociology Congress in Brisbane, 2002, no doubt another good academic excuse for globetrotting). My objective in this article is twofold. In the first half of the article I raise a few general propositions on the general impact of globalization on recent trends in international tourism. I examine the ever increasing search for the different that does not relinquish the comforts and security of the familiar and how globalization enables such combination. I try to show how tourism feeds on and further promotes an increasing attraction to the peripheral, even to the miserable, that are exhibited as objects of curiosity. In the second half of the article, I look more directly at the people who are the objects of tourism curiosity. I examine how they respond to tourism and how they are affected by it. I try to ascertain the extent of those people’s incorporation and/or marginality in the new global system, in economic as well as cultural spheres, as a result of their encounter with tourism. I also look briefly at the attitude of the governments in the non-western world towards the surging tourism phenomenon and towards transforming part of their land and population into tourism commodities, all in the context of globalization. The sets of questions raised in the two parts are, of course, closely interrelated and form the two components of the same phenomenon, as, I hope, it would be apparent to the reader. Tourism is the world’s largest and fastest growing industry. It is the largest employer in the world and is estimated to account for the largest export earnings by any industry (Wood, 1997: 1; Tisdell, 2001: 3). In the 1990s tourism arrivals were estimated to reach 666 million a year by 2000 and to grow by an average 4.5 percent per year (Din, 1993: 327). The 2002 figures supplied by the World Tourism Organization show that the growth of international tourism has rebounded from the crisis caused by the 11 September 2001 attack and the general fear of international terrorism. By 2002, international tourist arrivals passed the 700 million mark though the rate of increase was somewhat lower than in the decade between 1990 and 2000 (World Tourism Organization, 2003). However, the economic and cultural importance of tourism and its relationship to globalization are manifested not only in the scope of the phenomenon but also in the new forms it takes. Just as the numbers of travellers and of related industries that provide them services rise in gigantic steps, more tourist interests are directed to faraway places and to experiences that are different and remote from one’s own life. Since Urry (1990) it has

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often been stated that tourism is basically about gazing at particular scenes that are different from those encountered in one’s daily life (Tucker, 1997: 107). What is new, however, is that an increasing number of people look farther away in their search for the ‘different’ and that so-called ‘non- western’ countries are increasingly becoming primary tourist destinations. Both in the years 2001–2 and in the decade between 1990 and 2000, Africa, Asia and Pacific regions posted an increase that was above the world average. In Africa, despite the fear from AIDS and the political instability, the increase was 3.7 percent for 2001–2, compared to a world average of 3.1 percent for the same period. In the longer scale of the last decade of the 20th century, the international tourist arrivals rose by 6.1 percent compared to a world average of 4.3 percent for that period. In Asia and the Pacific, the respective figures were a 7.9 percent increase in 2001–2 and 7.2 percent in the decade 1990–2000, both above global averages. In Europe, by contrast, the growth was 2.4 percent in 2001–2 and 3.6 percent in 1990–2000, both below global averages. North America had similarly a lower than global average 0.4 percent growth in 2001–2 and 3.3 percent in 1990–2000. Finally, even in South America, that suffered a precipitous loss of 7.0 percent in 2001–2, due to the acute economic crisis that hit the continent, the decade-long figures for 1990–2000 showed an above world average 7.0 percent growth in international tourist arrivals (World Tourism Organization, 2003). The reasons for both the great rise in international tourism and its gradual movement to faraway destinations are diverse but reinforce one another. Air travel, even to long distances, has become economically more affordable. The advent of charter flights and package holidays initially created opportunities for mass travel to the peripheries of Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) and the Caribbean but later included more distant destinations in Asia, Africa and elsewhere. During the 1970s and 1980s the cost of travel remained more or less constant in real terms while disposable incomes and annual days of vacation rose in western countries, leading to a phenom- enal rise in international tourism (Hitchcock et al., 1993: 1–2). The information communication revolution of recent years has added to that sense of ‘time-space compression’ (Mowforth and Munt, 1998: 28). At the same time, the increasing familiarity of westerners with their own country and with similar countries of the West means that such places respond less to the quest for the ‘other’ (Desforges, 2000: 928; Hitchcock et al., 1993: 2–3; Parnwell, 1993: 298). The search has been for the exotic, for the remote, and it has been shared not by a few adventurers, as before, but by increasing masses, by ordinary people.1 Service providers that cater to this surging new consumption have grown in size and scope and lubricate that demand. As distances shrink, travel times shorten, economic prosperity grows in the West and longer vacations and leisure time are obtained, accessibility to more remote places thus grows. At the same time, curiosity for the other, for

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the different develops, perhaps as a reaction to the standardization effects of globalization. Boredom rises in the uniform global village (van den Berghe, 1980: 375). The expanding middle class systematically scavenges the earth for new experiences (Crick, 1989: 324, paraphrasing MacCannell, 1976). The same processes that create the global village, i.e. the mechanisms that shorten distances, propagate similarity and produce an ever growing undistinguished mass, also generate a quest for those dwindling refuges of difference (Elliott, 2001: 57; Mowforth and Munt, 1998: 135). I do not claim here that most of contemporary tourism is directed towards exotic, faraway places. The bulk of mass tourism still flows towards centres of one’s civilization, important monuments, palaces, historical sites, etc. or towards recreational areas, both close and distant from home. The world’s top tourist destinations, as seen in the figures of the World Tourism Organization are, in descending order, France, Spain, the US, Italy and China (World Tourism Organization, 2003). Four of the five are still western countries. Tourism towards the periphery (seen from the centrality of the West) is rising more rapidly than the rest of tourism and obtains a relatively larger share of tourism than before, but it still remains a minority destination. Higher growth percentages are obviously easier to reach when the absolute base is lower and looking at the absolute figures we still see some places like Africa lagging far behind Europe and North America (see figures in World Tourism Organization, 2003). Nonetheless, our claim that there is a gradual movement towards a relatively larger share of non-western areas as tourist destinations does hold, and this development appears to be related to globalization. There is, of course, an inevitable paradox in this search for what the West sees as its periphery. As more people want to go ‘beyond the beaten track’, those tracks are worn out by the many who follow the same route and hence lose their attraction2 (Nuttall, 1997: 223; van den Berghe, 1980: 380). New, unbeaten tracks have to be traced, new horizons of exploration have to be discovered. As an increasing number of people voraciously consume other cultures and environments, service providers are under constant pressure to open up new frontiers and to move them farther away as some of them become well travelled. The ‘opening up of the world’ through globalization provides the economic, technological and political means to reach out further and further. Would the frontiers of difference be eventually exhausted? I doubt it, even with regard to physical landscapes that seem more finite in character (outer space is still there and we have already heard of two instances of ‘space tourists’). The likelihood of frontier exhaustion is even lower with regard to culture or spiritual experience. It is crucial to add, however, that most people who wish to broaden their search for the different and to observe other peoples, cultures and landscapes

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are still unwilling to part with the daily amenities of their familiar surround- ings and lifestyle. They want the food and drink they like, their hot showers and the instant news from back home. Such amenities are, therefore, trans- ported with them to their places of destination. Following a full day of safari, or visiting ancient temples, or diving in coral reefs, our traveller is reunited with his or her familiar (and hence safe) food, drink, sound and faces (Curtis and Pajaczkowska, 1994: 207; Boniface and Fowler, 1996: 8, 39). The transfer of these amenities that accompany our curious traveller on his or her treks is indeed a major component of the support services that add significantly to the economic scope and impact of the tourism phenomenon. It also leads to an inevitable encounter of the ‘local’ with those global amenities. Some of the natives are active in servicing those amenities. They stack the refrigerator with cold drinks, learn how to pour the wine and make the bed, fix the shower or change a flat tyre while their cousins or neighbours exhibit their ‘different’ local customs (fieldwork in Kenya, 1987, 1995). How to implant the familiar facilities within the new environment without endangering its ‘difference’ as tourist destination, without diluting the local within the global is a major balancing act that the tourism industry has to face constantly. The combination of increasing curiosity for the different and continued attachment to comfort and familiarity is regularly manifested also without actual travel. The exotic, the different may be brought to the potential consumers in their living room and in the shopping centres of their hometown. As Urry put it, it is also possible ‘to see many of the typical objects of the tourist gaze . . . in one’s living room at the flick of a switch’ (Urry, 1990: 100 quoted in Tucker, 1997:107). These objects are offered in travel magazines, in television series on nature and on distant and disappearing worlds, in curio-shops in which so-called ethnic art, masks, leatherwork, wood carvings, etc. are sold. All indications point to a huge increase in such activities in western societies and the forecast is for a continued surge of consumer demand for such commodities. Operators that supply these commodities increase their activities, which means more travel by nature photographers, television producers and camera people, feature writers, entrepreneurs importing ethnic art, all in search of still undisclosed but quickly diminishing ‘virgin’ frames, land and people. In response to such ‘armchair tourism’ brought to the consumer in his or her living room or suburban shopping centre, in the form of magazines, television series, ethnic art, etc., actual travel operators try to market their commodity as something with added value. They stress the special enrich- ment of actually ‘being there’ and doing things that won’t be experienced without physical travel. Tourist brochures and advertisement promise the westerner who travels to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America that he or she will have an experience to remember for a lifetime and will return refreshed, renewed, enriched with cultural capital (Bruner, 1991: 239;

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Desforges, 2000: 938). In Alaska, ‘tourists are told that they are to “embark on a journey that others have only read about” ’ (Nuttall, 1997: 233). Photography also plays a prominent role in this experience. While photos are obviously important components of the commodities brought to the consumer’s home in travel magazines, the taking of the picture by the traveller him- or herself has an added value. Taking a picture of the observed scene is a major means of ‘capturing’ it, i.e. controlling it, framing it and bringing it back home as an object, thus extending that control into the future (Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1994: 455; Tucker, 1997: 120). Souvenir shopping plays a similar role. It is an act of acquisition and thus of incorporation of a fragment of the other into one’s own life and future, but under one’s own solid control, thus stressing the traveller’s superiority over the acquired object (Curtis and Pajaczkowska, 1994: 208). In all these forms, whether actual tourism itself or nature series broad- cast in one’s own home, consumer demand leads to the supply of commodities and activities, for economic proﬁt, by a variety of actors, from individual entrepreneurs to big corporations and governments. Travel agencies, airlines, hotels, car rental agencies, art dealers, wildlife trackers, anthropologists, television channels, publishing houses are all drawn into these activities and by promoting them, advertising them, also sustain the continued consumer demand. Some of these operators are small-scale entrepreneurs, such as free- lance photographers and tour guides or local cafe owners. Many others are very centralized and quite removed from the locality or object that is exhibited. The tours are pre-packaged and pre-paid, the hotel chains, travel agencies, television channels and travel magazines are corporate-owned, all part of the same globalization trends that also generate the consumer appetite for the packaged exhibit of the other, of the different.

The Expanding Differentiation of Modern Tourism

Just as tourism develops rapidly, it also branches out into an increasing variety of forms, not all of which are included in my main analytical focus. Hence, before moving on to an analysis of the impact of tourism on local people being exhibited as tourism commodities, I should brieﬂy mention a few types of tourism that may be growing rapidly and may be related to globalization but still remain beyond the purview of this article.3 First of all, general recreational tourism, perhaps the largest type of all, is beyond the scope of this article even though it may include an element of attraction to the different. A holiday on the beach and walking around in short pants or swimming suits all day may be a welcome change from the routine, just as walking in snow boots might be a welcome change for those wearing shorts all year long. The new environment enables socially less

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inhibited behaviour and allows a restructuring of time schedules. It legit- imizes unwinding and a change of habits. The inversion of everyday order is accompanied by a vicarious pleasure of sensing higher status and entitlement to privileged service from locals (Curtis and Pajaczkowska, 1994: 199; Crick, 1989: 327–32). This kind of holiday travel does not necessarily have to take place in a faraway land, though it seems that the distance and difference of the local culture help the tourists unwind and loosen their social inhibitions. Indeed, the encounter with faraway cultures and recreational beach holidays are often combined by the packaging industry. Sun, sand, sea and sex are offered in exotic locations, the breakdown of social inhibitions being associ- ated with the difference of the place (Matthews, 1977: 24–5). Sometimes, such recreational tourism is also packaged for more specific purposes such as the gambling trip or the rapidly developing sex tourism in which the engagement in acts suppressed or considered illicit back home is the main purpose of the travel. Such travel schemes have spun off from the common recreational tourism and are quite different from the family vacation on the beach. However, they still share with them the sense of liberation from routine and from some social controls due to the new location, and an incipient sense of superiority of the tourists who feel that they are entitled to special services from the locals. Nor should we confuse the phenomenon discussed here with identity- seeking or roots-seeking tourism, such as visits to places where one’s ances- tors were born or where historic events that shaped one’s collective identity took place. We are not discussing pilgrimages to holy sites or to national (or global) commemoration sites. When an Irish American visits the family’s ancestral village in Ireland, a Second World War veteran paces the beaches of Normandy or an African American visits coastal slave stations such as Elmira in Ghana or the island of Goré in Senegal, they all look for closeness, not difference. The common objective is to establish a link with oneself, not curiosity about the other. The sentiment invoked is one of belonging and integration within a larger and significant entity. These are, indeed, important contemporary phenomena that seem to have grown very much in recent years. Their possible relationship with globalization could be the topic of another interesting study, but it is beyond our analytical focus. Finally, the question of marginality that is central to this article should be clarified here. Attraction to the different is not necessarily attraction to the marginal. Some tourist sites, such as the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Egypt or Buddhist temples in South East Asia may be perceived as different and remote but may also inspire awe and enchantment on the part of the western travellers. The attitude would be markedly different regarding pastoral nomads in East Africa, pygmy hunter-gatherers in Central Africa, hill tribes in Thailand, tropical forest inhabitants of Borneo and New Guinea in South East Asia or of the Amazon basin in South America. While

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the latter may inspire admiration among some travellers for living ‘closer to nature’, for most western tourists they represent a backward stage of human development, some remnants of a disappearing world. The western tourists who took a boat ride up the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, as seen in O’Rourke’s (1987) ﬁlm, Cannibal Tours, did not value cannibalism but were fascinated with the primitivism and savagery that it represented. They wanted to encounter the descendants of cannibals, even from the safety of a luxury boat and knowing that cannibalism was no longer allowed, as the latter represented for them the closest specimens of that primitivism. In Bruner’s words, ‘a key tourist narrative states that the tourist is a member of a civilized world, even an elite member, with the resources, leisure time and discriminating taste . . . to travel to East Africa to see the remnants of a previous era, of a prehistoric world of wild animals and primitive man’ (Bruner, 1991: 240). In the former case, the tourists may admire the civilization they came to observe but still expect to be served by the local people and to command their deference. They may admire ancient Egyptian or Mayan civilizations but not necessarily the local Arab or Indian mule driver or coffee server. In the latter type, the superior status of the tourists is less ambivalent. The great majority of them come to view inferior natives whom they have no desire to emulate. From the centrality of their own existence they are curious about the margins of human existence. Such marginality does not have to be related to the remnants of the past. It can also be the result of modern developments that have pushed some people to the margins of society and of respectable existence. In that sense, even a manifestation of extreme poverty or substandard living, a shantytown, a refugee camp, a treatment centre for the sick, the addict, the deviant may, and in fact have, become tourist destinations as a side-effect of globalization. In addition to eco-tourism and adventure tourism one increasingly hears about ‘reality-tourism’, some of it with clear political overtones, in which visitors are taken to areas recently involved in political conﬂicts to see how people live (and presumably suffer) in those places. As reported in Time, ‘Does scuba diving in Hawaii leave you cold? For $3,299 plus airfare you can travel through Southeast Asia to meet with landmine victims and learn “how the secret CIA war on Laos affected the people” ’ (Roosevelt, 2001: 48). Similar trips are organized to Zapatista villages in Mexico or to other political trouble spots in remote or relatively inaccessible areas. Some of these tours have the blessing of the respective governments, some of them do not, depending upon how much the reality displayed toes the government line (Roosevelt, 2001: 48–9). Admittedly, these analytical distinctions are not always easy to detect in practice. A tour of Soweto in South Africa may be a visit to the marginal for some visitors while for others it may be conceived as a search for identity. A

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visit to the ruins of Karakurum, Genghiz Khan’s old capital, barely visible now in the Mongolian wilderness, may inspire awe among some visitors for being an ancient centre that, for a short period, ruled much of the world. Others, by contrast, may view it as a distant periphery, a true wilderness with a harsh climate, inhabited by poor nomads. Visits to Klondike in Alaska may be a search for the wild and peripheral for some tourists, while for some Americans they may also be re-enactments of a chapter of their own national history (Nuttall, 1997: 227). Obviously, for different groups, a visit to the same place may have very different meanings. Notwithstanding such differences, however, many are still attracted to what they regard as marginal, as a belated response to globalization. Furthermore, the same forces of globalization that generate such interest also create the instruments that tap on that potential demand. They facilitate encounter (brief and superﬁcial as it may be) with the peripheries of the dominant global order, whether those are located in Indian reservations, in refugee camps, in Mother Theresa’s compound in Calcutta, or among pastoral nomads in the Mongolian steppes and in the African savannah.

Economic Incorporation, Cultural Marginality

Having analysed briefly the rising phenomenon of international tourism and the form it takes in the context of globalization, I would like now to focus on what impact it has on the native people who are prominent objects of tourist attention. I use mostly the example of the Maasai of East Africa, which I have studied more closely, having conducted fieldwork in Kajiado and Narok in Kenya in 1987 and 1995 as part of a more general study of the relations between nomads and the state. I also refer occasionally to a number of other examples. It should be observed at the outset that the Maasai are prominent objects of tourism attention because the area they inhabit is also very rich in wildlife and is relatively accessible (not too distant from big cities, airline links, etc.). The great numbers of tourists flocking into the Maasai-inhabited areas do not come to see only, or primarily, the Maasai. Their attraction is mainly to the wildlife and a visit to the Maasai is combined with a more general safari in the African savannah.4 This also explains the first observable impact of tourism on the Maasai. They suffer from preference given to the protection of wildlife. As the traditional lifestyle of the Maasai (as well as of other pastoral nomads) competes ecologically with that of wildlife, the increased protection granted to wildlife has come at the expense of the Maasai. Why have African states given preference to wildlife protection over the interests of pastoral populations? First and foremost, because wildlife is an

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even bigger foreign currency earner from tourism than are the pastoral groups. Second, because ideas of ‘conservation’ have gained great respectabil- ity in the West and have been aggressively pushed by international organizations. African postcolonial states find it advantageous not only to cater to the bigger foreign currency earner but also to appear to follow the conservationist line in the international arena and earn points of credit among international advocacy groups with strong influence on western governments and international donor organizations (interviews with tour operators in Kenya, 1987, 1995 and South Africa, 2001; see also Arhem, 1985b: 35; Areola, 1987: 277). This too is part of globalization. Arhem (1985a, 1985b) and Homewood and Rodgers (1991) have docu- mented how the creation of national parks hurt the Maasai in Tanzania. In 1959, with the establishment of the Serengeti National Park as a game park, the Maasai who lived there were evicted and moved to the Ngorongoro conservation area. In 1974, they were forced to evacuate some parts of Ngorongoro as well on the grounds that their presence was detrimental to wildlife and landscape. In the 1980s they faced further restrictions as the conservationist attitude of the government stiffened. Maasai who lived within the conservation area found themselves subject to a series of rules and regu- lations that limited their herding activities and that did not apply to populations who lived outside the conservation area. Similar evidence could be found also on the Maasai who live near the national parks of Amboseli and Maasai-Mara in Kenya (Sindiga, 1984: 32; Azarya, 1996a: 28–9, 1996b: 83–5). In Kenya, the Maasai lost 3248 km2 to Amboseli and 1641 km2 to Maasai- Mara (Sindiga, 1984: 32; Mowforth and Munt, 1998: 263). Such measures were taken with the full support and encouragement of western conservationists. It is interesting to note that postcolonial African governments find it easier to use the conservation discourse with regard to wildlife and nature than with regard to local human cultures and societies. Furthermore, such discourse, shared by western conservationists, has been used in an area of greatest abundance of wildlife. Such abundance existed for centuries in coex- istence with the Maasai and did not seem to have suffered from it. On the contrary, such abundance of wildlife could be a tribute to the Maasai’s and other pastoral people’s special ability to maintain wildlife and coexist with it. They were, in a sense, the early caretakers of game which modern visitors now come to enjoy. How ironic, then, that the very same people whose traditional lifestyle enabled the continued abundance of wildlife were victim- ized and penalized in the name of modern conservation (Mowforth and Munt, 1998: 264; Homewood and Rodgers, 1991: 266). Restrictions on the movement of herds in the vicinity of national parks or outright expulsion from certain zones meant that the grazing areas and water sources were in shorter supply or necessitated longer movement as they were more dispersed or accessible only through long detours. Herds

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were cut off from dry-season pastures thus disrupting the adjustment to changing climatic conditions. High cattle density in a restricted area depleted the soil and led to overgrazing, thus endangering food supply for the coming years. Furthermore, indigenous people were forbidden to hunt wildlife that often preyed on domesticated herds. Even herbivore wild animals posed a serious threat to pastoralism as they were carriers of contagious diseases that were transmitted to domesticated animals. They also, obviously, competed for the same pastures and waterholes (Sindiga, 1984: 32–3; Arhem, 1985b: 55, 95; Homewood and Rodgers, 1991: 43, 74, 204). However, while the tourism industry has pushed for the preference given to the protection of wildlife at the expense of indigenous groups’ interests, it has also created important new economic opportunities to those same groups. Local people have been increasingly incorporated in various service jobs created around tourism and the related protection of wildlife and natural reserves. They have been employed as watchmen or other security person- nel, as waiters, guides, trackers, porters, maintenance workers, construction workers, etc. in lodges and camps, in travel agencies and tour operators, in the national park administration and other similar organizations that serve the tourists or the nature photographers and film producers. Tourism is a labour-intensive industry at various levels of the employment scale. Every hotel needs maids, porters and bartenders as well as directors and reception clerks (Elliott, 2001: 57). Local people also sell souvenirs, or work in shops that sell them, and locally purchased souvenirs are the major, and sometimes only, direct expenditures of tourists at the locality itself beyond the pre-paid package. Small cottage industries develop around traditional crafts now directed towards the production of tourist souvenirs (van den Berghe, 1980: 383). Obviously, the aforementioned occupations are at the bottom of the employment scale. They are low-wage, seasonal and non-secure jobs. They may be construed as indicators of economic marginality compared to other groups and sectors engaged in the tourism industry. The tourism industry is highly centralized and internationalized as part of the same globalization that pushes it forward (Dieke, 2000: 416). The high level of vertical integration in the tourism industry, involving western travel agencies, airlines and hotels, means that much of the economic gains do not reach the country that is the tourism destination. Even within that country, most of the profits go to the elite, the middle people, persons already wealthy and with political influence. Some of those are not even of the same ethnic group as the people who are the objects of tourist attraction, as with Mestizos in Peru or Kikuyu in Kenya (van den Berghe, 1980: 381–3; Sindiga, 1984: 33; Crick, 1989: 316–17; Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1994: 443). Relatively little trickles down to the locality that is the tourist destination. However, the little that does trickle down is still very significant

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compared to the general income level of local people. Little as it may seem compared to the amounts left in London, Paris, Amsterdam or Nairobi, it still becomes the largest source of income for the local population. Marginal as the aforementioned occupations may seem at the macro level, they are very central and significant in the local economy. They enable those engaging in them to be incorporated in the modern economy and generate a very significant differentiation from neighbours or kin who do not take part in those activities. Hence, while economically marginal at the global scale these endeavours are far from marginal at the local scale. Not surprisingly, access to these occupations is very highly prized and very competitive in the local scene. In order to increase the amounts that reach the local populations from the tourism income generated in their region, local councils have been transferred a certain share of the entrance fees to the national parks built in their area. For the Maasai of Kajiado and Narok local councils, such share from entrance fees to Amboseli and Maasai-Mara National Parks have been a very important additional income and it has been invested in local development projects in education, health, infrastructure, etc. (Time, 1996: 50–1). This, in turn, gives the local populations involved greater incorporation in the new occupational opportunities generated by the tourism industry. In 1996 a small group of Maasai opened their own Kimana Community Wildlife Sanc- tuary and negotiated a deal with a British tour operator to build a luxury lodge on the premises and channel tourists to the area. The local community was paid a certain share of the nightly lodging rate received from tourists and planned to use its earnings to build a school and clinic (Mowforth and Munt, 1998: 265). Similarly, in the mountain gorilla conservation area in Uganda, a government-appointed advisory committee that includes local representa- tives agreed that 10 percent of the park entry fees paid by tourists would be transferred to the local community (Mowforth and Munt, 1998: 268). Beyond these sources of income, local people also become tourism exhibits themselves. The natives are not simply there to provide services, they are an integral part of the exotic spectacle (van den Berghe, 1980: 377). They pose for photos for a fee, traditionally dressed. They open their villages, their camps and their dwellings to visits by tourists, photographers, reporters and film makers. They perform traditional dances for their visitors, show how they produce butter or draw blood from their cattle, stage rite-of-passage ceremonies or mock battle games, all for appropriate fees usually arranged in advance. Colourful local costumes, ornaments, customs, rituals, folk arts thus become services and commodities offered to tourists (van den Berghe, 1980: 386; Cohen, 1988: 372). Such exhibitions no doubt add significantly to the income of the Maasai, as of other indigenous groups elsewhere in the world, and contribute to their economic incorporation. They draw them further into the cash economy, reorder the use of their time, put them in direct contact

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with foreigners, teach them new languages and new habits (fieldwork in Kajiado, Narok and Samburu areas in Kenya, 1987, 1995). What the indigenous groups in question are selling in these activities is their own marginality. Were they not marginal to and different from the tourists, they would not have attracted the latter’s attention. In order to sustain such commodity, continue attracting customers, they have to maintain their difference. They may try to put on a show. Blue jeans and watches may be concealed behind spears, feathers and other ornaments or may be taken off for the duration of the show. A much quoted article describ- ing ‘Maasai on the Lawn’ dancing in front of guests in a British colonial farm, followed by afternoon tea and cookies, analyses such show (Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1994). However, in order to sustain itself over time, such show has to be well disguised. It would be self-defeating if it were too blatant. On Mayers Ranch, where Maasai and Samburu dance for tourists, there are no garbage cans, no signposts, no formal lectures, no uniformed guides or state-of-the-art amphitheatres. The guests simply sit on elevated ground while watching the show. All this contrasts with some other more clearly choreographed performances by professional groups in other tourist sites, such as Bomas of Kenya, and for this reason, is considered to be more attractive. Souvenirs sold on Mayers Ranch do not have price tags and are not even displayed on stalls; the goods are simply arranged on a blanket on the ground (Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1994: 452–3, 458). The important point here is that those indigenous groups encountering tourist curiosity have an incentive, encouraged by various tourism entrepreneurs, to package some elements of their culture as an exhibit to tourists and stress their difference from the tourists’ own culture. Wood has called this process a ‘fossilization’ of ethnic culture and identity in their separateness (Wood, 1997: 21; see also MacCannell, 1992: 19, 26). We should bear in mind, though, that fossils are transmitted frozen from the past but are not alive any more, whereas in this case, these cultural elements may be represented as if they are frozen in time but may still be very much alive. The ‘meeting ground’ between the ex-primitive native and the postmodern visitor is not as ‘empty’ and lifeless as MacCannell (1992: 19, 176, 288) would have it. We should note that some artefacts of local culture might not even be frozen at all. On the contrary, they are modified in order to make them more easily absorbed by foreign visitors. Some elements of the local culture are made more ‘presentable’ to tourists, preferably condensed into shorter time and into more photogenic chunks (Simpson, 1993: 166–7). Whether this modification leads, in the long run, to a modification of the tradition for the local people’s own consumption, or whether a separation is maintained between art and festivals ‘made for tourists’ and ‘made for locals’ is an interesting and unresolved question on which great variation exists. It certainly warrants further empirical and comparative research.

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What we detect here, in any case, is not only a reconstruction and renegotiation of identity but also a genuine ambivalence between economic incorporation and cultural marginality. The old, the traditional, the marginal, or whatever represents them, are maintained, nurtured and transmitted to younger generations in some kind of ‘suspended animation’, continuing to live it to a certain extent, while also commoditizing and commercializing it. The appearance of tourists encourages this process. Local traditions and handicraft, commercialized for tourists, thus become economically viable and may enable the survival of practices that may otherwise be forgotten (McKean, 1977: 94–105; Cohen, 1988: 382; Wood, 1993: 55). The traditional techniques may be degraded in mass production but the artistic skills may also be invigorated and salvaged from oblivion (Crick, 1989: 337). It is true that some of those objects are industrially produced in urban centres or even imported from abroad (Taiwan, Hong Kong?) and resold as local craft. But many of the crafts and other cultural practices are still produced, or exhibited, by the indigenous people themselves (though sometimes in modified form), who may then use the income earned from those activities for new as well as old economic or social needs (Nuttall, 1997: 224). They may buy a truck, a watch, a television set, they may acquire land or build a more solid house, or they may purchase cattle, pay for a new wife or otherwise engage in activities that would raise their status and influence over fellow members of the group. Indeed, the Maasai who exhibit their ‘traditional culture’ to tourists do use their earnings to buy modern amenities, above all land, a completely new form of investment for them. But they also spend much of the earned income to acquire their most traditional symbol of affluence: they purchase more cattle (fieldwork in Kenya, 1995; see also Bruner and Kirshen- blatt-Gimblett, 1994: 444). The outcome of the exhibit is therefore a greater incorporation in the new economy and society, but also a continuity of cultural marginality. One has to live in that culture sufficiently and be familiar with it in order to exhibit it to visitors and pass it on to new generations so that the exhibit could be sustained over time. Also, the indigenous culture has to remain different from that of the tourist in order to be of commercial value in the context of the tourism industry. The image of the untamed, of the pristine has to be perpet- uated. Some educated members of the community do not like this image and see in it an example of western exploitation. Others, by contrast, are happy to profit from it economically and even try to place themselves in positions of mediation between the tourists and the locals. They are the cultural brokers, the local entrepreneurs in the marketing of the ‘last frontier’.

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The Non-Western State and Reinforced Primitivism

Developing country governments are closely involved in tourism, not only in the planning of tourism infrastructure but also in the marketing of cultural meanings displayed to tourists through local practices. How to portray a country’s heritage obviously constitutes a powerful message about the national identity that is conveyed to both tourists and locals (Wood, 1984: 362–3, 365). In some cases, besides the economic beneﬁts involved, local and national governments use the tourist exhibits as representations of cultural peaks in the emerging identity, as a means of national pride within the context of ‘unity in diversity’. This seems to be the case with regard to the Bali culture in Indonesia (Picard, 1993: 83–7; see also Simpson, 1993: 169–70). This, however, is not how the Kenyan and Tanzanian governments view, and represent, the Maasai culture. Their attitude is closer to how the Indonesian and Malaysian governments view the indigenous populations of Borneo (King, 1993: 101–2, 114). While they deplore their relative backwardness and urge them to change, they also consider them as important tourism assets (interviews with tour operators in Kenya, 1987, 1995; on the attitude in Tanzania, see Homewood and Rodgers, 1991: 3, 242). Governments work in great collaboration with private enterprises, national and international, in turning their marginal populations into tourism exhibits. The initial demand for the encounter with the marginal comes from abroad, as we have seen, but the non-western governments encourage it and facilitate the provision of services that would satisfy the demand. As tourism develops, the income from foreign visitors becomes the mainstay of these countries’ economies. Many of them opt for tourism as a central development strategy (Crick, 1989: 310; Mowforth and Munt, 1998: 280). In Kenya, for example, the number of tourists rose from 5000 in 1958 to 814,000 in 1990 and 993,000 in 1999. In Tanzania, it rose from 153,000 to 459,000 between 1990 and 2000 (World Tourism Organization, 2003). In 1992, tourism accounted for 65 percent of the gross foreign exchange earnings in Kenya (Dieke, 2000: 406). For East Africa as a whole, foreign currency earnings from tourism topped US$6 billion in 2000 (World Tourism Organization, 2003). Faced with such prospects, a paradoxical attitude starts to emerge on the part of postcolonial states towards some of their populations, who are portrayed as tourist exhibits because of their marginality. The same governments that, in the name of progress and development, do all they can to change the lifestyle of those people, also encourage locking a small minority of them in their old traditions as tourism exhibits (Homewood and Rodgers, 1991: 242). In Africa, with which I am most familiar (numerous visits from 1972 to 2001), postcolonial governments, taking their cue from their colonial prede- cessors, take away the pastures and waterholes of pastoral nomads. They limit their movements and that of their herds. They allow encroachment of

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their grazing areas by cultivators. They put pressure on them to adopt perma- nent settlement, claiming that it is more conducive to rural economic development and to the encounter with what they claim are forces of progress (education, technology, better health services), but also in order to exert greater political control over them. They heavily tax their herds and try to induce them to market more animals and reduce the size of their herds, claiming again that nomadic pastoralism is a wasteful and anachronistic use of natural resources.5 At the same time, however, some of them are maintained in suspended animation at the margin of society, as specimens of a strange, different and gradually disappearing world. What we see, in effect, is a policy of ‘reinforced primitivism’, whereby those groups are accommodated in protected areas so long as they conform to certain traditional stereotypes (Mowforth and Munt, 1998: 273). They are displayed as a relic from the past, or an illustration of local colour and diversity, so that they can be attractive tourism exhibits. Their marginality is kept so that it can be commercialized in the context of globalization. Quoting from MacCannell: ‘Enacted or staged savagery is already well established as a small but stable part of the world system of social and economic exchanges. Many formerly primitive groups earn their living by charging visitors admis- sion to their sacred shrines, ritual performances, and displays of more or less “ethnologized” everyday life’ (MacCannell, 1992: 18). The groups in question share some of the profits and are more incorporated in the new national and international economy. However, culturally they have to display marginality as a condition of such benefits. And every effort is made, by themselves as well as by the governments and the other agents involved, to keep the display as genuine as possible, though still under tight control, so that it does not lose its commercial value. All join forces in maintaining this marginality, turn it into a saleable commodity and maximize its commercial value for all involved. In conclusion, globalization and marginality can be related in a myriad of ways, some of them quite removed from the topic of this article. Foreign workers, many of them illegal migrants, are a very marginal population very closely linked to socioeconomic processes of globalization. They grow as a result of globalization and lubricate the global economy, leading to still greater flows of international migration. The homeless people, living under the bridges, in empty office space, or in central train stations of metropolitan centres, are another extremely marginalized group connected to globalization. The AIDS epidemic is still another manifestation of the interface between the global and the marginal. In all these examples, and many others, processes of globalization either create or depend on marginality in its midst. They each warrant articles on the relationship between globalization and marginality. In this article, I have looked at quite a different instance of close encounter of the global and the marginal, derived from an increasing flow of

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western tourism into non-western regions. Unlike the other examples, here marginality is related to a perception of primitivism in western eyes towards places and people that become the objects of their curiosity. Such western attraction to the ‘primitive’ as a generalized other within its cultural frame has had an important impact on the people who are the objects of this attention. I have tried to point out a few of those effects on the people who become tourism exhibits and I have stressed how the economic incorporation opportunities depend on a continued representation of cultural marginality, as an ultimate paradox of globalization.

Notes

1I do not distinguish in this article between tourism, travel and exploration even though such distinctions are emphasized in the literature on tourism and form a hierarchy in terms of the traveller’s commitment to the endeavour he or she has undertaken (see Curtis and Pajaczkowska, 1994: 202). My assertion in this article is that the new forms travel has taken, as a result of globalization, have also blurred the distinction between those three categories. See on this point also, Tucker (1997: 108–9). 2 It has become a truism to assert that tourism tarnishes whatever it touches and destroys the very object of its desire (Abram and Waldren, 1997: 1). As is discussed in this article, however, one may also argue that tourism helps preserve elements of culture that might have otherwise disappeared. 3 It should be stressed that I am not trying to offer a comprehensive typology of modern tourism in this article. Health tourism directed to spas and ﬁtness centres, for example, or sports-related tourism, as active participants or as spectators, as well as many other types, are not discussed here despite their important share of the contemporary tourism market. 4 The fact that the Maasai are seen as an auxiliary to wildlife tourism strengthens the marginality argument regarding the Maasai as objects of tourism attraction. Maasai are seen as an extension of wildlife, hence they are regarded as most marginal (almost as marginal as wild animals), from the centrality of the so-called ‘civilized’ human existence and society. 5 Postcolonial government policies towards pastoral nomads are detailed and an extensive literature on them is cited in Azarya (1996b: 76–83). See also Swantz (1995: 218–55).

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