Current Sociology

Current Sociology http://csi.sagepub.com Globalization and International Tourism in Developing Countries: Marginality as a Commercial Commodity Victor Azarya Current Sociology 2004; 52; 949 DOI: 10.1177/0011392104046617 The online version of this article can be found at: http://csi.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/6/949 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: International Sociological Association Additional services and information for Current Sociology can be found at: Email Alerts: http://csi.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://csi.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Downloaded from http://csi.sagepub.com at Ebsco Host temp on January 18, 2007 © 2004 International Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 03 azarya (ds) 22/9/04 1:08 pm Page 949 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 trav- ellers. 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 Downloaded from http://csi.sagepub.com at Ebsco Host temp on January 18, 2007 © 2004 International Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 03 azarya (ds) 22/9/04 1:08 pm Page 950 950 Current Sociology Vol. 52 No. 6 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 popu- lation 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 trav- ellers 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 Downloaded from http://csi.sagepub.com at Ebsco Host temp on January 18, 2007 © 2004 International Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 03 azarya (ds) 22/9/04 1:08 pm Page 951 Azarya: Globalization and International Tourism 951 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 consump- tion 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.

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