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Second Edition Native Tours The Anthropology of Travel and Tourism Erve Chambers Uniuersity of Maryland WAVELAND ~~ PRESS, INC. Long Grove, Illinois Native Tours: The Anthropology of Travel and Tourism by Erve Chambers To my wife, Ratchadawan, and our daughters, Suwan and Anchalee .I Contents !>reface ix Introduction: Shedding Light on Travel Experiences 1 1 From Travel to Tourism 7 Travel in Historical Perspective 9 Tho Advent of Modern Tourism 15 The Tourist as Subject 20 Case Study: 'l'ouring the American Southwest 26 2 Tourism, Society, and the Political Economy 31 Tourism and Economic Development 34 The Distribution of Economic Costs and Benefits 38 Tourism as Work 40 Tourism Policies and Plans 43 Transnational Dimensions of 'l'ourism 46 The Politics of Representation 51 Somo Social Consequences of Tourism 55 Tourism and Gender 61 Case Study: 'l'irol and Rural 'l'ourism 65 3 Nature, Tourism, and the Environment 69 Environmental Impacts of Tourism 71 Toudsm to Natural Places 75 People as Nature 80 Ecotourism 85 Case Study: Ecotourism in Belize 92 vii viii Contents 4 Tourism and Culture 95 Tradition, Authenticity, and Modernity 96 Tourism and Ethnicity 102 The Language of Tourism 106 Material Culture, Performance, and the Built Environment 111 Tourism in Place and Space 116 Epilogue 121 References 125 Index 133 Introduction Shedding Light on Travel Experiences Persons who propose to themselves a scheme for travelling, gener­ ally do it with a view to obtain, one or more of the following ends, viz. First, to make curious collections as natural philosophers, virtuosos, or antiquarians. Secondly, to improve in painting, statuary, archi­ tecture, and music. Thirdly, to obtain the reputation of being men of virtue, and of~ elegant taste. Fourthly, to acquire foreign airs, and adorn their dear persons with fine clothes and new fashions, and their conversation with new phrases. Or, fifthly, to rub off local prej­ udices (which is indeed the most commendable motive, though not the most prevailing) and to acquire that enlarged and impartial view of men and things, which no single country can afford. -Josiah Tucker, Instructions for Travellers, 1757 Josiah Tucker's measure of the motives of eighteenth-century Euro­ pean travelers was written during a century in which the opportunity to travel long distances was a privilege to be enjoyed by relatively few indi­ viduals. In our time, tourism is of course a much more widespread phe­ nomenon, and it is hard to say whether the conventions of staying put or those of traveling are the best indicator of our condition on this earth. In terms of scholarship, travel and tourism represent rapidly growing areas for inquiry, not only in anthropology but in many related fields as well. The burgeoning number of influential studies devoted to trying to under­ stand the cultural processes associated with tourism provide insights for understanding the complex nature of tourism. This book represents an attempt to explore the parameters of this phenomenal spurt of interest in the subject, prompting readers to think critically about tourism and its effects and to stir interest in further exploration of the topic. 1 2 Introduction While the major goal of this book is to review anthropological con­ tributions to the study of tourism, I have not limited myself to the research of anthropologists. There are numerous other fields that offer insight into the human consequences of travel and tourism. I have included examples from geography, economics, history, sociology, and literary criticism, as well as from the newly emerging interdisciplinary field of tourism studies. In each case, however, I endeavor to keep my focus on tourism as a kind of cultural practice, in which the most telling consequences are often those that are among the least apparent. A cul­ tural perspective can help us achieve what Josiah Tucker declared to be the most commendable of travel's objectives. It can give us insight into the ways in which our "local prejudices" influence and often distort our view of this important field of study. In this respect, scholarly dis­ ciplines are themselves subject to the influences of culture and to their customary practices. Anthropology is no exception. A large part of the contribution that anthropology has made to our understanding of tourism has come in the form of ethnographic accounts of specific tourist places and situations. Others have remarked on the strengths and limits of this approach (e.g., Crick 1989). I rely extensively on ethnographic studies in this book. On the other hand, I also point to instances in which I feel that some current anthropological approaches to the study of tourism have become problematic. One such problem is that the ethnographic approach makes it dif­ ficult to generalize beyond specific cases. Unfortunately, this does not always discourage investigators from attempting to do so. The litera­ ture is full of examples in which anthropologists and others are not careful enough to limit their observations to the specific cases they have studied. Many at least imply that their results have much wider applicability, and not a few seem to suggest a near universality for their conclusions. We will see in this book that it can be extremely difficult to generalize tourism experiences from one case to the next or to theo­ rize general effects from a few specific instances. For example, a partic­ ular tourism activity that is judged to be beneficial to a host community in one instance might be discovered to be harmful to another commu­ nity. In most cases, there are both costs and benefits associated with tourism development, and how these play out in a specific community or region depends in large part on the several different factors that are introduced toward the end of this introduction. Anthropological contributions to tourism research also sometimes lack sufficient historical perspective. I mean this in two ways. First, many anthropologists still write largely in the "ethnographic present," and there is a dearth of longitudinal studies that could help us under­ stand how tourism processes operate over the long run. This is impor­ tant, for example, in trying to distinguish short-term effects on host communities from longer-term effects. A tourism development that Shedding Light on Travel Experiences 3 appears to be beneficial to a local community in its initial stages can turn out to have nightmarish consequences in the long run, and the reverse is also true. One exception to this tendency to focus on the present can be found in the second edition of Valene Smith's (1989) edited volume, Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology ofTourism. For this edition, Smith asked her contributors to "revisit" the sites of their stud­ ies and comment on any changes that may have occurred in an interval of more than a decade. These commentaries provide some of the few observations we have pertaining to the longer-term consequences of tourism in particular communities. In another sense, the anthropological study of tourism has also been subject to some of the same historical biases that are apparent in the field of tourism research as a whole. I refer here to the tendency to regard modern tourism as an invention of Western civilization and to trace the ancestry of tourism to the elite excursions ofpremodern Euro­ pean travelers. There is sufficient evidence to challenge both of these assumptions. In this book I point, for example, to recent studies ofnon­ elite tourist traditions in Europe, as well as to perspectives on tourism that can be gained from the study of the travel traditions of non-West­ ern societies. In regard to the latter, I rely primarily on scholarly work devoted to the study of Japanese tourism. Anthropologists have tended to study tourism in faraway places. One of the discipline's greatest contributions has been to demonstrate the impacts of tourism on indigenous, marginalized, and often neglected peoples. However, this predilection for observing peoples on the basis of their cultural distinctiveness from ourselves has also served to distort the way anthropologists sometimes frame tourism as a field of study. Anthropologists have tended to view tourism as a man­ ifestation of international and mainly unequal relationships between tourists and their hosts. They have given much less attention to domes­ tic tourism or to touristic exchanges among social and economic peers. Anthropologists have paid relatively little attention to urban tourism (e.g., see Sieber 1997) and to some varieties ofrural tourism where dis­ tinctions between tourist and host behaviors are more difficult to dis­ cern. I have endeavored to balance this perspective in this book and to range both far and near for the examples of tourism that I provide. I address the extent to which the study of tourism has been domi­ nated by a tendency to regard the tourist as the principal dynamic in touristic experiences. I offer a challenge to this usual focus on tourist­ host relations by pointing to the ways in which tourism is mediated by persons and institutions who are neither hosts nor guests. I also argue that we too often regard the local communities and regions that receive tourists as being the passive recipients of a tourist dynamic. Anthropol­ ogy probably has gone as far as any other discipline in countering this tendency, but we still have a ways to go. There are numerous accounts of 4 Introduction tourist behavior and a variety of theories to help us understand the moti­ vations of tourists, but there is precious little in the nature of complemen­ tary theories of the equally dynamic processes of hosting and hospitality. None of these provisos negate the considerable contributions that anthropology has begun to make in advancing our understanding of tourism.

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