Wageningen University and Research Centre
Transformative Tour
Guiding: Exploring
Old and New Recipes
A Tour Guide Perspective
Thesis code: Date: 11/10/2010 Saskia Janet Leenders Registration nr.82022650606 Examiners: I. Ateljevic & M. Duineveld Transformative Tour Guiding: Exploring Old and New Recipes
Transformative tour guiding: exploring old and new recipes
Saskia Janet Leenders Wageningen University and Research Centre Wageningen, The Netherlands 2010, October
ii Transformative Tour Guiding: Exploring Old and New Recipes
FOREWORD
Hereby I present to you my thesis on transformative tour guiding. The path of ‘walking my thesis’ was a big adventure for me, and the first thing that pops up when I hear ‘thesis’ is: STAY WITH THE PROCESS! So here is a short version of the story behind this piece of paper.
Inspired by Irena Ateljevic on Trans Modernity and by Paulo Freire on Transformative Education, I wanted to change my own practice as a tour guide towards facilitating transformative ways of doing and being with the aim of developing a critical consciousness and shifting towards values of transmodernity .
Why did I feel the need to do this? I will illustrate this by quoting myself in a letter I wrote to Theodore Zeldin: ‘I believe tour guiding, as it is facilitated at this moment, is rather boring: going to places and attractions, not having enough time to meet people to go beyond this empty meeting ground. So I am experimenting with methods to make people have conversations with one another, to interact, connect and possibly change their understanding of ‘the other’ and of themselves and to share’. In other words: I think that in tourism there is a great potential to get to a higher level of consciousness and to learn and reflect on own habits, practices and attitudes, to meet people to get connected and share! For this, people need to be actively participating in an intercultural meeting ground. However, from my previous experience as a guide, the way tourist move through the potential learning environment is limited in the ability to generate such processes, because the focus is somewhere else. Moreover, I believe that the guide in a guided tour can add extra value by facilitating this learning experience.
Therefore, in July 2009, I went to South Korea with the idea of experimenting to find a new method for transformative tour guiding while guiding tours for Shilla Travel1. I wanted to create a platform for dialogue between world cultures in between the program of the tours. After struggling as a tour guide for Shilla Travel for 2 months, I had guided 3 tours (around 40 people) and I felt like I failed my research completely: I didn’t succeed in creating a meeting ground between locals and the tourists in between that busy schedule that I had to follow. I
1 Shilla Travel is a Dutch/Korean based tour operator that specializes in tours throughout North and South Korea
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was exhausted by continuously being under pressure of the job, and at the same time criticizing its practice and trying to figure out how to organize possible ways to change it.
So, as a guide for Shilla Travel, I didn’t manage to transform my ways of guiding the groups. I started to doubt my ideas. Maybe my ideas were unrealistic? I wanted my research to be dramatic and innovative. Dramatic in the way that it would really change something within people; and innovative because I had the idea I had to find a method that was not there yet. Otherwise it was not worth doing research for, right?
On top of this, Shilla Travel went bankrupt in the end of August 2009. Now my research was doomed, I thought… Yet, this gave me the opportunity to experiment with setting up a meeting ground between locals and tourists outside of the guiding structures. I went to China and Laos together with Arjaan, my boyfriend, and we managed to facilitate 2 meeting ground sessions, in cooperation with local organizations. Back in the Netherlands, I organized another workshop in cooperation with Otherwise. On top of that, I had great conversations with other guides about current practices. All very valuable learning experiences; for research but also personally! Throughout the process of rethinking and re- shifting my research, I lost some time, and gained so much experience to ‘stay with the process!’
Overall, the thesis project was a challenging and valuable learning experience. It was a chance to gain new insights on tour guiding and generally understand the bigger socio- cultural forces in society that influence the practice. Although it was a tough process, it helped me in gaining insight on myself; my skills, my fears, my dreams, my traps, my passions. Actually this was quite a transformational experience in itself by learning and soaking up wisdoms and insights that transformed my own worldview and daily routines. Also, I am inspired for future projects to put my academic knowledge into practice. Throughout the process I struggled with my academic self. Yet, I do have the feeling I developed my academic skills further; to be critical reflexive, to analyze and write, and to apply all kinds of difficult theories to tour guiding and to put this into action. Particularly the putting it into action is very challenging and this is exactly what I will focus on after this piece of ‘think’ work.
This thesis is not meant to represent ‘the truth’; it rather is a moment of reflection on the practice of tour guiding. I hope it will broaden the way of thinking about tour guiding, and
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that it will give inspiration to those in the field of facilitating change and learning experiences. Thus, this thesis is a beginning and not an end.
Immense gratitude for all those beautiful people who guided me in this process:
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Thank you Irena for staying with me in the process; thank you for all the love that you gave me that supported me so much; and thank you for letting me dream- you are my mother of dreams: I have developed new feathers, which give me wings to fly away with a Master degree in my pocket!
Thank you Arjaan for all your love; thank you for doing a thesis boot camp together and to edit my thesis; thank you for the beautiful conversations; thank you of walking the path of facilitating meeting grounds in Laos and China with me!
Thank you Dawn, Hean, Bob, Hyejin, Don; Thank you inspirational authors, friends, colleagues, Phoenix Arbor, Otherwise, roomies, Rasa, university, great projects, meditation classes, musicians!
And thank you Paul and Lida, my parents, for supporting me in my studies.
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CONTENTS
Foreword ...... iii Executive Summary ...... ix Chapter 1 Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Broader socio-cultural context and the role of tourism ...... 2 1.1.1 Dehumanizing capitalism: To have or to be? ...... 2 1.1.2 The great promise of happiness through unlimited progress: the illusion of modernity ...... 5 1.1.3 Trans modernity: value shift ...... 7 1.1.4 Tourism as a reflection of society ...... 9 1.1.5 Trans-modern potential of tourism ...... 11 1.1.6 Tour Guides as possible facilitators of transition ...... 12 1.2 Empirical context ...... 13 1.3 Research aims...... 14 1.3.1 Aims ...... 14 1.3.3 Methodology in a nutshell ...... 15 Outline ...... 15 Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework ...... 16 2.1 Modern (mass) tourism ...... 16 2.1.1 Dehumanized interaction ...... 16 2.1.2 Tourism Bubbles ...... 18 2.1.3 problemetizing the Predominantly visual meeting grounds ...... 19 2.2 Transformation Potentialities in Tourism ...... 20 2.2.1 Tourism Meeting grounds: intercultural learning ...... 20 2.2.3 Away from home: space for reflection and discovering new ways of being...... 22 2.3 Tour guiding: exploring its potentials towards trans-modernity ...... 23 2.3.1 Conventional tour guiding ...... 24 2.3.2 Transformative tour guiding? ...... 30 Conclusion theoretical framework ...... 34 Research questions ...... 36 Chapter 3: Methodology ...... 37 3.1 Framing the research ...... 37 3.2 Research strategy ...... 38
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3.2.1 Data collection ...... 38 3.2.3 Data analysis ...... 46 3.4 Positionality and the research process ...... 46 3.4.1 Positionality ...... 46 3.4.2 The life path that resulted in this research ...... 46 3.4.3 Altering process as planned ...... 48 3.4.4 Process poem ...... 49 Chapter 4: Old Recipes ...... 50 4.1 bitter taste: Dehumanizing bubble and the madness of modernity ...... 50 4.1.1 Enforcing the power of bubble: creating passive dehumanized tourists, and moving away from shared realities ...... 50 4.1.2 Madness of modernity: commodification and perpetuating market mechanisms 58 4.2 The sweet and sour taste: transmodern potentiallities...... 64 Intercultural learning, reflecting, transforming? ...... 64 The guide as facilitator? ...... 68 Future dreams ...... 71 Chapter 5: New Recipes ...... 73 5.1 Johari’s window ...... 73 5.1.1 Theoretical background ...... 73 5.1.2 Complexities & Issues ...... 74 5.1.3 Potentialities ...... 75 5.2 Conversation menu...... 76 5.2.1 Theoretical background ...... 76 5.2.2 Complexities & Issues ...... 77 5.2.3 Potentialities ...... 78 5.3 Assumption play ...... 79 5.3.1 Theoretical background ...... 79 5.3.2 Complexities & Issues ...... 79 5.3.3 Potentialities ...... 80 5.4 River of Life: creating life histories ...... 80 5.4.1 Theoretical background ...... 80 5.4.2 Complexities & Issues ...... 81 5.4.3 Potentialities ...... 82 Conclusion ...... 83
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Old recipes ...... 83 New recipes ...... 86 Limitations of the study ...... 87 References ...... 88 Appendix A: Dutch quotes ...... 92
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This study aims at exploring Old and New recipes of potential tour guiding recipes that can foster a trans modern value shift in tour groups. Old and New recipes stand for approaches that tour guides practice now (Old) and potentially in the future (New) to bring together different life worlds of tourist groups visiting local cultures of the host. It does so by examining the perspectives of tour guides themselves, and by exploring different methodologies of trans modern learning.
As Ateljevic (2009) explains, trans modernity is an umbrella term that captures the socio- cultural, economic, political and philosophical shift. Trans modernism refers to the return of values and critical analysis after a period of technology driven development. As a paradigm, it aims at transcending through pre-modern, modern and postmodern understanding in search for human unity and innovative change.
The study is inspired upon past experiences of the author herself in guiding many tour groups through both North and South Korea. In these tours, recurrently frustrations of the tourist bubble and structure of the tour as a product of modernity have been an inspiration for the study of potential new ways of practicing tour guiding for a better world, by understanding differences that can transcend life worlds. This approach could advance a potential bridge in human unity.
In order to explore old and new recipes, the following two main research questions are asked: Old Recipes: What contemporary structures, practices and beliefs in tour guiding could contribute towards a shift in trans modernity?; New Recipes: What insights from the experimental methods of facilitation – based on theoretical insights – could contribute to trans modern tour guiding in the future?
By means of qualitative in-depth interviews – 9 in total – and action research on innovative facilitation – 3 facilitated workshops – an interpretive and emic understanding of current and future tour guiding has been sought for. The scale in stories and reflections have formed the basis of a discussion with the available literature on trans modernity, modern mass tourism, transformation potentialities in tourism and tour guiding practices. The research is mostly framed within the context of tour guiding in Korea, but has allowed perspectives of
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experiences in other destinations too. The different workshops have been facilitated in a multicultural setting too, namely; China, Laos and in Wageningen.
Through exploring tour guides perspectives, similar problems with the way tours are being framed came to surface. The tourism bubble that modernity has shaped makes it difficult to bridge different fenced of life worlds. Guides, tourists and hosts are part of this framework, that reproduces de-humanized practices. Hosts are becoming immune to guests behavior. Guests consume tourism by special interest in photography and the norm of travelling through comfort zones afraid of the unfamiliar. Guides, as representatives of tour companies, revisit places with different groups, where they feel locked in the structures of the standardized. Although there is a shared desire to change the institution, they are just as much docile to the ways we do things in tourism. Nevertheless, tour guides do have the power to frame experiences of guests, and by confronting guests with their behavior. They are THE mediator of potential change, but depend herein on the structures of the game and the voluntaristic behavior of both guests and hosts.
The different methods of facilitating a verbal and visual meeting ground between different individuals and groups have shown that there is trans modern potential: knowledge is shared, assumptions are challenged, life stories reflected upon, people are connected. Yet, it is indeed difficult to facilitate an in depth understanding of one another. One general observation has been the difficulty in finding people to participate: it is easier to stay inside the comfortable bubble, wherein reflection is unnecessary and revealing identity, fears, dreams, emotions either. Next to this, an observation is the fear of participants to open up themselves in sharing personal details that are necessary for un-superficial dialogue. Creating verbal meeting grounds between individuals of another culture can provide inter- linkages to understand different positions between individuals, but can also create confusion and chaos in the process. What is more value though is the potential for creating new relationships through participation that can foster intercultural learning. Confrontation of each other’s perceptions towards the other should also not be seen as something negative. However uncomfortable they may be, they do provide new ways of learning through interpersonal reflection. And sharing is better than keeping secrets. Finally, facilitating verbal meeting grounds is a difficult process, and is something that needs to be learned through training and continued experience. In short; potential for trans modern tour guiding is present, but challenging within the current structures of the industry and de-humanized fences of different life worlds.
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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
This thesis is about transformative tour guiding and its potential in changing contemporary tour guiding towards trans modernity. Transformative tour guiding can be understood as a way of facilitating a learning experience as a guide on a tourism meeting ground that would enable a process of transformational learning. As Mezirow (2000b) claims, transformational learning is a process within people by which they transform their taken-for-granted frames of reference - meaning perspectives, habits of mind, mind-sets - to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, emotionally capable of change, and reflective so that they may generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide action (p. 7- 8). Against this background, one question could be asked by the reader: Why do we need to transform and why should we try this during holidays? To understand this, I will first need to take you to a broader socio cultural perspective, to get insights that will make you understand why it is important and the reason tourism has a great potential to foster this change.
This introduction chapter will give insights into the broader socio-cultural processes that have been going on in our global society at large since the beginning of the industrial revolution. I will mainly focus on modernity and the shift towards trans modernity. It is important to gain a wider historical perspective on such trends in order to get a deeper understanding of where we are now, and where could a new paradigm such as trans modernity bring us. A paradigm can be understood as a suite of beliefs about how the world works, accompanied by a set of guiding principles (Jennings, 2001). It is not my aim though, to give a detailed description of all the processes that have been going on in our western, or world society; because this would not fit in this relatively small thesis. My aim is to give an umbrella of different paradigms in society that shape our ways of being, thinking and doing in order to understand our view of the world now. Those bigger, macro structures influence us on a micro level (Zeldin, 1995), and are therefore important to understand what is happening in tourism in contemporary society.
This umbrella chapter will provide a short introduction to relevant trends in tourism and shifts in paradigm thinking. Firstly, a theoretical contextualization of broader socio-cultural trends of modernity and trans-modernity are described. Those trends are consequently applied to the world of tourism, as tourism is a reflection of our society (Urry, 1990). Then I Transformative Tour Guiding: Exploring Old and New Recipes
will describe the potential of trans modern tourism and tour guiding. After having set my main argument I will briefly describe the empirical context of tour guiding and the empirical context of my research. Then I will take you to my research aims and objectives followed by a short description of used methodologies. Finally, I will give an overview of how this report is set up, and what you can expect in the following chapters of this thesis.
1.1 BROADER SOCIO-CULTURAL CONTEXT AND THE ROLE OF TOURISM This theoretical overview will take you on a journey through the general broader socio cultural context that have shaped ways of thinking and doing since the late nineteenth century. I am aware that a general overview will unavoidably make it simplistic, without giving voice to all other processes that have been going to society at large. Nevertheless, in order to understand processes in society and tourism today, those dominant macro structures could help us to get an overview and make us understand better what is happening on micro levels. I will mainly focus on the processes from modernity to trans modernity as described by many influential social scientists, historians and philosophers.
I will first start with contextualizing modernity, and how it brought many solutions for the problems then, creating new potential and possibilities. After this, I will discuss how modernity created new problems simultaneously with solving others. Modernity grew parallel with capitalism as the hegemonic ideology that is shaping our ways of thinking today. As some authors claim modernity has not been bringing happiness that it was hoping for, even more, the paradigm of modernity is destructing the earth and dehumanizing lives for many. Secondly, I will contextualize trans modernity, as a paradigm shift, that brings back values of ….. the universal story humanity needs to sustain the earth and reconnect to the core of the self and nature.
1.1.1 DEHUMANIZING CAPITALISM: TO HAVE OR TO BE? The hegemonic ideology that shapes contemporary (western) society is capitalism, essentially valuing money and material wealth (Zohar & Marshall, 2004). Gramsci (1978, quoted in Mezirow, 2000) explains hegemony as ‘the way in which people are convinced to embrace dominant ideologies as always being in their own best interest’ (p.128). As Mowforth and Munt (2003) explain, ideologies are the basis and validity of our most fundamental ideas. Ideologies are inescapably interlinked with the relationships of power that create representations of meaning which serve the interests of a particular social group. Hegemony is the way in which dominant social classes convince the majority of subordinate
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classes to follow their cultural and moral values (Mowforth & Munt, 2003, p. 47). In other words, hegemony is the way in which dominant groups can persuade others to follow their ideology. Although there can be many different ideologies at the same time, the hegemonic one can overrule the others by their power play. Capitalism has added an enormous drive to the concept of progress, by introducing a ‘new indisputable value of unlimited quantitative growth’ (Ghisi, 2007, p. 152). Since the industrial revolution the world and the lives of people have completely changed. We now live in a growing globalized world, which can be described as the widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide inter-connectiveness (Held & McGrew, 2002). Globalization of markets has changed the nature of work, with increased worldwide competition, wages are cut and downsized (Ray & Anderson, 2000). Many people in the capitalist society work under conditions that are mind deadening and boring and at the same time creating stress because of work pressure (Zohar & Marshall, 2004).
In a capitalist industrial society command and control are very important, because it is a machine centered society, wherein humans have to be adapted to machines (Fromm, 1992). The underlying assumptions about us, as human beings, is that we are primarily economic beings, who live to make money (Zohar & Marshall, 2004). As Zohar and Marshall (2004) claim, the capitalist system assumes we act to pursue our own rational self-interest. Ray and Anderson (2000) argue that in this system humans are primarily seen as consumers; the more you consume, the better citizens we are. Resulting in overspending as the addiction of many people in our modernized world today, from the poorest to the most affluent (Ray & Anderson, 2000). Especially after World War II, society was designed is such a way that we would identify ourselves with consuming. This is what retailing analyst Victor Lebow articulated as THE solution to the problem that existed after World War II, that has become the norm for the whole system; ‘Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption of our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate’ (Durning, 1992). The more we have to devote our time to earn the money we need to consume, the less time we have to stand still, relax and enjoy. Even though the ‘winners’ of capitalism live their lives in material and economic luxury, there is an increasing stress on them, because they cannot find time to nourish the
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needs that make them enjoy relaxation and to be with people they love (Zohar & Marshall, 2004).
Money prestige, power and success are considered to be of outstanding value in our modern society, and our focus is in achieving those aims. In our business culture this assumption is translated in the pursuit of profit for its own sake; every business exists of maximizing its own profit. The role of our environment, the earth, is to provide us with resources which we assume to be unlimited (Zohar & Marshall, 2004). In other words, as Fromm (1992) articulates, we use nature merely as building blocks for creating our world. As if we are gods and stand completely above it. Because of the domination of capitalist ideology and power structures, we think we stand above nature; this characterizes the patriarchal power structures of command and control orientation (Ghisi, 2007).
This orientation is cutting us from nature, from feelings and from life itself. Our modern world is a model of domination and this is permeating our whole society. The problem is that we live in a finite world, and this makes infinite growth impossible (Ghisi, 2007). Even when you rationally think about this, it cannot be the right way of living. Nevertheless, people rather do not refer to this, as the benefits of growing have always been the dominant voice. ‘We think that if we do that, we will be successful, and if I do this, I will stand out, and I will be happy, but what good is that if we have lost the passion of life? you have to know what it means to be true to your inner self, your soul’ (Ray & Anderson, 2000, p. 47). It seems we move on in a direction without critically analyzing its effect that it has on ourselves and our world. Ateljevic (2009) underpins this direction by mentioning that our world is in a ‘global crisis of wars, terrorism, climate change, over-consumerism, increasing gaps between rich and poor, social alienation, individual feelings of pressure, anxieties, chaos and powerlessness worldwide (p.3). Although there are many publications of how our world is doomed if we go on like this, we still try to solve problems from the same paradigm that started them in the first place.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them - Albert Einstein
Even though our individualized society is self-obsessed, self awareness seems to be modest; we don’t have many patterns or habits of reflection (Zohar & Marshall, 2004). Knowing ourselves, and our emotions and motivations that shape our behavior, we could raise and
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control those also (Goleman, 1995). On the other hand, as Freire (1956) argues, as human beings we are gifted with reason: it makes us aware of ourselves, of our world around us, of our past and possible future. We are historical beings and therefore different from animals, who live only in the moment (Fromm, 1956). Because we are conscious that we have a past present and future, we are able to reflect upon their own actions (Freire, 1973). By reflecting on actions, humans can critically analyze themselves and the reality around them, and are able to adjust their actions in the present, to create a change in the future. This reflecting and acting upon the reality and knowledge makes people aware of ‘the truth’ as a construction in people’s minds and the historical reality people live in, instead of perceiving the truth as static that cannot be adjusted or interpreted differently. Humans are capable of intervening in their reality, but not everyone has developed a critical consciousness that makes them aware of this power (Freire, 1973).
Although many people can clearly see something is wrong with the world, few make the connection that this problem is eventually a problem of us, as individuals. As Carl Jung puts it: “The alone makes history, here alone do great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately spring as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources in individuals (…) we make our own epoch” (Jung, as quoted in Zohar & Marshall, 2004, p.xi). The problem is that most of us are too much self centered, not acting from higher values that would make the world more equal, our earth more healthy and us more happy (Zohar & Marshall, 2004).
It is time for a change within us, our self-awareness, and the values we are acting upon. As humans we are dehumanized by capitalism. A change in us and our values will eventually translate into different kind of actions in daily routines, business, and education, leisure and tourism practices.
1.1.2 THE GREAT PROMISE OF HAPPINESS THROUGH UNLIMITED PROGRESS: THE ILLUSION OF MODERNITY It is ironic that the more serious problems emanate from the more industrially advanced societies. Science and technology have worked wonders in many fields, but the basic human problems remain. There is unprecedented literacy, yet this universal education does not seem to have fostered goodness, but only mental restlessness and discontent instead. There is no doubt about the increase in our material progress and technology, but somehow this is not
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sufficient as we have not yet succeeded in bringing about peace and happiness or in overcoming suffering(DalaiLama, 2010).
The above given quote illustrates the paradox of our times. Although we have reached a climax in the way we stand above and control nature, this doesn’t necessarily bring the happiness and peace we were looking for. We can now dream of an unlimited production and consumption, and the industrial age made this possible. It seems we can rule the world: we can produce more food than we need, and we can live comfortable lives. At least, in some countries on the globe this is the perceived reality. Erich Fromm (1976) calls this era the era of ‘The great promise of unlimited progress’: The promise of domination of nature, of material abundance, of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and unimpeded personal freedom (Fromm, 1976, p. 1).
Yet, that progress was obviously needed in the context of pre-modernity. Many things changed in society due to industrialization and modernity. Before the industrial revolution in our societies were overwhelmingly rural. This may sound romantic now, but in reality it meant harsh life, poverty, illiteracy, frequent illness, malnutrition, with a life expectancy of 30-40 years for the majority of people. This was what modernity was reacting against. ‘The creators of early modernism seem to have been constantly afraid of slipping back to the brutality and ignorance of peasant life’ (Ray & Anderson, 2000, p. 73). In the pre-modern agrarian society, the dominant time value was stability, and change was seen as undesirable (Ghisi, 2007). People’s lives made sense in the way that they followed the path that was laid out for them and followed their understanding of the world (Ray & Anderson, 2000). At birth, your fate was predestined, which made life and choices to be made much easier in comparison to the situation we face now. There wasn’t much freedom though to escape from gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, occupation, and education that were laid out on the moment born. Change was slow, and individual freedom was limited.
In modernity and the rise of scientific and technological worldviews, the pace of change became so rapid, that it broke all kinds of traditional structures in society that were constraining the individual to break out of the predestined life before (Ray & Anderson, 2000). Along with breaking down those structures new possibilities were created and ‘the sky was the limit’: everything seemed to be possible. The new religion became progress; it gave hope, energy, and vitality. The idea was that if everybody would live in wealth and comfort, we would have unrestricted happiness for all as well (Fromm, 1976). Even today,
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the most dominant measurements of progress of our human development are still rationality, money and technology (I. Ateljevic, 2009b).
Although modernity has been a necessary part of our development of human civilization, it is now at its peak, that is calling for its shift: our progress has reached the top and we cannot move faster and consume and produce more. The current problems we face are warning us that this idea of unlimited progress is becoming an illusion.
Material wealth and comfort are not able to generate wellbeing. The process of change and de-structuring went so far that some academics in the nineties saw Modernity as so de- fragmentized that it appeared to be as ‘disorganized fragments, alienation, wasteful, violent, superficial, unplanned and unstable and unauthentic’ (MacCannell, 1976, p. 8). Post modernist, like MacCannell gave a critique on modernity, which was very helpful in deconstructing modernity. Postmodernity can be seen as a reaction towards modernity. It has left grand narratives in bits and pieces to illustrate the plurality of meaning. Baudrillard (1994), for example, has shown us that grand narratives such as models, do become shreds of reality as they reproduce our understanding of reality in their own turn. Postmodernity has been very pessimistic, relative, and providing no universal solution, because modernity was such a grand narrative for humanity as a whole (Ateljevic, 2009). As the next section will illustrate, trans modernity is also a reaction against modernity, yet, bringing back the universal narrative and value shift needed for the future. For sake of completeness, I wish to clarify how trans modernity differs from postmodernity. Trans modernity likewise reconsiders modernity, but combines the best of modernity together with traditional and ancient wisdoms for humanity as a whole. One must however not understand trans modernity as a paradigm that follows or replaces postmodernity and modernity in a linear process. Where some people remain to believe in modernity, others are strong followers of post modernity, and some start to see trans modernity as a new emerging paradigm.
1.1.3 TRANS MODERNITY: VALUE SHIFT There’s a subconscious collective knowledge that is emerging into our joint, universal consciousness, so we can finally dare to think and speak what we deeply feel and intuitively know’ (Ateljevic, 2009, p. 3)
As Ateljevic (2009) claims, many people from different backgrounds argue that humanity needs (and is going through) a major global mind change and paradigm shift: the paradigm
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of Trans- modernity. As Ateljevic (2009) explains, trans modernity is an umbrella term that captures the socio-cultural, economic, political and philosophical shift. Trans modernism refers to the return of values and critical analysis after a period of technology driven development. In the new paradigm of trans-modernity people are going through a shift of values towards quality of life, supporting responsibility for our mother earth, aware of her and our vulnerability and interconnectedness, sharing knowledge and principles of respect and equity (Ateljevic, 2009a). People must reconnect to nature with feelings. This is a complete different way to relate to reality (Ghisi, 2007).
Deep in society there is a value change (Ghisi, 2007).There is a global mind shift wherein the act of giving and sharing is the highest value. Trans-modernity is about a general shift in thinking that is going through society at large. The mindset of people is changing towards greater acceptance of diversity, a search for meaning in life, more focus on quality of life rather than accumulating material wealth (I. Ateljevic, 2009a).
Ghisi (2007) explains that the concept of trans modernity transcends through modernity through an increasing belief in interconnectedness of women and men, of the human with the living system, of the spirit and the rational, in a movement for change that aims at improvement of quality of life and not that of modernity’s obsession with material wealth.
The necessity for cooperation can only strengthen mankind, because it helps us recognize that the most secure foundation for the new world order is not simply broader political and economic alliances, but rather each individual's genuine practice of love and compassion. For a better, happier, more stable and civilized future, each of us must develop a sincere, warm- hearted feeling of brother- and sisterhood. (DalaiLama, 2010)
As Ghisi (2007) claims the transformation towards a knowledge based society has already started. According to him, values in a knowledge based society are completely different in comparison to a materialistic capitalist one. In a materialistic based society, the focus is on quantities, while in a knowledge based society the focus is on quality. The quality of the information and knowledge gained and shared is of most importance. Knowledge cannot be owned in the same way, because it is in the head of people. So only by sharing, value is created.
Power is increasingly in the availability of human creativity in interactive networks and less in ownership of capital and technology (Ghisi, 2008). The capitalist dominant forces of power
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and control are not useful anymore, because it is not possible to control neither knowledge nor creativity. Power and control are not able to foster human creativity. Business as usual is leading towards a doom scenario for the future. Therefore we should rethink our ways of doing (Ghisi, 2008). According to Zeldin (1995), our ability to cope with difficulties of existence depends on the context on which we view them. In our globalized world, the big narratives of traditional societies have vanished, and new/alternative stories are created. The world is now becoming more and more complex, and this complexity brings new possibilities also. We need to find gaps somewhere, to create new opportunities to solve the dilemmas we face (Zeldin, 1995).
As the above argument of trans modernity illustrates, there is a general shift in thinking. Even though the newly occurring paradigm of trans-modernity is causing a value shift in the mindset of people, different paradigms are happening at the same time, and not everyone is looking through the same glasses. In the next section I will illustrate that tourism is a reflection of society and therefore a change happening in society, should also be visible in tourism.
1.1.4 TOURISM AS A REFLECTION OF SOCIETY Tourism can be thought of as a social geographic outcome of broader socio-cultural processes that are going through society. Tourism is a complex socio-cultural experience that cannot be understood on its own, without looking at those broader socio-cultural phenomena. It has to be placed in relations to other units in the whole of human society (Watson & Kopachevsky, 1994). Therefore, a change in tourism cannot be separated from wide ranging social and cultural developments in contemporary society (Urry, 1990).
Hegemonic ideologies that are under the surface of society are visible in the practices of tourism (Dann, 2002). This is well illustrated when looking at tourism from a historical perspective. History’s emphasis on time provides “the depth which comes from studying society not as a static but as a dynamic constellation of forces manifesting itself in continuous and constant change’ (Towner & Wall, 1991, p. 72). Fundamentally, history considers the transformation of things (people, places, institutions, ideas), through time, from one state into another. Since it is not my aim to have an elaborate historical overview, I will only briefly show how pre-industrial tourism, and modern (mass) tourism developed along with broader social-cultural trends.
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In the 13th and 14th century, when Christianity was the dominant ideology, pilgrimage tourism was a widespread phenomenon. Although the focus was on religious devotion, travels were also characterized by pleasure and learning about culture. Pilgrimage tourism gradually became institutionalized and by the 15th century there were organized tours from Venice to the holy land (Urry, 1990). In the 16th century elite started to send their sons across Europe to be educated about culture, art, history and pleasure (Brodsky-Porges, 1981). At least, this is the generally employed assumption on the nature of the ‘the Grand Tour’ that went through Western Europe (Towner, 1995). This tour was different in comparison to pilgrimage tours, because it broke with the spiritual aim, and thus was secular in kind. The dominant Ideology focused on science and knowledge and the tour served for generating this. Roughly from the 17th century the Grand tour was firmly established. By then, also middle class sons could afford to travel. In the 17th century the character of the tour changed towards romanticism, looking for scenic landscape beauty, and experience of the sublime (Urry, 1990). Here, the dominance of classical and Renaissance tastes on the pattern of the late seventeenth century tour was shaping the kind of tourism (Towner, 1995). Travel experiences were seen as an opportunity for dialoguing and to eye witnessing observation and was solely for the richer classes. The phenomenon of (youth) travel of lower classes started in the 18th century with the aim to learn everything about a certain craftsman profession (Adler, 1985a). Young professional craftsmen from villages were travelling to find a job. It was an institutionalized practiced that solely had the purpose of finding work, and to grow as an individual to be able to take responsibilities on return home. So travelling was the pursuit to find work and to be educated. The name for this kind of travelling is tramping and lasted sometimes for several decades. By tramping men were educated by different masters, and transformed as individuals by living, and working with people from different back grounds and cultures. This kind of work pursuit travelling was well known and was supported by networks of different crafts organizations. Tramping was part of the professional life path of a craftsman, even essential to be able to become a master oneself (Adler, 1985b). Trampers gradually vanished from the travel landscape along with their professions during industrialization and urbanization of societies (Adler, 1985a).
Modern Mass tourism developed since the late nineteenth century and grew exponentially especially after World War II. Modern society is intimately linked to modern ways of leisure activities, tourism and sightseeing (MacCannell, 1976) and is thus intimately linked to the ideology of modernity. The modern tourist typically longs for leisure as a breathing space
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from deeply alienating, routine work, and presumably as an effective counterbalance to pressures of work (Urry, 1990). A good illustration for this is that many tourists value ‘authentic’ experiences during their holidays immensely. This can be explained by the fact that Contemporary Modern societies are so complex that they are hard to either grasp or to be understood by the individual. For ‘moderns’, authenticity and reality are elsewhere, and this is the reason they have a nostalgia for naturalness (MacCannell, 1976) and thus are looking for it during their holidays. In comparison to other historical periods, modern tourism is different in a way that tourism is not solely for the elite, nor related to work. To be a tourist is one of the characteristics of modern life (Urry, 1990). Moreover, it is expected by many western tourists to travel every year at least once. Travelling has become a necessity and it is believed it will restore people’s physical and mental health if they get away from time to time.
Tourism as a reflection of society is illustrated in the above historical contextualization. Accordingly, Dann (2002) sees the practices of tourism as a metaphor for the social world. For example, according to Urry (1990) tourism is a reflection of (post) modernity. Ateljevic (2009) claims there is already a change happening towards a new paradigm: The paradigm of trans modernity as reflected in tourism practices. Thus, tourism is both a reflection of society and at the same time by looking at tourism practices lays the potential to see a change in society. Moreover, tourism practices could serve as a catapult towards trans modernity as will be argued in the next section. In other words, I will explain the potential tourism has in helping people shift to trans modernity.
1.1.5 TRANS-MODERN POTENTIAL OF TOURISM Tourism has to shift towards trans-modernity to do well and may then have a tremendous impact in assisting the citizens in this same transition. It could also have a new mission in helping people towards higher levels of consciousness (Ghisis, in Mykletun, Haukeland, & Furunes, 2006)
This will be my main argument: by facilitating a transformative learning environment in tourism, people could potentially be guided towards the change that is needed (and happening synchronically) right now.
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This new paradigm could evoke the change that we need for inner sustainability2. Ateljevic (2009a) illustrates this potential of tourism by arguing that trans modernity is capable of transcending through (post) essentialists distinctions that have created still existing differences in gender, cultures, races, etc. that drive human behavior and (mis-) understanding. The ever present distinctions are patriarchic and create grounds for domination over others. Transcending through the distinction is an ideal way to take away forms of domination in society that has continued present day marginalization. Although our contemporary society is increasingly being networked and connected, true understanding and a creation of a universal community is fostered through close personal contact. Tourism does provide a platform of physical meetings and understanding the other, potentially taking away the essentialist borders. Moreover, since tourism is connected to a broad range of other services, it is ideal for transcending communal values that trans modernity aims at.
1.1.6 TOUR GUIDES AS POSSIBLE FACILITATORS OF TRANSITION As the above argument indicated, there is much potential in tourism for people to reach a higher level of consciousness. Tourism can serve as a catapult to help people in their transformational processes needed to reach trans modern ways of being. As Mezirow (2000a) explains, transformation theory focuses on how we, as humans, could gain a greater control over our lives as socially responsible and clear thinking decision makers. Instead of uncritically assimilating values and meaning of that of others, transformational learning gives us insight on how we negotiate and act on our own purposes, values and feelings. Through the revelation of underlying values of our actions and thinking we are able to critically reflect on them.
In guided tours there is a possibility that the guide could play a facilitating role in a transformational journey towards higher levels of consciousness during the tour. Therefore, in this research I will focus on the possibility in guided tour tourism to be transformed into trans modern ways.
Now, the umbrella of the broader socio-cultural processes and paradigm shifts and the role of tourism in general and the possible role of guides herein are presented. In this research
2 Inner sustainability with the self can stand on the basis of outer sustainability of the world around us. Without making changes within people’s own behavior, little faith can be expected in the results of the outer world.
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the trans modern potential of tour guiding will be explored. To gain an insight of the empirical reality of tourism, in the next section I will elaborate on this shortly.
1.2 EMPIRICAL CONTEXT
As Weiler (2001)notes, there are many different kind of group tours and guided tours that have different purposes, aims, tourists, organization, length, and focus of the tour. This study focuses on guided tours for western tourists who go abroad accompanied with a native speaking guide. Many of these tours are arranged in such a manner that the group is away for 2-4 weeks, travelling from place to place. Unfortunately there are no available statistics on the number of tourists that travel by organized guided tours, neither were the most prominent tour operators willing to give numbers of customers they serve in the Netherlands. Yet, what I can provide is a general trend in the tourism industry, to show the immense growth rate and therefore the justification of this study on a more general level:
To illustrate the growth of tourism since the 1950’s, the UNWTO (2009) provides numbers of international tourist arrivals: In 1950 there were 25 million international tourist arrivals, in 1980 277 million, in 1990 438 million, in 2000 684 million and in 2008 there were already 922 million expecting 1.6 billion international tourist arrivals per year in 2020. According to the UNWTO many new destinations are developed alongside the traditional ones of Western Europe and Northern America. Although those numbers do not say anything about the kind of tourism, it does show that it is an ever growing industry.
This leaves me to describing the empirical context from my own experience as a guide for Shilla Travel. It is relevant, because this context was the inspiration for doing this research in the first place. Shilla Travel is a tour operator who organizes and facilitates 2- or 3 weeks tours through Korea (North and South). Shilla Travel is a relatively small tour operator with approximately 400 tourists per year, based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and Seoul, South Korea. The founder of Shilla Travel is Don Roelofs, who himself is an adoptee from South Korea and therefore the tours originally have a strong connection with adoption. Most groups who travel to South Korea are a mixture of adoptees with their families and partners, and tourists who are there for their holidays.
While the creation of Shilla was founded on the search for birthroots, Shilla does not promote itself as such. Through the internet and Travel Brochures they distinguish themselves from other tour operators by being ‘the Korea specialist’: ‘While other travel
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organizations choose many different destinations, we focus ourselves on quality and deep knowledge. For that reason we can call ourselves truly ‘the Korea specialist’ (www.shilla.nl).
By travelling, tourists have an embodied experience of being in Korea as well as having encounters with South Koreans. Shilla Travel offers a deeper understanding by providing a guide that will show the tourists Korea in many aspects. Their understanding of Korea will be influenced by the guide that will tell them his or her interpretation of Korea and its culture.
Yet, as a Dutch guide, there are many things that are not comprehensible about the Korean society, simply because not born and grown up in that specific cultural geographical place and unable to speak the language where through meaning is created. There are many elements in the culture that are lying under the surface. As Ned Seelye (1996) argues by using the metaphor of an iceberg to illustrate the difficulties of understanding a culture one is not born in: ‘What is under the waterline is of more importance then of what can be seen upon the first encounter’ (page 9). As person born and raised in Holland, the guide can only grasp a little and will be always an outsider of the Korean culture, even when living there for a considerable amount of time.
1.3 RESEARCH AIMS
The newly emerging paradigm of Trans-modernity transcending through tourism could help us towards a value shift that is needed in this time of modernity crisis. In tourism, there is a potential to make us aware and change our ways of being and doing and therefore could help us in this. As tourism is a reflection of society, trans modernity might already be reflected in the current practice of tour guiding. So first we need to know what is happening in tourism in guiding today, and how this helps or constrains us in our transformation process of tomorrow.
1.3.1 AIMS In this research I focus firstly on the potential that tour guiding brings now to transform people in a guided tour by exploring potentials in practices of today’s tour guiding. And secondly, on the possible ways tour guides could facilitate a transformative learning environment in the future by exploring potential methods.
In order to explore this potential, this research specifically aims:
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- Firstly, to explore the practice of tour guiding today in order to learn from a tour guide perspective. The aim of the exploration is to provide an insight in the practice of tour guiding to reach a better understanding what potential there is in the current practice from a guide perspective. In order to achieve this I will focus on their perspectives concerning their roles, experiences, difficulties, trends, intercultural interaction, and learning related to tour guiding and guided tours.
- Secondly, to explore trans modern action methods by experimenting with possible methods that facilitate transformative learning environments. The aim of this exploration is to find possible methods that could possibly (further) enhance the creation of trans modern ways of guiding in the future.
- Thirdly, to explore literature for the inspiration and theories that could guide action for change. The aim of this theoretical exploration is to guide the experimentation of possible facilitation methods.
To summarize, my aim is to explore old and new recipes for trans modern tour guiding.
1.3.3 METHODOLOGY IN A NUTSHELL This study makes use of qualitative data by means of doing 9 in-depth interviews and action research on innovative facilitation skills (in 3 facilitated workshops). The guiding principle is structured from an interpretive paradigm to get an emphatic and emic understanding of tour guiding actions now and in the future. The data collection has been done inductively mostly but has been framed within theoretical contributions relevant.
OUTLINE The remainder of this study will describe the theoretical framework – chapter 2 - that has been used to explore the potential of trans modernity in tour guiding. The literature will discuss primarily the following conceptualizations; modern mass tourism, potentialities in tourism, the role of tour guides in (trans modern) tour guiding and the potential and importance of verbal meeting grounds in trans modern tourism. The research questions, based on the conceptual framework, will form the conclusion of the theoretical framework.
Chapter 3 encloses a more detailed description of research methods used. Chapter 4 and 5 both contain the empirical data in the light of the theoretical framework: chapter 4 focusing on old recipes, and chapter 5 on new ones. The final conclusions of this study will be presented in chapter 6.
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CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.1 MODERN (MASS) TOURISM
Although we associate tourism with pleasure and fun, and a certain playfulness, tourism takes place in the context of great inequality of wealth and power (Mowforth & Munt, 2003). There are many constraints in modern (mass) tourism that are keeping us away from a meaningful intercultural meeting ground that could foster learning processes for change and critical reflection. In the following section I will give a critical view on how modern (mass) tourism is constraining us in reaching an optimal learning environment that could guide people through transformation.
2.1.1 DEHUMANIZED INTERACTION The bigger the flow of people to one destination, the more standardized and institutionalized the place becomes (Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(Cohen, 1979)(E. Cohen, 1979). Before the institutionalization of modern tourism, tourists have been guests and locals (residents, natives) have been hosts (Aramberri, 2001). Between the two there was an intense relationship, making it possible to interact and learn from each other. Travelers were depended on their hosts for protection, and this was on the basis of their common humanity. By giving the traveler shelter, food and protection - the basic needs for a traveler - the host would be assured to get the same in return whenever in need. Next to this, by accepting the host’s generosities, travelers made a pact of duties for both sides (Adler, 1985b). So there were certain rules to oblige by being a guest. If those rules would be broken, the guest would be chased away (Aramberri, 2001). Tourists were much more integrated in society by living with their hosts and following the daily routines that belonged to this lifestyle.
Nowadays, these features of guests and hosts do not apply to modern mass tourism. The term ‘tourist’ even received a bad connotation nowadays: it evokes associations of groups of tourists who do the same thing and only have a superficial meeting with the new culture they are moving in (MacCannell, 1976). Tourists can buy a tourist experience to be a temporarily leisure guest in another culture. The whole pre-modern system of guest-host interaction changed alongside the shift towards modernity with its different ways of doing
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and being. Most tourists buy a product or a service that they consume which is exchanged as a commodity via market relations in the same way as they do their groceries and clothing shopping (Aramberri, 2001).
The process wherein objects and activities come to be primarily evaluated in terms of their exchange value in the context of trade is called commodification (Cohen, 1988). Tourism as a commodity can be best understood as an expression of the ‘semiotics of capitalist production’ (MacCannell, 1976). For Enrich Fromm (1992), who analyzed human behavior on the basis of social economic structures of a society, the commodification of tourism is no surprise. In a culture wherein the market culture prevails, and in which material success is the greatest value, travelling relations follow the same kind of pattern of exchange as for a commodity. It seems our whole culture is based on the desire of buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange (Fromm, 1992).
In the process of commodification, human relations become objectified as relations between things. Moreover, interpreting tourism as a commodity that can be bought, discloses that the structure of social relationships creates two categories of people: those who buy, and those who supply. Or in other words one could say: those who are served and those who serve (Watson & Kopachevsky, 1994). In this relationship a clear power relationship emerges. The ones who serve will adjust to the wishes of the ones who demand. Therefore there is a kind of inferiority on the side of those who serve, and most of the times those people are local. This is not only making the interaction dehumanized by commodification processes. Those who are served are in power, making the interaction unequal. Becoming ‘other’ is a direct outcome of commodification of culture, ethnicity and identity (Shepherd, 2002). Although there are exceptions to this social phenomenon, it is a general reality for the masses.
With the creation of a tourist area, several social interactions are established between tourist, hosts, and the organizations and societies they represent. These transactions between groups are based on certain understandings of how to treat each other. Tourist interactions are generally based on the level of ‘strangerhood’ (Nash, in Smith, 1989, pp. 37- 52). Simmel (1950) saw the tourist as an ideal-typical’ stranger, because the tourist is a ‘temporary sojourner who does not share the essential qualities of host group life’ (Simmel & Wolff, 1950, pp. 402-407). Because of this, the interaction between the two tend to take form of a more general and impersonal form of interaction.
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Strangers are often not seen as individuals, but more as persons of a specific category. This shapes the perception of the host by the tourist and vice versa. Strangers tend to treat each other as types, even as objects. For example, by taking pictures, hosts are treated as objects. And if you are perceived as an object, people are not so personally involved and will feel freer to act to sever their own self-interest (Nash, inSmith, 1989, p. 45). Mac Cannell (1976) referred to the process of reciprocal misconstruction of identities as an empty meeting ground. This way, the understanding between people is not increased by tourism. Thus, the interaction that takes place in many tourism sites that are visited by many (groups of) tourists is dehumanizing: people are perceived as types and/or objects.
Next to this, the interaction between tourists and ‘hosts’ is separating them by the nature of tourism itself (Smith, 1989). The tourist is at leisure, which means he is only experiencing or toying with the world, not on shaping or changing it: the goal of most tourists is touristic. While on the other hand, the hosts who are in most contact with tourists have a more utilitarian kind of goal, namely: working (Smith, 1989). The host might be serving the guest to facilitate in tourism needs. This work-leisure distinction is separating the guest and host from each other, and is thus not helping in bringing a more humanized contact between the two. Next to this, Bruner (1991) argues the reality in tourism is that most tourists spend only a few days or weeks in one place, often moving fast, staying only shortly doing all kinds of activities. This way of moving makes the interaction with locals very rapid and difficult to sustain.
2.1.2 TOURISM BUBBLES According to Cohen (1979) tourism today is shaped by contradicting motivations to travel: a strong basis of familiarity, wherein people can relax and from which they can explore the unfamiliar safely. The modern tourist is not so much abandoning his environment for a new one, as he is being transposed to foreign soil in an environmental bubble of his native culture, where everything functions more or less the same as in his own habitat. Although globalization transformed our world and our views upon it immensely, humans are still basically shaped by his or her native culture and familiar environment and bound by patterns of routine behavior (Cohen, 1979). By moving to a new environment wherein these behaviors are different may still be experienced as threatening and unpleasant. This is the reason why even people are looking for something familiar in a new environment that
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makes them at ease. While on the other hand it is exactly the ‘otherness’ that is motivating many tourists to go on holiday.
Most of the conventional tourists never really enter ‘the other’ culture, and thus don’t have to adapt to the new unfamiliar host environment, and consequently are constraint in their learning. This is what Hottola (2004) found out doing an ethnographic study on backpacker tourists in South-East Asia. Hotolla’s study shows most backpacker tourists do their thing together with other tourists and selected hosts. They are not really engaged in the local culture, local people or natural environment. This is due to the so called ‘tourist bubbles’ that are created by and for the tourists in which they move (Cohen, 1979). Even if a traveler wants to escape from the path paved by mass tourism, it is difficult, since tourism grew so fast and seems to have reached almost everywhere (Bruner, 1991). This bubble is making the exposure to cultural difference limited and ritualized. The adaptation process that creates the learning environment and transformation potential will not be as intense in the tourism bubble in comparison to outside of this bubble (Hottola, 2004).
2.1.3 PROBLEMETIZING THE PREDOMINANTLY VISUAL MEETING GROUNDS Bruner(1991) observed sharply that the encounter between tourists and residents is mostly a visual one. There is almost no verbal contact. Already in the 19th century Merriwether (1903) observed what effects this has on the understanding between people while he was on his tramping journey. He used to be a luxury tourist himself, solely gazing at people and the environment from a car. This quote beautifully illustrates how different the experience as a tramper is in comparison to that of the luxury tourist: ‘The first class tourist may see the beauties of a country’s landscape and scenery from the window of a palace car, but his vision goes no further… to know a country one must fraternize with its people, must live with them, sympathize with them, win their confidence’ (Merriwether, 1903 inAdler, 1985b). This quote gains an insight on how solely gazing at people and a landscape creates a different kind of knowledge and understanding of a culture in comparison to living and working with people. Only a visual interaction will create a more superficial meeting ground than a more embodied one.
People, with whom we share our spaces, dominate our perception of place. We become familiar with those people, by seeing them regularly, but they stay strangers. Those familiar strangers create the feeling for a certain place, without verbally interacting with them. There are a lot of familiar strangers with whom we share our space. Familiar strangers are people
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who we observe repeatedly, but we do not have any interaction with them. Yet, we do make stories about these people, stories that are never corrected because there is no verbal interaction (Paulos & Goodman, 2004).
Without verbal communication there is no conversation between tourists and locals, and thus not challenging stories about the other. As argued above, the visual encounter that is dominant in tourism as practiced today is creating distorted life stories and knowledge about the other, because it is based on a person’s own assumptions and knowledge, instead of sharing and challenging these together with another person. In section 2.3.2 I will elaborate more on the importance of a verbal, instead of a predominantly visual meeting ground.
2.2 TRANSFORMATION POTENTIALITIES IN TOURISM
2.2.1 TOURISM MEETING GROUNDS: INTERCULTURAL LEARNING The above argument already set the argument shortly why interacting with each other is of vital importance to transform and open new perspectives. Now, I will elaborate on this adding the intercultural element of interaction that is created by travelling to another culture and/or destination. According to (Hottola, 2004), in tourism lies a great potential to learn from the intercultural meeting ground that is created by traveling to another culture. What exactly is an intercultural meeting ground? And why has it a great potential to learn? First a conceptualization of culture will be provided to understand better what is involved in a intercultural meeting ground: ‘(subjective) Culture is a frame of reference consisting of learned patterns of behavior, values, assumptions and meaning which are shared to varying degrees of interest, importance and awareness with members of a group; culture is the story of reality that individuals and groups value and accept as a guide for organizing their lives’ (Seelye, 1996, p. 9). In this sense culture only exist in the behavior of human beings. It has to do with how we create meaning in our lives and how we behave according to the meanings we create.
Culture, in this sense can be seen as a set of guiding principles, generating patterns of how to behave and value, and those patterns are learned and passed through generations and across groups. They are widely shared, yet not frequently overtly discussed. Nevertheless, the more or less silent rules provoke emotional reactions when violated, even though the values and set of behaviors can be rather complex, paradox and conflicting (Seelye, 1996). Thus, culture is an abstraction produced by thought and it cannot be seen or touched,
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although the material could be interpreted to have connections to the non material (Winner, 1980). Yet, we can get a sense of people who belong to the same culture, by noticing people move their bodies in certain ways - making choices about their lives on where to live, what to eat, how to learn, how to work, travel, and love (Seelye, 1996). So, in studying culture, we are studying the (internal) common rules, assumptions and values that are the foundations of what we can see, touch and feel externally. Belonging to the same culture generates a feeling of inclusion, and therefore gives a frame of reference, through which we can make sense of the world. Culture gives us guidelines on how to translate our meanings into action, and thus makes our lives coherent: we are not crazy acting in a certain way, because more people are doing the same and it seems to be normal.
By acting in a certain way, a person is communicating. Through action meaning is communicated. Moreover, communication is the creation of meaning (Barnlund, 1982). So as we are acting, meaning is communicated, and at the same time by communicating meaning is created. So it is an ongoing process. As Barnlund (1982) argues: It is impossible to exist without acting; impossible to act without interpreting. Because our world is so complex, we are overwhelmed by our senses, and no matter how chaotic our world seems, we must make it intelligible to be able to understand, and act. We are meaning making creatures and we constantly communicate this. For humans it is impossible not to communicate (Seelye, 1996).
This brings us one step further in understanding the concept of intercultural meeting grounds, as in the encounter of two people from a different culture they are communicating with each other. In communication between individuals who are from a different culture, the difference between them is relatively high because of their difference in experiential backgrounds. When people are aware of difference, a person can become self reflective and can start to develop a heightened consciousness of self (Seelye, 1996). As Boulding (1992) argues, ‘The human nervous system works in such a way that the patterns that govern behavior and perception come into consciousness only when there is a deviation from the familiar’ (p.406). An intercultural meeting ground has the potential to make people aware of their hidden program, because of this deviation. This brings us to an answer of the second question, namely: why has it a great potential to learn? When directly encountering others who practice unfamiliar processes of perceiving, valuing and behaving; a process of exploring, adapting and adjusting is created in search for shared meanings.
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As Bennett (1993) claims, through intercultural communication a person can go through an inner journey of different stages of intercultural sensitivity: the major shift is from an ethnocentric to a ethnorelative stage. By encountering difference, a person develops the ability of self reflection and the realization each person is the creator of his/her own world that he/she lives in (Bennett, 1993). Moreover, by encountering difference a process towards a critical consciousness can be developed. In this stage, through the realization of being active creators and meaning makers, a person becomes responsible for creating one’s own ethical guidelines and making personal choices. Thus, develops a critical awareness of own actions and power to change.
Tourists can learn from being in a different environment, both about themselves and about the new environment. During their travels they have the opportunity to meet new people and to gain information about the new society they are in, and this also provides the opportunity to reconsider earlier knowledge and reflect on themselves. Travelling changes the perspective people have of themselves and the culture they live in (Cohen, 1979). Tourists who enter the public space of the host society will go into a process of learning (Hottola, 2004). Especially when they are a minority in the unfamiliar culture they are encountering they will need to adapt their ways of dealing with people, getting their food, knowing the way, finding places to sleep. Tourist need to adapt to the new culture to be able to live there temporarily, and this adaptation process is a valuable process of learning. The normal ways of doing and being don’t fit in the puzzle of daily life anymore, and this creates the perfect situation to de-learn our habits and open our minds for something new.
2.2.3 AWAY FROM HOME: SPACE FOR REFLECTION AND DISCOVERING NEW WAYS OF BEING Traveling through a different environment in comparison to the home environment gives people the opportunity to distance themselves from their daily routines and ways of thinking (Gude, 2010). Brown’s (2009) study on sojourners3 shows the potential for change by encountering a different culture and what effect this could have on transformation of self, attitudes, competences. The period sojourners are away from home is characterized by having a geographical distance from the home environment, and because of this, also free
3 Sojourners are students who go abroad for studying and are away from home for at least 6 months up to 5 years. Their travel pursuit has an educational focus, because on their return they want to take a certificate that shows their new competencies learned and newly gained knowledge.
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from their expectations of family and friends. And on the other hand exposure of cultural diversity in the new, what made it possible for the sojourner to reflect on the self and have a distance on the life at home. All the sojourners interviewed by Brown looked back on the experience as ‘a testing but life changing event’ (Brown, 2009). During the year new roles were shaped and this transition, or adaptation process, the sojourners were faced with existential questions of what they do and who they are. Being able to cope with stress and loneliness, results in more self-confidence and internal strength in the end. During the year away, the sojourner changed attitudes, philosophy and behavior. Brown (2009) found out that the longer the stay in the new environment, the more embedded the new self can become.
White and White (2003) discovered there is a connection between a sense of self and a sense of place, discovering new identities in new places. They did a qualitative research on the transitions that took place in the life of long term, fairly old travelers in the Outbacks of Australia. By distancing themselves away psychologically as well as physically gave them the opportunity to transform. The journey created the space to get away from everyday routines to reflect and to feel free from social pressure and responsibilities (White & White, 2003).
Noy (2004) interviewed 40 Israeli backpackers 4within 5 months of their return home and asked them to tell their personal stories on the trip. The stories told by the backpackers interviewed by Noy, had one genre in common: the changing self in a very positive direction. The features of the trip that inspire people to tell stories of self change are the extraordinary adventurous experiences beyond the space of everyday life, in a unique destination and the experience of being different than the local community (Noy, 2004).
2.3 TOUR GUIDING: EXPLORING ITS POTENTIALS TOWARDS TRANS-MODERNITY
The aim of this study is to explore the potential of tour guiding to facilitate a learning environment that could guide people into a transformative process. Guided tours in this perspective have a great potential, because a tour guide could be a facilitator herein. Thus, the role for the tour guide as a facilitator is crucial in creating this learning environment. In order to understand its potential, the following section will give insights on the role of guides as it is practiced presently.
4 The definition used by Noy(2004) for backpacker travelling is an extended, multi-destination travel, lasting several months or years, and is typically undertaken by western youths to locations in the Third world(79).
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This kind of contemporary guiding could also be called conventional tour guiding, because it is the ‘normal’ way to practice. First an overview of the roles of tour guides as known from academic literature will be given. Then a deeper understanding about the interpretation and storytelling will be amplified to understand the way knowledge in guided tours is created. After this I will focus more specifically on the kind of guided tours used for this study and the learning environment that is created by it. This will eventually lead towards theories of possibilities towards trans-modern tour guiding: guiding that could facilitate people to challenge their frames of reference, their habits of mind by using transformative ways of learning.
2.3.1 CONVENTIONAL TOUR GUIDING
MULTIFOLD ROLES OF TOUR GUIDES A tour guide has many roles at the same time. Pond (1993) suggests that a modern tour guide has the following roles: leader, educator, mediator, public relations representative and host. These five roles indicate the multiple tasks a tour guide has. The leadership role can be understood as the one who shows the path and makes sure everything is going well. For the leadership role a guide needs to have a certain charisma to the group; he or she is the one who provides direction, access, security and safety (Weiler & Ham, 2001). Showing the path can be taken very literary as showing the way to the tourist. Besides this you can also interpret it as showing the path to a different culture. Although this would be more the role of the educator: to facilitate an environment wherein people can learn. Furthermore, the guide is supposed to glue social cohesion within the group, and mediate between local people and the tourists. As a public relations representative the guide is a representative of the destination and, as a host, is supposed to welcome and please the needs (to a certain extend) of the visitor. Pond indicates that these five may appear as separate roles, but they are in practice ‘interwoven and synergistic’ (1993: 76). What is more, Pond claims the guide’s role as educator has been regarded as the most important. But this depends on the kind of tour the guide is facilitating. Cohen (2002) also sees modern guides as educators; mediating and interpreting for the tourist who is looking for meaning in what he or she sees. More precisely, this is a synergy between the educator’s role and that of the mediator: the mentor.
As Weiler (2001) notes, there are many different kind of group tours and guided tours that have different purposes, aims, tourists, organization, length, and focus of the tour. This
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study focuses on guided tours for western tourists who go abroad accompanied with a native speaking guide. Many of these tours are arranged in such a manner that the group is away for 2-4 weeks, travelling from place to place. Most studies available for these kinds of tours, focus mainly on coach bus tourism lasting from a few days to a week. So even though the literature may not fit the picture completely, the literature is useful in getting insights on the phenomena of guided tour tourism. I will therefore specifically mention the role of the guide in these kinds of tours.
The role of the guide in coach bus tourism is both a Sheppard and an information giver. The guide guides the group safely through the new environment, and also tries to stimulate group interaction (Holloway, 1981). The guide could serve as a cultural broker, who initiates the new culture to the tourists by giving a deeper insight of the attractions they visit. The guide is normally together for a long time with the tourists and is able to interact with them in a meaningful way, answering their questions. The guide can also be seen as an actor, in the way he or she performs in front of his/her audience, making the experience different from every group. He can make a group sharing a personal experience together, by telling a certain story about a place, not visible by just observing.
To fulfill their roles, guides need to learn certain skills, like language skills, social skills, communication skills, interpretation skills, and first aid skills, knowledge of the area, culture, and history. According to Weiler & Ham (2001) the first thing that needs to be taught to the guides is an expansion and refinement of the product knowledge, which could include the flora, fauna, geology, history, culture and site knowledge. Since tour guides play a very crucial role in the interaction between tourist and host culture, the interactions between tourists and tour guides are very important. Communication competence of a tour guide plays therefore a significant role in the perceived success or failure of the tourism experience (Cohen, 1985). A tour guide might have a lot of interesting knowledge about the region, but if he or she is not able to communicate such knowledge to the visitor, it will be useless.
According to Leclerc (2004) there are 4 different dimensions in communication skills; nonverbal behaviors: e.g., careful listening, direct eye contact, position, body language, posture, personal appearance and behavior; topic/content behaviors: e.g., selection, structuring and linking of information, handling and use of questions, stress management, time management sharing information about self, and seeking topics of mutual interest;
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conversational management behaviors: e.g., interpersonal skills, such as asking questions about the other person, speaking clearly, answering questions, voice projection, breathing techniques, style and vocabulary; group management: e.g. positioning of guide and group, impartial approach and politeness, group dynamics, conflict management.
These skills relate to the roles tour guides have and should be taught in a proper tour guide training course. There are many more different sources of literature that write about the skills guides should have and how to train guides. However to describe those in detail would go beyond the aim of this study and therefore I will not elaborate on this. An important element that does deserve more attention is the guide as a storyteller and interpreter, which is elaborated below.
THE ART OF INTERPRETATION AND STORYTELLING According to Black and Ham (2005), a tour guide is a person who guides groups or individual visitors around the buildings, sites and landscapes of a city or region; and who interprets in the language of the visitor’s choice, the cultural and natural heritage and environment. This is a very skill based definition of a guide, which is useful for getting an idea what a guide should be able to do. Nevertheless, I would prefer the way Weiler (2001) defines the role of a guide; she sees it as a manager of the experience of the tourist. Guiding involves more than only interpreting and showing the surrounding environment: as a tour guide you are a kind of facilitator, creating a (learning) environment, for the experience (Weiler & Ham, 2001).
In every society there are people who tell stories to their audience; stories are everywhere. ´Through stories about places, they become inhabitable. Living is narrativizing´(Certeau, Giard, & Mayol, 1998, pp. 142-143). In a guided tour the guide is the one who tells stories to the tourist about a place. Already during Ancient Greek times there where guides, called ‘exgetai’, meaning explainers. Guides blend an educational component of knowledge sharing with entertainment, to make the audience involved.
As Wynn (2005) argues, after doing research among guides in New York; walking guides are creative, improvisational thinkers, intelligent historians and passionate storytellers. Guides make their own tour, and use their knowledge and tricks to involve their audience. They are improvisational thinkers, because in the interaction during the tour, something might happen that is not planned for. As interpreters, guides serve as cultural brokers. They are the ones who have certain knowledge about a place and they are the ones who
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communicate and interpret this information in the direction of tourists. Symbolically, they are the bridge between the local and the tourist (Wynn, 2005). Not only can guides be seen as a bridge, they are also entrusted to be a window onto the site, region, or even country or continent (Salazar, 2005). According to Salazar (2006) in the case of local guides, they are often the only local people with whom tourists interact for a considerable amount of time during their trip. Therefore, guides can be seen as a kind of ambassadors of the country the tourists are travelling through; they are representatives and are in power to select the information they would like to share (Salazar, 2005).
As Pond (1993) claims, the tour guide’s role is to interpret the place and the local community to the tourist. Guides reveal hidden stories and meanings; bring places, objects and ideas to life; create thought-provoking and memorable experiences; deepen our understanding and expand our horizons. Guides are able to help tourists understand the culture of the region visited and the way of life of its inhabitants. Interpretation is more than providing information, or the transmission of knowledge. Inappropriate interpretation can mean a recitation of a list of names and dates that remind tourists of a school history lesson, rather than transferring understanding of the host culture (MacDonnell, 2001). Through interpretation, a guide seeks to inspire and motivate, in order to let people understand the place better. Tilden (1957) is seen as the founder of the modern way of interpretation. Interpretation as defined by Tilden is: ‘An educational activity, which aims to reveal meanings and relationships through the use of original objects, by firsthand experience, and by illustrative media’ (Tilden, 1957). Interpretation is used to increase the enjoyment of place, to convey symbolic meaning and even to facilitate attitudinal or behavioral change (Prentice, Witt, & Hamer, 1998). As Tilden (1957) argues, interpretation is not about sharing information, but about provoking tourists. According to Howard (2001) - who performed research among Aboriginals in Australia - local tour guides created long-term understanding, attitudes and behaviors towards Aboriginal culture by challenging stereotypes or misconceptions through talking to participants and emphasizing the contemporary nature of their society. Interpretation should reveal meanings and relationships. Through interpretation people can enjoy the place more, because its significance is communicated. Interpretation can therefore be seen as part of the process of making places accessible to a public audience and providing visitors with insights into places (Stewart, Hayward, Develin, & Kirkby, 1998).
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Interpreting is the art of telling stories. Through stories the place will come alive, people can give their own meaning to it, understand it better. Stories will also help tourists to remember their experience, and enable people to share these stories to people at home. Through storytelling guides weave local knowledge and culture to a larger set of cultural meanings (Wynn, 2005). The guide’s interpretation of facts helps tourists creating impressions and understandings of the host culture (MacDonnell, 2001). The stories created for tourism are not fixed, but are the site of constant contestation of meaning.
STORIES TOLD AND UNDERLYING IDEOLOGIES As Chan (2006) noted, while doing research about guided Chinese tours in the border region of Vietnam, stories and tours are adapted to their audience. Chan’s study neatly illustrates how the gaze influences and shapes the ‘truth’ told by guides through storytelling. Stories told by the guides in Vietnam to the Chinese tourists are different in comparison to those told to western tourists. According to Chan (2006), those stories are shaped by the gaze tourists use in looking upon the new environment. In other words, the tour guide is providing what the guest wants to ‘consume’, taking care that the stories told are not evoking any kind of uneasiness (Chan, 2006). As Mowforth and Munt (2003) claim, ideologies are communicated through discourse, which can be understood as the way a certain topic is talked and thought about and how it is represented to others. For this study, the concept of discourse is important in the way that we use discourse to make meaning, to understand the world around us. As only one story is dominant over others, in the case of a hegemonic ideology as described earlier, our reality of the world becomes too one-sided (Vasterling, 2007).
The way guided tour tourism is organized now, is enforcing dominant stories and stereotypes, because there is a limited space for individual interactions, while taking into account a politically neutral version of storytelling. The guide is the one who interprets and communicates stories, which are shaped in such a way that it fits the gaze and understanding of the tour group. Cohen (1979) enforces this argument as he claims tour companies or operators decide what is worthwhile to see and do, and the rest is forgotten.
Yet, we need pluralistic storytelling to understand the reality of the world that we live in (Vasterling, 2007). When only a homogenous story is told, we will lose all the other viewpoints, and therefore our commonality, and meaningfulness, and in the end our reality.
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One perspective creates a strong black and white dreamscape that loses its nuances and haunts instead of guides understanding. Without people freely and publicly speaking and acting we lose our sense of a shared world. Important to note, Vasterling (2007) generates the insight that tour guiding - as it is practiced today - is rather blocking instead of creating transformative learning environments. This argument will later be elaborated on in the section of transformative tour guiding (see section 2.3.3). First I will elaborate more on the environment that is created for the tourist wherein a learning experience takes place to get a deeper understanding of possibilities and constraints.
GUIDED TOUR ENVIRONMENT Already in 1979 Cohen conducted a study on guided tour tourism. Unfortunately after this, not much research has been done, but even today, 31 years later, his main argument still smartly illustrates the environment that is created in guided tours. According to Cohen (1979) the guided tour tourist is moving in an environment where familiarity is maximized and novelty is minimized. This is the kind of mass tourism where big numbers of people are buying similar packages, and packages are organized in standard manners. The tourist is surrounded by the host environment, but not really integrated in it. By moving in large groups at the same time, having a fixed schedule to follow, and bringing the luxury from home, the tourist is experiencing the host culture from a certain distance. This kind of tourism is separate from the rest of the culture and daily flow of life.
Holloway (1981) did an ethnographic research on one day guided coach bus tours in England. He specifically focused on the relationships between guides, tourists and drivers. Holloway participated on one day bus tours, and later interviewed guides that workon busses. His findings illustrate the tourism bubble that is created by the way tours are facilitated. By sitting in a closed environment of a bus, looking outside and being informed by a guide, makes people inward looking. The outside environment is observed, but interpreted and interacted inside the bus. When a group of tourists of the same culture is travelling through a host environment of a different culture, group cohesion and interaction is being enlarged. The very act of sightseeing locals within a group is making the interaction with locals minimized. The locals, who are meeting the group of tourists, do not necessarily have to interact with the whole group, but can turn to the guide instead, reinforcing the role
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of the guide as an intermediary. This is removing the tourists from a direct contact moment with locals.
2.3.2 TRANSFORMATIVE TOUR GUIDING? “For ideas to be born a midwife is needed.” Theodore Zeldin
In this section the possibility and the theoretical background of transformative tour guiding will be discussed. First the possible roles of guides will be elaborated on, and then the importance of a verbal meeting ground and the potential this brings for transformative tour guiding.
TOUR GUIDES AS REFLEXIVE PRACTITIONERS Tourism and the intercultural meeting ground, by travelling through another culture has the potential for insightful learning (Seelye, 1996) as well as changing the way people think and act (Manson & Christy, 2003). Yet, it is not guaranteed that participation in intercultural interactions will bring people to know themselves, or anyone else, in any greater depth then before (Seelye, 1996). This is where the tour guide comes into picture. The role of the tour guide could guide the process of discovery by constructing learning spaces. Hence, transformative tour guiding is much more focused on educational activities in comparison to conventional tour guiding. Eventually this would lead to change in terms of knowledge and skills and even in attitudes and behavior of tourists. So guides are able to give their ‘students’(tourists), more than a superficial introduction to a new environment and lead them onto the stage of critically reflexive agents of their own world. Tour guiding has the potential to change people’s assumptions and views on the world (Manson & Christy, 2003). A considerable change in tourists’ thinking would be the rejection of certain stereotypes and attitudes, new ways of viewing the world and ones role in it. On the one hand guides should be able to satisfy the basic needs of costumers (Maslow & Frager, 1987) and at the same time change the way they think and act, to become mindful tourists.
There are many different kinds of travelling, and increasingly self directed tourists can learn by themselves. Yet, there are considerable amounts of tourists who want to be guided, and leave the responsibility to an ‘expert’ for the information they receive and the actions they take (Schuchat, 1983). By leaving the expertise to the tour operator they assume they will experience and see and learn the most important things. While the typical tour operator will normally choose what is most interesting for the majority, and what is possible to organize
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fairly easy for groups of tourists. So it seems there is a discrepancy between the assumptions of the tourists joining a guided tour and the tour organizer, who is aiming for profit and standardization.
The aim of transformative learning is to let the learners realize they have a specific way of viewing and acting in the world. Educators could change and hunt invalid assumptions. We all have certain values on which we act upon. We cannot separate ourselves from these values that are based on certain assumptions about the world. Challenges of our assumptions can occur when we have insights in someone’s perspective by travelling or reading and talking to another person. No action is value free (Zohar & Marshall, 2004). Every tourist experience is based on certain assumptions and therefore it is important to critically reflect on those assumptions to be able to access it for validity (Mezirow, 2000a). Therefore good training of tour guides is necessary in order to be critically reflexive (Manson & Christy, 2003) so the guides could fulfill the role as facilitator for transformational learning experiences.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A VERBAL MEETING GROUND A visual meeting ground, as earlier discussed, is creating a distorted reality. Thus, only visual encounters in tourism are not sufficient to create an environment for trans modern learning. So why is it important to create a verbal meeting ground instead?
Humans create, redefine and share knowledge through conversation (Bruner, 1991). Different stories have to be told to get a better sense of reality that can guide understanding. The intangible world is depended upon stories told, and that is why it is also very open for manipulation when there is only space for one perspective of reality. A shared world is build upon the existence of many different views of the same reality (Vasterling, 2007). In the interaction with others we are not in control of the process, and this moment generates new perspectives and views of the world and ourselves. The impact and consequences by interacting with other people is unpredictable, and this gives lack of closure and overview. ‘Adequate understanding and judgment of acts, facts and events requires that one is able to widen and transform the subjectivity of one’s own perspective with the perspective of others’ (Vasterling, 2007, p. 89). Other people in the process of interacting are likely to correct, resist and check assumptions in the way a person perceives and interprets things. Without the verbal interaction, people are monologueing with themselves about the other, and this way their own assumptions and perceived ‘truth’ is not
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challenged; therefore not creating a deeper understanding of the self and the world that could help in changing attitudes.
Next to this, as Mezirow (2000b) claims, to be able to access and fully understand the way others’ interpret experience requires discourse. Discourse in transformational theory is a specialized use of dialogue devoted to search shared understanding and an assessment of an interpretation or belief (Mezirow, 2000b). Without discourse, interpretation will not be reflected upon. So it is a process in which a person can become critically reflexive of personal and others assumptions that are normally not challenged without discourse. Discourse that involves this critical assessment of assumptions is called reflexive discourse (Mezirow, 2000b).
Freire (1973), has another term for the same kind of learning process: the development of a critical consciousness. He sees dialoguing also as the true creation of the critical consciousness: naming the world, and in such a way creating a dialogue about reality. The act of sharing experiences facilitates the dialogue and sharing of information that invites participants into a discourse (Florence, 2006). Dialogues make us surface and challenge the assumptions that support our motives. It leads to a change in our existing paradigms or mental models. It is a structure that dissolves previous structures (Zohar, 2004). For dialogue to take place, trust, love, and hope are essential elements (Freire, 1973).
Love and the art of loving is also the central argument of Fromm (1956) arguing it is the only sane and satisfactionary answer to our human existence. Fromm claims the only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love: this act transcends thought, it transcends worlds. If you don’t know a person, you cannot really love him. By asking fundamental question that many people try to avoid suppress and ignore it is possible to understand oneself and the other, and it opens possibilities for change. Love is an attitude, an orientation of character, which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole.
He, who knows nothing, loves nothing. He who can do nothing understands nothing. He who understands nothing is worthless. But he who understands also loves, notices, sees… The more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love (Fromm, 1956, p. xiv).
Furthermore, love is only real when it is an action, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as the result of a compulsion. Knowledge has many layers, and the only layer in which we can truly know another person is when we penetrate the core. It is impossible to
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love another person when we only know him/her superficially, unless one values superficiality in favor of wellbeing if the real does not enhance this individual wellbeing. Most people escape everyday reality here to choose a preferred simulated reality of the experience machine (Nozick, 1974).
However, as Fromm (1956) argues, as humans we have reason and our greatest desire is to know the secret of another person, to go as deep as the soul. And this is a very difficult to reach desire, because we might not even know our own personality to the deepest part of the soul. This is a never ending search. As Fromm (1956) mentions: ‘The more we reach into the depth of our being and that of another person, the more the goal of knowledge eludes us’ (p. 27). All his life, Fromm (1956) sought to confront ourselves with moral and intellectual dilemmas.
Another reason a verbal meeting ground is necessary, is if we could only change our attitudes if we could enlarge our memories. As Zeldin (1995) believes, if people would be able to tap in others people’s memories, they could change their own mentality. Mentalities are based on memories, experiences and stories told by people. Those memories are impossible to kill, but people could broaden their memories by understanding people’s life histories and how their mentalities are shaped through the centuries, in different regions and different cultures. They could find a new focus to view things differently, to shift their vision when everything seems to be falling apart. The stories we make of other people, and how we perceive ourselves depends on what we know of the world, and what we believe is possible, what memories we have and whether our loyalties are to the past present or future (Zeldin, 1995). The following quote illustrates what is needed to be able to change and discover new directions:
‘Now the stones of history need to be re-used to construct roads which lead to where one wants to go. That means giving up the illusion that humans can be understood simply as examples of their own civilization, nation or family (…) people who want to be free should dig much deeper & in a wider area to understand their personal emotions and ambitions’. To discover in what direction one wishes to go, one needs to acquire memories with a new shape, memories which point into the future & which have direct relevance to one’s present preoccupations.
(Zeldin, 1995, p. 50)
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And finally, Vasterling (2007) gives us a valuable insight why interaction with another person is so crucial for a transformation process. As she claims, when we are thinking about the world with only ourselves, in our own mind, we withdraw from the world, to understand it better, but this can only happen when we have the opportunity to speak with others in a worldly reality. So our sense of self derives from the interaction with the outside world and our reflection upon this, and cannot exist on its own. We need others to act and talk with in order to make ourselves visible, audible and real to others and in that interaction to ourselves. When we direct ourselves to our inner world we are able to reflect and read, and control our thoughts. But this way we are monologuing instead of dialoguing, and that is why a verbal meeting ground is essential for deriving a sense of self.
CONCLUSION THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Throughout the history of tourism host-guest relationships, it has been argued that a more dehumanizing exchange takes place between hosts and guests, that used to be more personal and on a deeper level in the past. Tourism as a product of consumption has become a commodity, like much consumption in contemporary society, splitting up the relationship between host and guest. In fact, some even speak of a so-called tourism bubble. Such a bubble can be described as a space of familiarity to explore the unfamiliar. It is an exclusive space that has limited access and exposure to local culture. Those guests visiting a destination do mostly have a visual meeting with the host instead of a verbal meeting. One can perceive guests as typical gazers of culture, away from conversation between the two groups of interest here. Having conversation would however contribute to a sharing of different views to a shared reality of this world. Having merely gazers would however just create monologues with oneself, not challenging an understanding of the self and the world.
By understanding that culture is being shared between people providing shared guidelines of how to behave or make sense of the world around us, it is reasonable to accept that in different places and among different people different cultures exists that partly overlap or differentiate from one another. If one opens up to another culture, and intercultural communication is being effective, a process of reflection and sharing is started. Such a process can initiate change of existing cultural behavior, perceptions, values, or ways to organize our lives. In fact, such a process provides room for exchange of different kinds of knowledge. It provides a learning as well as a de-learning environment. It moves from an ethnocentric to an ethnorelative point of view, allowing interdisciplinary and/or trans modern ways of thinking.
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The role of a tour guide is multifold. It is expected that a tour guide acts between hosts and guests in the following manners synchronically: leader, educator, mediator, public relations representative and host. Communicating skills are vital in this performance. Four traditional different skills have been identified in communicating towards a meaningful experience for guests: non verbal, topic/content, conversational management, and group management behavior. One skill that overlaps these skills is that of ‘the art of storytelling’ that frames experience of guests within the environment of the host. Merely summing up facts of a place does not provide the necessary frame that tourists ought to receive. The art of storytelling can move beyond such facts to bring places and objects to life. The guide becomes a cultural broker of local knowledge, and has a powerful position in transferring such knowledge by selecting stories as well as the way they are told. But it is not merely the storyteller’s position to decide upon which story is to be told. The tourism gaze provides expectations to what representation of places are in place. A current result of these hegemonic processes is that a tour operator can decide what is important for tourists to know, leaving other narratives untold.
Considering tour bus groups, one typical example of a standardized tourism package, some literature indicates that the gaze of tourists is inward looking due to the structural setting of tourists gazing over local arenas visited throughout bus windows excluded from interaction with the local. Meaning creation takes place within the bus here, often through mediation of the tour guide. And since human beings are claimed to be meaning making creatures by definition, it is the role of a tour guide that can provide potential trans modern value shifting. In order to make that shift, tourists could be activated by the guide to critically reflect upon narratives told; making tourists reflective of their own inherited values and assumptions. In such a way, one can connect to ones’ own and others’ discourses to start tapping into critical consciousness. This process needs to reconnect to the core of individuals, which is easier said here than done. But through a sharing of this core, one can witness and open up to an everyday reality that is often escaped from through simulated realities. Such latter realities are ever more present in contemporary guided tours, framed through the discourse of the gaze, the eye of power.
Yet, only by creating critically reflexive practitioners that guide the process inside the group does not take the practice of guiding away from the bubble. In other words: the structures of guides tours itself are unchallenged, and therefore limited in possibilities. Yet, if a verbal intercultural meeting ground is being introduced, this would (temporarily) move people
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outside of the structures of the bubble. Verbal meeting grounds could have potential for trans modernity in tour guiding, because individual (life) stories can be shared and dialogue could be facilitated. This way host and guest can return to a more personal relationship that has disappeared trough modernity; enabling potential changes in mentalities of both tourists and hosts that are provided space to move out of the gaze; expanding world views in a hope for change and meaningful progress.
This idea of transformative tour guiding is still purely theoretical, which takes many assumptions from literature, but there is no research done yet that scopes the potential for transformative guiding. That is why it is necessary to look at tour guiding at this moment, to know what is going on and what could be useful or changed to make the potential for tourism in broadening people’s perspectives on the world and their underlying assumptions and truths. Also, for this research it is necessary to experiment with potential methods that could create a meaningful intercultural verbal meeting ground, to go beyond a purely theoretical contribution concerning trans modern tour guiding. This brings me back to the aim of this research, namely: to explore old and new recipes for trans modern tour guiding. In the next section the research questions are posed, that translated this aim into my research.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS In order to explore these recipes, the following two main research questions are posed:
OLD RECIPES: WHAT CONTEMPORARY STRUCTURES, PRACTICES AND BELIEFS (OLD INGREDIENTS AND METHODS OF, AND PHILOSOPHIES BEHIND COOKING) IN TOUR GUIDING COULD CONTRIBUTE TOWARDS A SHIFT IN TRANS MODERNITY? NEW RECIPES: WHAT INSIGHTS FROM THE EXPERIMENTAL METHODS OF FACILITATION (NEW INGREDIENTS AND METHODS OF, AND PHILOSOPHIES BEHIND COOKING) - WHICH ARE BASED ON INSIGHTS FROM THE LITERATURE - COULD CONTRIBUTE TO TRANS MODERN TOUR GUIDING IN THE FUTURE?
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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY For this research I choose a qualitative approach on which the emphasis is placed on studying things in their natural settings, interpreting phenomena in terms of the meanings people are giving and this way humanizing the problem, and getting an ‘emic’ perspective (Phillimore & Goodson, 2004, p. 8). As Jennings (2001) argues a qualitative approach gives space to understand the thoughts and experiences of people, allowing the analysis of the experience to be based on their concepts and not on mine as researcher. A qualitative research method gives the opportunity to gain in-depth information about the thoughts, feelings and views on current and future ways of tour guiding from a tour guide perspective.
3.1 FRAMING THE RESEARCH
In this research I used the guiding principles of the interpretative paradigm, which is based on the work of Max Weber and his concept of ‘verstehen’, or empathic understanding. Empathic understanding is attained when through sympathetic participation we can adequately grasp the emotional context in which the action took place (Jennings, 2001). A paradigm can be understood as a suite of beliefs about how the world works, accompanied by a set of guiding principles. Broadly those guiding principles are set around ‘ontology (world view), epistemology (relationship between the knower and the known), methodology (qualitative or quantitative), and axiology (values and ethics) (Jennings & Junek, 2007, p. 202). Scientific paradigms define the rules and boundaries of what is acceptable knowledge production and research (Tribe, 2006). In the interpretative paradigm, it is assumed the world is composed by and of multiple realities (ontology). These realities are ‘subjectively (re) interpreted/ (re)constructed via qualitative methodology’ (Jennings & Junek, 2007, p. 203). It is believed that as humans we don’t only find or discover knowledge, but we actively construct it ourselves. As researchers we invent concepts, models and schemes that make sense of experience and we continuously test and modify those constructions on a new experience (Jennings & Junek, 2007). The researcher assumes an inductive approach to research and undertakes the research in the empirical world in order to develop explanations for a phenomena (Jennings, 2001). In other words, the researcher constructs interpretations of shared understandings and practices (Schwandt, 2000). The relation between the researcher and the known (epistemology) is a subjective one. In order to achieve verstehen, the researcher needs to enter the social setting to become one of the social actors, and thus generates an emic, or insider perspective (Jennings, 2001). Thus, the interpretative paradigm is opposite to the positivist paradigm, wherein being scientific
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means the researcher should sever all relationships with the observed. However, ‘This positivist credo is obviously wrong and it leads away from producing reliable information, meaningful interpretations, and social actions in social research’ (Greenwood & Levin, 2005, p. 53).
The interpretative paradigm gave me guidelines for conducting qualitative research, which is the methodology. Within the methodology I used several tools to collect and analyze the data gathered to say something about the world.
Through this research I gained In-depth knowledge on the tour guiding phenomena that is grounded in empirical world.
3.2 RESEARCH STRATEGY
3.2.1 DATA COLLECTION The following overview shows the methods used (in orange) for data collection, and the outcomes of these (in green).
What has Facilitating 3 Interviewing 3 Interviewing 9 been done? meeting experts on Dutch tour grounds facilitating guides on the meeting practice of grounds guiding
What Learning Receiving Tour guides results? process: inspiration, perspective outcomes visions and on current and advice practice and reflections future potential
As Jamal & Hollinshead (2001) argue, the choice of the research instrument does not depend so much on the methods level decision making process, but more on critical skills of applied philosophical awareness. As mentioned above, I have chosen the interpretative paradigm as a guiding set of principles to undertake my research, and therefore choose several methods that fit this paradigm. Each different method of collecting data revealed different aspects of empirical reality, also referred to as triangulation (Jennings, 2001). I used the following
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sources: active interpretative semi-structured interviewing and facilitating meeting grounds (workshops). In the next part I will briefly elaborate on the different methods.
ACTIVE INTERPRETATIVE SEMI STRUCTURED INTERVIEWING Interviewing is a kind of conversation that can be practiced in different kind of forms (Holstein & Gubrium, 2004). By asking people to talk about their lives, interviewing provides a way of generating empirical data about the social world. All interview forms have one thing in common: they are interactional. Because of their interactional nature, meaning making is collaboratively made. This means both parties are active in the process doing the interview. Moreover, interviews fundamentally shape and form contends of what is said, and therefore both parties in the interview encounter actively and communicatively assemble meaning (Holstein & Gubrium, 2004). This view on interviewing suits the interpretative paradigm, wherein the knowledge on the social world is not merely discovered, but rather constructed in an encounter between people. Multiple worldviews exist and come into being, and continuously change (Jennings & Junek, 2007). Reality is continuously under construction, assembled using the interpretative tools at hand (Holstein & Gubrium, 2004).
The interview is an active process, actively generating meaning and knowledge together, and this is why it is impossible to stay outside the process of interactional meaning making, both as an interviewer or ‘respondent’. The word ‘respondent’ itself is assuming the person provides a response to the question asked, and has therefore a passive connotation. So I would not like to call my interviewees respondents. Yet, to call the respondent co- researcher, as Holstein and Gabrium argue would give the interviewee an active connotation too. The underlying assumption about the co-researcher is that this person is actively constructing and interpreting knowledge, possibly even manipulating knowledge or hiding facts. Therefore, I rather use the term active respondents. The view of the active respondent stands in contrast with the conventional view of respondents, wherein ‘subjects are basically conceived as passive vessels of answers for experimental questions put to respondents by interviewers’ (Holstein & Gubrium, 2004, p. 123).
The role of the ‘conventional’ interviewer is to ask the right questions, in order to get the knowledge out of the respondent, who, in his/her turn is perceived as a passive owner of knowledge, and only needs to be stimulated in an accurate way (Holstein & Gubrium, 2004). Thus it wouldn’t matter who would ask the questions: as long as the researcher has the skills
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to conduct the interview in a professional manner, the information will come out of the respondent. The focus is on the content, and not so much on the process of interviewing and knowledge creation. Yet, in the active interpretative interview, the process itself is seen as important as content. In a different setting, with another interviewer, the process, and thus the content might have been constructed differently.
WHAT HAS BEEN DONE? For this research I choose the semi-structured guided in-depth interviews with tour guides and experts. Semi-structured guided interviews are guided by a topic list, yet open for further exploration of the answers given. Every interview had a different character, and different things and ideas were presented and elaborated on. I conducted 9 in depth semi structured interviews with Dutch tour guides, each lasting between 1 ½ to 2 hours. The setting in which those interviews took place was different in every interview: two interviews were done via skype, because the guides were guiding tours at the time. One interview was done in an office of the Tourism school, Breda, and the others were all conducted in the guides’ homes.
Next to this, in order to gain ideas, and inspiration for experimental workshops, I also conducted 3 conversations with experts, who are already facilitating a verbal meeting ground between people, to help me finding ways to transform conventional tour guiding. The first one was with Theodore Zeldin from the Muse Foundation, who developed ‘the conversation menu’. The second one was with Bob Findley, director of China Cultural Centre, who also facilitates conversations between locals and tourists in Yangshuo, China. The third was with Rene Gude, the director of the Philosophy Institute in Leusden, which also contributed to my understanding of the importance of creating a verbal meeting ground.
EXPERIMENTAL WORKSHOPS; FACILITATING MEETING GROUNDS By facilitating meeting grounds between local and tourists and international students I tried to find a method that would create a verbal meeting ground that would facilitate a transformational learning process. This is research in action, making the method and adaptation by learning part of the process. The main learning outcomes and reflections will be given in the Chapter on New Recipes.
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In the following section I will give a context of the 3 different places together with an overview of the methods used. The methods are developed in the light of the theoretical framework, and will also be further elaborated on in the chapter on new recipes
WHAT HAS BEEN DONE? In total I facilitated 3 meeting grounds: one in Yangshuo, China; one in Luang Prabang, Laos; and one in Wageningen, The Netherlands. After the first meeting ground, I started talking to experts that already facilitate a meeting ground in their own way, to gain insights in their methods, and to get advice what to do differently next time. In the chapter on new recipes, those insights and visions will be included.
In the following section I will contextualize every meeting ground separately, together with an overview of the methods used in each workshop to get an understanding of what has been done.
1. CHINA: INTER-ACTION, IN COOPERATION WITH CHINA CULTURAL CENTRE
THE CONTEXT: Yangshuo is a very popular touristic village in China, beautifully located in the Karsts Mountains next to the river Li, in the south east of China. Yangshuo grew from a rural isolated village, to a very popular tourist destination both for Chinese and foreign tourists of whom many are staying more than 3 days. This sets the perfect situation for creating a meeting ground between tourists and locals. Geographically the two different groups seem not to interfere in each other’s lives very much though. The western tourists flock on the west street, where many bars, café’s and souvenir shops are located, and the Chinese flock in another part, with their own restaurants, hotels and shops.
Next to being a main touristic attraction, Yangshuo is also one of the main centers for Chinese to learn English, and therefore chinese from all over the country come there for a few years to study. Many language schools are located in Yangshuo, and China Cultural Centre is one of them. The China Cultural Centre is located in the juice bar, next to the river, a little bit outside the main tourism hub. By being a juicebar and a cultural centre they try to create a low barrier for people to get connected: people who come for a drink are also presented with the other services that the centre provides.’ This is the aim of the centre: ‘The China Cultural Center was developed to bring people from around the world to China and give them a place to get into direct positive contact with the people of China. The CCC is
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a clearinghouse for both students and teachers, both foreign and Chinese’ (www.chinaculturalcentre.org). China Cultural centre organizes free open discussion evenings every week, for people to practice their English and to learn from each other. Ideally those evenings are attended by tourists and students, but the reality is that only some Chinese students join.
The director and founder of China Cultural Centre, Bob Findley, was willing to cooperate with my project and provided drinks and the space for us. Next to this he also invited teachers and students from the local tourism school to participate in the meeting ground session that was organized and helped me in generating insights and ideas in finding a method to facilitate a meaningful meeting ground.
PROGRAM AND FACILITATING TOOLS: Introduction: who am I, my research, what will we do, and why? Postcard game: Introduce yourself, by telling your name, and a memorable meeting you have had with a person from a different culture. The different pictures, drawings and colors on the postcards will inspire people to think of a meeting ground, and by telling it in the group, people get an idea of the person, without having to talk about profession, age, or marital status. Also these stories will allow me to have an insight in what makes a special meeting. Johari’s window: The following framework will be given to each individual fill in for themselves first.
What I know What I don’t know What you know Fill in: what I know, and you know Fill in:What you know, and I don’t know What you don’t know Fill in: What I know and you don’t Fill in: what we both don’t know know
After writing this down, the windows are shared and discussed.
2. LAOS: LAO-LICIOUS, IN COOPERATION WITH UDOMPONG GUESTHOUSE
THE CONTEXT:
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To give a geographical idea of Luang Prabang, I will quote Wikipedia literally: "Royal Buddha Image," is a city located in north central Laos, where the Nam Khan river meets the Mekong River about 425 km north of Vientiane. The current population of the city is about 103,000 The city is also notable as a UNESCO World Heritage Site’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luang_Prabang). Luang Prabang is a special place, full of beautiful temples, and attracting many different kinds of tourists. Every evening an evening food and souvenir market is set up, and many people strawl along the market and eat some food. Oudomphong guesthouse is a family guesthouse, just next to the evening market, situated in a residential street, and is a meeting place for tourists. They have a big table just outside the main entrance, where people gather, eat, and meet. It is a special place because they succeed in making people feel at home. The following quote illustrates this: I stayed in Oudomphong Guest House in LP and of my 6 months travelling in Asia, this is one of the only guest houses I remember the name of, and we even got a photo taken with the family running it the day we left...says a lot for the place! Great location, (…) can't sell the place enough, the family and people we met there, made LP very special for us indeed, and I would go back tomorrow.
(http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1888456)
While staying in Oudomphong guesthouse and talking to the sisters that run the place, I found out they had the idea of creating a cooking workshop for the tourists. The problem was they didn’t have any experience before, and didn’t know how to do it. We brainstormed together and we concluded that we could work together to combine a cooking workshop with my research project. So as a guide I helped Hean, the youngest sister, how to set up a guided tour to the local market, and together we developed a program and flyer. She would take care of the local people to participate in the conversation part, and I would promote our workshop and meeting ground for the tourists.
PROGRAM AND FACILITATING TOOLS Oudomphong Guesthouse and Dialicious present: Lao-Licious!
We would love to invite you at Oudomphong guesthouse to learn about traditional Loa food, taste and prepare delicious dishes, and to exchange personal stories to learn from each other! We organize a morning full of learning about Lao gastronomy and culture by doing a cooking workshop and a conversation menu with someone from Luang Prabang . This
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workshop is part of the Master research project of Saskia: Dialicious! Tourism beyond empty meeting grounds. It would be great if you would like to participate!
Introduction Morning market: A guided tour through the local market, to learn all about the mysterious ingredients used in the Lao kitchen and to buy the ingredients needed for the dishes to be prepared. Cooking: The best cook of Oudomphong guesthouse will teach you how to prepare typical traditional Loa dishes. Conversation menu:
Sharing personal stories while enjoying the food. The conversation menu is a guided menu that will help you to reveal personal stories to each other. The question developed were about fears, dreams, turning points in life, experiences, like : ‘share an achievement in your life that you are really proud of. What is your biggest fear? Are there things in your life that you would differently when you could turn back the time? What are your dreams for the next ten years? Imagine you would live on an island the rest of your life and you can only bring one backpack; What would you bring? Tell the other person about a special meeting you have had with another person? What are the moments in your life that changed its direction? For what can I wake you up in the middle of the night?
End: reflection of the day! How did you like it?
3. THE NETHERLANDS: EXPLORING VISUAL AND VERBAL MEETING GROUNDS, IN COOPERATION WITH OTHERWISE.
THE CONTEXT: Wagenignen university and Research centre attracts many students from all over the world. This creates a very international student population. Yet just by being here doesn’t mean people interact in a way that makes them reflect on their own ways of thinking that would develop a critical consciousness. Therefore, I thought of organizing something in Wageningne. Loes, a friend of mine, told me otherwise is doing a participatory research program: their aim is to create dialogue for development. This sounded like a perfect place
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to organize a workshop, and a perfect experimental learning environment to learn and reflect. Loes offered me to organize a meeting together so we could both try out a new method, create a meeting ground and learn from it together as facilitators. And so we did.
PROGRAM AND FACILITATING TOOLS From my previous experience I wanted to let people experience the difference between verbal and visual meeting ground to make them aware of the different knowledge that is created. So instead of only trying to create a verbal meeting ground, I wanted them to first experience only a visual one, to make people aware of the stories they create on the basis of someone’s physical appearance. And after this, I would use the river of life as a tool to reflect on their life paths and to share their personal histories. Because university students would participate, I thought it would also be nice to present some of the theories behind the method on visual and verbal meeting grounds as well.
• Introduction & warming up
• Assumption play
Write down your assumptions you have about the other without talking: Look! Don’t talk (So it is only a visual meeting ground)You can think about lifestyles, personal hobby’s, history, backgrounds, tastes, music, food, studies, work, relationships etc.
• Deeper understanding about visual and verbal meeting grounds (theory and reflection)
• River of Life: creating life histories
draw your own river of life, which shows how you became the person that you are now. You can think of turning points in your life that are significant in the process of becoming the person you are now. For example you can think of a changing direction, or the water suddenly slowing down, or rocks creating different currents, or trees hanging over protecting you, or birds changing the scenery, or another river intervening your path etc. After drawing your river, you can couple up with another person and share your story.
• Theoretical background
• Final reflection and discussion
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3.2.3 DATA ANALYSIS The interviews provided different stories about the guides’ perspective to tour guiding. These stories were coded heuristically, in order to make them relate axially before recoding and selective concepts can be derived inductively (Boeijie, 2005). The chapter on old recipes will discuss these selective concepts in relation to findings of the theory. Quotes of different interviewees are selectively represented to illustrate the arguments made.
The reflections and reactions of the action-research; the workshops, have stand on the basis of the data accumulation and analysis of new recipes. These reflections and reactions provide feedback upon the methods used, and are discussed also by means of the available literature to understand their potential role in trans modern tour guiding of the future.
3.4 POSITIONALITY AND THE RESEARCH PROCESS
3.4.1 POSITIONALITY Research is an interactive process shaped by the researchers own history, biography, gender, social class, race and ethnicity & those of the people in the setting. Reflexivity does not only mean looking and reflecting inwards and outwards to those who we research, but also understanding micro and macro forces that influence, constrain and shape the complex dynamic act of producing knowledge. By reflexivity the researcher can be critical towards what is gained and what is lost through interaction (I. Ateljevic, Harris, C., Wilson, E. and Collins, E., 2005).
The data I collected will be reshaped because of the process and that is why it is important to reflect upon this process, to explicitly make this visible for others who read the newly created knowledge to be aware of the process that formed it.
3.4.2 THE LIFE PATH THAT RESULTED IN THIS RESEARCH
In 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010 I guided tours as a tour guide in South-Korea for Shilla Travel. I have guided 17 groups in total, varying from 2 to 3 weeks, resulting into a total presence in Korea for 15 months in total. During my experience as a tour guide I have learned a lot about tourism, for example, the tours we provide and the expectancies of tourists, their experience, the power relations in tourism, the production side of the scene, the influence a tour guide can have on the tour and the experience of the tourists. This process, although rewarding as a life experience, has created continues and growing frustrations of how tours
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are being framed within the comfort of the tourist bubble and the limited gazes of tourists, not allowing any deep interactions between the tourist and host. Although Koreans are experienced not to be the most open people, I do have experienced close and everlasting relationships with some Koreans through my work as a tour guide. Wouldn’t it be more fulfilling to provide guests with similar experiences? Wouldn’t it be just to have more deep levels of understanding of one another? Why visit a place without conversation? My boyfriend once illustrated this in an interesting way by means of the following metaphor:
“If you visit your friends at their house, you cannot just walk around, sit and eat in their house without actually talking to them, right? You are a guest in their home, and tourists are just as much a guest in the home of their host”.
Next to my experiences as a tour guide, my personal past with the Socio-Spatial Analysis group has brought me in connection with a large scope of different people that made me a more critical thinker of these same tourism practices and with life processes in general. One example has been the critical reflection of our personal life paths that started with the course in Concepts and Approaches of the MSc study in Leisure, Tourism and Environment. This has been my first encounter with dr. Irena Ateljevic, an inspiration from day one. But the journey continued almost one and a half year ago when I engaged in a extracurricular activity to set up a work shop, together with 4 other students, on Learning 4 Life; where we have challenged fellow students on their life choices and how this influences the knowledge we obtain during our studies and beyond. Due to the success, we were invited to do a similar workshop during a CTS conference in Zadar with scholars from around the globe that teach in tourism studies.
My role as a facilitator in both workshops, and other previous workshops, have provided me with personal insights into my role to bring together people and reflect upon their practices to see where we think along or differences co-exist. Another relevant example is the internship I performed in Rwanda in the fall of 2008. Here I also worked upon my past role of a tour guide in order to translate this into developing a training handbook for future tour guides in community based tourism initiatives that SNV-Rwanda capacitates.
I have learned so much from these processes that I feel that these steps will only continue throughout my personal life path inexplicitly related to facilitation of experiences. And my
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wish to change current practices is a very strong guiding force that has also led to an inspiration for this MSc. Thesis.
3.4.3 ALTERING PROCESS AS PLANNED Initially, the planning for this thesis was to analyze embodied experiences of being a tour guide and how current practices of tour guiding, as it is practiced in Korea and in most guided tour groups, could be changed through in group experiments with tourists. This process was planned to be performed within the spare few hours of free time next to the guiding work, but turned out to be a too heavy load in practice. Next to that, the current structures of guided tours are so heavily occupied with intense experiences and busy scheduling, that it made the effort even more difficult and challenging.
Instead, I decided to shift the focus to practices of tour guides on guiding in general and outside the structures of tour guiding, by interviewing tour guides personally. My search for knowledge was driven by a longing to see how current practices of creating meeting grounds between the guest and host can be created. And, through experimenting with external knowledge of facilitation skills, I searched for inspiration to change current practices for a future hybrid process of trans modern tour guiding.
To wrap up this section, I will illustrate the personal process of this thesis by a poem that I wrote during the last few weeks while driving on my bike in the night, returning from my work that I do next to my studies; working behind the bar in a cultural music centre in Utrecht named Rasa.
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3.4.4 PROCESS POEM ALL THE ABSTRACTIFICATIONS OF MY BRAIN ARE CAUSING SEVERE PAIN IN BETWEEN THE EYES, MY THIRD EYE? CONSTRAINING MY FEELINGS OF ME AND BEING I AM SEEING NEW THEORIES FLYING TRYING TO WRITE THEM UP CONNECTING THEM TOGETHER AS IF THEY ARE LITTLE STRINGS WITHOUT GIVING ME WINGS NOBODY PUTS A FEATHER IN BETWEEN MY BUM MY HEAD FEELS NUMB I JUST CAN’T STAND ANYMORE TO SIT IN FRONT OF MY COMPUTER SOMETIMES THE FEAR OF FAILING IS SO HIGH, MY HEART BEAT IS MAKING A NEW RECORD I FEEL LIKE SCREAMING AAAAAAHHHHHHHH
STAY WITH THE PROCESS, IN THE POWER OF NOW ACCEPT IT DON’T FOCUS TOO MUCH ON THE RESULT THE ART OF BEING, TO HAVE A MASTERS DEGREE, OR TO BE ONE??? A CONSTANT STRUGGLE WITH MY WAYS OF BEING MY WAYS OF WRITING AND THINKING EVERY NEW THEORY BRINGS NEW IDEAS, NEW POTENTIAL PROJECTS, VENTURES NEW RESEARCH WHERE IS THE ACTION? I HAVE TO STOP… STOP MAKING NEW WAYS STOP AND TRY TO FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS!!!!
TODAY STARTED AS AN INTERNAL THUNDERSTORM AND ENDED IN A BIKE POEM. MY HEAD IS OPEN AGAIN AND CREATIVITY IS FLOWING. RASA WAS GOOD. FEEL THE MUSIC, WORK WITH MY BODY. WHILE READING ABOUT REFLEXIVITY AND IDEOLOGIES I REALIZE MY RESEARCH IS SPECIAL AND CLOSE TO ME I CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. STAY WITH THE PROCESS!!
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CHAPTER 4: OLD RECIPES
In this chapter the main outcomes of the interviews with tour guides about the current practice of tour guiding, as potential existing ‘old recipes’, will be discussed in the light of the insights provided by theory. Main outcomes are illustrated with literal quotations of guides [translated in English]. The references to the original quotes are presented in terms of references to endnotes within the text that are to be found literally in Appendix A.
The main research question that will guide the discussion here:
OLD RECIPES: What contemporary structures, practices and beliefs (old ingredients, methods, and philosophies) in tour guiding could contribute towards a shift in trans modernity?
4.1 BITTER TASTE: DEHUMANIZING BUBBLE AND THE MADNESS OF MODERNITY
In this section I will illustrate reflections and intensity of the madness of modernity, as a structure, in contemporary guided tours and the dehumanizing bubble that is present from the guides’ perspectives. First I will discuss how contemporary tour guiding is enforcing the power of the bubble; creating passive dehumanized tourists, and how this practice is moving away from shared realities. After this, I will show how the ‘madness of modernity’ is entrenched in daily practices and experiences of tour guiding today.
4.1.1 ENFORCING THE POWER OF BUBBLE: CREATING PASSIVE DEHUMANIZED TOURISTS, AND MOVING AWAY FROM SHARED REALITIES As argued in the theoretical framework, guided tours tourism is part of mass tourism practices, and is the kind of tourism that is highest on the score of exploring the unfamiliar, from a very secure, comfortable and familiar space: THE BUBBLE. Although it is not too surprising to see this bubble in the perspectives of tour guides, what is new, is the insight in the role that the guide plays in enforcing this bubble; reproducing passive and dehumanized tour groups; and the way the organization of the tour is further moving away from shared realities. In the following sections I will illustrate this argument in detail, illustrated with quotes from the interviews.
ENFORCING THE BUBBLE: CREATING PASSIVE DEHUMANIZED TOURISTS According to guides, a primary task in guiding is creating a safe and secure environment.
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Respondent D: Primary task is to provide certainty and to offer a lot of security. The feeling that they do not have to worry.
Respondent H: you have to be a source of security. To be some sort of hold on for people and not just a travel companion. 1
This role is similar to the leadership role as discussed by Weiler and Ham (2001), because herein the guide is the one who provides direction, access, security and safety(Weiler & Ham, 2001). By providing safety and security, people in the group will feel more comfortable and secure, not having to deal with the unfamiliar environment. Thus, by playing the leadership role the guide enforces a safe bubble, wherein familiarity is fairly large. Next to this, the leadership role puts guides in a position wherein they feel they are expected to know and control everything, responsible to solve problems and make decisions for the group.
Respondent E: ‘That I can be so indecisive. That is impossible. Continuously you are the one who has to ‘cut knots’ make decisions and just do things. And it is not good if you are tortured with doubt feelings afterwards. For me the responsibility is really difficult. Everybody gives all the responsibility to you, so you are the only one who has to decide’. 2
So, as illustrated above, the guide is the one with decisive power for group decisions, and the responsibility is given to the guide by its tourists. According to one of the guides this is also a reason for people to travel with a guided group tour;
Respondent H: It is a kind of laziness, a kind of search for comfort and uhhh, that is off course a reason also why people book a group tour, because it includes a tour guide that perform the sort of fatherly or motherly role for you… 3
In a way this is also enforcing the bubble, because it can be comfortable and secure not to think for yourself, and have a guide who takes care and responsibility for you: a person to depend upon.
Respondent H: I have always found it a fascinating phenomenon to see that people feel utterly uncomfortable when they are abroad. They are losing their self- confidence, and they position themselves a bit like little children. You automatically obtain a kind of childish behavior that is also dependent to the tour guide. 4
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Concluding from this, the guide enforces the bubble, and by doing this, the guide takes away potential learning experience tourism could bring by adapting to new unfamiliar environments and cultures. This constrains tourists to enter the public space of the host society, and the possibility to go into a process of learning and de-learning (Hotolla, 2004). Yet, of more concern for the potential in guided tours to learn, transform and to create a critical consciousness, is the way this structure is creating passive followers:
Respondent D: The docility is very strong with people. Someone from the last group said: I will find the way on my own. But they found this so hard. And only since then, they realized how they were walking behind me all the time. They are high educated people you know? And they all have very good jobs. They are all alone and then they are lost. They said, yeah we just walk behind you blindly. And in such a situation they just switch off their minds. These are particular processes, they are psychological and that is very interesting. 5
The above example is showing a practical example of a passive mindset creation in the practice of tour guiding. Yet, this passive uncritical reception of instructions is also reflected in situations wherein the guide is assumed to be the expert and authority on knowledge. One guide gave a good example of this given knowledge authority by the tourists on his first trip to China as a guide:
Respondent H: …but the strange thing was, when I was standing on the platform with the group while the train was arriving, it was the look of the group members who thought I had knowledge about everything. There were even two managers from Berenschot [renowned consultancy company], and those people… It was the way they looked at me. That look gave me a kind of authority. And everything I said was assumed to be true. 6
Concluding, by being a guide, tourists perceive the person to have ‘the’ knowledge. The contradiction in this expert role is that the guide often does not feel like the expert.
Respondent A: Because it is a kind of classical teacher who is standing in front of class. Who, who…, who always has the biggest message, and the last word, a person who…. Yes, well, people assume this person has the knowledge…. About the country, the destination, the people. While, of course this is not true, it is only a fraction. The real knowledge lies within the people themselves [the hosts]. Nevertheless, the
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people who are joining the group, they are assuming that this is really true [that the guide has the knowledge]. 7
In this role of expert, the guide has a strong position to even manipulate or invent things.
Respondent C: You can fool all people, really. In that respect you have quite a lot of power. 8
In the passive way of receiving knowledge given by the guide as expert, ‘the banking system’ of Paolo Freire (1992) seems applicable here. Paulo Freire critically deconstructed the way we produce knowledge in society and how this system helps ‘the oppressors’ to keep the power and ‘the oppressed’ to follow passively, without acting as human beings who are able to intervene in their own lives and reality. My aim here is not to create direct links with tour guides as oppressors, and tourists as the oppressed - the relationship between the two as well as roles of guides are much more complex -, there are however similarities in knowledge creation, of what Paolo Freire called the ‘banking’ system: In the banking system of education the teacher is the one with the knowledge, who gives the knowledge to his or her students and, in their turn, passively receive this knowledge and store this somewhere. This system not only makes the students [tourists] passive receivers, also will they become the possessor of an empty mind, passively open to the reception of ‘deposits’ from the reality from the world outside, unable to actively transform, create or question this knowledge themselves. From the quotes above it could be claimed that in the role of tour leader and expert, the guide is the teacher who deposits knowledge and information to a passively receiving and following crowd of tourists. As Freire argues, knowledge cannot be owned through passive reception. Full knowledge can only emerge through invention and re-invention. In guided tours this would mean the knowledge is transferred to, but not owned by tourists, because there is no method of acquiring knowledge through invention and reinvention when the guide is the one who is the authority on knowledge, and thus the only owner. Moreover, the situation between the student [tourists] and teacher [expert guide] should be equal to make it possible to create knowledge together, to question it and to learn from each other. This means that the main ingredient of guided tours with a strong tour leader and expert is incapable of creating and questioning knowledge together with tourists because of the unequal situation guided tours are producing.
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An example of the perceived unequal relationship from the perspective of a guide is the stereotypical way some of them answered my question of describing the kind of people that participate in a guided tour:
Respondent A: …lonely people that have a need to travel with other people since they are incapable of doing so by themselves. (…) Singles of boring couples. They are working their asses off all year long and in the weekends they have time to meet family, or to visit a birthday or something. But they really do not get into touch with much other people. Well, you know what I talk about, the kind of people that talk a lot with and about their colleagues (…) they just want to make jokes and sing traditional Dutch songs. These are people that watch a lot of TV. 9
This quote illustrates the way this guide interpreted the passive group behavior and the reason for travelling by group as a personal characteristic of all guided tour tourists: unable to travel alone, people who are single or have a boring relationship, people who are lived by routines of work and social obligations of family and friends, people who are simple minded and who watch a lot of television. Thus, it could be said guided tours stir up stereotypical ‘types’ of people, which is dehumanizing in the sense that the other is treated as type or object ( Nash, 1989). Moreover, from the interviews it became clear that many tour guides look down on the kind of people that are travelling in their tour and guided tours in general:
Respondent H: The difference between a tour guide and the group is that you a a tour guide….that group needs you. You also need the group somehow, but in a whole different way; to make a living. Your value is you don’t need a tour guide to travel through such a country, and that such a group can’t do this. So this puts you on a higher level more or less. 10
Concluding from this empirical insight connected with the theoretical insight of the banking system, the way knowledge is produced in the bubble of the guided tour environment is dehumanizing, because tourists become possessors of empty minds; and through unequal relationship tourists are perceived as specific ‘types’ from the guides perspective, which is blocking the invention and reinvention of knowledge together. The enforcement of the bubble is limiting the learning potential created by moving in an unknown environment. Moreover, by the structures of the guided tours, the tourists have a tendency to become passive followers, enforced by an unequal relationship that is created by the leadership role.
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This is dehumanizing tourists from within, creating ‘empty minds’ as described by Paolo Freire, making a link between guiding and the banking system of education.
NON VERBAL DOMINATION: MOVING AWAY FROM A SHARED REALITY As discussed in the theoretical framework, Bruner (1991) observed that the encounter between tourists and residents is dominantly a visual one, meaning verbal contact is marginal.
The following quotes confirm the way guides would characterize a dominant non verbal existing communication between local and tourist:
Respondent D: The communication of a laugh. You cannot expect much more than this often. Laughing, and the Dutch will laugh back, and they exchange three-and-a- half words of English with each other.
Respondent A: i.e. person M. had a great deal of interaction: crazy faces, waving, saying hello, in order for her to feel like the queen. That is the most often occurring interaction. Here [in the Netherlands] they would see you like an idiot, but not there not, since there she is a tourist. 11
In this description of the existing communication shows the interest people have in communicating with each other. Yet, the language problem and the behavioral gaze are limiting the communication to a superficial and non-verbal level. As argued in the literature, by merely gazing monologues are created within individuals about how the world works and about the self. As humans we are creating stories about the people we meet, to simplify the complex world around us to be able to cope with it. In contemporary guided tours tourism, the interaction is characterized as ‘flighty’, making it even more difficult to meet beyond the visual level. Therefore, this way of doing tourism is moving us away from a shared reality: different realities are not shared nor contested.
Respondent B: I think that they often make the wrong conclusions. That we are filthy rich. You never know what a hasty visit brings about. 12
What is more; the tour is organized in such a way that it is rather constraining instead of stimulating interaction.
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Respondent H: I think it is actually stunning if you start thinking about how the meeting ground is. How little potential there is for spontaneous meetings. Except that we laugh, bounce in to each other, make a picture. 13
This is the visual non verbal ‘bubble’ created in tourism - and especially in guided tours - since the tight program of the tour is not allowing spontaneous meetings. This lack of verbal communication limits the experience and understanding of another culture, yet is not a requirement of being able to travel around in the way tours are organized now:
Respondent E: there are so many things connected to language. Jokes, politic, and without controlling a language one cannot really get to know other people. Without language, it seems impossible to have deep conversations. But there is no real need of such conversations in relation to the places that you visit in a trip. You can travel to these places without them. But, it can be a real enrichment. 14
Next to this, the non-verbal bubble is also very comfortable, enabling people to stay in their own world.
Respondent A: everyone is comfortable in his or her own world, so why should you want to meet? 15
And when there is an organized meeting between two groups, this meeting still does not cross the comfortable yet superficial and primarily visual meeting space of the bubble.
Respondent G: I think that most people travel with a sort of glass bubble around them. Yes, they think it is ok to meet the local population and all that, but this does not go further. Rather not look somewhere inside.
Respondent C: No, it mustn’t be to long, this privation.
Respondent G: Actually, one of the foremost reasons of people to travel to Ethiopia, is to visit that tribe. (…) Tourists want to go there for the pictures. (…) most of the time we do not stay longer [with a tribe] for half an hour.
Respondent I: People are free to do and move in a direction they want without any further obligations. 16
This example exactly illustrates the separation between the two groups in modern tourism: the tourists want to meet people from a comfortable zone, without future obligation, and
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with a picture of the experience to take home. This phenomenon of interactive gazing is unable to create a shared understanding of the world, to challenge assumptions, or to create a human bridge between people. On the contrary: it is enforcing the bubble.
Moreover, this way of moving through a destination gives the guide the power to frame the experience: to influence reality of individual people by interpreting the reality through stories. One guide was very aware of this power of the experience framer.
Respondent A: the program offers some experiences, yet, what matters is the way you interpreted those experiences. It is about how you as a person deal with this, directed by the guide. As long as it is nicely framed. When the guide generates energy, everybody will soak this up. That is where the power of the guide is. (…) It is unbelievable that as a tour guide you have the power to frame the entire experience (...) 17
As the next quote illustrates, the bubble of moving inside a bus makes the tour guide extra powerful to frame the experience. Respondent A: I can make the experience a little bit more trilling then it is in reality, because basically you are sitting in the bus taken for a ride around. And if you experience it like this, it is a very depressing trip. Then it will be really super boring. However, if you start playing with words, then a whole new dream world opens up for people, and those people really believe in this. They can really see it, and actually you are experiencing a story, instead of sitting on a bench in the bus. 75 % of the time you are sitting indoors. And when you are allowed to get out, you are moving in a kind of Reserve. There is nearly no contact with people, so you have to… you have to just frame the experience. If someone else would frame the experience differently, they would have a complete different experience.18
So, by using specific words and stories guides feel they are able to frame the experience their own way, creating a different reality in comparison to ‘just’ sitting in the bus and letting people create their own monologues about reality.
Summarizing, this insight about dominant non verbal meeting grounds and story creation by individuals or framed by the guide confirms the way the bubble is enforced by guided tour tourism, and therefore moving away from a shared reality. Yet, the insight of the guide as experience framer could also move in the direction of critical reflexive practitioners, which
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would enable the guide to question assumptions and created realities by storytelling and individual monologueing inside the bubble. Instead of taking the role of the expert as storyteller, the guide as storyteller could also facilitate an understanding of how dominant stories in tourism are created, where they come from, and how other people also create their own stories based on what is seen, connected with own knowledge and personal experience. In this role the guide would be much more a facilitator of awareness of created and realities and knowledge, and thus move away from the banking system. In the section about potentialities this facilitator role will be discussed more elaborately.
4.1.2 MADNESS OF MODERNITY: COMMODIFICATION AND PERPETUATING MARKET MECHANISMS The madness of modernity is reflected in the guided tours from several perspectives. First I will show how commoditization processes are dehumanizing both de interaction between locals and tourists, and also the tour guiding job. Then, I will illustrate how market mechanisms are shaping the actual experience of the tourist, and how this system is also dehumanizing the tourists themselves. In the discussion of these processes I will show these processes are reflecting broader trends modernity’s madness.
MADNESS OF MODERNITY: COMMODIFICATION As argued in the theoretical foundation in the process of commoditization, human relations become objectified as relations between things, to be primarily evaluated in terms of their exchange value in the context of trade (E. Cohen, 1988). By interpreting tourism as a commodity that can be bought, discloses that the structure of social relationships creates two categories of people: those who buy, and those who supply. Or in other words one could say: those who are served and those who serve (Watson & Kopachevsky, 1994). In this relationship a clear power relationship emerges. The ones who serve will adjust to the wishes of the ones who demand. This phenomenon is also visible in guided tour tourism. The following quote illustrates how humans and life itself of local people are objectified as a product, for the sake of earning money from tourism:
Respondent G: I have been to a Himba tribe in Namibia and when I am walking there, I start to realize, and I knew this kind of in advance, that this was a set up village, and that they are living 200 km further up, and that they send a representative group for tourists. These people are sitting in a sort of grassland, where they have reconstructed their huts, and a campfire, and a goat that is hanging on top of that. 19
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The local people reconstruct their village life here to serve the assumed expectations of tourists, because of the reward this brings. This way, the experience of the tourists is moving away from a shared reality, because of the adjusted performance of the village life, which is presented as a ‘real’ village. This above example is an example of commoditization that is dehumanizing the lives of local people for the sake of tourism experiences. The following example shows how, in the behavior of guided tours, contemporary tourism constrains a meaningful interaction between the two groups.
Respondent G: But I think that the more often you are visiting a certain place, the more a distant is being created between the community and the tourists. Especially from the perspective of the community. In the beginning they might be very curious and willing to know what the tourist is coming to do (…). And the more they see that tourists only like to make pictures, they are becoming a little immune for this.
Respondent I: Yes, then they want to get the benefits out of this [behavior].
Respondent G: Yes exactly, and that is on a very superficial level. 20
The commoditization of tourism is no exception; it can be seen as a general trend.
Respondent H: Tourism is much more a product. It is even a sort of emotion that you buy. Everything is becoming pre-cooked. 21
Next to the dehumanized interaction between locals and tourists, because of commoditization, the relationship between the guide and the tourists is also dehumanizing as will be explained more in detail below. In their role guides serve the individual wishes of their groups, to be able to give them the best possible experience.
Respondent B: I already start exploring what people like, do, and why they go on a trip when at the gate in Schiphol Airport. I am here for them and not the other way around. 22
Respondent F: I try to take a close look at the group and the individuals in the group, to make sure everyone is having a nice trip. So exploring everyone’s personal desire and giving attention to everyone, being dispersed so I make a conversation with everyone. 23
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As explained by the guides however, it is relatively easier to give people they like attention and devotion. However, those people with whom the guide does not have a ‘click’ will need attention too. Actually, it is recommended to focus on those people more.
Respondent H: Look, people all want attention. And also in the same portions. A typical mistake for beginners is that if you do not like people that much, you will feel uncomfortable around them, and you will get closer with the people you do like.24
This serving-people-aspect of the job evokes frustrations.
Respondent H: You are actually a sort of a whore, you now. That you do everything for their lusts, problems and questions. Actually you are even more than a whore. A whore is merely sexual, he or she will only limit the service to the physical. 25
This shows how far the role of servant can be experienced. Being ready to serve the needs of the group can be exhausting. Moreover, in the intensity of the job and serving the tourist, tour guides experience very little ‘private’ space:
Respondent E: ’you have to make some private space for yourself, but that is very difficult in a group tour. People expect you to be there for them all day, for all. You totally have to give yourself for the group otherwise you cannot do the job. Sometimes you make days of 18 hours. 26
So the mask of the tour guide is ‘on’ most of the day. Together with the serving aspect of the job, the guide is supposed to show certain friendly and bright happy attitudes towards their guests.
Respondent H: people expect you to be always clear and cheerful. People just don’t accept it if it is not your day. A little bit maybe, but it mustn’t become too personal. 27
This is creating a struggle, being unable to show real emotions or to share real thoughts or feelings.
Respondent A: To show the most beautiful side of yourself for 2 weeks in a row. When you feel bad, you have to pretend to be happy. Basically you do everything what nature would forbid normally. It is like not eating for two weeks. Your basic needs to show emotions are suppressed; only the beautiful nice emotions are
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allowed. As a guide you cannot burst into tears, or get angry. Basically you become a suppressed being. You are there but not really alive. You live for the group. 28
One of the guides described it as being a ‘public property’. Being public property is not easy, and requires the guide to set clear borders to protect him/herself:
Respondent B: As tour guide you have to be friends with everyone, but at the same time keep distance to take care they don’t suck al the energy out of you. 29
Next, the job can be frustrating when feeling the need to be everyone’s friend, unable to express real thoughts and emotions:
Respondent A: then I arrive in my room completely filled with frustrations, because they are acting against everything I believe in. Then I feel like screaming. I lock the door, and test if the walls are sound proof en then I just start screaming. Or I take a shower trying to clean myself thoroughly, scrubbing all fat away, and then I lie under the bed sheets and try to breathe calmly to fall asleep. 30
Even though serving people element is sometimes experienced as dehumanizing, serving individual needs of people is a rewarding job, and more importantly: the reasons for guides to continue their job:
Respondent E: If you can make people really happy, if you see them enjoy. That is really the most important.
Respondent D: …people are deep and deeply thankful for the trip they may have had, and that they have been looking forward to for ten years, in relation to the adoption matter.
Respondent C: the positive energy that you get if people leave. 31
Taking this back to literature, in the relationship between the guide and the group, a clear power relationship emerges. The guide who serves will adjust to the wishes of the tourists who demand. This relationship is dehumanizing, because the guide has to wear a mask most of the day, lacking private space to be a person beyond the role of the guide, unable to show real emotions or thoughts. This process is due to commoditization processes in guiding, wherein the guide is part of the product to serve the experience of the tourists.
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The commoditization of tourism in guided tours also has an effect on the experience of the tourists, wherein people are consuming rather than experiencing. For example by checking the brochure if the program is exactly offering what was promised when booking, or the way they want to make the exact same photographs as presented in the brochure. Also, guides mentioned the way tourist experience many moments in the trip without really being there. An example of this is the role of the camera in the tourist experience. One guide neatly explained how this behavior is constraining people to be in the moment: Respondent I: But I have seriously called to the people in the group, asking if they – for once – could not look only through their lenses. Oh ja, Oh ja…. You are here now, I say to them, you ARE here now. 32
In the commoditization of tourism the experience is the product. The tour operator’s concern is to provide the exact experience tourists payed for. To be able to control the product [experience] the tour is standardized in a way that the experienced as promised is more or less secure. This process of standardization of experiences is neatly illustrated by the story of how Shilla Travel professionalized:
Respondent D: Now we are more professional, and we have a more constant quality. (…) This used to be different and then you receive complaints. And complaints are the most terrible for me. (…) So by professionalization I minimize the complaints. You want to create it in a way that people do not have any complaints at the end of the trip.(…) you cannot work with a small motel where they clean the room at 9 am, and the other day at 4 pm. That does not provide constant quality, and the Hilton does have that quality. 33
This change towards ‘professionalization’ is also noticed by one of the tour guides, who describes how this influences the experience in the destination and the job of the guide:
Respondent C: We used to have smaller groups, in unknown little motels where you knew the owner. In the neighborhood of the local Korean. In this way you get to know the area. In those large arrogant hotels you have no idea. It wasn’t always that pleasant if the shower was leaking, if there were no towels, if you can’t sleep because of the floor heating. But with this much luxury you do not get to know the real Korea. Now everything is predestined, so less challenging. It is not my personal reference but at least it is the most comfortable for me as a tour guide. 34
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Concluding from this, for standardization and security reasons the tour has gradually moved further away from daily life, from ‘reality’. This way of organizing tours characterizes the patriarchal power structures of command and control orientation (Ghisi, 2007). In a way it could be argued that this orientation is cutting us from life itself, because the bubble that is created is taking tourists away from daily life of host societies. Our modern world is a model of domination and this is permeating tour guiding. What's more, because of these processes, the tour guide’s job is standardized as well, which is reflecting a common reality for many jobs in modernity.
MADNESS OF MODERNITY: PERPETUATING MARKET MECHANISMS Next to this, market mechanisms influence a fierce competition between tour operators that is making tour operators compete on the number of destinations visited for the lowest price. As one of the guides explained,
Respondent I: If tour operators do offer a relaxed and more ‘human’ program nobody will book, because the other is offering more, so it seems people are getting more value for their money. The trend is to fill up the program even more. People will book with the competitor if he is offering an extra excursion on day 24. 35
This process reflects capitalism as the hegemonic ideology in modernity, which has added an enormous drive to unlimited quantitative growth (Ghisi, 2007, p. 152). In the moment of selecting tours, tourists value the quantity above the quality of the actual experience. This trend is part of a bigger trend in society of consumptive quantitative attitudes towards life in general as described by one of the guides:
Respondent H: It is surprising me that everything is only going faster, and harder, and more stressed. Nevertheless, that is the trend, mainstream: faster even more often, even further away, more flighty, superficial, and more consumptive (…) What I do find hard myself in group travel, is that people really need their rests, since they are super stressed. They almost fall over from the stress while they still want to do everything, see everything, and have to be involved with everything, you know. But actually they do need the time to get to their senses from their stress. 36
Holiday as recovery from the pressures of work and daily life can be difficult to accomplish in a guided group tour. As several guides said on the moment of arrival they are pushed in a new tight schedule without having the space to breathe and stand still, do nothing for a
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moment. Tour guides experience tourists being stressed in the beginning of the tour and sometimes even more exhausted in the end. So the ideology of modernity that a holiday is meant for recovering from busy daily routines is conflicting with the tour group routine.
4.2 THE SWEET AND SOUR TASTE: TRANSMODERN POTENTIALLITIES
INTERCULTURAL LEARNING, REFLECTING, TRANSFORMING? What do tourists learn by travelling in a guided group tour according to guides? ‘A lot’, was the most common reaction of the guides to this question. Being in a new unknown destination people are keen to learn about the new culture and environment they are moving in. Yet, if people learn they might not be conscious of this. Respondent F: So I think people do learn, only it is not their direct motivation. It is a kind of secondary thing that happens implicitly. 37 Also, whether people learn from the tour depends mainly on their own attitude. Respondent D: I think people learn during the tour, but that depends on the person himself. Curious people learn a lot. (...) For example an artist in my group was inspired by the adoptee background of some fellow travelers. She learned a lot during the trip. 38 Not only about the destination visited, but also about people within the group, things are learned. Inside the group many things are shared and therefore people can learn from each other. Most tour guides are fascinated about how soon people get intimate with one another.
Respondent H: It strikes me always very much that travelers are doing so many things together. I always find this phenomenon a bit strange, because people travel to the other side of the world, to be with people from your home country, who even are strangers for you. And then I think: why wouldn’t you go travelling in your own country to be able to be with people that share your nationality. It is a kind of detour. But it is a factor that is significant.39
People travel intensively with strangers and this can result in sharing and learning from each other. Only booking a tour is not enough; a person has to be curious and open minded to learn something. Yet by being on a tour temporarily opens ways for learning.
Respondent I: Uuuuuh, I think people learn from the tour, but only on the level of, well, on the level of being a tourist. I don’t know, I have the feeling as soon as they
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get home, wearing their old coat again, instead of the tourism jacket, that much of the learned elements will sink to the bottom, without the process being continued. 40
REFLECTING Normally, reflection is not facilitated by the tour guide, nor is space made for in the schedule. On the contrary: the trend according to more experienced guides is that tours are becoming more consumptive with tighter schedules not creating any possibility for reflection.
[ S: do you have the idea there is space for reflection during such a tour?]
Respondent I: no
Respondent G: No! I don’t think so either
Respondent I: no, even less. The trip is being crammed further and further. People go to the competitor when they see they offer something 5 euro’s cheaper with something extra on day. 24.
Respondent G: I think the only moment of reflection is back home when looking at the pictures taken. 41
Yet, these processes might not be visible for the tour guide:
Respondent F: Well, I think there are many possibilities and in some way it will happen. You do take a distance of the situation back home. Even though this is happening in silence, I do reflect myself. I can imagine it to happen automatically. 42
For the guides themselves, it is difficult to find a moment for their own reflection. There are no patterns of reflection that facilitate this in the organizational structure, accept from a more practical perspective. Tour guides themselves explained they are taken away by the madness of the tour themselves. Only at home some of them started to think about what had happened and how they felt about this. It illustrates ways in modernity, wherein self awareness seems to be modest; we don’t have many patterns or habits of reflection (Zohar & Marshall, 2004). Except from very practical knowledge on the destination itself, there is a lack of structures in tour guiding that would enable the sharing of knowledge and experiences and learning from each other.
[S: What would you still like to learn?]
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Respondent C: oh, I wouldn’t know. As long as you are doing something your own way, and you receive positive reactions, you don’t feel you should improve something. You are doing completely your own thing. It is a similar thing in my studies. I always thought I was doing my job really well, and that I couldn’t learn anything more, but now that I started the University in my field, a new world is opening up for me. I learn so much more. And while doing my job I was not aware of this at all. So I think it is a similar situation for tour guiding. 43
Tour guides rarely meet or communicate with their colleagues during guiding, and moments of gathering to evaluate guiding, to reflect on their practice, do not seem to be facilitated by tour operators either.
Respondent C: … it feels really good to talk to someone who exactly understands what I am talking about. People around me directly think, oh, there she starts again. It is good to talk about it and to share experiences. Normally we never do something like this. The only moment I have learned something about tour guiding from someone was during the practical training the first tour. 44
By reflecting on actions, humans can critically analyze themselves and the reality around them, and are able to adjust their actions in the present, to create a change in the future. Not sharing experiences between tour guides seems a structural deficit in the current practices, not allowing any reflections for change.
INTERACTING Some tour guides gave some examples of artificial meeting grounds organized in the tour. One of the tourist highlights wherein people sleep in an open air museum to experience traditional ways of living:
Respondent H: I did notice with my group, when they were staying in the open air of an old farm where an old man made fire for tea and dinner, where we stayed for bed and breakfast… And where they could participate with Monks in the morning ceremony… That they truly found it a very special experience. And that was, in their eyes a meeting ground, but I see it as a typical tourist product. If you would ask me if there is space for a meeting ground, then I will say yes, that is an illusion that is very limited. But if you take the perspective of those people, they find it very special. And that is what counts off course. 45
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Even though it is a set up environment with staged roles for people it was a way of understanding the way of living and therefore a valuable experience. The other meeting ground was a home stay organized by a volunteer organization that would invite people to sleep one day in their home:
Respondent D: …We used to have a home stay program, but we removed it [out of the brochure]. There we had true interaction with the Koreans. But these were volunteer organizations that we worked with. And we are now a more professional organization. And that was a difficult process, since we want to guaranty a certain level of quality. And you can’t expect that from volunteers. …however, it used to be a great party, and we would do all kinds of nice games. And I know that some people still have contact with each other. But we couldn’t continue this at a certain stage. It became too big. Even they said that they could not handle it any more. (…) there was too much additional work. But it was the ideal way to get into contact with Koreans. You were staying in people’s homes, you ate and drank with them, you partied with them. They were not having sex though I believe haha… 46
On the one hand this example shows the creation of a valuable learning ground facilitated by the tour operator. On the other hand it shows the difficulty the organizations brings working with a volunteer organization and the amount of extra work it is creating and the insecure and uncontrollable character it has, because it is based on the good will of people to cooperate. And economies of scale value quality less, a result of growth made by the tour operator.
TRANSFORMING? Reflection and the educational element of the tour are closely related to the possibility of change of people’s assumptions, behavior or attitudes on a guided tour.
As one guide mentioned, travelling is less a life changing event in comparison to before:
Respondent H: When I look back on the initial tours it was much more a life changing event for people. Now, it is much more a routine. Look, it has become a kind of right people claim to have, even a far away holiday is perceived to something natural. It would be more life changing when people would stay home. 47
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So this might be a reason for less space to reflect during the journey.
Respondent H: People don’t want to be left completely lost recovering from holidays for half a year. That they would have so much difficulties going back into the routine, heh? 48
Yet, there is also a minor trend visible of people who feel the need to go back to themselves through more spiritual holidays, wherein experiencing something together is more important than the destination itself.
Respondent I: Yes, but to experience something together is becoming more of a trend. (…) However more in a luxury niche market. Meaning not to practice a bit of yoga on top of a small mountain, no it has to be in a luxurious resort with a spa and a wellness, and good food.
S: …not back to basic, but more back to yourself.
Respondent G: …more back to yourself. I think that people are distancing themselves too much in their daily lives. Maybe that is a reason to book a trip with a whole different character. 49
THE GUIDE AS FACILITATOR? In trans modern tour guiding the dominant role of the guide would shift from a tour leader to a facilitator of a learning environment. For this, skills of a facilitator are needed. The following quote shows how in the current guiding practice, there is already a difference in tour leaders and tour facilitators:
Respondent F: It depends, I guess, very much upon your personal qualities. (…) I find it beautiful to see, as you actually have tour facilitators and tour guides, and it does not mean that one is better than the other. But one fits better [according to your qualities] than the other. I see myself more as a facilitator … and I try to facilitate the trip in the good way, although I am not someone who constantly says; follow me, 50
One of the most prominent elements of guided tours is the Group element. Group dynamics, not surprisingly, is one of the main things tour guides focus on and learn from: Respondent A: (…) I learn every day again from groups, and that is the fun part of the process: every group is different. 51
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And,
Respondent D: The Group dynamics, that is what takes place within a Group. That is controllable for a large part. A good travel guide takes care that the group dynamics remain positive. 52
Some guides really see it as their task to make ‘one’ group wherein there is a good atmosphere, cohesion and everyone is included:
Respondent A: When people are silent for a long time, they fall out of the group and start to enclose themselves, but I do not allow this to happen in my group. (...) people long for cohesion. I know for sure my role as a tour guide was very important in this aspect the last tour. I was tired for a reason. Without my involvement, those people would never have connected with one another. 53
This way of connecting and engaging people would be very helpful in the facilitation of meeting grounds in the future. Yet, another guide claimed the contrary:
Respondent B: People don’t book a group tour for the group. Often, they want to have nothing to do with the group. People hate the group; they don’t want to be bothered with it. (...) It is not my role to make a good atmosphere. People choose to travel by group for safety reasons, not for the group. They prefer travelling individually. It is not so much fun travelling in a group. 54
During the interview my idea about creating verbal meeting grounds was discussed. The tour guide could play an important role as mediator in this aspect. Tour guides say to indirectly stimulate interaction by teaching people about local customs, culture and a few words of the language. Yet, only when the local people feel like participating and if such is in the wishes of the groups:
Respondent B: I do facilitate it yes. It depends on some factors. I will never impose [such a facilitation] to the local population. And it has to be in the wishes of the travelling group. I don’t see it as a must. As a tour guide you shouldn’t be to normative. Just as much that you should position yourself as an entertainer. 55
In present practices, guides don’t see it as their task to actively stimulate interaction, because it is not the normal way of doing in today’s practices. Next to this they feel it is not fitting with the needs of tourists and they might not be interested at all:
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Respondent A: … I presume that people do not have the need. (…) There is no desire, purely also because it does not exist. It is not the way you celebrate your holidays. This is how it goes, this is normal. The way it goes now is accepted. (…) that is just the way it is. 56
The following quote shows how a guide is creating an experience based learning environment by being a mediator between the local street vendor and the tourists:
Respondent D: Also, my role is to let people try out new things, for example with food. Then I try out things I would never tryout myself, but then I want my group to try, so I do it myself first. You could say I am a kind of pioneer in trying out new things, in order to make the group try out as well. I will give you the example with a rice cake street vendor. When I would be alone, I would never make friends with such a street vendor, but because I know it works, you do it, and then everyone receives a rice cake. And very often people actually buy something, so it is also good for the street vendor. People don’t dare to try out themselves; while eventually they really like it.57
CRITICALLY REFLEXIVE PRACTITIONERS Tour guides as critical reflexive practitioners would be one way of enabling transformative learning in guided group tours. As argued in the theoretical framework, the aim of transformative learning is to let the learners realize they have a specific way of viewing and acting in the world. Tourguides could change and hunt invalid assumptions. One of the elements needed for this is a challenge of existing assumptions and knowledge people have accumulated throughout their lives. We all have certain values on which we act upon. We cannot separate ourselves from these values that are based on certain assumptions about the world. The next quote illustrates the way assumptions are entrenched in people’s thinking about the world Respondent A: They (tourists) are so preoccupied with themselves; many things are only viewed from their perspective, and their way of thinking. And that will lead to dogma. What in their perspective is good or bad. 58 Challenges of our assumptions can occur when we have insights in someone’s perspective by travelling or reading and talking to another person. Already in the current practice of guiding, some guides see it as their task to challenge certain invalid assumptions people
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have. Guides expressed different strategies to do this. For example, one guide who has a background as social worker has the following strategy: Respondent B: For example, when I see people behaving irritated towards locals, I say: So, I can see you are not very fond of the Chinese are you? Then I go in their flow of thoughts. Let them get rid of all negative energy and thoughts, then they ‘puke’ everything out and when done I can push them in the right direction. I learned this tool in social work. 59 Another guide sees people make invalid interpretations of what they observe and how they create their own versions of ‘the truth’. His strategy is to try to make people envision what they would do if they would be on the other side, as the next quote illustrates:
Respondent A: As a tour guide I try to give people a more relative insight about the things they claim to be true, in order to show them the other side. They accept this from the tour guide, but wouldn’t accept this from fellow travelers, which will eventually lead to conflict. 60
These dreams are examples of how guides could change the structures of guiding themselves if they would have the chance.
FUTURE DREAMS Guides create visions by first looking at the broader trend in society that influences tourism and tour guiding, and secondly by looking at their individual experiences in tour guiding and life in general. When I asked some of them what they would want to do if they would have the chance to change something, some interesting insights were presented. The following quote shows the awareness of this guide that people are living in a way far away from themselves, and his dream to facilitate an exploration journey:
Respondent A: People lose the meaning in their lives, because they are stuck in their disciplines, routines, patterns of expectations. Slowly people start to realize that they have been fooled, and that they are slowly being destructed due to their own existence. The idea that you have your own identity has to be re-invented: an explorative journey, go and find yourself. Full of memories. You can lead a life for 40 years with what you are expected to do, but after 40 years you get older and you find out that you haven’t showed enough interest in your own existence. You have to put your hands back into the earth. (…) a spiritual journey isn’t so bad. Without any hocus pocus, just see what you can get out of it, look for a meaning. 61
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Another guide is already trying to set up her own company ‘inner action’, and the following shows the story of her main idea:
Respondent F: the idea started from my own experience that when walking through the desert you literally take distance of everything that is going on in daily life, the daily routine, that can completely occupy you, you take a break from it for a while. You create a sort of distance to it. Also by walking and through that meadow landscape you start to put things into perspective, and you get to a sort of relaxation that makes you reflect. Thinking Hey! What am I doing actually? And uh…this can happen sometimes on its self. (…) but that context can be nourishing for the process, and if you give a little more attention to this process and facilitate it, then you might get a lot out of it. (…) The idea is to combine the fun part with the educational part…. 62
Those ideas combine aspects of nature with learning, physical action and reflection. In these dreams guides can see themselves as facilitators and coaches:
Respondent F: I would find it cool to really work with teams, on another level to get them together. I have always found education of the elderly interesting. And the aspect of how you can use challenges in nature as a mirror for your own challenges. And that you use them with your team to grow. What am I and who am I and how do I proceed? And then focused on the team. But why do we need to go all the way to whatever, we could do these kind of things also close to our homes. 63
Respondent A: I would like to create a niche for philosophy, to get the chance to philosophy with others. Philosophizing all day about life with others during a travel. In this way people can change during a tour and I can also learn from them. That is what I am missing right now. The immersion. Because the goal isn’t there right now. I do look for it, but this is taking really long. I have a need for meaningful conversations. (…) we could walk through nature, in the mountains. Through physical endeavors people become clear-headed and are often able to find inspiration in trees or animals or sounds or just by standing still somewhere to get hold of their breath and realize that they are alife, that they have arms and legs. 64
These dreams illustrate trans modern ways of thinking that could possibly help in shifting guiding for the future. The role of the guide is essential in reaching trans modern
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transformation, and for this reason guides themselves need to be trans modern thinkers and practitioners themselves first.
CHAPTER 5: NEW RECIPES
As argued in literature, the reason for facilitating meeting grounds between tourists and locals is multifold. First of all, a meeting ground would enable people to break dehumanizing commoditization structures present in contemporary tour guiding. A meeting ground between people is based on values of sharing and learning instead of generating money, and also breaking the work/leisure distinction between them. Next to this, mass tourism paved a path in tourism destinations that is difficult to escape; a meeting ground could create a bridge to escape the bubble into innovative understanding. Next to this, by facilitating a meeting ground enables guided tours to get out of modernity structures that are choking the potentialities for transformative learning in contemporary tour guiding now.
In this chapter the main outcomes of the experimentation process of meeting grounds will be discussed. And last but not least, the potential that an intercultural verbal meeting ground could bring in creating critical reflexivity, stimulating a shared reality and possibly creating a bridge towards human unity, that could help people in a transformation towards trans modernity.
The main research question that will guide this chapter is:
NEW RECIPES: What insights from the experimental methods of facilitation (old ingredients, METHODS, and philosophies) -which are based on insights from the literature- could contribute to trans modern tour guiding in the future?
Insights on the complexities, issues and potentialities will guide the structure of this chapter guided by different methods used.
5.1 JOHARI’S WINDOW
5.1.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND This is a tool that could give insights on assumptions, and about how people interpret things, on the basis of our own knowledge. Also, it makes people think of what the other person knows and sees and to open up discussions about how our different backgrounds influence
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our worldviews. The Johari Window is in fact a matrix that participants can fill in to practice this thinking. An example of such a window is depicted below.
5.1.2 COMPLEXITIES & ISSUES By using Johari’s window, it is possible to stay very superficial, like: ’I know and you know we are in Yangsho, You don’t know my favorite place in Yangshuo, and I don’t know what Holland looks like’. So I think when making it more concrete, about a specific subject, than it could be pleasant for use. The assignment for Johari’s window was too broad to reveal different views and interpretations on the same thing. The situation of meeting is changed in the direction of a verbal interaction, but still I have not managed to go into depth in conversations. Only a few times we touched upon it, by talking about the concept of romanticism and marriage and the social effects of one-child policy in China.
Because of the language difficulties, people started to talk to each other, to translate what was said en to tell each other related stories. It was very difficult for some people to express themselves well, and to understand the question asked to them. They would just start talking, without answering the question. This is one of the major difficulties. Also for the French participants English was not their mother tongue and they could not really make clear what they wanted to say sometimes.
The group size and excitement was making it difficult to do methods with the whole group. People were really curious to hear each other’s stories. So curious, that they were talking more with their neighbors and it was difficult to get the attention of the whole group. Group size is very important because if the group is too large, discussion and listening is difficult. So it is better to split the group up when personal things are to be discussed, making size of the space an important issue. Yet, one of the most difficult things was to control the number of people that would participate. My method of getting people to participate was to talk to people on the main tourist street, and to give them an information folder and to ask if they would like to participate the same evening. Tourists who are travelling in guided group tours, were unable to attend, because of the tight schedule, and many backpacking tourist didn’t want to promise anything. At the end of the day I thought I would have 7 people from the tourists’ side to participate. At seven o clock, only 2 people, a couple, showed up. And at 19.45 an Irish guy arrived as well. From the Chinese side, the people from the Juice bar and China cultural Center helped me in promoting the meeting ground. Instead of 6 people, 10 people showed up, of whom some were not invited, but came because they heard of it.
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Because people were invited via others, and through the network of China Cultural Centre, the aim of the workshop was unclear, and I noticed people were there for other reasons. Also some were leaving earlier, or arriving later, making it difficult for me to give clarity to everyone about the aim and structure of the workshop.
One lady used the introduction with postcards to tell her story of her experience in Indonesia as a tourist and how this knowledge should be implemented in Yangshuo. She was talking for a very long time and I tried to stop her a few times, but she was not picking up my signals, and went on with her story. As I later found out this is a very respected and influential lady in Yangshuo, she might have had her own agenda to come to the meeting; as other people might have had as well. So this meeting ground between people could have benefitted for them as an individual if they would explicitly tell me their aims beforehand.
As facilitators, we learned how difficult the role is to facilitate a good discussion: when you are too dominant in steering the discussion people will respond to you instead of to the others in the group. And when you let it flow too much, people start doing their own things. So for facilitating meeting grounds experienced facilitators should be trained.
When organizing a meeting between strangers, the ‘strangeness’ of the group is interesting in itself, and the curiosity is so high that it seems better to only do one method in depth, instead of pushing for several methods, even though in theory could bring a much better understanding when doing them all.
After this experience we decided to move to Laos, for new inspiration, and a new place to facilitate a meeting ground. We were a bit disappointed in the willingness from the tourists’ side to participate. Also, I realized how difficult it was to facilitate something first-class, and it would take a lot more try outs to develop a method. This would be asked too much from the China cultural centre, so we moved to another place.
5.1.3 POTENTIALITIES Johari’s window was a nice tool to think of what the other, from a different culture or living environment, is knowing and what you know yourself, and what you don’t know. I think you now, that I/ We …., I think you don’t know the I, we … We both know… This is giving people a frame work to talk about their perspectives on things, generating topics to talk about from their own experience.
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The next day when sitting in the China Cultural Centre, they were still talking about it: I know, that …but you don’t know that! So this makes me think, they were more aware of their own perceptions and other ones perceptions and how interpretations and perspectives can differ between people and how important it is to actively communicate this.
By facilitating a meeting ground, new links between people were developed that would have not been there otherwise. Shelly – one participant - started inviting people over to her house at the end of the meeting, to continue another time and to talk about tourism in Yangshuo. So by organizing this meeting, new connections between people were generated. Yet, me and Arjaan were the only ones to show up and this is also illustrating the difference in attitude between tourists, locals and the researcher.
Because of the research I am experiencing the journey differently. Because of this research I was involved in a network of people who I met every day, and who opened up new doors. They arranged new meetings, and I learned new things, I even taught at the local tourism school in Yangshuo and learned Thai Chi through a friend of the China Cultural Centre. So staying in one place for a longer time, meeting people with the purpose of doing something together, while trying to make a change in the way tourism is facilitated. I discovered that by taking part in creating instead of consuming only is a very nice way to travel and learn.
5.2 CONVERSATION MENU
5.2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The conversation menu is based on knowledge about conversation as discussed in the literature by Bruner and Vasterling: Humans create, redefine and share knowledge through conversation (1991). Different stories have to be told to get a better sense of reality that can guide understanding. A shared world is build upon the existence of many different view of the same reality (Vasterling, 2007). In the interaction with others we are not in control of the process, and this moment generates new perspectives and views of the world and ourselves. ‘Adequate understanding and judgment of acts, facts and events requires that one is able to widen and transform the subjectivity of one’s own perspective with the perspective of others’ (Vasterling, 2007, p. 89). Next to this, a conversation with Theodore Zeldin, the founder of the muse foundation and the ‘conversation menu’ advised me to facilitate 1 to 1 conversations because those will lead to more personal and profound things. I would need to create an environment where people can have privacy, a little space, a little table, where it is quiet. The Muse foundation organizes conversation meals at which participants are seated in
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pairs with someone they have never met, or know only very vaguely. People are each given a menu of conversation that looks like a restaurant menu, with starters, fish, grills, dessert, etc. But instead of descriptions of food dishes, each heading contains topics to talk about(…)Each of the participants chooses a topic, and when they have finished discussing it, the other chooses a topic and so you go through the Menu. By using this method they found out that people get to know a stranger very well, and find that they are learning a lot about yourself too, in discussing such topics as ambition, curiosity, fear, friendship, the relations of the sexes and of civilizations. (http://muse.prettygetter.tv/dinners#1).
5.2.2 COMPLEXITIES & ISSUES Again, it was difficult to get people to participate. The people that participated were friends of the guesthouse we stayed at in Luang Prabang, and the reason to participate was to help me out, instead of their own motivation to do it. One example of the difficultly to find participants is the following: I asked some people to participate in my conversation menu, or the whole lao-licious workshop after sharing a nice evening together. They told me they were busy, and had other plans. And then a girl arrived, and told them about night bowling somewhere just outside Luang Prabang. She told about a very popular experience that many tourists go to, to do bowling and to get drunk until the police arrive to get everyone out. And then those same people were really enthusiastic, making plans to go the next evening. So this made me realize it is not an experience they were waiting for. When I told this to one of my friends, she said: I wouldn’t participate either if I wouldn’t help you, because this is scary. You don’t know how much you will have to reveal of yourself.
What I didn’t foresee when starting the cooking class, is that we were making far too much food, and it took much longer to prepare everything. After 6 hours of learning about Lao gastronomy, people were so tired, that they were barely able to talk. So the idea of combining a cooking class with the conversation menu to make it attractive for tourists didn’t work out well. This generated the insight that it is better to keep it simple, because that way all the energy can flow in the meeting ground itself.
In addition, the Lao people who would participate in the conversation menu cancelled the meeting, so we decided to postpone the meeting to another evening. It is complex to get people to participate from the local side, because they are busy in their daily occupations and have less time to meet in comparison to the tourists who are freer to spend their time the way they feel like.
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It was difficult to find people willing to participate. This could have several reasons, and one of them is the comfort the bubble brings wherein tourists do their thing with other tourists and selected hosts. In a conversation with a experienced traveler the advice was given to stay inside the bubble: you can better facilitate something between tourists, because there is already a vibrant meeting ground between them. It will be difficult to find locals who will have time & speak English well enough. People already learn a lot from each other, and spend time together’. Yet, what this traveler didn’t understand is, that this is exactly the reason for me to facilitate a meeting ground outside the bubble.
Inspired by the conversation menu, and the possibility to facilitate another meeting ground, I also developed a new idea and method to be used in the future: Lao river of life. Yet, by the difficulty in getting people to participate, I was so des-illusionized, that I felt I was the only one who wanted to do this. And I wanted to create something that others would like to learn from, so after the first Lao-Licious meeting ground, I couldn’t find the energy needed to organize another one. For whom am I doing this??
5.2.3 POTENTIALITIES We had such nice, honest, and fun conversations together. After the meeting we discussed about how this meeting was different from other conversation. It was different because nobody had a conversation like this before, and they all agreed that they learned a lot, also unexpected things. Especially the Lao girls wanted to learn more, and meet again. One of the tourists told me the following: I learned things that I wouldn’t have expected, like the lao girl, who was a passionate Christian. Her meeting with her friend, Jesus, changed her whole life. She believed he is always with her, to support her and to be there for her. Although she is only a Christian for one year now, she believed he has always been with her. She first didn’t want to tell the group who her friend was, and then after a while she told it is Jesus. Some English teachers introduced the bible to her, and once per week they have bible discussions. I assumed that everyone in Laos was Buddhist, because this is written in the lonely planet, but it seems there is a strong Christian movement as well. I was really shocked!
Unexpected, participants preferred to do the conversation menu in the group. So we did and this was working as well. With such a small group of 6 people it was an enriching experience, because more insights from different perspectives were generated. So there is potential in doing the conversation menu in small groups next to the already existing variety of doing it
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in pairs. This opens up possibilities to facilitate something likewise in guided tours where it could be difficult to find the same amount of local people willing enough to participate.
5.3 ASSUMPTION PLAY
5.3.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Tourist interactions are generally based on the level of ‘strangerhood’ (Nash, in Smith, 1989, pp. 37-52). Because of this the interaction between the two tend to take form of a more general and impersonal form of interaction. Strangers are often not seen as individuals, but more as persons of a specific category; strangers tend to treat each other as types. As humans we need to make sense of the world, and therefore we simplify things. For example we tend to make stories about people we don’t know and visually meet, however never corrected because there is no verbal interaction (Paulos & Goodman, 2004). By creating stories based on behavior and physical appearance we simplify individuals and put people in boxes. When there is only a visual meeting ground, typifications are based on the physical appearance of the person, combined with one’s own knowledge from different kind of information sources. By looking, without talking, and at the same time writing assumptions down, people are confronted with their own ways of thinking, and the way their appearance gives people clues on who they are. Without the verbal interaction, people are monologue- ing with themselves about the other, and this way their own assumptions and their perceived ‘truth’ is not challenged, and thus not creating a deeper understanding of the self and the world that could help in changing attitudes. In tourism interaction, the interaction is mainly based on visual meetings and this tool is created to make people critically aware of how these mechanisms work.
5.3.2 COMPLEXITIES & ISSUES People felt very uncomfortable to stare and observe at each other, explicitly judging and creating stories behind the physical appearance. ‘I really didn’t like it, it wasn’t nice at all’. In the reflection people told they were ‘embarrassed by the exercise’, and ‘they would prefer not to do it’. Yet, in daily life people are doing this all the time. So in this way it was a very strong and revealing tool that enabled people to critically reflect on their own ways of constructing stories about other people on the basis of a non verbal interaction.
Because of the method, people were more aware of their own performance and how this influences the opinions of their partner. One woman started to make it a real performance
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by walking around her partner, making faces full of expressions revealing her thoughts, looking, nodding, writing. This made the person looked at very uncomfortable, and made clear what an awkward situation I created as facilitator.
By splitting the group into couples, people were observing by sitting in front of each other, this is generating an ‘unnatural’ situation, because it is not something that is reflecting normal behavior in daily life. This made it more difficult to create stories. If a person would be observed in a more natural situation, maybe the stories would have been closer to the real identity of the other. Normally ‘others’ are observed from a distance, and the setting was blocking some people in the inspiration for creating stories.
5.3.3 POTENTIALITIES This method enables people to think about their own judgments about people they don’t know. It amazed me how honest people were in writing up their observations. The method gave insights on how some people were able to grasp a person fairly close to the reality of the other, and others were far from close: ‘missing the nail completely’.
The stories created about you as a person based on your physical appearance are very confronting. Therefore it has a lot of potential, because it generates awareness of people’s assumption on the basis of physical appearance. By some the tool was not appreciated, yet creating insights of this mechanism of creating interpretations.
Also it makes people aware of how their own appearance is creating certain assumptions for other people. And most importantly, the awareness of how the visual meeting ground is creating misunderstandings, and ‘untruths’.
The potential of this tool could be further deepened by asking each person to ‘make assumptions about lives of 3 other people. This could gain more insight of how from different perspectives assumptions are similar or different.
Also, next time the tool could go deeper by having more time to discuss afterwards in the group. ‘It would have been better to go more in depth in the first exercise, because it really struck me and I felt the need to continue with this’.
5.4 RIVER OF LIFE: CREATING LIFE HISTORIES
5.4.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
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By telling stories about themselves, people simultaneously describe and construct their identity. A personal life story is constructed out of selected events along the life path, that generate a storyline, and show a specific path which goes from the past into the present. Life changing stories highlight those moments in a life path that made the direction of it change significantly. Those moments can also be described as turning points in life. Reflecting on actions, enables humans to critically analyze themselves and the reality around them. By sharing these personal life changing stories with another person, is creating the opportunity for individuals to reflect on both psychological and social levels that would not be possible alone. So the social and psychological are intertwined, complementing each other in the narrative told. Next to this, T. Zeldin (1995) believes that if people would be able to tap in others people’s memories, they could change their own mentality. Mentalities are based on memories, experiences and stories told by people. Those memories are impossible to kill, but people could broaden their memories by understanding people’s life histories and how their mentalities are shaped through the centuries, in different regions and different cultures. (Zeldin, 1995).
5.4.2 COMPLEXITIES & ISSUES Although this exercise was good for generating reflection on life histories, it didn’t bring the depth it could have brought. Maybe it is better to draw the river focusing on a specific aspect, like studies, or how specific meetings with people created a turning point. Now the time was too short and the rivers too broad to reach the dept that could reveal more insights.
Next to this, as one of the participants mentioned, the discussion of the rivers could generate more insights when discussed in a group, possibly generating better insights on differences, similarities or trends.
Drawing the river is a ‘safe’ tool, because people can share only those things that they want to share. Yet, this also has the pitfall that people don’t reveal so much about them, as the following quote illustrates: ‘I didn’t learn more about the person then I already knew. This could not take us to another level.’ So the ‘depth’ of the method depends on the person using it.
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Yet, on the other hand the tool is not ‘safe’ at all, because quite a lot of your personal life is revealed to a stranger, and this could block people in exposing themselves. So this tool would possibly be more revealing with people who know each other a little longer.
Some people found it super difficult to draw, and they were ashamed of their product, even though it was explicitly mentioned the way you draw is not important.
The method used, needs a good understanding in English, and because English was not the mother tongue for many participants, this was a barrier for a good conversation sometimes. As one of the participants reflected: ‘maybe it is better to live with people for a while, do what they do, and eat what they eat to understand them better’.
5.4.3 POTENTIALITIES By drawing new insights about one’s own life history were revealed, and things became more clear:
‘I really enjoyed drawing and it gave me many insights’ The Rivers of Life gave a good insight on how one thing was build on another. Also for some it was enabling them to ‘easily get to an emotional level’.
Only by the difference in drawing in itself is already generating an insight of how different we all think and act.
This method is able in generating a personal insight of who a person is, and how he or she perceives their own life path.
Explaining the theoretical foundation behind the method used was working well; people told me they really appreciated that and they really learned something. Only, the concepts should be explained is such a way comprehensible to people without any former knowledge on subjects.
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CONCLUSION I will first provide conclusions related to the aim of exploring potentialities in contemporary guided tours for trans modern tour guiding (old recipes) and after this the conclusions in relation to the exploration of facilitated meeting grounds (new recipes).
OLD RECIPES The dominated taste of the insights on contemporary guiding is bitter: reflecting much of the dehumanizing and mad ways of modernity it is constraining rather than creating potentials and possibilities. The way tours are organized is dehumanizing tourists, tour guides and locals as individual beings, as well as the relationships between them due to market mechanisms and commodification processes. Structures in guided tours are enforcing the bubble moving away from a shared reality; unable of critically reflection, or transcending patriarchal power structures and dichotomized ways of thinking which could create a bridge for human unity and intercultural understanding. Yet, there is also a sweet and sour taste present in contemporary guiding that is generating hope for the shift towards trans modern tour guiding. The potentialities can be found mostly in the elements present in roles of the guides as facilitators. Now, I will elaborate on those conclusions in more in detail.
The role of the guide plays an important role in the enforcement of the bubble: By providing safety and security (leadership role), people in the group will feel more comfortable and secure, not having to deal with the unfamiliar environment. By doing this, the guide takes away potential learning experience tourism could bring by adapting to new unfamiliar environments and cultures. This constrains tourists to enter the public space of the host society, and the possibility to go into a process of learning and de-learning. Moreover, the tour is structured in such a way that responsibility is given to the guide by the tourists, enforcing passive mindsets in tourists.
Expectations of tourists create assumptions about the guide to be the expert and therefore tourists give the guide authority knowledge wise; meaning tourists perceive the person to own the truth. This system not only makes the tourists passive receivers, also will they become the possessor of an empty mind, passively open to the reception of ‘deposits’ from the reality from the world outside, unable to actively transform, create or question this knowledge themselves. The leadership role and tour expert place the tour guide above the group, creating an unequal relationship. The Through this unequal relationship, and due to the passive group behavior the structures of the tour enforces, tourists are perceived as
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specific ‘types’ from the guides perspective, which has a dehumanizing effect on the perception of individuals. This unequal relationship is also blocking the invention and reinvention of knowledge together.
Next to this, the relationship between the guide and the tourists is dehumanizing; the tour guide sees him/herself as server of the needs of tourists. Being a server is making the guide inferior to the tourists, which can be frustrating and creating feelings of being ‘public property’; being everyone’s friend, unable to express real thoughts and emotions. This relationship is dehumanizing, because the guide has to wear a mask most of the day, lacking private space to be a person beyond the role of the guide, unable to show real emotions or thoughts. This process is due to commoditization processes in guiding, wherein the guide is part of the product to serve the experience of the tourists.
Furthermore, the predominant non verbal meeting ground in guided tour tourism, is not able in fostering a shared reality. By merely gazing monologues are created within individuals about how the world works and about the self. Non verbal meeting grounds don’t challenge existing invalid assumptions in the minds of people, generating stories about ‘the other’ on the basis of their visible behavior and appearances. By moving inside the bubble most of the time, the power of the guide to frame the experience is enlarged, framing reality on the basis of his or her own interpretations instead of creating reality together with local individuals; moving away from a shared reality.
The tight program of the tour is not allowing spontaneous meetings. Yet, during the tour some organized meetings with locals are facilitated. Nevertheless those meetings are unable in generating potentials for transformative learning, because tourists prefer to meet people from a comfortable zone, without future obligation, and with a picture of the experience to take home: people are consuming rather than experiencing. Due to commoditization processes eminent in guided tours the lives of local people is dehumanized for the sake of tourism experiences: they are developed into a product in exchange for money. In the relationship locals are dehumanized, because they are the ones who serve the tourists adjusting to the wishes of the ones who demand.
Because of standardization and security reasons the tour has gradually moved further away from daily life, from ‘reality’. This way of organizing tours characterizes the patriarchal power structures of command and control orientation. In a way it could be argued that this orientation is cutting us from life itself, because the bubble that is created is taking tourists
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away from daily life of host societies. Our modern world is a model of domination and this is permeating tour guiding. What's more, because of these processes, the tour guide’s job is standardized as well, which is reflecting a common reality for many jobs in modernity. Market mechanism and modernity ideologies of progress and unlimited quantitative growth are permeating contemporary tour guiding. Already in the moment of selecting tours, tourists value the quantity above the quality of the actual experience. This trend is part of a bigger trend in society of consumptive quantitative attitudes towards life in general. The broader trend visible in tour guiding is more consumptive, faster, more stressed and consequently less human.
By reflecting on actions, humans can critically analyze themselves and the reality around them, and are able to adjust their actions in the present, to create a change in the future. Yet, for the guides themselves, it is difficult to find a moment of reflection. There are no patterns of reflection in the organizational structure, accept from a more practical perspective. Not sharing experiences between tour guides seems a structural deficit in the current practices, not allowing any reflections for change. Tour guides themselves explained they are taken away by the madness of the tour themselves. Only at home some of them started to think about what had happened and how they felt about this. It illustrates ways in modernity, wherein self awareness seems to be modest.
Having said enough now on the bitter taste in contemporary tour guiding that does not generate the hope needed to generate energy for change. I will now turn to the sweet and sour taste that is capable generating the energy needed.
One of the guides told a story about a meeting ground facilitated by the tour operator that exactly illustrates this sweet and sour taste: a program that enabled tourists to stay in the homes of local people. It showed the difficulty of working with a volunteer organization and the amount of extra work it is creating and the insecure and uncontrollable character it has, because it is based on the good will of people to cooperate. Due to modernity madness of power and control mechanisms the operator could not sustain this practice, yet the spirit was there, and created an intercultural learning environment.
Another example that is generating hope is that even though tourists are taken by modernity madness, there is also a minor trend visible of people who feel the need to go back to themselves through more spiritual holidays, wherein experiencing something
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together is more important than the destination itself. So also from the side of the tourists the new paradigm of trans modernity is already emerging
In the development of transformational learning environments and meeting grounds the role of the guide as facilitator is essential. The guide could make a difference, and in the current roles there are already some recipes that generate a sweet taste. The sweet taste is reflected in the way the tour guide is already facilitating group dynamics; group dynamics is one of the main things tour guides focus on and learn from. Guides are connecting and engaging people in the process and this would be very helpful in the facilitation of meeting grounds in the future. Yet, not every guide is engaged in facilitating group processes. Another example of generating a sweet taste in old recipes is that guide is creating an experience based learning environment by being a mediator between the local street vendor and the tourists. Also, the guide as the one who is actively challenging invalid assumptions is illustrating the potential of guides to be critically reflexive practitioners. Next to this tour guides say to indirectly stimulate interaction by teaching people about local customs, culture and a few words of the language; yet, only when the local people feel like participating and if it is in the wishes of the groups. In present practices, guides don’t see it as their task to actively stimulate interaction, because it is not the normal way of doing. Next to this they feel it is not fitting with the needs of tourists and they might not be interested at all. Transformative tour guiding is demanding both locals and tourists to be willing to participate, and not everyone might be ready for this. One of the guides provided the insight that there is a difference between tour leaders and guides. This generated the insight that not every guide would fit trans modern guiding, as well as the need to train guides well to be able to facilitate a transformative learning environment for the tourists.
Moreover, there is a need of guides who cherish trans modern values to be able to ‘practice what you preach’. The role of the guide is essential in reaching trans modern transformation, and for this reason guides themselves need to be trans modern thinkers and practitioners themselves first. Future dreams show how some guides would change the structures of guiding themselves if they would have the chance. These dreams illustrate trans modern ways of thinking that could possibly help in shifting guiding for the future. So there is hope!
NEW RECIPES The different methods of facilitating a verbal and visual meeting ground between different individuals and groups have shown that there is trans modern potential: knowledge is
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shared, assumptions are challenged, life stories reflected upon, people are connected. Yet the process facilitated is too short and transformation within the individual so complex that I am not able to conclude anything about this. It is indeed difficult to facilitate an in depth understanding of one another. One general observation has been the difficulty in finding people to participate: it is easier to stay inside the comfortable bubble, wherein reflection is unnecessary and revealing identity, fears, dreams, emotions either. Next to this, an observation is the fear of participants to open up themselves in sharing personal details that are necessary for un-superficial dialogue. Creating verbal meeting grounds between individuals of another culture can provide inter-linkages to understand different positions between individuals, but can also create confusion and chaos in the process. What is more value though is the potential for creating new relationships through participation that can foster intercultural learning. Confrontation of each other’s perceptions towards the other should also not be seen as something negative. However uncomfortable they may be, they do provide new ways of learning through interpersonal reflection. And sharing is better than keeping secrets. Finally, facilitating verbal meeting grounds is a difficult process, and is something that needs to be learned through training and continued experience.
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
Doing interviews with tour guides is like taking a snapshot of their perspectives in this specific moment constructed during the interview interaction. For this reason the results should not be understood as ‘the way it is’ in general, but more as a picture of that moment in that place. There are many different kinds of tour operators, and tour guides, and the recipe they use from the experience and knowledge of the 9 tour guides I interviewed is just a small part of the reality of tour guiding. Also, the outcomes and reflections of the 3 meeting grounds facilitated are just a snapshot of that moment in that place. In order to really be able to understand the potentialities of facilitation methods well a structured and sustained intervention in the meeting grounds in tourism would have to be created. And even then it would be difficult to find a direct relationship between the experience and the transformation within individuals.
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APPENDIX A: DUTCH QUOTES
1 Respondent D: Primair heel veel zekerheid geven en heel veel veiligheid bieden. Dat mensen zich geen zorgen hoeven te maken.
Respondent H: dat je de reis leidt. Dat je een rots in de branding bent. Dat je een soort houvast bent voor mensen en niet een soort medereiziger. 2Respondent E: dat ik zo besluiteloos kan zijn. Dat kan helemaal niet. Je moet continue knopen doorhakken en gewoon dingen doen. Dan is het niet goed als je achteraf gaat zitten twijfelen. Ik vind die verantwoordelijkheid hel moeilijk. Eigenlijk geeft iedereen die verantwoordelijkheid aan jou, dus je bent die enige die iets moeten beslissen. 3 Respondent H: Ook een soort luiheid, een soort gemakzucht en uh, dat is natuurlijk ook een reden waarom mensen een groepsreis boeken, omdat er dan een reisleider bij zit die dan een beetje een vaderlijke of moederlijke rol speelt. (...) 4 Respondent H: Dat heb ik ook altijd een interessant verschijnsel gevonden dat mensen zich in zo’n buitenland erg ongemakkelijk voelen, dat ze hun zekerheden kwijtraken, en dan gaan ze zich een beetje als kleine kinderen opstellen. Dan krijg je ook een soort kinderlijk gedrag, ook naar de afhankelijkheid naar de reisleider. Dan gaan ze zich onzeker voelen en ongemakkelijk. 5 Respondent D: Ik merk dat als ze je op een gegeven moment accepteren, dan kan het enge vormen aan gaan nemen. Want als je dan bijvoorbeeld verkeerd liep, en iemand zag dat, dan blijven ze toch achter je lopen. Dat het niet eens bij hen opkwam, van […] misschien moet je naar rechts hier Do: De volgzaamheid is heel groot bij mensen. Iemand uit de laatste groep zei: ik ging even alleen weg, en die vonden dat zo ontzettend moeilijk. En dat ze toen pas realiseerden hoe ze achter mij aan liepen. Het zijn hoog opgeleide mensen snap je? Die ene heel goede baan hebben. Ze zijn helemaal alleen en ze zijn gewoon plompverloren. Ze zeiden, ja we lopen gewoon blind achter je aan. En daar denken mensen ook niet bij na gewoon. Dat zijn bepaalde processen, dat zijn psychologische zaken end dat is heel interessant. 6 Respondent H:maar het rare was, dat toen was ik met die groep op het perron, en toen kwam die trein aan, en toen was het eigenlijk de blik van de groepsleden die eigenlijk dachten dat ik alles wist, en ik weet nog wel er waren ook twee managers van berenschot, en die mensen het was gewoon de blik waarmee ze mij aankeken kreeg ik gewoon een soort autoriteit. En alles wat ik zei werd eigenlijk voor waar aangenomen.
7 Respondent A: Omdat het een soort klassieke leraar is die voor de klas staat. Die die, die altijd de grootste boodschap brengt, die het laatste woord heeft, die... ja mensen gaan er vanuit dat diegene alle kennis heeft. Over het land, over de bestemming over de mensen. Terwijl dat natuurlijk helemaal niet waar is, dat is maar een fractie van. De echte kennis ligt bij die mensen zelf. Maar de mensen die in jou groep zitten, die zijn dus in de veronderstelling dat dat echt zo is. Altijd als er vragen zijn dan komen ze natuurlijk naar je toe. Naar wie moeten ze anders toe? Er zijn natuurlijk wel een paar typetjes die iets meer weten dan een ander, maar die praten ook altijd tegen de reisleider en dan ook opzoek naar confirmatie. Als ik ze dan gelijk geef, dan voelen ze zich ook trots dat ze dat weten. 8 Respondent C: Je kan mensen echt alles wijs maken. Wat dat betreft heb je best wel veel macht. Zeker bij kinderen. Mensen gaan ervan uit dat je alles weet. S: Maf heh?
Respondent C:Soms wel een beetje...Als ik heel eerlijk ben, dan verzin ik ook wel eens wat.
S:Ik ook
Respondent C: Ooh gelukkig maar. L: Je wordt soms gewoon een beetje moe van al die vragen. Helemaal als je er geen antwoord op hebt. En als je alles moet nazoeken of vragen dan ben je super veel extra tijd kwijt. Vaak zijn het ook echt vragen waar je gewoon geen antwoord op kan vinden, zoals: waarom hebben ze blauwe daken?
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En als je dan iets verzint, en ze komen er achter, dan ben je je geloofwaardigheid kwijt. Soms wordt je betrapt op een klein leugentje. Maar de meesten kunnen daar wel de humor van inzien.
9 Respondent A: Als ik ze moet typeren: eenzame mensen die het nodig hebben om op reis te gaan met andere mensen omdat ze dat alleen niet kunnen.(...) Alleenstaanden of suffige stelletjes. Die zijn het hele jaar keihard aan het werk en in het weekend hebben ze tijd om met de familie af te spreken, of een keer bij een verjaardag langs te gaan. Maar ze komen niet echt in contact met andere mensen. Ja, je kent het wel, dat collega gepraat.(...) Ze willen gewoon moppen tappen en Hollandse liedjes zingen. Mensen die heel veel tv kijken. 10 Respondent H: het verschil tussen reisleider en groep is dat jij als reisleider...Die groep heeft jou nodig. Jij hebt die groep ook wel nodig, maar meer op een andere manier om je geld te verdienen. Jouw waarde is dat jij zonder reisleider door zo’n land kan reizen, en dat zo’n groep dat niet kan. Dus dat is een soort verhoginkje. 11 Respondent D: De communicatie van de lach. Meer kunnen ze niet met elkaar vaak. Lachen en de Nederlanders lachen wel terug en er wordt drie-en-een-halve woord Engels gesproken met elkaar. Respondent A: M. die had heel veel interactie: gekke bekken, zwaaien, halo zeggen, zo dat ze zich de koningin kon voelen. Dat is de meest voorkomende interactie. Hier zou je uitgemaakt worden voor idioot, maar daar niet, want daar is ze de toerist. 12 Respondent B: ik denk dat ze wel vaak de verkeerde conclusie trekken. Dat we stinkend rijk zijn. Je weet nooit wat een vluchtig bezoek teweeg brengt. 13 Respondent H: ik denk wel dat het eigenlijk verbazingwekkend is als je erover gaat nadenken hoe beperkt die ontmoetinggrond is. Hoe weinig mogelijkheid er is voor spontane ontmoetingen. Behalve dat we even lachen of tegen elkaar aanbotsen, een foto maken. 14 Respondent D: er is zo veel met taal verbonden. Grapjes, politiek en zonder dat je de taal beheerst kan je mensen ook niet echt leren kennen. Zonder taal kan je eigenlijk geen diepgang bereiken. Maar, het is niet echt een gemis qua plekken die je bezoekt in een reis. Je kan ok prima zonder. Maar het is wel een verrijking. Het maakt je ook een leuke reisleider. Al met een paar woordjes maak je heel veel indruk op de groep. Dan denken ze al gauw dat je echt koreaans kan. Soms verzin ik gewoon wat als ik dan een woordje zeg, en dan lijkt het al heel wat. 15 Respondent A: iedereen voelt zich gemakkelijk in zijn of haar eigen wereld, dus waarom zouden we eigenlijk willen dat we elkaar ontmoeten? 16 Respondent G: ik denk dat de meeste ook wel reizen met een soort glazen bubbel om hun heen. Ja, die vinden het allemaal prima dat ze de lokale bevolking dan ontmoeten en zo, maar daar blijft het dan bij. Liever niet ergens naar binnen of uh, Respondent I: nee het moet niet te lang zijn, de ontbering. (...)Respondent G: eigenlijk een van de voornaamste reden van mensen om naar Ethiopië te gaan, was het bezoeken van die stam. (...) Toeristen willen daar heen voor de foto’s’. ‘Het ontmoeten van’. En meestal bleven we daar niet langer als een half uurtje. (...) Respondent C: Mensen zijn vrij om te gaan en staan waar ze willen, en het liefste zonder enige verplichting. 17 Respondent A: Ik vind het heerlijk als je sterretjes bij mensen in hun ogen ziet. Dat ze genieten van je woorden. Dat je bijna poetische aan het praten bent over iets en dat je met passie verteld over de geschiedenis of andere feitjes en dat mensen zo heerlijk achterover aan het leunen zijn en ontspannen aan het genieten van je verhaal.
Respondent A: …Het programma bied wel wat ervaringen, maar het ligt er nu net aan hoe je die eraringen interpreteert. Hoe je daarmee omgaat als persoon, gestuurd door de reisleider. Als het maar leuk ingepakt is. Als de reisleider energie uitstraalt, dan neemt iedereen dat over. Daar ligt de macht van de reisleider. (…) A: Het is ongelooflijk dat als reisleider heb je de macht om een hele ervaring te framen. (...) A: Mensen zijn natuurlijk niet achterlijk, maar je kan wel, zeker een land als korea is gewoon helemaal onbekend, dan kan je wel zo eng maken als dat ik wil. 18 Respondent A: Ik kan het wel een tikkeltje spannender maken als dat het eigenlijk is, want eigenlijk zit je gewoon in de bus en je wordt gewoon rondgereden. En als je dat zo ervaart is het een hele depressieve reis. En dan is er echt geen ruk aan. Maar als je dus met woorden gaat spelen, dan gaat er dus een hele droomwereld open voor mensen en die mensen die geloven het ook echt. Die die zien
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ook echt, je ervaart eigenlijk een verhaal, in plaats van dat je gewoon in de bus op een bankje zit. 75% van de tijd zit je gewoon ergens in. En dan mag je er een keer uit, en dat zit je eigenlijk in een reservaat: bijna geen contact met mensen, dus je moet wel, je moet die ervaring gewoon framen. Zou iemand anders het op een andere manier framen dan krijgen ze een totaal andere ervaring. 19 Respondent I: ik ben toen in Namibië naar zo’n himba stam geweest En ik loop daar en ik realiseer me, van te voren wist ik dat al, dat het een opgezet dorpje was, en dat zij 200 km verder zitten, en dat ze dan voor de toeristen een deel afgevaardigden. Die zitten dan in zo’n weiland, en die hebben voor de toeristen hun hutjes nagebouwd en een kampvuurtje en een geit die daar boven hangt. 20 Respondent G: Maar ik denk wel dat hoe vaker je naar een bepaalde plek komt, hoe meer er een afstand gecreëerd wordt tussen de bevolking en de toeristen. Maar dan vanuit het oogpunt van de lokale bevolking. Omdat ze aan het begin heel erg nieuwsgierig zijn en heel erg willen weten wat de toerist komt doen, ook heel open staan daarvoor. En hoe meer dat zij zien dat de toeristen eigenlijk alleen maar foto’s willen maken, dan worden die daar dan toch een beetje immuun voor. Respondent I: ja, dan willen ze de benefits daarvan gaan halen. Respondent G: ja precies, en dat is op een heel oppervlakkig niveau. 21 Respondent H: Toerisme is veel meer een product. Het is zelfs een soort emotie dat je koopt. Alles wordt voorgekookt. 22 Respondent B: Ik ga op schiphol bij de gate al beginnen met erachter komen wat mensen leuk vinden, wat ze doen, waarom ze op reis gaan. Ik ben er voor hun en niet andersom. Het grootste compliment dat ik ooit heb gekregen is dat ik onopvallend aanwezig was. Ik doe niet aan animatie, of aan mensen vermaken. Ik ben geen kroegen tijger. Alles wat ik doe is goed luisteren, maar ik zal zelf nooit schitteren.
23 Respondent F: Ik probeer toch heel erg te kijken naar die groep en de individuen in die groep, om iedereen een goede reis te bezorgen of zo. Dus kijken naar iedereen’s persoonlijke behoefte en iedereen aandacht geven, verdeeld, zodat je met iedereen af en toe een praatje maakt.
24 Respondent H: Kijk, mensen willen ook allemaal aandacht. En ook wel in dezelfde maate. Een beginnersfout is ook altijd dat als je mensen niet zo leuk vind, dat je je daar ongemakkelijk voelt, dat je snel trekt naar de mensen die je wel leuk vind.
25 Respondent H: Je bent eigenlijk een soort hoer ook, weet je. Dat je voor al hun lusten en probleempjes en vragen. Eigenlijk nog meer dan een hoer. Een hoer is alleen maar sexueel. Die beperkt zich eigenlijk tot het lichamelijke. 26Respondent E:Je moet ook een beetje tijd voor jezelf nemen en dat is soms gewoon heel lastig in zo’n groep. Mensen verwachten wel dat je er altijd voor ze bent, en ook voor iedereen. Je moet jezelf er helemaal instorten, anders kan je het niet.En soms ben je wel 18 uur per dag met de groep. 27 Respondent H: mensen verwachten altijd dat je helder en opgewekt bent. Mensen zullen het niet accepteren als het even niet je dag is. Een klein beetje misschien, maar het moet niet te persoonlijk worden. 28Respondent A: ’Om twee weken lang het mooiste van jezelf te alten zien. Als je je rot voelt dan moet je toch blij zijn. Je doet eigenlijk alles wat de natuur je verbied. Het is net alsof je twee weken niet eet. Je kan niet je basisbehoeften doen om je emoties echt te tonen. Je kan alleen hele mooie emoties laten zien. Je kan niet in huilen uitbarsten, je kan niet heel boos zijn. Je wordt eigenlijk enivilleerd als pesoon. Je bent er wel maar je leeft niet echt. Je bent er echt voor de groep.
29Respondent B: Je moet als reisleider het met iedereen kunnen vinden, maar je moet ook afstand houden en zorgen dat ze je niet helemaal leegzuigen. 30Respondent A: dan kom je op je kamer en dan zit je helemaal vol met frustratie dat ze echt tegen alles ingaan waar ik in geloof. Dan wil ik gewoon keihard schreeuwen. En dan doe ik de deur op slot en dan test ik of het een beetje geluidsdicht is en dan schreeuw ik het gewoon uit. Of dan ga ik onder de douche staan en dan probeer ik alle vetjes van me af te speoelen, en dan ga ik onder de lakens liggen en dan probeer ik rustig adem te halen zodat ik zo in slaap val. 31 Respondent E: als je mensen echt blij kan maken, als je ze ziet genieten. Dat vind ik echt het belangrijkst.
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Respondent D: mensen je echt diep en diep en diep dankbaar zijn voor de reis die ze hebben mogen maken waar ze al tien jaar naar uit gekeken hebben, met het adoptiegebeuren. Respondent C: de positieve energie die je krijgt als mensen weg gaan. 32Respondent I: maar ik heb wel eens serieus geroepen van jongens probeer nu eens even niet door de lens te kijken. Oh ja oh ja. Je bent er nu, je bent er nu zeg ik dan je BENT er nu. 33 Respondent D: Nu zijn we professioneler en hebben we een constante kwaliteit. Vroeger niet en dan krijg je klachten. En klachten vind ik het allerergst wat er is.(...) Dus doordat ik professionaliseer, minimaliseer ik de klachten. Je wilt het zo goed hebben dat mensen aan het einde van de reis ook maar één punt van kritiek hebben. (...) dat kan niet in een motelletje waar ze de ene keer om 9 uur ‘s ochtends schoonmaken en de andere keer om vier uur ’s middags. Dat maakt niet de constante kwaliteit, en dat heeft een Hilton wel. 34 Respondent C: Vroeger waren het kleinere groepen, in onbekende kleine motels, waar je de eigenaren kende. In de buurt van het gewone leven van de Koreanen. Zo leer je area kennen. In die grote arrogante hotels heb je geen idee. Het was niet altijd even fijn als je douche lekt, er geen handdoekjes zijn, je ’s nachts wakker ligt van de norebang. Maar met zoveel luxe leer je het echte Korea niet kennen..: nu ligt eigenlijk alles vast, dus het is minder uitdagend. Het is mijn persoonlijke voorkeur niet, maar het is wel makkelijker als reisbegeleider. Het wordt een beetje saai, zo elke keer hetzelfde riedeltje, maar wel makkelijk. 35Respondent I: Als tour operators wel een veel relaxter en menselijker programma aanbieden, dan boekt er niemand, omdat de ander meer biedt, dus dan lijkt het net of je meer waar voor je geld krijgt. Er wordt steeds meer in die reis gepropt. Mensen gaan voor 5 euro goedkoper bij die andere als ze bij de andere zien dat er nog een extra excursie op dag 24 zit. 36 Respondent H: het is verbazingwekkend dat het allemaal steeds sneller, en harder en opgefokter wordt. Dat is toch een beetje de trend, de mainstream, dat is toch nog sneller, nog vaker, nog verder vliegen, gehaaster, oppervlakkiger, consumptiever (...) wat ik zelf wel lastig vind van het groepsreizen dat mensen dat ok echt nodig hebben (rust), want ze zijn super gestressed. Ze vallen bijna om van de stress en toch willen ze alles doen en alles zien en alles moeten en alles weet je wel, terwijl ze eigenlijk die tijd nodig hebben om even bij te komen. 37 Respondent F: Dus ik denk dat mensen wel dingen leren, amar ze komen niet direct om dingen te leren. Een soor tvan secundair iets wat dus vak impliciet gebeurd.
38Respondent D: Ik denk wel dat ze wat leren, maar dat ligt vooral aan de persoon zelf, als die open staat voor andere dingen. Nieuwsgierige mensen leren veel. (...)Er zat bijvoorbeeld een kunstenares in mijn groep en die heeft zich helemaal laten inspireren door de adoptie achtergrond van een paar medereizigers. Zij heeft denk ik hel veel geleerd op die reis. 39 Respondent H: dat valt me ook altijd heel erg op met de reizen dat reizigers altijd heel veel met elkaar om gaan. En wat ik eigenlijk een beetje een gek verschijnsel vind, omdat je helemaal aan de andere kant van de wereld gaat, om met andere landgenoten om te gaan, die je ook nog een keer niet kent. En dan denk ik, waarom zou je niet in je eigen land om kunnen gaan met landgenoten die je niet kent. Een beetje een soort omweg. Maar dat is toch een factor die van betekenis is. 40S: heb je het idee dat er ruimte is voor reflectie tijdens zo’n reis.
Respondent I: nee
Respondent G: nee! Dat denk ik ook niet
Respondent : I nee steeds minder. Er wordt steeds meer in die reis gepropt. Mensen gaan voor 5 euro goedkoper bij die andere als ze bij de andere zien dat er nog een extra excursie op dag 24 zit.
Respondent G: ik denk het enigste moment dat er reflectie plaats vind als ze de foto’s thuis gaan bekijken.
40. Respondent I: uuuhh………………….. ik denk dat mensen leren van zo’n reis, maar wel op een niveau van veel, nou ja, veel op het niveau van toerist. Ik weet niet, ik heb het gevoel dat als ze thuis zijn, weer in het oude ritme zitten, weer in hun oude jasje zitten, in plaats van dat ze het jasje van de
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toerist aan hebben, dat er best heel veel weer naar de achtergrond zakt, en dat het leerproces niet doorzet. 41 Respondent G: Ik denk dat het enige moment van reflectie thuis plaatsvindt als men de foto’s terugkijkt. 42Respondent F: nou ik denk dat het in ieder geval heel goed kan, maar ik denk dat het ook wel in zekere zin ook wel gebeurd. Je neemt toch even afstand van je situatie. Ook al doe je het niet hardop, het gebeurd wel in mezelf. In ieder geval gebeurd dat in mezelf wel. Ik kan me heel goed voorstellen dat dat automatisch gebeurd. 43 S: Wat zou je nog willen leren?
Respondent C: Oh, dat zou ik nu niet weten. Zolang je iets doet op jou manier, en daar positieve reacties op krijgt dan heb je niet het idee dat je iets zou kunnen verbeteren. Je doet zo je eigen ding. Ik merk dat nu met mijn studie ook. Ik dacht altijd dat ik mijn werk heel goed deed, en dat ik niets bij kon leren, maar nu ik toch voor mijn hbo ben gegaan, gaat er een wereld voor me open. Ik leer zo veel meer. En daar was ik echt niet bewust van toen ik aan het werk was. Dus ik denk dat dat ook een beetje zo is met het reizen begeleiden.
44 S: Heb je weleens contact met je reisbegeleider collega’s?
Respondent A: Nee. Ik heb ze weleens ontmoet, maar het enigste waar je het dan over hebt is de rare dingen die je meemaakt. Maar het zijn meestal wel hele sociale mensen. Het zijn mensen die hart hebben voor andere mensen. Dat is ook de enigste manier dat je het echt volhoud. Met de insteek van de touroperator red je het niet. Die interesseren zich echt niet voor mensen. Niet echt.
S: Bedankt voor het interview! Ik vond het een heel fijn gesprek! Thanks for the interview, I experienced our conversation as very pleasant!
Respondent C: Ja ik ook, echt fijn om het met iemand over te hebben die gewoon precies weet waar ik het over heb. Mensen uit mijn omgeving die denken meteen, oh, begint ze weer. Leuk om over te hebben en ervaringen te delen. Dat doen we normaal eigenlijk nooit. Het enigste moment dat ik iets heb geleerd van iemand over reizen begeleiden was in de oefen reis.
45 Respondent H: Ik merkte wel dat mijn groep, toen ze in een soort openlucht museum bleven op een oude boerderij, waar zo’n oud mannetje het vuur opstookt voor de thee en voor het eten, waar ze bleven voor bed en breakfast. En waar ze ‘s ochtends mee mochten doen met de monniken voor een ceremonie. Dat vonden mijn mensen in de groep toch een hele bijzondere beleving. En dat was in hun ogen een ontmoetingsgrond, maar omdat ik zie dat het een soort toeristisch product is. Als je mij dan zou vragen is er ruimte voor een ontmoetingsgrond, dan zeg ik, ja dat is een illusie, dat is heel beperkt. Maar als je van die mensen uitgaat. Die vinden dat echt bijzonder. En dat telt uiteindelijk. 46 Respondent D: …We hadden vroeger een home stay programma, maar dat heb ik er uit gehaald. Dat was ook echte interactie met de koreanen, maar dat waren vrijwilligersorganisaties waar we mee werkten. En wij zijn nu ene professionele organisatie. En dat ging moeilijk, want je wilt een bepaalde kwaliteitsgarantie. En dat kun je niet verwachten van vrijwilligers. S: Wat ging er fout? Respondent D: Nou er ging niets fout, want mensen waren altijd heel enthousiast erop. Maar als we met een groep van 20 waren, wilde ik wel dat iedereen kon, en niet de helft. S: Wat vonden mensen er goed aan? Respondent D: Het is een groot feest, dan gingen ze leuke spelletjes doen. En ik weet dat sommigen nog steeds contact met elkaar hebben. Maar dat konden we op een gegeven moment niet meer doorzetten, op een gegeven moment werd het te groot. Dat zij ook zeiden, oh dat kunnen we gewoon niet meer aan. (...) Dat was zoveel extra werk gewoon. Maar dat was wel de manier bij uitstek om contact te krijgen met de Koreanen. Je was bij mensen thuis, je at je dronk je feestte met ze. Er werd niet gevreeën geloof ik, haha. 47Respondent H: Als ik kijk naar de begin reizen was het veel meer een levensveranderende ervaring voor mensen. Nu is het steeds meer een routine. Kijk het is een soort recht, ook een verre vakantie
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dat zien ze als een vanzelfsprekend heid. Als je dat niet doet, dat is meer levensveranderend denk ik. Asl mensen een keer thuis zullen blijven. 48Respondent H: Die willen niet zo van hun stuk gebracht worden dat ze nog een half jaar meotne bijkomen. Dat ze zoveel moeite hebben om weer in het ritme te komen.heh?
49Respondent I: ja maar op zich het samen iets beleven is volgens mij wel weer in opkomst. Of weer? Het is volgend mij in opkomst. Maar dan wel in het luxe segment. Dus niet zomaar yoga doen op een bergje, nee dan wel in een luxe resort, met een spa en een wellness, en goed eten. S: dus niet back to basic, maar wel back to jezelf. Respondent G: dat denk ik ook niet, maar wel back to jezelf. Ik denk ook omdat mensen gewoon in het dagelijks leven daar steeds verder vanaf komen te staan. Misschien is dat ook wel een reden om een reis te boeken met een heel ander karakter. 50 Respondent F; Dat hangt denk ik heel erg van je persoonlijke kwaliteiten af. (...) Ik vind het mooi om te zien want je heb eigenlijk reisbegeleiders en reisleiders, en het is niet zo dat het één beter is dan het ander, maar het één past beter bij je als het ander. Ik zie mezelf dus meer als een begeleider, meer als een facilitator achtig iets en ik probeer die reis in goede banen te leiden, maar ik ben niet zo iemand die de hele tijd zegt: follow me, (...)Maar ik krijg wel altijd hele positieve feedback van de deelnemers dat ze mij prettig vinden van goed ik het doe. 51 Respondent A: (…) ik leer elke dag weer van de groepen die ik begeleid, en dat is het leuke gedeelte van het proces; elke groep is weer anders! 52 Respondent A:… Eerste paar dagen moet ik altijd even een stapje terug, dan moet ik altijd even wennen aan zo’n groep, en na drie dagen ongeveer kan ik mijn waarde laten zien. Dan ben ik vrij om te praten, dan kan ik mensen goed inschatten, en dan komt pas echt die synergie tot stand. Dat is die gave ervaring waar mensen hun herinneringen uit halen. (…) Ik leer elke dag weer van groepen en dat is nou zo leuk: elke groep is anders.
Respondent D: De groepsdynamiek, wat er binnen een groep plaatsvindt, dat is voor een groot gedeelte controleerbaar. Een goede reisbegeleider zorgt ervoor dat de groepsdynamiek positief blijft. 53Respondent A: Want als mensen te lang stil zijn dan vallen ze uit de groep en dan gaan ze zich afsluiten, maar dat wordt gewoon niet toegestaan in mijn reis (...)Mensen hebben behoefte aan samenhang. Ik weet zeker dat ik daarin in de laatste reis zo’n belangrijke rol heb gespeeld. Ik was niet voor niets zo moe. Zonder mij waren die mensen echt niet met elkaar in contact gekomen.
54 Respondent B: Mensen boeken geen groepsreis voor de groep. Vaak willen ze daar helemaal niets mee te maken hebben. Mensen hebben vaak de pest aan de groep, daar hebben ze helemaal geen zin in (...)Ik ga geen gezellige groep maken. Mensen kiezen een groepsreis omdat ze het eng vinden en voor de veiligheid, niet voor de groep. Het liefst willen mensen individueel.. Het is helemaal niet leuk om in een groep te functioneren. 55 Respondent B: Ik faciliteer dat wel ja. Afhankelijk van factoren. Ik zal het de lokale bevolking nooit opleggen. En het moet ook in de wensen van de groep liggen. Zelf vind ik het geen must. Je moet als reisleider niet te normatief zijn. Net als dat je geen entertainer moet zijn. Het is hun reis, ze hebben mij ingehuurd. Ik zeg ok altijd aan het begin: Ik ben er voor jullie, om jullie reis een succes te maken, hun belangen te behartigen. Je bent een mediator. 56 Respondent A: … ik veronderstel dat mensen daar geen behoefte aan hebben. (...) De vraag is er niet, ook puur omdat het niet bestaat. Zo vier je ook niet je vakantie. dit is zoals het gaat, dit is normaal. Zoals het nu gaat is geaccepteerd. Zo doen mensen. Ik vind het zelf ook niet heel erg dat het ontbreekt, zo is het gewoon. 57 Respondent D: Ook is mijn rol om mensen dingetjes uit te laten proberen. Bijvoorbeeld met eten. Dan probeer ik dingen die ik zelf nooit zou proberen, maar dan wil ik dat de groep dat ervaart, dus dan probeer ik dat zelf eerst. Ik ben zeg maar een pionier om dingen te proberen. Zodat de groep dat dan ook probeert. Bijvoorbeeld bij een rijstecakejes kraampje. Als ik alleen zou zijn dan zou ik niet zo snel gaan aanpappen met zo’n kraampje, maar omdat je weet dat het werkt doe je dat, en dan krijgt
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iedereen een rijstcakeje. En meestal kopen ze dat dan ook wel. Dus dan is het ook goed voor de verkoper. Mensen durven dat niet zelf, terwijl ze het uiteindelijk wel heel leuk vinden. 58 Respondent A: Ze zijn zo met zichzelf bezig; de meeste zaken worden alleen vanuit hun eigen perspectief gezien, en ook vanuit hun eigen manier van denken. Dit leidt tot extreme dogmatisch denken, in dingen als goed of slecht te zien. 59Respondent B: Als ik bijvoorbeeld zie dat ze de lokale bevolking beginnen af te snauwen, dan zeg ik: je mag ze niet zo heh, die chinezen? Dan ga ik er ook in mee. Laat ze maar even lekker spuien, dan braken ze alles uit en daarna kan ik ze de goede richting in duwen. Ik heb die beweging geleerd in de hulpverlening. 60Respondent A: Ze leren heel veel over hun eigen assumpties. Omdat ik ze daar in uitdaag. Over zichzelf hebben ze misschien niet echt door dat ze iets leren. Mensen zijn vooral met zichzelf bezig, maar dat willen ze niet toegeven. Ze zijn zo selfcentered, veel dingen worden vanuit hunzelf benaderd, hoe zij denken dat het in elkaar zit. En dan krijg je dogmatisering. Wat zij vinden wat goed of slecht is. Als reisleider ga ik wel eens dingen relativeren die mensen zeggen, om ze de andere klant te laten zien. Dit accepteren mensen wel van de reisleider maar niet van de medereiziger, en dan zal er conflict ontstaan. 61 Respondent A: Mensen raken de betekenis van hun leven kwijt, omdat mensen vastzitten in hun disciplines, routines, verwachtingspatronen. Mensen komen er langzaam achter dat ze voor de gek gehouden worden dat ze langzaam kapot gaan van hun eigen bestaan. Het idee dat je ene eigen identiteit hebt, moet opnieuw uitgevonden worden: Een exploratie reis, ga jezelf maar vinden. Vol met herinneringen. Je kan een leven leiden 40 jaar met wat je geacht wordt om te doen, maar na 40 jaar wordt je ouder en dan kom je erachter dat je niet genoeg interesse hebt getoond in je eigen bestaan in het leven. Met je handen in de aarde te zitten. We zijn echt helemaal uit de realiteit getrokken. Dus een spirituele reis is helemaal niet zo slecht. Zonder hocus pocus, gewoon wat je er zelf uithaalt, zoek betekenis. 62 Respondent F: het idee is ontstaan uit mijn eigen belevingservaring van als je door die woestijn loopt dan je letterlijk afstand neemt van alles wat er gaande is in het dagelijks leven, de dagelijkse sleur, waar je zo ontzettend in kan zitten, daar ben je dan even helemaal uit. Daar heb je dan een soort afstand van. Ook door dat lopen en door dat hele weidse landschap ga je zeg maar vanzelf een beetje relativeren, en kom je tot een soort ontspanning en ga je ook reflecteren, van hey waar ben ik nou eigenlijk mee bezig en uh dat gebeurd soms vanzelf, soms gebeurd dat wat minder, maar ik denk dat in ieder geval die context voedend kan zijn voor het proces en als je dat proces dan dus iets meer aandacht geeft en begeleid, dan denk ik dat je daar best wel veel uit kan halen. Dus zo is het ontstaan. Het idee is een combinatie tussen het leuke en het leerzame combineren. Ik wil graag op vakantie, maar ik wil ook graag wel meer dan dat. Ik wil niet alleen maar een beetje ouwehoeren, maar ik wil helderheid over waar ik nu mee bezig ben, of ik zit met bepaalde vragen en daar wil ik inzichten voor. Dus het is een soort reis plus, met een verdiepingslaag zeg maar. 63 Respondent F: Ik zou het wel heel tof vinden om echt met teams te gaan werken, om die op een ander level met elkaar te brengen. Ik heb altijd al iets gehad met ouder education, en dat aspect met de challenge die je in de natuur kan zien, dat je die als spiegel gebruikt en daar ook je eigen challenges in kan zien. En dat je die ook gebruikt om met je team in te groeien. Wat ben ik en wie ben ik en hoe ga ik verder? En dan op het team gericht? Maar waarom moeten we dan helemaal naar weet ik veel waar, dat zouden we ook dichter bij huis kunnen zoeken. 64 Respondent A: Ik zou een niche willen creëren over filosofie, om dan de kans te krijgen met anderen te filosoferen. De hele dag filosoferen over het leven met anderen tijdens een reis. Zodat mensen kunnen veranderen door een reis en dat ik ook van die mensen zou kunnen leren. Dat mis ik nu. Die diepgang. Omdat dat doel er nu niet is. Ik zoek dit wel altijd maar dit duurt heel lang. Ik heb gewoon behoefte aan zinvolle gesprekken. S: Wat zou je eigen rol zijn? Respondent A: Meer een manager. Gesprekken aanwakkeren. S: Wat voor activiteiten? Respondent A: Veel meer door de natuur, in de bergen lopen. Door fysieke inspanning worden ze helder in hun hoofd en vaak kunnen ze inspiratie vinden in bomen of dieren of geluiden of gewoon ergens stilstaan om uit te hijgen en dat ze dan ineens voelen dat ze leven, dat ze armen en benen
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hebben. Hoe meer mensen moeite moeten doen voor een reis, hoe meer ze er uiteindelijk van genieten.
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