ASPECTS OF TOURISM 5 Series Editors: Chris Cooper (University of Queens/and, Australia), and Michael Hall (University of Otago, New Zealand) Tourism and Development I concepts and Issues Edited by f~ Richard Sharpley and David J. Telfer I I I I BU5P I Gr i IEit Ig . AI I TEi8934-7. I CHANNEL VIEW PUBLICATIONS 0.002. I Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto • Sydney I I I To Olivia and Kyoko Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues Edited by Richard Sharpley and David J. Telfer Aspects of Tourism: 5 Includes bibliographical references 1. Tourism-Economic aspects. 2. Economic development. I. Sharpley, Richard. II. Telfer, DavidJ. Ill. Series G155.A1 T5893422002 338.4'79104-cic21 2001047709 British Library Cataloguing in PubJication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-873150-35-0 (hbk) ISBN 1-873150-34-2 (pbk) Channel View Publications An imprint of Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7SJ. USA: 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario, Canada M3H 5TB. Australia: Footprint Books, PO Box 418, Church Point, NSW 2103, Australia. Copyright © 2002 Richard Sharpley, David J. Telfer and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by Archetype-IT Ltd (http://www.archetype-it.com). Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cambrian Printers Ltd. Contents Contributors . vii Introduction ............... 1 Part 1: Development Theories and Tourism Theory 1 Tourism: A Vehicle for Development? Richard Sharpley . 11 2 The Evolution of Tourism and Development Theory David J. Telfer. 35 Part 2: Relationship Between Development and Tourism 3 Tourism and Economic Development Issues Tanja Mihalic. 81 4 Tourism and Regional Development Issues David J. Telfer. 112 5 Tourism and Community Development Issues Dallen J. Timothy. 149 6 Tourism Employment Issues in Developing Countries: Examples from Indonesia Judith Cukier. 165 7 Tourism and Sociocultural D~velopment Issues Atsuko Hashimoto. 202 8 Tourism, Development and the Environment Chris Southgate and Richard Sharpley . 231 Part 3: Barriers to Tourism Development 9 Towards a New Political Economy of Global Tourism Raoul V. Bianchi. 265 10 The Consumption of Tourism Richard Sharpley . 300 11 Sustainability: A Barrier to Tourism Development? Richard Sharpley . 319 12 Conclusion: Tourism and Development David J. Telfer. 338 v vi Tourism and Development References , .,,349 Index, , . , . , ,394 Chapter 9 Towards a New Political Economy of Global Tourism RAOUL V. BIANCHI Development must start from the actual conditions and social practices of each people. (Michael Barratt Brown) Introduction As pointed out in the Introduction to this book, despite its undoubted signifi­ cance as an item of international trade, tourism continues to be relatively neglected in the wider development studies literature. While there have been many studies which have sought to evaluate tourism's relative contribution to the economic de~ velopment of different countries and regions (Bryden, 1973; Cleverdon, 1979), the political economy of tourism has yet to fully establish itself as a discrete field of enquiry. Moreover, there have been few attempts to engage with some of the para­ digmatic debates in the theoretical literature on development. Arguably, this has partly been due to the dominance of the neoclassical paradigm in the literature on tourism development, in conjunction with the emphasis on studies of an applied and practical nature. 'The preponderance of prescriptive and technical studies of tourism's economic impact upon host societies may give some insight into the overall quantitative value of tourism (see Chapter 3), but do little to reveal the complex articulations between technological change and the social relations of power woven into historically specific modes of tourism development. The principal objective of this chapter, therefore, is to reflect and elucidate upon the systemic sources of power which serve to reproduce and condition different modes of tourism development, as a basis from which to develop a more theoreti­ cally informed understanding of the structure and dynamics of the political economy of tourism. This chapter does not claim to provide a comprehensive study of the international political economy of tourism, but rather presents a particular way of looking at tourism development based on the radical theoretical traditions 265 266 Tourism and Development- in political economy (d. Sherman, 1987). The central normative preoccupation of such an approach consists of an analysis of the social relations of power which con­ dition the unequal and uneven processes of tourism development which are reinforced through particular configurations of ideologies and institutions. In this regard, the following section reviews some of the central' problems' in the politiCal economy as well as examining some of the earlier applications of the neocolOnial dependency model in tourism, before then going on to explore the contemporary tourism political economy in more detail. Capitalist Development and the Power of Tourism A radical political economy approach to the analysis of tourism and capitalist development challenges both the neoclassical view of market equilibrium as the central dynamic force of development, as well as reified Marxist models which profess to 'explain' development processes according to a generalised and ab­ stract set of mechanical laws. A radical approach asks how and why asymmetries of power emerge between opposing social class interests and the different geo­ graphical regions brought together through inter-locking networks of exchange through tourism. In particular it is concerned with the manner in which market re­ lations between different groups of actors in the tourist system conceal the uneven bargaining powers and underlying material interests of different classes. Before considering existing models of political economy in tourism it is important to dwell briefly upon the principal theoretical assumptions which inform the two main paradigms. Defining pOlitical economy In its broadest sense the essential distinction between the neoclassical and Marxist traditions in political economy lies in the respective emphasis given to the centrality of cooperative and competitive instincts in the formation of human societies (Barratt Brown, 1995: xiii). In turn, this has been mirrored by the normative disputes surrounding the appropriate balance between equity and efficiency in the economy (see Levine, 1988: 107-25). The origins of the latter derive from the liberal tradition of economic and political thought in the 18th and 19th centuries, which has consis­ tently emphasised the maximisation of individual liberty (to acquire! dispose of labour and property) as the basis upon which to secure the welfare of society as a whole, in contrast to the former, which is associated with the Marxist tradition, in which it is argued that the formal equality between citizens enshrined within liberal polities, conceals deeper underlying antagonisms brought about by the workings of the market (see Walker, 1989: 22-41). Marxist political economy thus places the em­ phasis firmly upon the power relations which are constituted by the capitalist mode of production, 1 which in tum give rise to the increasingly antagonistic relations between capital and labour. In contrast, scholars in the neoclassical tradition, such A!:!ew Political Economy 267 as Alfred Marshall, who followed on from the earlier work of Smith and Ricardo (see Larrain, 1989: 7-9), tended to reduce political economy to the study of individ­ ual economic behaviour in the market. Whilst the more deterministic aspects of Marxist political economy have been ex­ tensively criticised (see Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Popper, 1990), the legacy of his work remains central to a radical political economy analysis of the forces of social change and mechanisms of appropriation which condition and structure contemporary patterns of development in the international political economy. Indeed a number of critical scholars, including Cox (1981, 1987), Sherman (1987) and Strange (1994a, b), have demonstrated a more open theoretical approach to political economy whilst retaining the central normative preoccupation of examining the systemic sources of power and inequalities at different levels in the global system. In a seminal paper, Cox (1981) developed the concept of historical structures, according to which a par­ ticular configurations of forces (material capabilities, ideas and institutions) condition rather than determine the range of actions within the international politi­ cal economy. Thus, the structures of power which both condition and emerge from a process of social change vary according to the historical-geographical configura­ tion of material capabilities, institutions and ideological forces in particular 'state/ society complexes' (Cox, 1981: 134--7). Accordingly, Cox (1987: 5) argues that 'it [production] has no historical precedence; indeed, the principal structures of pro­ duction have been, if not actually created by the state, at least encouraged and sustained by the state' . The political economy of tourism should, therefore, seek to elucidate upon the an­ tagonistic forces and sodal relations which give rise to