Cultural Tourism in a Changing World: Politics, Participation and (Re)presentation

by Melanie Kay Smith (Editor), Mike Robinson (Editor)

Overview

At the interface between culture and tourism lies a series of deep and challenging issues relating to how we deal with issues of political engagement, social justice, economic change, belonging, identity and meaning. This book introduces researchers, students and practitioners to a range of interesting and complex debates regarding the political and social implications of cultural tourism in a changing world. Concise and thematic theoretical sections provide the framework for a range of case studies, which contextualise and exemplify the issues raised. The book focuses on both traditional and popular culture, and explores some of the tensions between cultural preservation and social transformation.

The book is divided into thematic sections - Politics and Policy; Community Participation and Empowerment; Authenticity and Commodification; and Interpretation and Representation - and will be of interest to all who wish to understand how cultural tourism continues to evolve as a focal point for understanding a changing world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845412715
Publisher:	Channel View Publications
Publication date:	09/12/2006
Series:	Tourism and Cultural Change , #7
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Melanie Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Tourism from the University of Greenwich in London, as well as a Visiting Lecturer in Budapest, Hungary.

Mike Robinson is Professor of Tourism and Culture and Director of the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds Metropolitan University Leeds, UK.

Melanie Kay Smith (PhD) is an Associate Professor, Researcher and Consultant whose work focuses on urban planning, cultural tourism, wellness tourism and the relationship between tourism and wellbeing. She is Programme Leader for BSc and MSc Tourism Management at Budapest Metropolitan University in Hungary. She has lectured in the UK, Hungary, Estonia, Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as being an invited keynote speaker in many countries worldwide. She was Chair of ATLAS (Association for Tourism and Leisure Education) for seven years and has undertaken consultancy work for UNWTO and ETC as well as regional and national projects on cultural and health tourism. She is the author of more than 100 publications.

Read an Excerpt

Cultural Tourism in a Changing World

Politics, Participation and (Re)presentation

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By Melanie Smith, Mike Robinson

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2006 M. Smith, M. Robinson and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84541-271-5

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CHAPTER 1

Politics, Power and Play: The Shifting Contexts of Cultural Tourism

MIKE ROBINSON and MELANIE SMITH

Introduction

Contexts are important, not only because they embed specific phenomena in more general historical circumstances, but because they themselves change both in a temporal sense and also in their social and political validity as interpretative frameworks for actions and events. The emphasis in this chapter is to provide some degree of context for the concept of cultural tourism and the remaining chapters of the book, which explore the ways in which culture(s) is/are mobilised for tourists and read by tourists within particular settings. In utilising the term cultural tourism we are explicitly acknowledging both the cultural nature of, and the role of, tourism as a process and set of practices that revolve around the behavioural pragmatics of societies, and the learning and transmission of meanings through symbols and embodied through objects. In this vein it is useful to acknowledge the normalising perspective of Levi-Strauss (1988), which recognises the implicitness of culture not as something set against life, or overlain over it, but as substituting itself to life as a constructing power and transformational process which is processual, and practical; life builds culture, builds life. Tourism, as an expression and experience of culture, fits within this form of historical contextualisation and also assists in generating nuanced forms of culture as well as new cultural forms. In this sense it is not difficult to see that use of the term 'cultural tourism' is problematic. As Urry (1995) suggests, tourism is simply 'cultural', with its structures, practices and events very much an extension of the normative cultural framing from which it emerges. Cultural tourism is tourism, and clearly, as this book demonstrates, it is far more than production and consumption of 'high' art and heritage. It reaches into some deep conceptual territories relating to how we construct and understand ourselves, the world and the multilayered relationships between them.

Tourism as an international system of exchange displays particular tensions around the interface between space and experience that reaches into the conceptual heart of globalisation. The global structural realities of tourism are very much framed by the idea of the nation state and have their roots in the modern political geographies and nation-building agendas of the late 19th, and the first decades of the 20th century. Despite growing interest in the notion of regionalism whereby the region acts as the focal point for 'culture building and identification' (Frykman, 2002), it is the idea of the nation that still holds primacy in the metanarratives of international tourism. Each nation, no matter what their position in any notional global political league table, promotes tourism as an actual and potential source of external revenue, a marker of political status that draws upon cultural capital, and as a means to legitimise itself as a territorial entity. Thus, national governments have offices for tourism that quite willingly promote the idea of a national 'brand'. Wandering around the World Travel Market in London, or the International Travel Convention in Berlin, one can be forgiven for thinking that ideas of mobility, transnational flows and deterritorialisation had no currency whatsoever. Exhibition stands forcefully exist as microcosms of nations, albeit with regional and subregional constituent parts. Tour operators act as buyers of essentially 'national' products. Developers negotiate with national government offices under national legislative frameworks. National airlines retain highly visible and symbolic meaning for both host community and tourists, and despite the presence of multinational hotel chains, many hotel groups remain firmly structured around particular national characteristics and ideologies.

Of course, a 'tourism of nations' perspective is riven with the fault lines of conflict and contestation. Nevertheless, it is a reality that maps onto Westernised cognitive frameworks of cultural resemblance, which have themselves been shaped by essentialising histories of the nation-state. Counter, and in parallel, to this metastructural view, are the social realties of 'doing' tourism and 'being' a tourist, which exist not within and between bounded territories but with far more immediate, intimate, and to the tourist, more meaningful spaces. Here the focus is upon experience and the in situ production of spaces that facilitates such experiences for tourists; a point largely accommodated by the babel of globalisation theorists who have challenged ideas of national boundaries. The thesis which proffers notions of boundary dissolution (language and religious boundaries included), the compression of time and space, and the emergence of 'landscapes' fashioned along cultural and ethnic lines (Appadurai, 1990), positions the tourist as part of a larger 'flow' of people, ideas and objects. Things and containers such as 'Spain' or 'France', and even their regions, relinquish their importance in the light of processes and actions, and what become more important for the tourist are not the metanarratives and ideological frameworks of nationhood, nor the notions of cultural resemblance and difference, but rather the outcomes of individual and social encounter, interaction and engagement.

This tension inherent in international tourism is not reducible to some binary opposition between modes of production versus modes of consumption. It is not some battle between historical fact and socio/anthropological interpretation. Nor is it about the relativism of where anyone happens to be standing. Rather, it is very much a movement along a continuum between two sets of equally valid, albeit discursive practices functioning at and between macro and micro levels. International tourism exists as a suitably vague umbrella term that is locked into the continuities of the modern nation-state and operates through the experiences and practices of the individual tourist. Cultural tourism is, de facto, caught up in the movements and flows of the world and this is evident when we come to look at the various cases set out in this book. For, despite having specific geographic foci and particular genealogies, the various cultural developments and conflicts discussed are sculpted through their exposure to, and encounters with, peoples from 'other' places and pasts.

Culture as Resource and the Resourcefulness of Culture

The most distinguishing feature of mature capitalist systems over recent decades has been the re-creation of economies around the symbolic value of culture(s). The political roles of culture as representing and enforcing national ideologies and particular hierarchies of power, together with its social roles as entertainment and as a form of communal intellectual glue, while still present, have been overtaken by its centrality in economic life. Scott (1997: 323) neatly summarises this fundamental shift arguing that:

... capitalism itself is moving into a phase in which the cultural forms and meanings of its outputs become critical if not dominating elements of productive strategy, and in which the realm of human culture as a whole is increasingly subject to commodification, i.e. supplied through profit-making institutions in decentralized markets. In other words, an ever-widening range of economic activity is concerned with producing and marketing goods and services that are infused in one way or another with broadly aesthetic or semiotic attributes.

Culture, in its widest sense, provides a set of material and symbolic resources that are abundant in supply (arguably infinite), and highly mobile (Rojek & Urry, 1997). The resource of culture is certainly at the basis of international tourism and indeed has facilitated its growth and allowed various societies and sections of societies to participate in the development process. However, in treating culture as a resource we should not neglect aspects of agency, as the value and priority of culture(s) relates not only to its intrinsic worth, but to the ways that it is used (Keating, 2001). This in turn begs questions about ownership of, and access to, culture (Robinson, 2001), and also raises issues with regard to the ways in which culture is 'read' by particular typologies of tourists. So-called 'cultural products', as Therkelsen (2003: 134) points out: 'generate associations and meanings that are influenced by the cultural backgrounds of the potential tourist.' In this sense, tourists do not encounter culture as some value-neutral form or process. Rather, they decode culture(s), in social spaces and times in relation to particular formal and informal knowledge regimes accrued through exposure to formulated tourism packages and through the normative processes of socialisation (Robinson, 2005).

In a European context, conventional conceptions of what we understand to be 'culture' have largely been dictated by our postenlightenment sensibilities regarding the romantic, the beautiful, the educational, and also, by extension, the moral. It is not surprising that what is now heralded as 'cultural tourism' broadly follows the patterns of the 'grand tour' of the 18th and 19th centuries indulged in by the social elite. Motivating factors of education, social betterment and basic human curiosity remain but have been complemented by a range of other factors which have assisted in the on-going development of cultural tourist centres. Importantly, the rise of the low-cost airlines across Europe has played a key role in stimulating tourism within more recently acknowledged cultural centres such as Budapest, Krakow and Ljubljana. Though well established cities of culture such as Paris, Rome, Venice and Athens maintain their primacy from the early days of tourism, cheap flights have created new opportunities for people to experience heritage and the arts, particularly in some smaller places such as Girona, Bratislava and Riga. This apparent democratisation of cultural tourism has also been helped along by highly competitive and increasingly sophisticated marketing campaigns, mainly within urban contexts. The European Cities of Culture campaign, with its strong emphasis on destination branding, has been particularly successful in this way and has acted to endorse the idea that culture is a highly 'moral' product and also, through its ability to attract tourists, is economically beneficial.

In this vein, the concept of cultural tourism seems to be taking hold everywhere. Former heavily industrial centres have moved from being economies of production to economies of symbolic cultural consumption, and industrial heritage sites would seem to substitute all too easily for sites of manufacturing. The number of festivals and cultural events has increased exponentially over recent years and there has also been substantive growth in the number of museums and cultural attractions as destinations have sought to compete for the growing markets of culture-hungry tourists. But the on-going ferment and frenzy to create new displays of cultural capital and to attract the 'cultural tourist' – that is the well educated, largely White, high- spending, middle-class tourist – raises a number of longstanding issues relating to how we use culture to make sense of, and gain meaning from, a rapidly changing world.

An important point of perspective to bear in mind is that while cultural tourism is certainly a growing segment of international tourism, the vast majority of tourists could be said to be culture-proof (Craik, 1997) in that they are not seeking the exotic, culture or heritage, but relaxation, warm weather and various forms of hedonistic activity. Beach holidays remain as popular as ever with tour operators continually seeking to develop virgin stretches of coastline, while theme parks (50 years after the opening of Disneyland), as a destination and a model of tourism development, are flourishing. This is not to say that the individuals that go to make up so-called 'mass' tourism are somehow devoid of any interest in culture(s). But it does remind us that tourism reflects a certain degree of polarisation between the persistence of culture as somehow elevated and special in society, and the culture of the ordinary and the everyday.

Culture, as the social critic Raymond Williams pointed out, is one of the most problematic words to define, but despite elaborations and attempts by anthropologists over the years to widen our understanding of the term culture away from elitist notions, it would seem that, in the context of tourism we are, in the main, reproducing the idea of 'high' culture from the 18th and 19th centuries. Nor is this restricted to European tourism. We have exported our aesthetic preferences and conceptions of culture to other places. In the Middle East, for instance,rich as it is with centuries of history and cultural diversity, we have inscribed our predilections for romantic ruins that we can recognise onto national tourist strategies. A country like Jordan, for example, is locked into the promotion of its Greco-Roman sites and the Natabean city of Petra, as 'must-see' places. However, such sites are hardly representative of the culture(s) of the Jordanian/Arab peoples, shaped as they have been by Ottoman culture and complex historical relations with the West. At one level this is playing to the market. At another level it is obscuring the very essence of local and national identity.

We should not be surprised at our own preferences for culture as expressed in the iconic and the spectacular. As tourists we have but little time in any one location and instinctively we gravitate to what is heralded as being the exceptional, rather than the norm, and what we recognise through our own aesthetic frames. It is also not surprising that a destination eager to capitalise on the economic rewards of tourism should prioritise its cultural high points. The question, however, is one of extent. For in privileging some aspects of culture to tourists, we exclude others and close off tourism as a development option for some destinations and communities.

The Politics of Playfulness, Creativity and Change

Wallerstein (2000) writes of multiple temporalities, universalisms and particularisms in the context of cultural development in the 21st century. Although total relativism is not a necessarily desirable condition (universalisms relating to fundamental human rights might need to be prioritised, for example), this affords enormous scope for tolerance, political change and innovation. Though this can lead to a superficial democratisation of culture (Wallerstein, 2000), and problematises how we define who are 'we' and who are the 'others', it nevertheless forces our attention to the rapidity and restlessness of change and shifting power relations.

Relativism and pluralism go a long way in characterising culture(s) as a set of resources and it is thus not surprising that cultural tourism constantly seems to generate interconnected and apparently intractable moments of contestation in the way we represent and receive culture as both tourists and hosts. How, for example, how can we privilege womens' or Black history without doing the same for men or Whites? How can we balance the iconic signification of culture with the intimate? How do we celebrate cultural difference and diversity in ways that retain meaning for tourists and visited communities? Both relativism and essentialism still create major challenges in the context of truth and reconciliation, especially when interpreting or representing one's past in the present. Alexander et al. (2004) note how cultural traumas (e.g. the Holocaust) leave indelible marks on their groups' consciousness, memories and identity, which can be both solidifying or disruptive, but rarely unanimous. People come to terms with their past in different ways, but the development of a (cultural) tourism industry also necessitates the acceptance of responsibility in terms of interpretation and representation of events. The 20th century is widely regarded as one of the most violent and tragic in modern history, thus there is much to come to terms with and to (re) present.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Cultural Tourism in a Changing World by Melanie Smith, Mike Robinson. Copyright © 2006 M. Smith, M. Robinson and the authors of individual chapters. Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Politics, Power and Play: The Shifting Contexts of Cultural Tourism - Mike Robinson and Melanie Smith

Part 1: Politics and Cultural Policy

Chapter 2 Cultural Politics, Cultural Policy and Cultural Tourism - Jim Butcher

Chapter 3 Heritage Tourism Politics in Ireland - Catherine Kelly

Chapter 4 Heritage Tourism and Revitalisation of Barony Life in Norway - Arvid Viken

Chapter 5 Cultural Tourism and Socioeconomic Development in Poland - Barbara Marciszewska

Part 2: Community Participation and Empowerment

Chapter 6 Cultural Tourism, Community Participation and Empowerment - Stroma Cole

Chapter 7 Cultural Tourism in African Communities: A Comparison Between Cultural Manyattas in Kenya and the Cultural Tourism Project in Tanzania - Rene van der Duim, Karin Peters and John Akama

Chapter 8 Township Tourism: Blessing or Blight? The Case of Soweto in South Africa - Jenny Briedenhann and Pranill Ramchander

Chapter 9 Community Empowerment through Voluntary Input: A Case Study of Kiltimagh Integrated Resource Development (IRD) - Frances McGettigan, Kevin Burns and Fiona Candon

Chapter 10 Raising the Status of Lappish Communities through Tourism Development - Satu Miettinen

Part 3: Authenticity and Commodification

Chapter 11 Cultural Tourism: Aspects of Authenticity and Commodification - Nicola MacLeod

Chapter 12 The Process of Authenticating Souvenirs - Frans Schouten

Chapter 13 Pataxó Tourist Arts and Cultural Authenticity - Rodrigo de Azeredo Grünewald

Chapter 14 Authenticity and Commodification of Balinese Dance Performances - Tanuja Barker, Darma Putra and Agung Wiranatha

Part 4: Interpretation

Chapter 15 Interpretation in Cultural Tourism - László Puczkó

Chapter 16 Interpretation in the House of Terror, Budapest - Tamara Rátz

Chapter 17 UK Museum Policy and Interpretation: Implications for Cultural Tourism - Josie Appleton

Chapter 18 Caves in Belgium: Standardisation or Diversification? - Anya Diekmann, Géraldine Maulet and Stéphanie Quériat

Chapter 19 Liberating the Heritage City: Towards Cultural Engagement - Marion Stuart-Hoyle and Jane Lovell