Tourist Productions 2005

Like MacCannell, Bruner acknowledges the “differentiations” inherent in the tourism industry –the tourists are usually the privileged consumers of spectacles provided by people who need money. However, he does not let this political-economic given blind him to cultural creativity that is produced in the liminal “border zones.” His respectful attitude toward both the tourists as well as those who provide tourist spectacles is refreshing and insightful. The model of culture proffered by Bruner is one that is emergent, dialogic, and ever-changing. Regardless of the provenance of the cultural phenomenon, it is all part of local culture.

Some tourist productions, such as the Balinese frog dance, originally created for international tourists, subsequently have become reincorporated into their own culture. Rather than bemoaning the destruction of local culture by Western modernity, Brunner’s approach to these cases dignifies the cultures that adapt to the global flows. Where other’s see the apocalyptic triumph of the West over the rest, Bruner sees the birth of a myriad of creative responses. While tourism may not be the panacea that cures the ills of underdeveloped economies, it motivates the formation of important stages on which to perform local and national identities.

Another important move Bruner makes is to treat the messages of these performances as dialogic. In several of his essays, Bruner’s object of analysis is “narrative,” which he treats as an open-ended process of construction. He discusses the stories that are told before, during, and following the touristic experience by different actors involved in it. According to him, narratives, (like Turner and Bell’s idea of “ritual”) do not merely reiterate and reproduce hegemonic messages; rather, their retelling can contest dominant messages with other interpretations of the same story, as well as personalize them, incorporating the teller into the broader context his retelling depicts. In the context of tourism, the essence of a people (or historical period) are defined and dramatized for both internal and external consumption –with the aims of building nationalistic solidarity, distinguishing local identity from global or foreign influences, or to produce the experience of nostalgia for a lost paradise. Contests over meanings occur in the process of defining the nature of local identity and ideal lost states.

Bruner’s approach to creativity and meaning-making in tourist productions is very similar to Edensor’s approach to the tourist audience’s contestatory significations. However, in contrast to Edensor’s cynical, half-hearted response to the cultural impotence produced by postmodernist critiques of simulacra, Bruner’s case studies of sites such as New Salem and Masada drive home the point that these performances are aspects of everyday life that are experienced as real and that do matter to the people who participate in them.