Tourist Productions 2007: January 2007 Archives

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January 31, 2007

Misc. from Jamie

Round thoughts:
In relation to our discussion of Turner’s concept of liminality, I have been thinking about the shape of the tour. Up until now I have always envisioned the process of transformation from one point to another as being linear, in that the journey one takes across the threshold into the liminal state to arrive at the end point somehow transformed would be more of a straight or winding path from point A to point B. After reading MacCannell and Chia-fen’s posting about the starting and end point of the tourist being “home”, I now see the liminal journey as having a circular trajectory. The round shape of travel and tourism begins and ends at point A, but upon returning to the point from which the tour began the traveler is transformed by the voyage.

Research possibility:
One other idea I had, which I mentioned to BKG and wanted to share with the rest of the class as a possible research topic, was the idea of “viral tourism”. In one of my classes last semester we explored the topic of “viral marketing”, which encompasses everything from Gap’s new “red” campaign to fight AIDS in Africa to the selling of pink merchandise in order to raise breast cancer awareness. So, I was curious if any of this might play in to how people travel. BKG mentioned that there are specific travel destinations where people go to seek remedies for their ailments, which made me think of the mystic healing powers of rainforests, and also of Eastern medicine. Anyway, I thought I would put it out there, as it seems this might be a interesting vein of study.

Posted by Jamie Reynolds at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

Borat info

Hello everyone-- I had hoped to coordinate a time for those of us who have not seen BORAT yet to meet up and screen it together, but, alas, my schedule is just too crazy this week. Just thought I’d pass along the info:

TIMES CHANGE ON WEEKENDS (pls check w/ theater)
this is m-f

BORAT
Clearview Chelsea
260 W. 23rd St, New York, NY 10011
12:15 I 3:15 I 6:00 I 8:15 I 10:25

City Cinemas Village East
181-189 Second Ave., New York, NY 10003
2:00 I 4:00 I 6:00 I 8:00 I 10:00

Posted by Jamie Reynolds at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2007

The tourism of the everyday: everyday in Rio's favelas

Currently in Rio de Janeiro doing research on community museums and tourism in the favelas, I find it impossible not to link the articles I read to my experiences here, though not in any exhaustive detail. First, let us look at Franklin and Crang´s article, which pinpoints key discourses within the field of tourism studies and make an overall argument, which my own work has come to realize and support: there is a need for deeper and broader theoretical studies in the area of tourism in order to keep adding to the understandings of this complex social phenomenon by the developments of social and cultural theory and other related areas of study and methodological approaches. My research on community cultural centers in a few countries and in particular those places where the cultural centers become tourist destinations has led me to conclude that tourism brings forward an intriguing dynamic in the local context of memory, identity, and heritage preservation.
The community cultural centers/museums in some of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro – Rocinha, Mare, and Providencia – since the early 90s have gradually become (or tried to become) tourist attraction. Generally, the cultural centers opened by NGOs or the government were not created with the idea of becoming in any way related to tourism; rather, they were a system of institutions that aimed to bring down the high arts to the people who can’t afford them and eliminate the inequalities of access to cultural events. In Mare and Providencia, however, the cultural centers are different, since the communities created local memory museums specifically to attract tourists. The presence of the outsiders has certainly added to the community dialectics at multiple levels, understood through the interviews and observations I conducted. The major contribution of tourism to the community life, expressed in most of the interviews I took, was related to higher levels of self-esteem of the dwellers by the fact that people not simply from the outside of the favela, which in itself has traditionally been a place shunned by the outsiders, but people from other countries consider it worthwhile to visit a place known only for its violence. They locals hope to show the outsiders faces of the favela that they would never otherwise hear about – faces with smiles, telling stories, singing.
The “tourism of the everyday” (8) as Frank and Crang refer to it is what has been building base in the favelas, where there is a constant flow of tourists at the community socio-cultural hubs that have now become a stage for cultural performances and exchanges of ideas, customs, and emotions between people who would have never been in contact were it not for tourism. Indeed, I observed the pertinence of Frank and Crang’s analyses that the flows of tourists “may profoundly alter the social texture” (9), as the presence of tourists in the familiar community spaces previously reserved to communal sociability now deconstructed the function of this social space and opened it up to other forms of interaction and discourse.
Tourism forges new social exchanges in the bodies of both economic exchange – when tourists buy crafts from the artisans, who on their part responded to the demand for souvenirs in the favelas of Mare and Rocinha – and socio-cultural exchange of human energy, tourist appreciation of the local traditions and creativity, which in the words of many of the locals I interviewed has boosted their own self-esteem through the recognition of their amateur talent and their appreciation of their local traditions. Certainly, not all dwellers feel this way, many are apathetic and many say they feel as if tourists were there only to see their poverty and misery; yet, the museums and the tourist flows have undoubtedly brought in new life into the community: and all debate can be productive.
Frank and Crang offer an insightful perspective on the dynamics of the tourism of the everyday and specifically the fact that the flow of tourists in a place leaves “the distinction between the everyday and holiday entirely blurred” (8). I would extend their ideas on the “extraordinary everyday” to Lefebvre’s conceptualization of the everyday, where he believes the everyday in itself should disappear as a concept (a concept carrying the charge of repetitive routinization) in order to appreciate every “everyday” as a festival – those festivals that in the past constituted the “style” of life, and now degenerated into culture where the constant dream is the escape from the everyday into the artificially created realm of holiday.
Interestingly enough, with tourism the dichotomy between everyday and holiday does start to shift – though in a process completely unforeseen by Lefebvre – by generating new spellings for the day-to-day.
And in addition to new spellings, is tourism also casting new spells on the everyday? Cohen’s article reveals an interesting interpretation of the “center” of the visited culture that tourists in many cases strive to find and sense: “movement away from the spiritual, cultural, or even religious centre of one’s world, into its periphery, towards the centres of other cultures and societies (182-183). The five types of tourism Cohen delineates - recreational, diversionary, experiential, experimental, existential – are important guidelines to consider in the analysis of tourist experiences, but are in no way categories that cannot be further elaborated. On the contrary, categories can mix and form new hybrids of tourism, they can extinguish or get enriched, considering the most important element in tourism, which is the fact that we are dealing with human phenomenology – the most volatile thing of all.
I take Cohen’s notions on the search of the “centre” of a culture and connect it to the final and extremely important point that Frank and Crang make related to the diminishing aesthetic components of tourism. They try to deconstruct the domination of the notion of tourism’s visualism and present cases of theory and practice that turn “the passivity of visual tourism into kinaesthetic sense and flow (see Thrift 1999)” (13). This is a key phenomenon to keep in mind because it reveals the precise active process through which tourists are enacting that search of the “centre.” The interactive elements in the tourist experience and the experience of the locals often produce instances of intriguing trans-cultural “social effervescences,” as Durkheim would have probably called them, when the visual evolves into speech and action. The “kinaestheticism” of tourism is in constant movement…

Posted by Nadezhda Savova at 07:53 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2007

Balg Eun Song reflection

Even though most of the people now depend on tourist productions, we sometimes feel shame to be in a group of tourists. Tourist production has both the positive and negative aspects like a double edge sword. Instead of the convenience and comfort, it reduces all the adventure. Tourist production also has chance to be marked by other reasons. For example, someone told me not to eat today’s special menu in restaurants, because some restaurants do today’s special menu to use the old ingredients from being rotten. When a culture begins to be managed as productions, there are other reasons in addition to the main reason of why we appreciate it.

To be marked as a tourist attraction, the place has to be authentic in some way. Today, there are so many reproductions that are easy to access, so without authenticity people have no reason to visit. However, as soon as the place becomes marked by someone, the authenticity becomes mediated. Paradoxically, in the other hand tourist productions sometimes help to maintain the authenticity. As soon as a place becomes marked, the place could be protected from changing in this rapidly changing society. Today, the difference between other countries is getting smaller. Because of the globalization, the world is rapidly resembling each other and becoming same as one whole country. The world develops toward fast and convenient way, and perhaps these productions are somewhat preserving the authenticity...

Posted by Balg Eun Song at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)

Native-controlled tourism?

I found interesting to note in Chapter 9 the early examples of community-based tourism (of “natural growth”) which has expanded widely today, as a breed of tourists seek to differentiate themselves from mass tourism: there is eco-tourism, indigenous self-regulated cultural tourism, and increasingly, tourism that seeks to associate itself with environmental and human rights education.

In an unprecedented case in northern Chile, the government has turned over the control of pre-Columbian archaeological sites back to the Native communities, who have received no training in tourism or site management and conservation, and who are now actively seeking engagement with the tourist industry, seeking alternative, sustainable and low-impact models of eco-cultural tourism. Many of these communities have had internal consultations to determine if and how they will use these sites, which include burial grounds that are now off limits to researchers and tourists. While the idea of tourism was shunned as non-Native to the communities of one area in particular, it was also seen as a viable way of self-preservation. Basically, there was the knowledge that someone was going to profit from Native attractions, and that it was less damaging if the control of tourism was in Native hands. I am interested in how these indigenous communities perform their take on tourism; how they will determine tourism will fit sustainably into their culture.

Posted by Amalia Cordova at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2007

Authenticity and Tourism in My Life

As I was reading MacCannell’s The Tourist, I couldn’t help reflecting back on my own various touristic experiences. During extensive travel with my family over the years, we have paid money over and over for the “authentic” experiences—a luau in Hawaii, camel rides in the Australian outback, ranger talks at Mt. Rainier, etc. Lately, as I’ve traveled separate from my family, I’ve strived to not be a tourist, and felt ashamed of being labeled as such. I’ve strived for the truly authentic experience. I didn’t want to be seen as someone who just has the surface experience, somehow who doesn’t get to know the “true” culture. MacCannell says, “sightseers are motivated by a desire to see life as it is really lived, even to get in with the natives, and at the same time, they are deprecated for always failing to achieve these goals.” (94) I certainly fit into this. When I was in Istanbul, I saw the true or authentic culture as what I experienced in the homes of the Turks I visited, in the restaurants and cafes were my friend and I were the only visible outsiders. I took pride in the fact that I knew people living there, that I “got in with the natives.” I looked down on people who weren’t seeking the authentic experience like I was. However, MacCannell made me realize that everyone is seeking the authentic experience, and you can’t escape being a tourist. I’m sure that at the restaurants I ate at and in the homes I visited, the servers and residents were putting on a show, trying to give my friend and I taste of “Turkish life”; they were very much “performing”!

I’m intrigued by the interaction of different cultures, often in an everyday setting, and what can be learned from this experience. I think it’s easy to forget about the everyday-ness of tourism. In places that experience many visitors, like New York, we are constantly performing “New York-ness” so these visitors will have an authentic experience. In my own research, I’m continually looking at identity formation and how cultural differences inhibit communication and collaboration and, lately, how this happens in youth. MacCannall points out how we manufacture our morality and social values through the other, and I’m struck by how this is continually being enacted in tourism, with both how we look at tourists who visit us and how we, when we are the tourists, see those we are visiting. I’m looking for practical applications to incorporate into conversations to have with kids about traveling and tourism. If these ways of thinking of the other are essential parts of who we are and our identity formation, yet we determine they’re problematic, how do we get rid of them? Does awareness make it better?

Posted by Rebekah Steinfeld at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)

Tara Good responds

Utilizing the phenomenon “Tourism” Dean MacCannell sketches a historical typography of Western socialization. MacCannell facilely jumps from mundane to extraordinary examples of travel and sightseeing, and by grounding them in social theory, holds up a reflecting glass to the post-industrial age. As a historically minded reader, I loved the historical trajectory he considered in his analysis. The work relies a great deal on theories exposed by Marx and Durkeim, but in framing tourism as a socially performative act through the work of Goffman and Levi-Strauss, he breaths new life into the works of foundational sociology.

In class this week one of my professors described Performativity as a self-creating, self-referential act. MacCannell underlined the implications of that statement on a massive scale when he described the function of tourism in society as “…a simultaneous development of industrial social structure and modern self-consciousness so the industrial structure are realized as attractions even as they are first coming into existence.”(187)

One theoretical area which MacCannell did not dabble into is Victor Turner’s definition of liminality. The differentiation of work vs. leisure is primary to Turner’s identification of liminal vs. liminoid spaces in society. MacCannell’s conception of tourist attractions as symbols of cultural continuousness which contributes to constructing and/or perpetuating cultural identity, parallel’s Turner’s work. The ritualization surrounding social enactment, as described by Turner as liminal behavior, is also described by MacCannell as a mode of differentiating society in the form of sightseeing. I think that a consideration of the performative intersection between these two authors would prove to be immensely informative in considering current manifestations of the phenomenon of tourism.

Posted by Tara Good at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)

Dasha Chapman - response to The Tourist

Dean MacCarrell employs, as one of my professors would have called it, a “bread and butter” methodological approach to examining tourism as a meaningful structure of signs in modern society. Although his writing style makes connections seem too logical, or perhaps too bland, he does make perspicacious assertions about tourism’s role in social life – which resonate in a very basic way to today. The Tourist illuminates the ways in which tourism as an activity of leisure and the production of experience is integral to fashionings of [differentiating] selfhood and modernity.

But what of this character, “the tourist”?

Quoting Lévi-Strauss’ musings, “Travel and travelers are two things I loathe…”, MacCarrell provided a poignant commentary – and problematic – that connects to our own positions as scholars in this milieu. It provokes me to question the disconcerting similarities between ethnography and tourism. Are there ways to travel to other places and “see” others in a manner that does not carry a political valence? Wherever we go, along come our own cultural baggage and systems of belief. How do we reconcile this?

It seems to me that MacCannell’s work illuminates the ways in which ethnography is an activity – a duty – of a particular sector of the leisure class. He notes in the “Epilogue” that in addition to his work’s central theme of “we are all tourists,” there is a counterbalance: “we are all tour guides.” Perhaps it is the ethnographer that cannot escape taking on both of these roles at the same time: a tourist of a community who aspires to be the tour guide.

---------------------------

On a different note:

MacCarrell applies Walter Benjamin’s notion of “aura” to his analysis of the design (consecration?) of a tourist attraction, which creates touristic ritual based on “the relationship between the original object and its socially constructed importance.” (48) I believe it is also the aura surrounding particular attractions and experiences that connotes the performative – an experiential dialogue between tourist and tourist site/performer. Aura enchants art just as it enchants productions of culture. This is an element which I would like to explore farther.

Besides this, my most general interest for a project lies within the circuits of meaning-making inherent in tourist productions, specifically meanings that imbue notions of self and other, and personal or community histories. For example: a “real authentic African tribesmen” in a mock-cultural village outside of a big city in Africa, in which the life practices (contemporary or out-dated) from a specific group of people are put on display for another’s consumption. These productions heavily contribute to constructions of “traditional Africans” – as MacCarrell would term, a “social structural differentiation” that reifies the tourist’s own position as a modern being. Yet, it would seem to me that for a community which has members participating in this type of tourist production, their own notions of tradition, authenticity, and otherness will also be shaped significantly through their staged interactions and enactments. These performers are players in a market that has created a demand for these constructed performances – namely, cultural productions which guarantee exposure to an exciting and exotically authentic African experience. The market, which often claims to function in the name of economic development for these communities, has fashioned a multifaceted exchange of meanings, epistemologies, and notions that stems in many directions. I would like for my project to investigate the ways in which these phenomena interact, affect, and shape historical and cultural memory – for all participants of the tourist production.

Posted by Dasha Chapman at 07:27 PM | Comments (1)

Jamie Reynolds- MacCannell "Authenticity"

I find the process of staging authenticity in tourist productions and McCannell’s description of Goffman’s front/back model particularly intriguing. Having worked in numerous tourist settings, I have found myself in both of these constructed areas. The front space is established as a welcoming social space for the tourist, and also the “on-stage” area for the players producing the experience. According to MacCannell, this is a place for tourists to “overcome or to get behind” in order to have an “authentic” experience. This raises issues of access and an aim to penetrate a socially constructed off-limits area within the tourist production. Today our culture is rampant with the pursuit of this privilege. For example, audience members (tourists) zealously attempt to get “back stage” in order to get autographs (souveniers) from the performers, or even just to get a glimpse of them in an alternate setting. Even restaurants are marketing this strategy by advertising a “special chef’s table” in the kitchen, which provides the diner an “inside” view of what goes on behind the scenes of the restaurant, thus granting the tourist a more “authentic” experience.

This is complicated by the idea of the staged back stage area. A production that invites the tourist to the back has carefully crafted this area, albeit different than the front, but constructed nonetheless. When reading this, I could not help but think of Schechner’s “not-not”, in that the back stage is not the actual tourist production, but it is not-not part of the production. This reminded me of a couple of personal instances when these front/back areas were established in different ways. First, in the instance of Disney, they are vehement that the public (tourists) only have access to the front, as if there was no back area at all. MacCannell finds that where one finds exploited leisure, one also finds exploited labor. This could not be more true than in the case of Disney, where workers meet extreme demands, sometimes in extreme weather conditions, all while keeping up the parks “magical” image. Another moment I was reminded of happened this past summer while in Peru with the Hemispheric Institute. Our student group went to see a circus production called La Tarumba, which was in the tradition of European circuses and quite different from the American Barnum & Bailey experience I grew up with. Following the performance, our professor crossed from the “front” to the “back”, relatively unannounced, with all of us in tow, which made many of us very uncomfortable because not only were we in a different culture, but now we were crossing another boundary and we didn’t want to seem disrespectful. Upon entering the performers back stage area, they were caught a bit off guard, but were very welcoming to our group, and we proceeded to share our complements in broken Spanish and English. Of course, their behavior altered immediately in our presence, which brings up the argument that every area or “stage” of the tourist production is socially constructed in some way.

In thinking of how I might define “tourist”, I must also consider MacCannell’s distinction between the traveler and the tourist and, thus, how I might define “traveler”. (I am still wrestling with this and hope we can unpack it further as a group.) If the traveler is said to be in search of a more authentic/ real experience (i.e. “getting in with the natives”) and the tourist in pursuit of a more contrived setting, then it seems this issue has to do with individual reality and values. What I read in MacCannell’s finding is that the tourist/traveler’s search for their respective version of a “true” experience is really a search for a “true” self-discovery. Whether staged or not, this plight for personal understanding is a timeless ritual, and the authenticity we might find in tourist spaces depends not only on those who construct them (labor), but also on our behavior within them (leisure).

Posted by Jamie Reynolds at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)

[from Beatrice] What about the locals?

I have recently had the pleasure of participating in the viewing of Sasha Baron Cohen’s latest creation: a movie by the title “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” In this film/documentary, Cohen traces the travels of a fictional character, Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev (Sash Baron Cohen), as he road trips across the southern states of “U.S. and A.” in order to report back to his country about the great United States.
One of the ways in which Cohen plays with his character lies in the readings of Borat’s identity by the “locals” he encounters on his journey. Borat’s dark, “middle-eastern” looks, his home country and strong foreign accent, and the values he upholds (i.e. his blatant anti-Semitism), all give room to his interlocutors to relate to him as a stereotype fitting “other.” Borat becomes the ultimate tourist (quite a provoking one) and his identity is produced through interaction with the locals.
MacCannell’s borrowed distinction between front and back social spaces still holds in the model proposed by Cohen’s fictional documentary. Here Borat comes to “U.S. and A.” in order to get to the authentic values of American culture. The character presumes the identity of the tourist, allowing for a whole performance to be enacted. What is particularly interesting to me is the kind of performance that is allowed to happen in different contexts. In this sense, the local’s perspective plays a much more active role in relationship to the tourist production than MacCannell seems to cover. If we are talking about tourist experiences as productions, it seems to me like equal attention should be given to all participants in the production. Furthermore, focusing on the relations amongst “sightseers” and local people can give us more insight on identity issues such as ethnicity/race/gender. How is the tourist experience shaped by these factors?
Once we look at relations within tourist productions, I believe we can start asking questions about a more hopeful kind of tourism. Can we make tourist attractions more focused on sensitizing participants as to the differentiation process these productions are supporting? And can we imagine a tourism in which intimacy and closeness, defined by MacCannell as at the “core of social solidarity,” are important elements of one’s experience?

Posted by Beatrice Barbareschi at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)

Commentary 1 : "The Tourist" Dean MacCallen

“Revolutionary Tourist” is described by Allan Wall, a reporter for CNN, as the alternative kind of tourism that reside in sites of social interventions. The visitors search for experiences that are not for entertainment, but in an abnormal way involves a cultural experience. During the last year Oaxaca, a beautiful and well-known tourist city in Mexico has been the site of violent acts against peaceful protestors. While in this time, groups of foreign people had continued to arrive to the city, the common tourist avoids this location. It is interesting to analyze this shift towards “revolutionary tourism” through MacCannell´s front-back region concept. According to him, the front region constitutes areas that create an efficient communication and service for the visitor, while the back region is a hidden space to prepare the tourist experience.
The front- back region, represented by the sites of protest, brings to the visitors experiences that are not designed for a traditional knowledge of tourism and transforms it as they become part of the events. This blurs the line between the front and back region underlining the diversity and flexibility of the bodies in these social acts. In addition, it combines the individual desire to have a cultural experience and become part of social movement as they risk their life. Oaxaca is just a small example of revolutionary tourisism, but in stressful moments such as theirs the concern of a stranger penetrating the back region becomes irrelevant. It transforms the situation by absorbing the visitor as a part of the actions that involves him well as everyone present.

Posted by Nohemi at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)

Tourism, Cinema, Spectatorship

In his chapter, The Paris Case, MacCannell quotes a contemporary Michelin guide to New York City inviting visitors to enjoy, "A typical sight... the rush at noon after the factories close: solid waves of workers emerge, sweeping everything before them." (MacCannell, 59) Curiously, an identical scene is featured in what is widely reputed to be the first film created by the Lumieres brothers in turn of the century Paris. The film can be viewed on youtube, here: Workers Exiting a Factory. This was my first clue to the many parallels between emergent forms of cinematic spectatorship, and the rise of touristic spectatorship as detailed by MacCannell.

Vanessa R. Schwartz, in an essay entitled "Cinematic Spectatorship Before the Apparatus: The Public Taste for Reality in Fin-de-Siecle Paris," examines forms of spectacle prevalent in turn of the century Paris that, in her opinion, prepared the populace for the emergence of cinema at approximately the same moment. Importantly, her analysis largely centers on one of the sights to which MacCannell turns his attentions, the Paris Morgue. While MacCannell's analysis of the Morgue is brief, and focuses on the sociological import of the sight ("What is represented is the importance of social order and of leaving society in an orderly way..." (MacCannell, 72)), Schwartz's analysis of the morgue links it more closely with the concerns over authenticity that MacCannell explores throughout much of the rest of his book. Schwartz writes in her introduction, "I hope to situate early cinema as a part of the public taste for reality." (Schwartz, 87) Of the Morgue, she comments, "The Morgue served as a visual auxiliary to the newspaper, staging the recently dead who had been sensationally detailed by the printed word." (Schwartz, 90) Schwartz seems to identify here a link between marker and site similar to those detailed by MacCannell in tourist productions. Ironically, the link here seems somewhat reversed, the morgue(site) is the 'visual auxiliary'(marker) of the newspaper article, that details the real, authentic event that might be the true object of interest to the tourist/public.

While there is likely more to be said on this specific connection, what interests me most is the affinity it indicates between cinematic forms of spectatorship and touristic forms. This affinity can be found throughout MacCannell's book, as when he relates the experience of tourists to the experience of pornography (see the second paragraph on page 99 of MacCannell, too much text to quote here effectively). Significantly, this affinity seems to center on the shared ocular emphasis of both cinema (especially early cinema) and tourism (sight-seeing). While in our first class we discussed several tourist productions that eschew the visual, after reading MacCannell, such events would appear to be the minority, and visual experience the dominant mode of tourist production. I am curious what might be found in a deeper examination of the parallel rise of modern tourism and the cinema.

While reading MacCannell, I also found myself reminded again and again of a passage from Don Delillo's novel White Noise in which the protagonist visits the "Most Photographed Barn in America." The specific passage can be found here. The passage details an extreme case of 'marker involvement,'(MacCannell) and also feels like it quotes MacCannell directly, as when MacCannell updates Benjamin, noting, "The work becomes 'authentic' only after the first copy of it is produced. The reproductions are the aura..." (MacCannell, 48) The Barn does not appear to be a work of fiction, however, and images of it can be found here, on flickr. This particular type of kitsch tourism, tourism that revels in its own absurdity, is of particular interest to me. While the photographer I have linked seems sincere in his admiration for the barn, I cannot help but imagine he does retain a certain tongue-in-cheek distance while photographing the barn. When taking a road trip, I always keep my copy of Roadside America, with me. The book is a travel guide to the trappiest of tourist traps across the US, and reading MacCannell, I find myself asking whether such sights are a primarily USian phenomenon. While certainly the Paris Morgue or Sewers are non-traditional tourist attractions, they are not quite so vulgar as the World's Largest Stump in Kokomo, Indiana (quite a sight at 57' in diameter) or the World's Largest 'Catsup' Bottle in Collinsville, Illinois (less impressive, it needs a new paint job). How do such ironic or self-reflexive forms of tourism fit into MacCannell's model?

Posted by James Ball at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

on The Tourist

I am compulsively filtering ideas through my dancing body- dragging anything onto dance studies. I thought of several ways to apply MacCannell’s ideas to dance.

1. tourist=dancer / site=movement / marker=recognition of association
Like the tourist, the dancer navigates through space by moving in varying speeds and spatial patterns, continuously adjusting the spatial relationships both within the body and to the surrounding environment. From the perspective of a dancer, the body’s movement can be considered terrain or cultural site in which visits to the specific movement or choreography are like the touring through the site. In the dancers recognition or named associations of specific moments, movements and pathways can become spatial or temporal markers that could signify efficacy or beauty (or whatever else). Kinesthetic memory of previous association to a movement are the souvenirs, the ephemeral trinkets that link the tourist/dancer back to the visited site/movement.

2. tourist=audience / site=dancer / marker=movement
Likening the tourist to the audience is not a big leap as they are both seeking an experience of entertainment or exposure. In this comparison, the dancer or performer is the site in which the tourist/audience is witnessing. The perceived movements of the dancer, like the marker, mediate or explain the relationship/distance between the site and the tourist (audience/dancer). From the perspective of the dancer, movement choices are made knowing they are a site being witnessed. Choosing material that would communicate or represent something specifically is like Goffman’s front space. In my own experience performing, in some situations I have felt the need to differentiate the movement I do when being witnessed by an audience and my ordinary non-performing movement- between knowing what may be perceived as efficacious/beautiful/whatever to doing the awkward movements necessary to figure out an idea spatially/kinesthetically. The latter could be considered the back space.
Is this too much of a stretch?

Posted by Claire Duplantier at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)

Eric Luo's response

In “The trouble with tourism and travel theory”, Adrian Franklin and Mike Crang classify the troubles with tourism theory into three categories, the research object of tourist studies, tourism as an economic thing, and the frame of tourist studies(2001: 5-6). In my opinion, this article reveals what we might encounter with while we doing tourism as a study.

Moreover, they also raise the question of embodying tourism (2001: 12-14) which matches my interest of the intersection of tourism and sexuality. In addition to this, the issue of tourism and sexuality always comes with the economic and postcolonial questions. Taking Thailand as example, it is one of the famous tourist sites due to its scenery, food and low-price in the world. Furthermore, the booming sensual and erotic industry is also considered as another factor which attracts tourists no matter what his/her sexuality is. My first trip to Thailand is in 2003, when my friends and I walk in the Patpong Night Market (the most famous night market in Bangkok which attracts thousands of tourists a day), there were always some pimps came to us and ask us that do we want hot girls in falteringly English. In fact, Patpong is not only famous for it cheap and various products, but also the booming sensual and erotic industry (sex here is another kind of various products). In 2005, I went to Bangkok again to present my paper at first Asia Queer Studies International Conference, and I went shopping at Patpong with my friends. There were still pimps ask the same question, “Do you want hot girls”, to us. But while we say “no”, they immediately say “we also have cute boys”. In the mean time, I was totally shocked. That’s right, as being a queer studies researcher and cultural worker; I should not be shocked by this. However, I am wondering to ask myself that did I have a great development of gay-appearance or did they have a dramatic change of erotic consumption and travel industry in only two years?

Thus, doing tourist studies in the age of globalization, I think that the trouble with tourism and travel theory will face more complicated questions. At least for me, traveling is no longer a leisure activity. In my own opinion, a tourist is someone who only enjoys the spectaculars, delicacy and great service without considering anything more. We nowadays might be a semi-ethnographer tourist or a semi-anthropologist tourist due to our reflexive thinking of what we experience during the trip. Hence, there should be more and more dimensions of tourist studies in my personal viewpoint.

Here is the website of Boyz Town in Pattaya, the famous beach near Bangkok. http://www.boyztown-pattaya.com/

Posted by Ching-Yao Luo at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)

Chia-fen on MacCannell

As Levi-Strauss puts “culture” as the opposition of “nature,” Dean MacCannell defines the “tourist” as the contrary phase of the “modern worker.” The idea of tourism is generated from the working condition of the modern society, since the work has alienated the middle class people from “the real world,” and deprived them of the totality and authenticity of this real world, though “totality” and “authenticity” might be just modern myth. The tourist-worker opposition is not an opposition of two human figures, but schizophrenia within one single person.

In Lone Twin’s Nine Years, Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters condensed their nine years’ traveling in different cities and countries in ninety minutes. In each ten minutes, lines as such by Whelan repeated again and again:

"Who said it’s right? I work here from day after day after day after day, and I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I felt like this (a shoulder gesture of sadness.) I shouldn’t be here. I should be there. I should be a singer. I should be a dancer. […] [I should be there] where the real world happens."

Some tourists go traveling for weeks or months, and some, like Whelan and Winters, for years. But their fate is all the same: there is a time to return; their nostalgia memory of “home” or the lack of more money calls them back. The tourists are in a liminal state, since they are alienated and displaced. They don’t belong to the place they were born and brought up, where they work day after day to earn a living. They don’t belong to anywhere else in the world either, where they are named and derided as “tourists.” Their differentiated consciousness belongs to nowhere. And most of them end up in working day after day after day after day after the journey.

But the story of the tourist may not be that pathetic all the time. Enlightenment may occur to the tourists if we take the journey as a ritual. According to Arnold van Gennep, the idea of “rite of passage” has three phases: separation, liminality, and incorporation. Tourism in some way embodies such a process: the tourist leaves home, bumps into some “touristic shame” (MacCannell 10) or bewilderment of the other culture, and returned home with a whole new realization of his own society and the world. The tourism is a ritual definitely in this way. On one hand, it helps people to release their disgust of themselves as just boring and lifeless working machines. On the other, the tourism may be just a placebo — in the end, people surrendered themselves to the horrible working conditions again.

The tourism thus creates a vicious circle: the workers earn money to travel away from their daily work, then they run out of money in the journey, and finally they come back to work again to earn that money. Isn’t that ridiculous and funny?

Posted by Chia-fen Chang at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)

Nico Daswani on the readings

Most interesting to me in these readings is understanding the development of the study of tourism from a discrete discipline to, as Franklin and Craig see it, a social phenomenon that is part of the way we look at the world today.

Although many of McCanell’s methods seem out of touch, his front and back region analysis is very relevant. His tourist, whom Cohen identifies as the “experiential tourist” seeks the authentic and real life of others without trying to appropriate it. One could relate this to our obsession with reality TV and content-generated internet such as blogs, youtubes, and myspaces. It is a sort of balance between knowledge-seeking and voyeurism, but without emotional involvement. Adler in Origins of Sightseeing explains how the study of tourism evolved between the 17 and 18th from personal narratives of amateur travelers to a discipline led by scholars and specialists. It seems that in our era we have gone back to seeking personal narratives and the internet and globalization are creating that need and/or facilitating that possibility.

I was also very interested in the relationship between travel and art, where it could be argued that the process of traveling is akin to the process of producing art. In addition to the aesthetic comparisons that are made by Adler in Travel as Performed Art, she points out that in the 17th and 18th centuries, travelers required financial sponsorship from elite families, which is akin to funders of the arts today, and that those who could not afford to pay for their travel would travel as tutors- this made me think of the need for so many artists to teach to make ends meet. She discusses the increased commercialization of tourist experiences which is so true of much art-making today.

Also, Erik Cohen describes the “recreational” mode of tourism as “refreshing modern man so he is able to return to the wear and tear of “serious” living”, which is similar to the role of arts when understood solely as entertainment. Could we draw deeper meaning from comparing tourism and the arts in the sense of social phenomena as opposed to recreational activities and discrete parts of society? According to Franklin and Craig, tourism may be far more rooted in the culture of the everyday than acknowledged. They argue that developing tourism can mean more access to knowledge about a place for the locals. How can the arts, which are omnipresent in a city like New York, enable us to understand our city better? What role can this play in our collective consciousness?

Posted by Nicolas Daswani at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

Nadezhda Savova responds

For example, the community cultural centers/museums in some of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro – Rocinha, Mare, and Providencia – have slowly become a tourist attraction. Most of the centers were not created with the idea of becoming in any way related to tourism; rather, they were a system of institutions that aimed to bring down the high arts to the people who can’t afford them and eliminate the inequalities of access to cultural events. In Mare and Providencia the communities created local memory museums specifically to attract tourists and the presence of the outsiders has certainly added to the community dialectics at multiple levels, understood through interviews and observations. The major contribution of tourism to the community life, expressed in most of the interviews I took, was related to higher levels of self-esteem of the dwellers by the fact that people not simply from the outside of the favela, which in itself has traditionally been a place shunned by the outsiders, but people from other countries consider it worthwhile to visit a place known only for its violence. They locals hope to show the outsiders faces of the favela that they would never otherwise hear about – faces with smiles, telling stories, singing.

The “tourism of the everyday” (8) as Franklin and Crang refer to it is what has been building base in the favelas, where there is a constant flow of tourists at the community socio-cultural hubs that have now become a stage for cultural performances and exchanges of ideas, customs, and emotions between people who would have never been in contact were it not for tourism. Indeed, I observed the pertinence of Frank and Crang’s analyses that the flows of tourists “may profoundly alter the social texture” (9), as the presence of tourists in the familiar community spaces previously reserved to communal sociability now deconstructed the function of this social space and opened it up to other forms of interaction and discourse.

Tourism forges new social exchanges in the bodies of both economic exchange – when tourists buy crafts from the artisans, who on their part responded to the demand for souvenirs in the favelas of Mare and Rocinha – and socio-cultural exchange of human energy, tourist appreciation of the local traditions and creativity, which in the words of many of the locals I interviewed has boosted their own self-esteem through the recognition of their amateur talent and their appreciation of their local traditions. Certainly, not all dwellers feel this way, many are apathetic and many say they feel as if tourists were there only to see their poverty and misery; yet, the museums and the tourist flows have undoubtedly brought in new life into the community: and all debate can be productive.

Franklin and Crang offer an insightful perspective on the dynamics of the tourism of the everyday and specifically the fact that the flow of tourists in a place leaves “the distinction between the everyday and holiday entirely blurred” (8). I would extend their ideas on the “extraordinary everyday” to Lefebvre’s conceptualization of the everyday, where he believes the everyday in itself should disappear as a concept (a concept carrying the charge of repetitive routinization) in order to appreciate every “everyday” as a festival – those festivals that in the past constituted the “style” of life, and now degenerated into culture where the constant dream is the escape from the everyday into the artificially created realm of holiday. Interestingly enough, with tourist the dichotomy between everyday and holiday does start to shift – though in a process completely unforeseen by Lefebvre – by generating new spellings for the day-to-day.

And in addition to new spellings, is tourism also casting new spells on the everyday? Cohen’s article reveals an interesting interpretation of the “center” of the visited culture that tourists in many cases strive to find and sense: “movement away from the spiritual, cultural, or even religious centre of one’s world, into its periphery, towards the centres of other cultures and societies (182-183). The five types of tourism Cohen delineates - recreational, diversionary, experiential, experimental, existential – are important guidelines to consider in the analysis of tourist experiences, but are in no way categories that cannot be further elaborated. On the contrary, categories can mix and form new hybrids of tourism, they can extinguish or get enriched, considering the most important element in tourism, which is the fact that we are dealing with human phenomenology – the most volatile thing of all.

I take Cohen’s notions on the search of the “centre” of a culture and connect it to the final and extremely important point that Frank and Crang make related to the diminishing aesthetic components of tourism. They try to deconstruct the domination of the notion of tourism’s visualism and present cases of theory and practice that turn “the passivity of visual tourism into kinaesthetic sense and flow (see Thrift 1999)” (13). This is a key phenomenon to keep in mind because it reveals the precise active process through which tourists are enacting that search of the “centre.” The interactive elements in the tourist experience and the experience of the locals often produce instances of intriguing trans-cultural “social effervescences,” as Durkheim would have probably called them, when the visual evolves into speech and action. The “kinaestheticism” of tourism is in constant movement.

Posted by BKG at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2007

John Dietrich on MacCannell

Dean MacCannell attempts to define almost every area of social behavior that could ultimately be categorized as tourism, almost to the degree of the explanations becoming markedly obvious. The analyzing at times goes to the extreme of explaining common human behavior that has no need for a deeper definition beyond what the action taken simply is. For example, on page 123 he discusses “the double-take”, which as we know is simply taking a second look at a sight, object or person because of a possible past recognition. Actually going to the trouble of constructing a diagram that pinpoints the exact moment of realization and defining it as “the double-take” is taking the level of study too far without offering any relevant greater understanding. That said, what I found most valuable in MacCannell’s studies was that he offered a vast array of reasoning for why people seek out a tourist experience, the thought behind why they may decide on one type of experience rather than another and the differentiation of the value of a particular experience. What the book does is provide a much greater list of questions to be asked if one is determining how to create a tourist production or experience that is understood, appreciated and valued by the widest range of viewers, spectators or audience. Raising the question of what a tourist is ultimately seeking out is significant: leisure, authenticity, comfort, quality, knowledge, and should the first step in the development of a tourist experience.

The question is, how do I satisfy the expectation of every tourist that may be participating in a particular experience, and can I? What may be missing from the reading is discussing the different approach to tourism from the aspect of social status. The objective of tourism in the lower class versus upper class, and perhaps the distinction of experience between the two at different points in history. Yes, the book does differentiate somewhat, the budget traveler versus the luxury traveler, but understanding “who ventures where” can be very enlightening and where do those lines cross. Obviously, every level of social class can visit the Eiffel Tower, on the other hand, whom can afford to go to Paris? Another area to consider when understanding tourist expectation and experience is popular reaction to something. For example, when Picasso created a particular painting, his intention & purpose could have many definitions from personal expression to social statement and the reaction to that work by the public in 1920 could be completely different from that of a viewer in 2007. All of this based on the changes in society and culture and the actual society from which the viewer comes, (American versus Ugandan, Jewish versus Muslim). In order for the tourist to receive the greatest understanding and appreciation for the experience, how much information needs to be provided him/her as part of the experience, if any. These are several notions that I found the reading to evoke, yet could stand to discuss further. Concepts such as “Tourist/ Sight/ Marker” and “Front region/ Back Region” are important to understand but often the surface definition is simple where as exploring the many different examples of them can be much more valuable.

Posted by BKG at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)

Dori Lubliner on MacCannell

How do I define the tourist? First of all, I think that MacCannell is correct in saying that although there is a negative quality associated with being a tourist, everyone is one. Tourist attractions are cultural experiences. Even the most hyper-sensitive, liberal-minded philosopher or scholar must admit his/her culpability within MacCannell’s model. It is about human behavior in response to “otherness” in varying forms. The tourist is of all classes, races, cultures, religions and identities; he/she is looking to understand, revere, mock, inspect, escape, and experience something “other” that is not quotidian. The tourist seeks a cultural experience whether it is for educational, socioeconomic, religious, or leisure purposes. The tourist looks for an affirmation in a system of signification in which the attraction is a marker of semiotic meaning; however, MacCannell aptly points out that the tourist often confuses recognition for perception and therefore misidentifies the symbolism by conventionalizing it. Therein lays his, and every other scholar’s problem with tourist identities.

Studying tourism is all about the context. For my purposes the semiotic approach will be most helpful in discerning the abundant misidentification of the Broadway musical. There is nothing more stereotypically artsy New York tourist attraction than the spectacle of Broadway as a particularly Bourgeois American cultural experience. It is also helpful to think about the mechanics behind the Broadway musical and the work/leisure dichotomy reflected through back/front social space as well as the public and private experiences of such a spectacle. Looking at the Broadway musical is a two-fold performance studies project because the musical is a performance in and of itself as well as being a tourist destination. Performance Studies would approach tourism from an anthropological standpoint in which the tourist is an inherent identity that is constantly performed through dynamic acts of performative spectatorship. Performance Studies finds a significant place most obviously in the ritualization of tourism. Tourism as a modern ritual exemplifies how people perform a sequence of events that climax in the encounter with the attraction, which fulfills a kind of tourist rite of passage.

Posted by BKG at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)

locals and tourism (i'm new to this blogging thing...)

I am very intrigued about tourism changing a location, especially when MacCannell discusses some residents trying to send negative messages about their locales to fend off tourists. My grandfather has a house on Long Beach Island in southern New Jersey that my great-grandparents built. While my family lives there every summer and has for generations, we still fall into a “tourist” sub-category—not quite local, not quite “shoobie.” For a few summers, I worked in the oldest restaurant on the island, right on the bay with huge windows, and dealt with a wide range of customers—those who loved it because it was very nostalgic, others who detested it. Many of the customers who loved the restaurant disliked the way that tourism had changed the island—the relaxing, gritty island they loved had become cosmopolitan, over-priced, and crowded. There is also a threat that the island’s only super market may be closed due to a raise in taxes and will be paved and replaced by rental properties. While this change may not affect people spending a week on LBI, the thought of dealing with rental traffic on and off the island to get groceries is about as appealing as riding the subway from Queens to Brooklyn late on a Saturday night. Consumerism and capitalism have had such impacts on the Jersey Shore, I almost wonder if the change in demographics will not eventually leave the now over-constructed island a ghost town—if prices in realty drop and it is no longer an economically sound investment, what happens to the locale?

A friend from Ivory Coast once told me that the war started soon after the government built the basilica in Abidjan. The government’s goal had been to increase tourism, but in addition to much civil strife, what people saw were excessive funds spent to placate visitors while citizens were starving. While she said things were much more complicated, the unrest started around the same time as a government investment in tourism. When a mock-Eiffel Tower and a new residence for the President were completed in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, I heard citizen’s expressing similar outrage and predicting similar public unrest to be in the country’s future.
I had never thought about tourism in relationship to Marx, but I’m pretty curious about it now.

The other thing I thought about with MacCannell was the “marker” tourists give certain sites. I was in Nuremberg with a couple friends and was much more excited about Albrecht Durer’s house because I had done a report on him in grade school. I brought my own background to the site and it became extraordinary, much more so than the plaque in front could have accomplished on its own. There was also a scary, scary distorted rabbit sculpture in front of it which created a memory, which I am including just for entertainment value…

Posted by Aralene Callahan at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2007

Nico Daswani on "hidden places," BKG responds

I am thinking about a project for this class. I have been reading a book by Steve Zeitlin, whom I think you know, a book called Hidden New York. What is interesting to me is that some of the sites are not necessarily very hidden, such as Coney Island, however the type of experiences he offers are unique- and in this sense hidden. This raises the question for me about how we give meaning to sites and as a cultural programmer I think about how to facilitate a deeper exchange between people and between people and sites. One of our goals with the World Festival of Sacred Music in LA was for angelinos to take their city more seriously and discover its wealth of people and places--and redefine their relationship to their city-- is there such a thing as internal tourism?

On a completely different subject, I am also interested in the Israeli backpacker phenomenon. I met many on my travels to Northern India this past summer, and was stunned to see that there was a Jewish Center in Leh in eastern Kashmir. I wondered about what kind of experience these people got and how that would be different from mine, and wondered about the need for comfort and sense of home that some travellers have, when others want to rough it and feel like they are on the other side of the world!

BKG responds:

Time Out New York also does a little column each week about an overlooked detail of the city. It is an interesting (and actually venerable concept) of a hidden or secret city, with specialized guidebooks to the secrets.

Here is a 3-D version of Hidden New York, billed as an online documentary film, and the Place Matters website. Sign up for a weekly email about a place that matters.

Here is Forgotten New York, Lost in Place, .

There is also Urban Explorations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_exploration. These (and the Situationist projects to which they are related) find adventure at home through various strategies and practices, whether through the idea of "hidden" in "full view" (i.e. unattended), trespassing (going places you are not supposed to), or randomizing the routine ("organized alienation of tourism") and otherwise taking an experimental approach.

See, for example,
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/article/2005/may/22/observerescapesection2
http://www.spacing.org/writing_abstract.html.

Very different from various forms of enshrinement, as discussed by MacCannell.

The NYC bloggers' map is interesting too: http://www.nycbloggers.com/

Posted by BKG at 06:01 PM | Comments (1)

January 24, 2007

Readings for Monday January 29, 2007

If you have difficulty getting hold of Dean MacCannell's The Tourist (a copy is on reserve in Bobst), please read these articles instead.

These readings, which span the period 1973 to 2001, begin with the emergence of interest in tourism in sociology, inaugurated in large measure by the publication of MacCannell's The Tourist. In the essay found here, one of MacCannell's core concepts (the role of front and back regions in the staging of authenticity), derived from Goffman, is explored. Erik Cohen, also a sociologist, offers a typology of tourist experiences, which is part of his more general concern with the concept of the tourist and a typology of tourists. Recommended is his 1984 article on the sociology of tourism, where he outlines tourism as a system. Adler, a sociologist, is of special interest to us for her attention, as early as 1989, to travel as a performed art; she pays special attention to the relationship of the history of tourism to the history of art and examines artistic practices that are at one and the same time travel practices. Franklin and Crang, geographers, offer a manifesto of sorts for the "new tourism," upon the launching of the new journal Tourist Studies. Recommended as well is Bauman, a Polish born and trained sociologist, who suggests what a postmodern perspective might offer when tourism and its history become an allegory of sorts for contemporary life.

In addition to anything at all that you find of interest in these readings, here are some additional angles:

1. Based on these readings, how might you define the "tourist"?
2. Where in any of these readings do you see useful concepts and methods for studying tourism today, especially in relation to a project you might do for this class?
3. Where in these readings do you find opportunities for suggesting what a performance studies approach to tourism might be? Are there relevant concepts or concern with particular phenomena or kinds of practices (and ways of looking at them) that might figure in such an approach?

Please read:

MacCannell, Dean. 1973. Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings. American Journal of Sociology 79, no. 3: 589-603.

Cohen, Erik. 1979. A phenomenology of tourist experiences. Sociology 13, no. 2: 179-201.

Adler, Judith. Origins of Sightseeing. Annals of Tourism Research 16, no. 1 (1989): 7-29.

Franklin, Adrian and Michael Crang, The trouble with tourism and travel theory? Tourist Studies 1, no. 1 (2001): 5-22.

Recommended:

Cohen, Erik. 1984. The Sociology of Tourism: Approaches, Issues, and Findings. Annual Review of Sociology 10: 373-92.

Bauman, Zygmunt. 1996. From pilgrim to tourist--or a short history of identity. In Questions of cultural identity, eds. Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay. London, Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage, 18-36.

Posted by BKG at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)