Tourism as pacifier
While it has become popular to condemn tourism on the grounds that it destroys cultures and recreates them as empty spectacles, I wonder whether the net effect is in fact more positive. One aspect of tourism is that it subjects little-known countries to the public gaze. While this is largely for lifestyle purposes - the reinvention of still-Communist Vietnam as an earthy, unusual destination for backpackers a mere generation after America lost the war is a case in point - it also creates Vietnam as a newer, more vital image in the Western public eye, and subjects it to scrutiny.
A good example of the power of tourism is Fiji. Beneath the idylic palms bubbles a long-lasting conflict between ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians which erupted into a coup in 2000. But after only a year of instability, democracy returned in 2001. I'd argue that in part, this was due to Fiji's tourism-led level of importance in the minds of Western media makers, disproportionate to its size or global importance. (Note, for example, the much longer incubation time of the conflict in the Solomon Islands, or the slow slide into bloody tribalism in Papua New Guinea, both places without significant tourism infrastructure as a base.) In short, it is in the interest of tourist destinations to brush up on human rights and appear welcoming, at least in glossy brochures. Countries who don't buy into tourism can still survive - the junta in Myanmar does well enough as a narco-state supplying the pleasure needs of other Western and regional subcultures - but once installed, tourism is an addictive source of funds. Western tourism means an onslaught of white people with white expectations of being treated OK, who expect not to see bodies on streets. Recommend-a-friend schemes don't really work in relation to muggings or inpending civil war.
But then again, tourist dollars have readily become a weapon in an internal war. The Islamist Bali bombings were well-aimed for two reasons. The choice of Bali as a target was a chance to attack the decadent West at its weakest; wiping out blind-drunk, sleazy white men in a land of sexual opportunity. But it also represented a chance to take the Hindu-dominated island down a notch. How dare the Balinese elevate themselves financially in a Muslim nation? What better way to install humility than by removing the tourist drip?
While it has become popular to condemn tourism on the grounds that it destroys cultures and recreates them as empty spectacles, I wonder whether the net effect is in fact more positive. One aspect of tourism is that it subjects little-known countries to the public gaze. While this is largely for lifestyle purposes - the reinvention of still-Communist Vietnam as an earthy, unusual destination for backpackers a mere generation after America lost the war is a case in point - it also creates Vietnam as a newer, more vital image in the Western public eye, and subjects it to scrutiny.
A good example of the power of tourism is Fiji. Beneath the idylic palms bubbles a long-lasting conflict between ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians which erupted into a coup in 2000. But after only a year of instability, democracy returned in 2001. I'd argue that in part, this was due to Fiji's tourism-led level of importance in the minds of Western media makers, disproportionate to its size or global importance. (Note, for example, the much longer incubation time of the conflict in the Solomon Islands, or the slow slide into bloody tribalism in Papua New Guinea, both places without significant tourism infrastructure as a base.) In short, it is in the interest of tourist destinations to brush up on human rights and appear welcoming, at least in glossy brochures. Countries who don't buy into tourism can still survive - the junta in Myanmar does well enough as a narco-state supplying the pleasure needs of other Western and regional subcultures - but once installed, tourism is an addictive source of funds. Western tourism means an onslaught of white people with white expectations of being treated OK, who expect not to see bodies on streets. Recommend-a-friend schemes don't really work in relation to muggings or inpending civil war.
But then again, tourist dollars have readily become a weapon in an internal war. The Islamist Bali bombings were well-aimed for two reasons. The choice of Bali as a target was a chance to attack the decadent West at its weakest; wiping out blind-drunk, sleazy white men in a land of sexual opportunity. But it also represented a chance to take the Hindu-dominated island down a notch. How dare the Balinese elevate themselves financially in a Muslim nation? What better way to install humility than by removing the tourist drip?
posted by Doug @ 4/10/2006 04:03:00 pm
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