Noel B. Salazar - Published & unpublished work |
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If you would like to read any of the unpublished writings listed below, just send me an e-mail (nsalazar |
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tourism international tourism alternative tourism development third world developed country developed countries developing country developing countries Indonesia Yogyakarta Yogya Jogja Tanzania Arusha Zanzibar Africa East Africa Asia insular Southeast Asia insular South-east Asia anthropology public interest anthropology anthropology in action applied anthropology AAA SFAA NAYA trinet tourism researh travel traveller travelling traveler traveling tourist tourists turismo tourisme viajar viaje viaje antropologie antropologia anthropologie ethnology ethnologie ethnologia University of Pennsylvania Penn image imagery imagination experience decolonization decolonisation globalization globalizering globalisation global local glocal glocalization glocalisation Belgium Belgie Spain Spanje Espana Belgique Espagne Noel Salazar Medina Brugge Bruges fair tourism fair trade just tourism Lonely Planet Rough Guides autonomy indigenization indigenisation creolisation creolization mélange hybridization hybridisation rhizome culture tourism turismo cultural tourism culturel cultureel toerisme Tourismus Entwicklung mondialization mondialisation mondializering |
Published2008Representation in postcolonial analysis. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 2nd edition. William A. Darity, ed. Pp. 172-173, Vol. 7. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. Vacations. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 2nd edition. William A. Darity, ed. Pp. 565-566, Vol. 8. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.
2007Towards a global culture heritage interpretation? Evidence from Indonesia and Tanzania. Tourism Recreation Research 32(3):23-30. Natural and cultural heritage destinations worldwide are adapting themselves to the homogenizing culture of tourism at the same time as trying to maintain, or even increase, their local distinctiveness. While local and national tourism authorities and travel agencies package and sell so-called ‘authentic’ natural landscapes or ‘traditional’ cultures, what counts as heritage and the way in which it is interpreted are increasingly defined on a global scale (e.g. UNESCO’s World Heritage policies). By way of a comparative case study, this paper examines how local tour guides in Yogyakarta, Indonesia (cultural heritage tourism), and Arusha, Tanzania (natural heritage tourism), learn to tell their foreign guests seducing tourism tales. Combining an in-depth ethnography of the local tourism industry with a discourse-centred analysis of guiding narratives, the author explores the relationship between global tourism discourses and local tour guiding in both destinations. The focus is on how guides, through their interpretations of local heritage, act as key actors in mediating the tension between ongoing processes of globalization and local differentiation. Paradoxically, guides seem to rely on fashionable global tourism tales to interpret and sell their culture and heritage as authentically ‘local’. This is partly because tourists appear to appreciate interpretations that combine narratives about the particularities of a destination with well-known tourism imaginaries that are circulating globally. However, this does not mean that guides merely reproduce normative templates. In the interaction with tourists, they become themselves creative producers of tourism rhetoric.
“Small is successful”: The lure of small-scale tourism development and transnational networking. In Sustainability, Profitability and Successful Tourism, Aparna Raj, ed., pp. 396-420. New Delhi: Kanishka Publishers. Success stories in tourism usually come from the industry and are eagerly used as marketing tools to promote destinations. This chapter reflects on what ‘successful tourism’ is, and why scholars are more cautious than practitioners are in using this kind of catchphrase terminology. The discussion takes into account the contemporary context of an increasingly powerful global tourism-industrial complex. By way of a case study, the second part of the chapter analyzes a remarkable transnational network that has organically grown and aims at creating sustainable small-scale tourism projects worldwide. Focusing on the network’s unique combination of for-profit and non-profit activities in Belgium, Indonesia, and Tanzania, I assess the degree to which they are examples of ‘successful tourism’. The examples show that sustainable tourism development takes vision, planning, and a lot of work and dedication to assure that projects that were successful at one stage remain so in the near future.
2006Touristifying Tanzania: Local guides, global discourse. Annals of Tourism Research 33(3):833–852. Applying a combination of ethnographic and discourse-centered approaches to an exploratory case study in Arusha, Tanzania, this paper examines how global discourses are locally (re)produced. By acquiring specialized knowledge that is circulating through handbooks, magazines, websites, and videos, Tanzanian students learn how to become professional “local” guides. During their training they are instructed, both implicitly and explicitly, how to use global discourses to represent and sell their natural and cultural heritage as authentically local. However, in the personal interaction with tourists, guides do not merely reproduce the narratives and practices they were taught at school but become themselves creative storytellers, often subtly questioning or contesting the normative templates.
Antropología del turismo en países en desarrollo: Análisis crítico de las culturas, poderes e identidades generados por el turismo. Tabula Rasa: Revista de Humanidades 5:99-128. [The anthropology of tourism in developing countries: A critical analysis of tourism cultures, powers, and identities] El presente artículo examina las teorías del turismo internacional en países en desarrollo, inspiradas en la perspectiva antropológica. Esto se hace analizando las interrelaciones entre tres conceptos teóricos centrales: la cultura, el poder y la identidad. Los primeros intentos antropológicos de teorizar sobre el turismo contemporáneo se inscribieron en el marco de la economía política y se centraron en las desigualdades a escala macro. Enlazando el turismo con la dependencia y la dominación, dichas teorías estaban muy influenciadas por la teoría marxista. El mismo marco se ha usado más recientemente para analizar las llamadas formas de turismo «alternativas», las cuales hacen énfasis en lo auténtico y la sostenibilidad. Basados en el paradigma «anfitrión-invitado», los antropólogos han explorado tradicionalmente la interacción personal entre los turistas y las personas que habitan los destinos turísticos. Esta perspectiva se ha combinado con un enfoque en la relación entre el turismo y las políticas identitarias. Los académicos del tema han añadido recientemente una perspectiva foucaultiana y una crítica feminista. Con el propósito de sintetizar esta amplia gama de elaboraciones teóricas, la antropología del turismo tiene una apremiante necesidad de un marco teórico integrador, que entrelace los diferentes niveles en los que entran en juego las culturas, los poderes y las identidades.
Building a ‘culture of peace’ through tourism: Reflexive and analytical notes and queries. Universitas Humanística 62(2):319-333. Combining reflections on my personal experiences regarding tourism with an analytical review of key concepts, this essay addresses the question whether and how tourism contributes to building a global ‘culture of peace’. Setting the scene, I first situate myself vis-à-vis tourism and the peace-through-tourism idea. The next section of the paper provides an in-depth analysis of the terms culture, peace, and tourism. After having defined these concepts, I illustrate how my own research project contributes in innovative ways to the current debate. I conclude with a plea for more collaboration and open dialogue between policy makers, industry representatives, and scholars in order to facilitate ‘peace through tourism’ as well as ‘peace within tourism’.
“Enough talking! Can you take a picture of us instead?” Asian tourists redefining the role of local tour guides. In “Of Asian origin”: Rethinking tourism in contemporary Asia. International Conference Proceedings CD-ROM. Singapore: National University of Singapore. Asian tourism hot spots, like destinations elsewhere in the world, constantly have to adapt themselves to rapidly changing tourist populations and consumer patterns. This involves actively (re)creating a distinctive local identity, attractive for the targeted markets, and ensuring that the goods and services provided meet the standards set by the global tourism industrial-complex. Local tour guides are key players in mediating the tensions between these concurrent processes of localization and globalization. Drawing on ongoing fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, this paper explores how Indonesian guides adapt their narratives and practices to serve and please Asian clients. By way of an in-depth ethnographic study of Yogyakarta’s tourism sector in general and the local guiding scene in particular, I examine how the recent surge in tourists of Asian origin redefines the roles commonly assigned to guides in the literature (which is mainly based on research of Western tourists). Preliminary findings seem to suggest that the different ways guides deal with Western and Asian tourists should not be explained only culturally. Structural characteristics of the way Asian tourism is currently organized have to be taken into account as well. The empirical data illustrate that, while the Indonesian guides are fine-tuning their narratives and practices to accommodate Asian cultural sensibilities and interests, broader power dynamics of the global tourism-industrial complex frame the encounter. As such, this case study reaffirms that tourism of Asian origin is both shaping and being shaped by the currently dominant models of global tourism.
Experimenting with “glocal ethnography” as a methodology to study tourism in Asia and beyond. In Questions of methodology: Researching tourism in Asia. Asia Research Graduate Workshop Proceedings CD-ROM. Singapore: National University of Singapore. Researching tourism in Asia, as elsewhere in the world, is a fascinating but also extremely challenging endeavour. Since tourism is a multi-layered phenomenon – marked by a plethora of politico-economic, socio-cultural and other processes of production and consumption on local, national, regional, and global levels – many studies fail to understand and explain it adequately. Collaborative, mixed-methods, and multi-sited research have been proposed as possible ways to tackle and unpack tourism’s complexity. However, these are demanding methodologies to engage with as a graduate student, often with limited time, experience, and resources. Using my ongoing fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, as a case study, I demonstrate how “glocal ethnography” as a methodology helps me capturing the details of the local tourism scene while at the same time paying attention to how it is firmly embedded in and continuously interacting with broader processes and power structures. In this paper, I offer a tentative description of what “glocal ethnography” entails and I illustrate my ongoing experiment with this methodology in my own local study of the tourism-industrial complex.
De vrees voor een tsunami leidde tot massahysterie, Brugsch Handelsblad, Friday, 9 June 2006, 4-5. [The fear of a tsunami led to mass hysteria]
2005Tourism and glocalization: "Local" tour guiding. Annals of Tourism Research 32(3):628-646.In tourism, global-local dynamics have been most researched in the field of cultural and heritage tourism. Using a group of tour guides in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, as an example, this paper explores the usefulness of the theoretical construct ‘glocalization' to better understand the dynamics of globalization and localization processes in tourism. The Indonesian tour guides studied are fully participating in global popular culture and the use of modern technology in their private lives. While working, however, they ‘glocalize' their guiding practices by creatively adapting their representations of the ‘local' to the tastes of different groups of international tourists. It is concluded that tourism offers excellent opportunities to study glocalization processes but that more grounded and critical research is needed.
Resolving conflicts in heritage tourism: A public interest anthropology approach. International Journal of Heritage Studies 11(5). (Co-editor with Benjamin W. Porter; Special Issue) This special issue explores how and why conflicts arise in the development and practice of heritage tourism. From New York City’s Ground Zero and the archaeological site of Chichén Itzá in Yucatan, Mexico, to an Underground Railroad site in Pennsylvania and a post-industrial Massachusetts town, the authors of these four articles are concerned with identifying the often overlapping interests of stakeholders in their attempts to gain access to and guide the development of heritage resources. This issue grows out of a 2003 symposium entitled ‘Resolving Conflicts in Heritage Tourism: A Public Interest Anthropology Approach’, at the 102nd annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, Illinois, organised by Dr Peggy Reeves Sanday, Noel Salazar, and Benjamin Porter of the University of Pennsylvania. The symposium encouraged scholars to consider heritage apart from official and ‘top-down’ definitions as well as how an emerging methodological approach, public interest anthropology, could be applied to the analysis of heritage conflicts.
Heritage tourism, conflict, and the public interest: An introduction. International Journal of Heritage Studies 11(5):361-370. (Co-author with Benjamin W. Porter; Special Issue) This introduction places the issue’s key themes of heritage, tourism, conflict, and the public interest in focus and illustrates their intersection in a brief case study from modern Jordan. Following this, the four ensuing articles are discussed with an emphasis on their contributions to the issue’s themes. Heritage and heritage tourism are long familiar terms to the journal’s readership and our goal is not to recapitulate what others have described so well elsewhere. In particular, we analyse a process of revaluation that objects, sites, and practices undergo before they are placed within the domain of heritage. Additionally, we explain why tourism is an ideal realm in which to investigate heritage and why the conflicts that erupt around heritage tourism are particularly volatile.
Más allá de la globalización: La ‘glocalización' del turismo. Política y Sociología 42(1):135-149. [The “glocalization” of tourism: An ethnographic perspective] (Special Issue, Sociology of Tourism) En los estudios sobre el turismo, globalización y localización se conciben a menudo en oposición binaria. En este trabajo se muestra una etnografía de un grupo indonesio de guías de turismo para ilustrar cómo lo global y lo local están íntimamente entrelazados a través de lo que se ha descrito como el proceso de "glocalización". Los guías estudiados son buena muestra de ese fenómeno de glocalización. Participan plenamente de una cultura popular global y en sus vidas privadas hacen uso de las nuevas tecnologías. Por contra, en su trabajo representan con maestría la vida “glocalizada” que les rodea como distintivamente "local", adaptada a los gustos de los diferentes grupos de turistas. Se concluye pues que el turismo ofrece excelentes oportunidades para estudiar el fenómeno de la glocalización, aunque aún es necesaria una mayor cantidad de investigación empírica.
"Seducation": Learning the art of telling tourism tales. In On voyage: New directions in tourism theory. International Conference Proceedings CD-ROM. Berkeley: UC Berkeley Tourism Studies Working Group. Tourist destinations worldwide are adapting themselves to the homogenizing culture of the global tourism industry at the same time as trying to commoditize their local distinctiveness. These twin processes of globalization and localization play out clearly in the practices and narratives of local tour guides, often the only ‘local people' with whom tourists interact for a considerable amount of time during their trip. Applying a combination of grounded ethnographic and discourse-centered approaches to fieldwork data from Yogyakarta , Indonesia , and Arusha , Tanzania , this paper examines how guides learn to tell tourists seducing tourism tales. Paradoxically, guides rely on popular globally circulating discourses to represent and sell natural and cultural heritage as authentically ‘local'. However, in the interaction with tourists they do not merely reproduce but become themselves creative producers of narratives, often subtly altering or even contesting the normative global templates. The use of a comparative case study approach to examine tour guiding narratives and practices in two different destinations is an innovative way to study and theorize the complex interconnections between the local, national, and global layers of tourism in general.
2004Heritage and tourism, PIA and global interests. Anthropology in Action 11(2/3):2-60. (Co-editor with Benjamin W. Porter; Double Issue Special Edition) All papers in this special issue on public interest anthropology applied to cultural heritage and tourism were originally presented at the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. The panel took up the general conference theme, ‘Peace', in an exploration of heritage, tourism, and the ways public interest anthropology can address proliferating conflicts arising in tourism at heritage sites. Each author addresses a diverse assortment of themes intersecting with tourism, heritage, and the public interest, analyzing how groups formulate heritage identities and translate these identities into representations and special interests. Cultural heritage and tourism: A public interest approach - Introduction. Anthropology in Action 11(2/3 ):2-8. (Co-author with Benjamin W. Porter; Double Issue Special Edition) Introduction to a special journal issue on public interest anthropology applied to cultural heritage and tourism. Resolving conflicts in heritage tourism: A public interest approach. Anthropology News 45 (2): 44-45. (With Benjamin W. Porter and Peggy R. Sanday) Tourism as seen through the eyes of an anthropologist. Newsletter Via Via Jogja 3:3. Developmental tourists vs. Development tourism: A case study. In Tourist behaviour: A psychological perspective, Aparna Raj, ed., pp. 85-107. New Delhi: Kanishka Publishers. Many Western development NGOs have a well-established tradition of organizing field trips for their staff, volunteers, and benefactors to projects in developing countries. These NGOs are increasingly offering their ‘off-the-beaten-track’ journeys to the broad public as well. This kind of tourism can be called ‘development tourism’. Interestingly, the motivations of tourists participating in such journeys clearly differ from the intentions of the organizing NGOs. Although aimed at confronting people with the complexity of development aid and gain extra support for project work, the case study analyzed in this chapter shows how tourists choosing for development tourism seem to be more preoccupied with their self-development. Development tourism can therefore best be regarded as yet another response to the growing demand for new, distinctive kinds of leisure for the educated, mainly Western, middle-class.
Forthcoming“Imaged or imagined? Cultural representations and the “tourismification” of people and places. To appear in Cahiers d’Études Africaines.“Enough talking!” Asian tourists redefining the roles of Asian tour guides. To appear in Civilisations 57(1/2). A troubled past, a challenging present, and a promising future? Tanzania’s tourism development in perspective. To appear in Tourism Review International. Tourism development and modernity in Africa. To appear in Le Bulletin de l’APAD. Between the global and the local: Toward “glocal ethnographies” of tourism. To appear in Research methodologies and methods in cultural tourism, Greg Richard (Ed.).
Unpublished2007Unbridled global tourism development and its local frontrunners of ‘modernity’. Paper to be presented at the Anthropology of Social Change and Development Conference: Development, Liberalism and Modernity - Trajectories for an Anthropology of Social Change, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren (Belgium), December 13-15. The anthropology of development traditionally focuses on fields like health, education, or agriculture; it rarely considers tourism as part of development. This has much to do with the ambivalent attitude anthropologists have had towards tourists since the establishment of the discipline. However, local stakeholders in ‘to-be-developed-localities’ are often excited about the possibility of drawing international tourists (and foreign currencies) to their region. Tourism as a cause of social change, on the other hand, has been well-studied. Scholars have repeatedly lamented how tourism has destroyed the traditional lifestyle of once-untouched natives, often negating the agency people might have in the commodification of their culture.
Temporality is a key dimension in many forms of tourism. For people interested in meeting other cultures, for example, travel to the ‘Other’ is often conceived as a journey to a time-frozen past. In developing countries, local service providers tirelessly try to fulfill these nostalgic imaginaries of authenticity. The daily encounter with tourists places tourism workers in an in-between temporality, representing the past (tradition) while dreaming of the future (development). An analysis of this ambivalent liminal dynamic is largely absent from tourism research, which is too focused on tourists alone or on the effects of the leisure industry on amorphous ‘local communities’. Focusing on local tour guides, the locals with whom tourists usually spend most time, this paper explores how guiding practices undermine existing linear assumptions about temporality and timing, which often presume that actors are able to do only one thing at a time, and that events follow each other in a linear order. One the hand, tour guides strive for their clients’ immediate satisfaction by playing the role of the knowledgeable ‘local’ and, on the other hand, they operate in the long term by using their contacts with tourists to become more cosmopolitan and socially mobile. Using ethnographic examples from Indonesia and Tanzania, I show that a successful mediation between so-called host and guest cultures not only implies a profound transformation of the guides’ own identities and social personae but also indirectly stimulates modifications of the host cultures to which they bring foreign tourists.
The various ways in which peoples and places around the globe are represented and documented in popular media like movies, websites, or magazines have an immense impact on how tourists imagine their future destinations. Even though tourism and travel discourses take a variety of forms – oral, written, pictorial, symbolic, or graphic – visual imagery seems to have the biggest influence on shaping tourists’ pre-trip dreams and imaginaries. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this paper illustrates the dynamic processes of cultural tourismification in Tanzania’s so-called “Northern Circuit”. In many parts of the world, famous nature documentaries, mainstream Hollywood entertainment, and semi-biographic films about this region have become fashionable icons for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, often reinforcing a perfect romantic and nostalgic vision of the black continent as an unexplored and time-frozen wild Eden. While tourism representations of northern Tanzania have overwhelmingly focused on its amazing wildlife, an increasing demand for meet-the-people cultural tourism has brought local people more and more into the picture. Interestingly, locals are commonly portrayed while engaging in vibrant rituals of celebration or in inauthentic, staged poses wearing celebrative costumes. As an example, the paper discusses how the romanticized image of the virile Maasai warrior, dressed in colourful red blankets and beaded jewellery, has led to a true Maasai-mania that is profoundly affecting the daily life and culture of Maasai and other local communities.
2006Public interest anthropology among Tanzanian tour guides: Consultancy, teaching… and a lot of learning. Paper prepared for the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology Student Achievement Award (2nd prize). This paper explores how a Public Interest Anthropology (PIA) approach can help engaged anthropologists, and in particular student anthropologists, to successfully combine their activist drive to change and improve the situation of the people they encounter while doing fieldwork with a more academic concern to fully grasp the complexities of the contexts in which they work. I do this by presenting and reflecting upon my preliminary fieldwork on tour guiding in Arusha, Tanzania, in the summer of 2004. During my stay, I performed three partially overlapping tasks: (1) I collaborated with a non-profit organization in a project to improve local tour guide training programs; (2) I taught as a guest lecturer in anthropology at a local tour guide school; and (3) I did fieldwork in the more traditional sense of the word, assessing whether Arusha would be a good site for my doctoral fieldwork. It was the mixture of these different roles and activities that enabled me to establish more solid local working relationships, which in turn allowed me to better address some of the needs of the people I was working with and, at the same time, produced more valuable insights for my own research.
Global tourism imaginaries and local tour guiding in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Paper presented at the Asia Pacific Week 2006, Australian National University, Canberra (Australia), January 29-February 2; and the Center for Tourism Studies, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta (Indonesia), January 20.
2005Imagining the present as an imagined past: Local interests in global tourism discourses. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C., December 2. Anthropology now takes it for granted that cultures are not (and never were) passive, bounded and homogeneous entities. Instead, space and society as well as place and community are seen as mutually constituted. However, we should question the impact of this paradigmatic shift in thinking on the world outside academia. How much did it change popular representations of cultures and other collective identities? Ideas of old-style anthropology – objectifying, reifying, homogenizing, and naturalizing peoples – are now widely used by social movements, staking their claims of identity and cultural belonging on strong notions of place and locality. In the multibillion-dollar tourism industry, nostalgic essentializing imagery, often based on outdated ethnographic descriptions, is used to market and sell places and people as authentic destinations. This is paradoxical because tourism itself is one of the global forces producing change and hybridity. Drawing on ethnographic data from Yogyakarta , Indonesia , and Arusha , Tanzania , this paper reflects on the following questions: Whose interests are served by (re)producing stereotyped images of the time-frozen local(s)? What agency do local people (and anthropologists) have in reproducing, contesting or transforming globally circulating tourism representations? How do culture brokers such as local tour guides negotiate the conflicting interests of foreign tourists and local communities in their own narratives? How should representations of the local, as it is currently lived and experienced, be incorporated in global tourism discourses? What is the role of an engaged ethnographer in field situations such as these, where multiple local groups with different interests compete with one another?
Timeless tradition vs. culture change: Local interests in global tourism discourses. Paper presented at the CASCA-SANA-UADY/FCA Conference, Mérida (Mexico), May 5. Anthropologists now take it for granted that cultures are not passive, bounded and homogeneous entities. However, these ideas still prevail in the globally circulating discourses of the tourism industry that represent and sell places and people as authentic destinations. This is paradoxical because the phenomenon of tourism itself is a global force producing local change and hybridity. Drawing on ethnographic data from Indonesia and Tanzania , this paper asks the following questions: Whose interests are served by stereotyped images of the time-frozen local(s)? What role do local people and ethnographers play in (re)producing or transforming global touristic representations of ‘the local'? Whose heritage is it anyway? Teaching 'local' African tour guides a 'global' discourse. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Santa Fe, April 6. This paper is based on fieldwork in a tour guide school in Arusha, Tanzania. Giving guest lectures and observing other instructors teaching gave the author the opportunity to analyze what exactly is being transmitted in the school. Through the acquisition of ‘global' knowledge – reading foreign handbooks, magazines, and websites, and watching foreign videos – students are taught to become ‘local' tour guides. It is by appropriating a ‘global' discourse that they are better able to sell the natural and cultural heritage as ‘local'. This paradox forces us to rethink the value of the local-global dichotomy when talking about heritage and tourism.
2004‘Being there’: Field experiences as ethnographer... and tourist. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Dallas, April 1. While doing fieldwork abroad, ethnographers are surrounded by other ‘outsiders' who sometimes play very similar roles, at least in the eyes of local ‘insiders'. Anthropologists themselves also play different roles, the obvious role of ethnographer being only one among others. Based on recent research on tourism undertaken in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, this paper gives a personal account of the difficulties that can be encountered ‘in the field' when positioning oneself as ethnographer. Some anthropologists have suggested that advocacy work is a key element to justify their fieldwork, both for the communities they are working with and the broader public. Taking the point of view of a student-ethnographer, for whom doing fieldwork is a degree requirement and not easily combined with advocacy ‘in the field', this paper explores other possibilities of being an engaged student-anthropologist.
The academic quests of an engaged scholar. Paper presented at the African Studies Center ‘Scholar for a Day’ Colloquium with Prof. Peter Geschiere, Philadelphia, March 29.
2003‘Glocalized’ representations of ‘local’ culture: The cultural practices of tour guides in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, November 21.Despite the increased threat of terrorism and conflict, tourism is a growing global phenomenon. Together with other transnational flows, tourism facilitates ‘global’ trends to penetrate the ‘local’ and vice versa. Every tourist destination finds itself in a constant process of ‘glocalization’, by creatively adapting its local reality to broader global developments, while at the same time trying to maintain, or even increase, its distinctive features as a unique – ‘authentic’ – destination. Local tour guides are first-line agents of ‘glocalization’, playing a crucial intermediary role in the cultural encounter between tourists and the local population. The marketing of cultural tourism, which instills in tourists the desire for some kind of ‘traditional’ cultural form, illustrates what ‘glocalization’ is all about. Previous anthropological research has described how, at different levels, the representation of a tourist destination is socio-culturally constructed. Most studies, however, have failed to take into account how local tour guides increasingly make use of global networks to adapt their discursive representations of the local culture to the taste of different types of tourists. Based on fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, this paper investigates how local tour guides creatively deal with the tensions between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ in their daily practices, and how new information and communication technologies help them to do so. The findings suggest that global networking indeed gives guides some ‘comparative advantage’, by helping them to turn their ‘glocalized’ narratives into a more profitable enterprise. However, it does not necessarily make them better ‘culture brokers’.
Keywords – Glocalization. Unpublished paper, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.This paper traces the history of the concept of glocalization and analyzes how it has been used throughout the social sciences. The following fields are reviewed: global marketing and economics; sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies; geography, urban studies, area studies, and tourism studies. The scholarly use of glocalization is also contrasted with more popular usages of the term.
The global tourism industry: An exploratory analysis. Unpublished paper, Organizational Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania.Tourism is widely believed to have become the biggest industry in the world. Not surprisingly, many interest groups try to shape the form tourism takes. This paper explores the multiple faces of the global tourism industry, specifically focusing on the role of inter-, supra-, trans-, and multinational players. The political economy of tourism is opaque because the tourism sector strives to be self-regulatory. This poses serious questions of how this global industry can fit within systems of global governance.
Tanzania’s tourism development in perspective. Unpublished paper, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania. Despite the many assets the
country possesses, tourism in Tanzania has operated far below its potential
in the last four decades and the, often unplanned, development of the
tourist industry has had its costs for both the Tanzanian people and
the environment. This paper places the development of tourism in Tanzania
in a broader historical and socio-economic perspective. This larger
framework helps us to better understand tourism’s role within
the encompassing – and sometimes conflicting – processes
of localization, regionalization, nationalization, and globalization
that affect Tanzania as much as other countries.
Going on ‘safari’: A sociolinguistic exploration of the relations between Kiswahili, the Waswahili and international tourism. Unpublished paper, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.The sociolinguistic study of verbal encounters in touristic situations provides a unique opportunity to examine communication between different linguistic groups under unusual circumstances: the high temporariness of international tourists and the high degree of linguistic accommodation of the local people. Language in touristic situations is not only an important practical problem; it is also of theoretical interest precisely because such situations are marked by different parameters than other forms of intercultural communication. In this paper, I want to focus on a particular linguistic situation, namely, the tension between the promotion of Kiswahili as a national language in Kenya and the sociolinguistic identity construction of the Waswahili, the native speakers of Kiswahili. This tension has some important repercussions for international tourism, although tourists – even those who have studied some Kiswahili – are hardly aware of this.
Theorizing tourism in developing countries: Interrelationships between cultures, powers, and identities. Unpublished paper, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.This article reviews anthropologically inspired theories of tourism in developing countries, analyzing the interrelationships between three core theoretical concepts – culture, power, and identity. The first attempts at theorizing contemporary tourism were embedded in a framework of political economy and focused on macro-scale inequalities. Linking tourism to dependency and domination, these theories heavily relied on Marxist theory. The same framework has been used in recent times to analyze so-called ‘alternative’ forms of tourism, which focus on authenticity and sustainability. Relying on the ‘host-guest’-paradigm, anthropologists have traditionally explored the interaction between tourists and people living in tourist destinations. This approach has been coupled with a focus on the relation between tourism and identity politics. Tourism scholars have recently added a Foucauldian perspective and a feminist critique. In order to synthesize this wide array of conceptualizations, tourism studies is in urgent need of an integrative theoretical framework, interlinking the different levels at which cultures, powers and identities are at play.
The conservation of nonhuman primates: Wildlife tourism as a panacea? Unpublished paper, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.The current policy assumption worldwide is that tourism has significant potential to support wildlife conservation. Tourism is widely celebrated as a contribution to conservation in developing countries because of local success and informal review, often over short timeframes. Appraisals of the economics of community benefits and costs from wildlife, however, suggest more caution. These appraisals do not render wildlife tourism useless to community conservation projects, but instead encourage project developers to explore fully, and in advance, the costs and benefits to all stakeholders – local people, primates, and tourists – and to develop management protocols accordingly. Besides, there is clearly a need for greater realism as to the potential of tourism in areas such as West and Central Africa, where tourist infrastructure is poor, tourism is limited, and political instability is a significant problem.
The missing link: Evolution and tourism. Unpublished paper, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.The link between evolutionary theory, paleontology, and contemporary tourism is not as far-fetched as first thought. Although content-wise evolutionary theory may not seem very relevant for tourism studies, its methodology certainly is. It can help tourism scholars to rethink and reformulate their strictly linear tourism development models. And where evolutionary theory is not well understood by many people, “paleo-tourism” offers limited means to solve this problem.
2002Development, tourism … and anthropology: Baka-pygmies ‘on holidays’ in a Belgian nature park. Unpublished paper, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.This paper critically analyzes the stay of ten Baka-pygmies in a private Belgian nature park, during the summer of 2002. This example nicely illustrates the fact that there are many players in the touristic game and that every player has different ways of defining culture and society.
‘Ethnosprech.com’: A modern register of international tourism marketing language in postmodern formats. Unpublished paper, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.Since much of the rhetoric used in tourism marketing is both logically and temporally prior to any travel or sightseeing, one can legitimately argue that tourism is grounded in discourse. Tourism advertising nicely illustrates how texts, far from being static markers of cultural traits, are actually dynamic agents that are continually influencing, modifying and reifying the meanings, beliefs and ways of seeing, of contemporary cultural groups. However, this language of advertising is rarely a monolithic genre. On their turn, the different tourism registers appropriate other genres, as we have seen in the example of the appropriation of the ethnographic register. Besides, “brochurese” is not longer limited to beautifully printed glossy brochures. It has recently found its post-modern form(s) of expression on the Internet.
The power of tourism in developing countries: Towards an integrative theoretical framework. Unpublished paper, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.This article reviews how power relations operating at different levels in tourism in developing countries have been conceptualized through time. The first theories were embedded in a framework of political economy and focused on macro-scale inequalities. Linking international tourism to dependency and domination, they heavily relied on Marxist theory. The same theoretical framework has been used more recently to analyze power relations in newer forms of international tourism which focus on authenticity and sustainability. Anthropologists have traditionally focused on the power relations at play in the interaction between tourists and people living in a particular tourist destination, thereby relying on the ‘host-guest’-paradigm. Contemporary tourism theorists have added a Foucauldian perspective on power in international tourism and a feminist critique attacking previous conceptualizations for being gender biased. It is argued that the time has come in tourism studies for an integrative framework of power issues in international tourism, theoretically linking the different levels at which power is at play.
Seeing the 'Other': Tourist Consumption in ‘Development(al) Tourism’. Unpublished Master's Thesis, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Policy makers often consider
international tourism as one of the possible ways for ‘developing’
countries to ‘develop’, at least economically. Following
this logic, a few Western development NGOs (non-governmental organizations)
set up new and support existing tourism-related development projects.
More Western NGOs are involved in international tourism by organizing
‘field trips’ for their benefactors, staff, and volunteers
to the development projects they fund abroad. These trips often focus
on socio-cultural above economical issues. I call this ‘alternative’
form of tourism ‘development tourism’.
Anthropologies of tourism: Different theories, different approaches. Unpublished paper, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.Although it took a long time before anthropologists systematically started studying tourism, the anthropology of tourism is now a firmly established sub-field of socio-cultural anthropology. In this paper, I present some of the contributions that different anthropological approaches made to the anthropology of tourism. The scope is not to be exhaustive. By using examples from several theoretical frameworks, I want to illustrate how each of them influenced the anthropological study of tourism and how each provides new directions for this complex field of research.
Consuming the ‘Other’: The commodification of cultures through international tourism. Unpublished paper, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.Tourism and tourist ‘destinations’ have emerged as commodities and consumer items that are produced and reproduced by the tourism industry. In this paper, I analyze the processes of consumerism and commodification in international tourism. Concepts such as ‘fetishism’, ‘sustainability’, ‘subservience’ and ‘authenticity’ will prove to be very useful in the discussion. I also question whether so-called ‘alternative’ forms of tourism are as alternative as they claim to be. In order not to get stuck in a purely theoretical discourse, I present cultural tourism in Bali as an exemplary case study.
MSTour: The paradoxal role of ‘solidarity tourism’ in the battle of MST for a better Brazil. Unpublished paper, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.Tourism as a global industry is not merely about ‘leisure’. It is also used as a tool to convey all kinds of messages and an activity that can have unforeseen impacts on the people involved. This paper wants to illustrate this by way of a case study, analyzing the ‘solidarity tourism’ programs of the Brazilian ‘Landless Rural Workers Movement’ (MST). In order to understand this particular new form of tourism, I first situate MST within the broader political and agrarian Brazilian context. I then move on to show describe MST’s philosophy behind the MSTour, and how this kind of tourism is being promoted in the ‘West’. In the final discussion, I point to some future dangers related to the development of MST, including a criticism on the new tourism programs.
Towards an anthropology of ‘development(al) tourists’: Development aid vs. personal development. Unpublished paper, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.Many Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) specialized in development aid are involved in what I have termed ‘development tourism’ – an ‘alternative’ form of international tourism – by organizing trips to their projects abroad. This paper focuses on the “Culture & Project” journeys of the Flemish NGO ‘Vredeseilanden’ as a novel example of this kind of tourism. I sketch the personal motivations and experiences of people who went on a “Culture & Project” journey, comparing their views with the aims and development framework of the organizing NGO. Tourist questionnaires and semi-structured interviews revealed that people who choose for a “Culture & Project” journey mostly belong to the highly educated middle class. In contrast with the organizing NGO, which considers the journeys as a means to personally confront participants with the local dynamics of international development aid, the tourists themselves regard it primarily as an original way to spend their holidays. Moreover, their proclaimed interest in ‘meeting the locals’ conflicts with the urge to ‘see as much as possible’. Photographs, slides, or travel diaries usually serve as proof of the latter. I therefore argue that, at least from the tourists’ point of view, ‘development tourism’ could be renamed as ‘developmental tourism’, a means to stimulate their personal development, and an aid in reaffirming their own identity.
2001Changing worlds: Ethnography on the move. Unpublished paper, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.Like the objects of ethnographic inquiry – people – ethnography itself is on the move. Traditional ethnographies have been based on the ideas of locality. With the rise of globalization processes, this concept has been increasingly questioned on a theoretical level. With the fast expansion of different kinds of novel interaction patterns, such as the Internet, ethnographic work faces new challenges. There are more and more calls for multi-sited and multi-faceted ethnographies. This paper argues why.
Buddhist views on poverty and development. Unpublished paper, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.It is difficult to be sure that religious philosophical categories could be easily transformed into criteria of development. However, from a Buddhist point of view, it should be clear that the ultimate goal and the main indicator of the development is a human being. In this paper basic Buddhist concepts are used to develop some Buddhist views on poverty and development.
Hindu views on poverty and development. Unpublished paper, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.In this paper, I present some views on poverty and development from the viewpoint of Hinduism. Describing core Hindu notions such as the caste system and the ever-present tension between dharma and moksha, we can get a closer grip at what the sacred Hindu scriptures tell us about human development. Some examples show us how Indians nowadays put the theories into practice.
Words that make worlds. An introspective analysis of ‘development-speak’. Unpublished paper, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.The anthropological study of the globalizing cultural practices that constitute ‘development’ is by now well established. Yet few consider that analogous ‘developmental’ processes go on much closer to ‘home’, experiences that can provide students with a practical and experiential insight into the dilemmas of development itself. In this paper, I demonstrate how the potentialities and paradoxes of an academic course at university can be somehow compared to a development project. In a double move, I use an ethnographic approach to reveal the limitations of the development discourse and practice.
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Noel B. Salazar (Last updated: April 2008)
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