RC 50 Statement

 

Kevin Meethan

 

University of Plymouth

 

 

I would like to begin outlining my approach by making some axiomatic points. First, the contemporary globalised world is one characterised by mobility rather than stasis. Secondly, tourism is one aspect of this mobility. Thirdly, tourism is a form of consumption of goods, services and the less tangible assets or culture that comprises a unique place. Fourth, this is not a passive activity, but involves the negotiation of meaning at both an individual and a social level, and finally, such activities involve the creation and maintenance of a self narrative or biography.

At a more theoretical or abstract level, this is a concern with broader sociological issues of agency and structure, identity and mobility, and in its widest sense, the construction of cultural identities.

 

The global movement of populations and sub groups is not a new development in itself, and neither is the fact that mobile populations bring with them cultural values and practices. What is of particular importance here is the idea that, given the speed and scope of mobility, the everyday experiences of people may no longer be so rooted in a singular locality than was arguably the case in the past, and consequently that identities can no longer be taken for granted as being rooted in one locality.

 

Seeing mobility - of which tourism is one variety - rather than stasis as a condition of the contemporary world, also necessitates an examination of the dynamics of place construction as a continually shifting interplay between local residents, the producers of tourist space and the tourists. The values and meanings that are both derived from and imposed on forms of tourist space indicate that different interests create and consume different forms of knowledge, perhaps built on wider cultural, social or group forms of consensus, perhaps as a more existential, unique and individual condition, or even combining elements of both.

 

Overall, the main thrust of my approach is that the practices involved in tourism, the production and consumption of tourism experiences and places, is not simply a matter of dominant discourses or gazes prescribing what may be experienced, thus reducing the consumer to the status of a passive entity devoid of agency. Rather, what it involves is a complex and dynamic interplay between the producers and consumers of tourist space, what is consumed are narratives of both space and self, in which both ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’ actively create. At the risk of reductionism, one can say that globalisation is not what happens out there, somewhere else, and to others, but rather is what we directly experience in our day to day lives, whether as a resident, or as a tourist. Although such changes may seem to challenge the authenticity and purity of cultures, to acknowledge that cultures both give and take from each other is simply to acknowledge the creativity of people to engage with, and respond to, the changing circumstances in which they find themselves.

 

In order to arrive at a more nuanced account of tourism, I would argue that attention needs to be focussed on the relationship between the production of the gaze/narrative/discourse on the one hand, and the practices of consuming on the other, and the contradictions, anomalies and paradoxes that this entails. I would argue that this can be achieved if we focus on the construction of individual biographies, on how a sense of the self is created and maintained, in particular the ways in which values, meanings and forms of knowledge can be altered, changed and renegotiated at all points in the production – consumption chain. By doing this, we would then be examining the ways in which different forms of knowledge are constructed out of the matrix of possibilities that mobility offers.

 

The approach outlined here then has a number of important theoretical and indeed methodological consequences. In many ways, it requires us to shift focus away from seeing institutions as the sole determinants of identity, and into an approach that looks to the active construction of a biographical self in the context of global changes and their localised manifestations. As a consequence, there is also a need to challenge the utility of the concept of culture as an analytical category, if not to discard it entirely.