Conclusion

Tourismscapes

5 Tourismscapes

5.7 Conclusion

Chapter 5 Tourismscapes

institutional environment into the content of the activities. Innovation, product diversification, inter- or intra-division of labour, or – in the terms of actor-network theorists – the addition of new human and non-human beings to the collectif, the enrolment of people and things that initially challenged tourism development, a qualitative shift in the properties of the actors involved in the collectif: all of these are possible outcomes of these struggles and negotiations (ibid.: 231).

Since tourismscapes are interactively open, the environment can trigger these changes. The reason stems primarily from the fact that all actors participate in several, sometimes conflicting networks (see Stalder, 1997). In general, no actor is exclusively defined by one network. Indeed, every actor-network affects and is affected by the characteristics of the actors that have emerged from other networks to which they belong, because an actor can and usually does belong to more than one actor network at the same time (Cordella and Shaikh, 2004: 5). The case can be made even stronger: the reason why a particular actor is included in given or emerging tourismscapes is precisely because he/she/it brings along all the actors of other networks to which he/she/it belongs. In sum, networks develop because they are in inseparable interaction with other networks and self-production requires adaptation to an ever-changing environment (Stalder, 1997).

102

Chapter 5 Tourismscapes

103

become part of the same space only when immutable mobiles – a network of elements that holds its shape – shuttles between the two. Without these, such actors as Dutch tourists and entrepreneurs in Manuel Antonio/Quepos do not exist in the same space. A common space results from the work of translation, which can be successful only if all the pieces in the network fit together. In this case, the tourismscapes will be provisionally closed and black-boxed. In other cases, however, the ongoing translation work results in networks that cannot be closed and eventually will dissolve.³¹

Similarly, we can also look at the ‘global’ side of tourismscapes. For example, what is the size of Boer and Wendel, Martinair or the world tourism market? These actors are certainly very large, since they mobilize millions of agents through processes of delegation. At first sight we assume that their amplitude must therefore stem from causes that absolutely surpass the small collectifs of the past.³² We might depict them, as Castells (2000) does, as the ‘networks of power’ that extend across the entire world. But if we wander about inside De Boer and Wendel, if we follow the chains of command in Martinair, or if we study the processes of selling and buying in the world tourism market, we never leave the local level. So they are local in all points, yet they are global as they connect Manuel Antonio/Quepos with Amsterdam or Miami. Instead of either remaining at the local level, that of interpersonal contacts, or moving abruptly to the global level and dealing with decontextualized and depersonalized realities, we should look for what allows us to pass from the local to the global and back, and from the human to the non-human: the collectifs labelled here as tourismscapes. They are the processes of ordering in the middle of four different realms: the human and the human, the ‘local’ and the ‘global’. But the non-human and the non-human do not explain tourismscapes, just as ‘global’ flows or ‘local’ interactions do not ‘cause’ tourismscapes. To the contrary, in studying tourismscapes we have to position ourselves at the midpoint, from where we can follow the attribution of both human and non-human properties, from where we can look at the intermediary arrangements that are much more interesting than the extremes.

Chapter 5 Tourismscapes

Notes

1 More recently Peters (2003) and Appelman (2004) significantly contributed to the body of knowledge in Dutch tourism studies.

2 See for an extensive discussion on the relation between tourism and GATS the publication of Seifert-Granzin and Jesupatham (1999), and also Pleumaron (2002a), Fayed and Fletcher (2002) and Brown (1998)

3 See Bianchi (2003) for a first account on the possibilities of relations between local anti-tourism activists and global activism

4 See for example Law and Hetherington (1999), Law and Mol (2000) and Law (2002) discussing Portuguese vessels en route to India.

5 See especially Urry (1992, Chapter 2)

6 Clearly, statistics show that developed countries still receive the bulk of international tourists, generate the greatest number of tourists and receive the greatest quantity of income from them. Yet, long-haul travel is predicted to increase its market share from 18% in 1995 to 24% in 2020 (Vanhove, 2003: 127).

7 EU-plus is the 25 European countries plus Bulgaria, Romania, Norway and Switzerland (see Peeters et al., 2004)

8 The search for new theoretical avenues in tourism studies started with an inspection of the globalization debate (Held et al. 1999). However, especially contributions by Urry (2000 and 2003) showed us the way to actor-network theorists like John Law. Generally speaking, I considered the understandings of global mobility as provided by for example Castells and Urry too abstract to relate to the state of affairs in my case study areas. To the contrary, actor-network theory opened new avenues and understandings of the way tourism unfolds at particular locales as well as it consequences (see Chapter 7).

9 See Latour (1993), Callon and Law (1995) and Murdoch (2001) for an extensive discussion on the principle of symmetry

10 The principle of symmetry between people and things has met severe criticism especially from social constructionists who in their response to Latour and other actor-network theorists defend the special place of human actors as well as their agency and knowledge in their explanatory schemes. It is argued that ‘these distinctions are so deep-seated and so much in part of our cultural heritage that the attempt to do away with them would make the resulting analysis utterly incomprehensible for its intended audiences’ (Belt, 2000, endnote 30. In: Hebinck 2001: 124). In this light Hebinck (2001) suggests that it is probably more fruitful to emphasize how nature and society evolve together.

Similarly, according to Murdoch (2001), it is worth considering a ‘middle way’, by assuming that, while humans are enmeshed within networks of heterogeneous relations, they retain their distinctive qualities as members of such a network. It should entail a way of combining an awareness of human distinctiveness – notably linked to language and culture – with a focus on the complex heterogeneous matrices in which this distinctiveness plays itself out. See for this discussion also Woods, 1997; Broek (in: Caalders, 2002); and Law (1999a) and Latour (1999) for rejoinders.

11 Already in 1899, Veblen pointed at the significance of conspicuous consumption (Veblen, 1953).

12 Objects are always enacted in a multi-topological manner; they are network objects, but they are also objects within Euclidean space. Paraphrasing Law (2002:97), a plane, or a car or a vessel is only an unbroken network shape if it is also an unbroken Euclidean shape.

13 As we have seen, actor-network theorists claim that these networks are composed not only of people, but also machines, texts, money, architectures – any relevant material. So, as Law (1992: 381) argues, the argument is that ‘the stuff of the social isn’t simply human. It is all these materials too. Indeed the argument is that we wouldn’t have a society at all if it weren’t for the heterogeneity of the networks of the social’ (see also Law, 1994: 23-24).

14 According to Law (1992: 383), we need to distinguish between ethics and sociology. The one may – indeed should – inform the other, but they are not identical. To say that there is no fundamental difference between people and objects is an analytical stance, not an ethical position.

15 See also Peters (2003) discussion of the creation of heterogeneous orders of ‘American Passages’.

16 As Brunori et al. (2004: 336) explain, the process of black-boxing originates from the progressive development of a network involving human and non-human elements until its ‘closure’ into an ‘engine’: a system of relations in which all elements of the network, even if motivated by different attitudes and expectations, are ‘aligned‘ around specific goals.

17 Or a leg is broken during a winter sports holiday – as in February 2005 in the case of my son. All of a sudden, ordering processes in tourism become plainly visible.

18 Note that the objects and actors in both the global and local network are heterogeneous. In this case there are organizations related to tourism, research and development cooperation involved, as well as money, data on the SDA/

UNDP projects gathered by Buiten Consultancy, Internet, skills, building materials, infrastructure and much more. See Law and Callon (1992:46)

104

Chapter 5 Tourismscapes

105

19 Interestingly, Cooprena – a Costa Rican NGO supporting these SDA projects in creating local and global networks – is aiming not only at national markets but also at international markets through their own incoming tour operator, Symbiosis Tours. By doing so they not only compete the existing incoming tour operators in San José that are already enmeshed in existing tourism collectifs, but also neglect the deficiencies in the local networks.

20 Callon therefore introduced a ‘fifth moment’ in the process of translation: that of dissidence (see Woods, 1997).

21 However, a ‘small’ entrepreneur obviously also ‘translates’ and ‘orders’ (see for example Verschoor, 1997a).

22 Based on Latour (1995) and Verschoor (1997a).

23 See the introduction to Chapter 6.

24 Here, ‘environment’ is used in the broad sense as in the Dutch word ‘omgeving’; it includes not only ecological processes but also other spatial/socio-spatial processes and their effects.

25 They all brought irreversible changes and instigated giant leaps in volume and types of tourism (Russel and Faulkner, 2004). For example, transport technology still significantly influences patterns of travel and changes thereof. O’Conner (2003: 88) reports that the share of all passenger movements through the top 10 airport cities (six of which are multiple airport cities) has been declining, along with the share recorded in the next group, while the two other groups of smaller cities have attracted increased shares of passengers. These shifts in traffic are likely to be related to the gradual deregulation of air travel and changes in the production systems of firms in a range of industries, as well as changes in aircraft technology (ibid.: 89).

26 More generally, Parker (2002) petitions ‘mundane’ studies stressing the focus on everyday processes and operations.

See also Law (1994) and Chapter 9. Callon (2002) provides a clear example of a mundane tourism-related study in his analysis of the role of writing devices in a company that organizes cruises on the Seine and a company developing meal vouchers to be bought by firms for their employees and to be used in restaurants of the employee’s choice.

27 The resemblance between the Internet and tourismscapes is illustrated by some of their shared characteristics.

Both are not only complex and open, but also vulnerable, self-evolutionary and hard to rule (reflecting a paradigm of freedom, which however is contested), and both are cultural creations (see Castells, 2001 for these characteristics of the Internet). Latour (1999), however, discussing the nails in the coffin of actor-network theory, cautions us about this comparison as now the WWW exists everybody believes they understand what a network is: ‘what I would call ‘double click information’ has killed the last bit of critical cutting edge of the notion of network’ (ibid.: 15-16).

28 These statistics come from various sources, gathered in a brochure distributed by the Netherlands Board of Tourism

& Conventions (NBTC, 2004).

29 For Latour, actor-network theory is primarily a method, not a theory (see Latour, 1999). See also Chapter 9.

30 But as Mol and Law (2000: 8) explain, sometimes the immutable mobile becomes fluid, i.e. becomes a mutable mobile.

31 See for example Kaghan and Bowker (2001) for similar arguments.

32 See especially Latour (1993: 120) and section 6.3.