The composite effect of many of the socio-cultural changes that have been associated with tourism may eventually lead to significant shifts in local social structures and new patterns of social empowerment. As before, effects are likely to be most pronounced where tourism brings together hosts and visitors from contrasting socio-economic traditions, but where such differences are marked, repercussions could be significant.
Changes result through a number of pathways, but three are worth emphasis. First, tourism creates new patterns of employment and opportunities for work amongst groups who, in traditional societies, may not normally work for remuneration, for example women. As we have seen in Chapter 4, tourism creates particular opportunities for employment for women, and it has been argued that one of the beneficial effects of tourism has been to help the liberation of women from traditional social structures, to provide the independence that comes with a personal income, and to promote, through time, more egalitarian social forms and practices. Ateljevic and Doorne’s (2003) study of the production of ‘tie-dyed’ fabrics as tourist commodities in the Chinese prefecture of Dali showed how local women engaged in the production of fabric acquired a greater level of independent control over their lives whilst the income they earned raised the prospect of improved educational and employment opportunities for their children. In many traditional agrarian societies, the arrival of tourism may also be beneficial to young people who gain employment in the industry. This enables new levels of financial independence, partial or total release from the traditional social controls of their elders – especially within extended families – and new choices in matters such as place of residence or selection of marriage partners.
Such social empowerment may also arise through the second key process – language change – although this is also an area that has received only modest levels of attention with respect to the role of tourism (Cohen and Cooper, 1986). Language is a significant defining feature of a society. It provides identity and acts as a cultural marker (Wall and Mathieson, 2006) but, more significantly, it underpins social relations by defining who talks to whom.
However, because international tourism is generally conducted through one of a very few languages that have worldwide usage (most typically English and, to a lesser extent, French), tourists that originate in countries where these ‘global’ languages are based will often harbour expectations that the hosts will have at least some grasp of their language.
Expectation is often reinforced by practice, at least to a basic level of communication.
Foreign ownership of tourism developments may impose a new language as the norm for business purposes, whilst training in the hospitality industries will also strive to give personnel some grasp of languages that they are likely to encounter. But as with employment,
so the acquisition of new language skills empowers people in several significant ways. It provides wider access to globalised media and the influences that the media convey; it makes easier the possibility of migration in search of employment or improved prospects; and it alters the status of the individual within their home society through the acquisition of a powerful skill that others may lack. However, as skills in international languages are acquired, so there is a risk of displacement of local languages (Huisman and Moore, 1999), although there are few empirical studies that have demonstrated this tendency with clarity, White’s (1974) study of the decline in the use of Romansch in areas of tourism development in Switzerland being an exception.
The empowerment that comes with employment or the adoption of new languages is best envisaged as operating at the individual or group level. But occasionally, whole communities and cultures become empowered through the development of tourism and its integration into local socio-cultural development. Picard’s (1993, 1995) studies of tourism development on Bali showed how the appeal of the distinctive Balinese culture to international tourists provided powerful political and economic ‘levers’ that could be deployed to advantage by the local Balinese authorities in their dealings with the central Indonesian government. The desire of the Indonesian authorities to showcase Balinese culture, in order to project positive images of the state to the international community, enabled a reassertion of local identity and a political elevation of Bali in ways that might not otherwise have been possible.
This links to the third pathway to change through the creation of local resistance. Pitchford (1995) has noted that where social groups possess a distinctive culture that forms the basis of an attraction to tourists, this becomes a resource of both material and cultural significance in any local assertion of identity and resistance. Such resistance may be directed against the homogenising effects of globalisation and the mass marketing of international travel, but may also be deployed to counter colonialism, whether as an external or an internal process.
Pitchford’s (1995) study examines how tourism development in Wales has been used to promote and protect Welsh culture in the face of a protracted and systematic erosion of Welsh identity through internal colonisation by the English. Picard’s (1993, 1995) work on Bali demonstrates a comparable process in terms of Balinese resistance to the colonialism of the Indonesians.
However, resistance is not just a process of engagement between the communities that receive tourists and the wider world, it also works within communities as a process through which the cultural acceptance of tourism is negotiated. This notion of mediated resistance is examined in the final case study in this chapter which serves not just to illustrate how the local relations between tourism and cultural practices might be rationalised, but also illustrates several of the wider issues that have been discussed in this chapter.
CASE STUDY 6.2
Mediated resistance to tourism in a Hindu pilgrimage town
The Hindu town of Pushkar lies in the Indian province of Rajasthan and has a well-established tradition as a centre of religious pilgrimage. The town stands on the shores of a lake that has mythological links to the god Brahma and a large number of temples and shrines, together with ghats (step-like embankments that are ritual locations for worship, bathing and cremation of the dead) provide focal points for puja (ritual patterns of devotion).
The practice of puja draws pilgrims from all over India and provides an important livelihood for Brahman pandas – religious men who conduct the various rituals but who also arrange
for the more routine requirements of pilgrims for food and accommodation and who receive payments for their services.
Tourism to Pushkar originated in the late 1960s through small-scale visiting by hippies, but, under the guidance of state and regional governments that are anxious to bring new sources of wealth to a particularly impoverished area, it has evolved into a much larger-scale activity involving large numbers of wealthy, white, Western tourists. This has impacted, first, on the physical landscape of the town as hotels, guest houses, restaurants and tourist shops have been developed amongst the religious sites, and, second, upon the cultural basis to the community. These cultural impacts have included:
• commodification of puja through its adaptation (and abbreviation) as a staged performance that is conducted in return for money (as donations) and delivered in a blend of pidgin English;
• the relinquishment by some pandas of their traditional role as mediators of pilgrimage and who, instead, apply their knowledge to meeting the needs of tourists from whom much higher earnings may be derived;
• signs of acculturation, especially amongst young adult groups who have begun to adopt Western fashions (such as jeans and baseball caps) and who also aspire to ownership of luxury goods such as cameras;
• a realignment of local production of crafts to meet the demands of tourists for souvenirs rather than catering for the needs of pilgrims;
• replacement of local cuisine in many local restaurants with alternative dishes that are held to be more suited to the tourist palate.
Such change has inevitably created widespread local concern amongst those not directly involved in tourism about the loss of tradition and the debasement of the religious significance of the site. Many tourist practices – such as dress codes and the tendency to photograph sacred sites such as the temples and the activity of the ghats – are seen as an affront to Hindu beliefs and customs, yet at the same time a significant portion of the local population have come to be dependent upon tourism’s economic benefits. Many local people have therefore been forced to adopt an ambivalent position in relation to tourism – on the one hand condemning or expressing concerns over the damaging impacts of the activity on local culture; whilst on the other, finding ways to rationalise (or mediate) that resistance in ways that permit continued participation in a valuable activity.
The authors of the study propose that a key part of the process of mediating resistance has been to deflect accountability for tourism’s impacts onto outsiders, but not the tourists themselves. This draws upon some traditional local divisions between the Brahman identity of long-term residents (the insiders) and those from the wider India (the outsiders) who have moved to Pushkar – perhaps as administrators or to take advantage of commercial opportunities – and on whom the ‘unwelcome’ development of tourism may be blamed.
Similarly, government is also held to account for the way in which the religious and cultural identity of the town has been promoted to international tourists. This has helped to sustain a political rhetoric in which local politicians and pressure groups have often been able to strengthen their local positions by leading periodic attacks on state and national government on issues relating to tourism development, but, crucially, conducted in ways that do not directly attack the tourist industry itself.
However, perhaps the most interesting form of mediation of local resistance has been to invoke local religious beliefs – in particular, the Hindu belief in kalyuga – as a means of
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