Tourismscapes
5 Tourismscapes
5.2 The globalization debate: a brief overview
Globalization is thoroughly contested both as a concept and as a subject (see for an extensive discussion Held et al., 1999; RAWOO, 2000, Scholte, 2000; Waters, 2001). Beyond a general recognition of a real or perceived intensification of global interconnectedness, there is substantial disagreement regarding how globalization is best conceptualized, how one should think about its causal dynamics, and how one should characterize its structural consequences, if any.
The political dimensions of this debate have attracted a lot of attention, cumulating in what has become known as the ‘Battle of Seattle’. In Seattle in 1999, an unprecedented number of demonstrators participated in a debate on trade liberalization, which had been previously the monopoly of professional negotiators. In Seattle, however, more than 1500 NGOs had signed an anti-World Trade Organization declaration in advance. More than 770 NGOs were actually present. Among the demonstrators were environmental NGOs, labour unions, fair trade NGOs, extreme leftist groups, consumer organizations, farmer organizations, and human rights activist.
They had a new, common target: globalization (see Mol, 2001).
Although tourism is an essential part of the liberalization processes under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)2, it has not yet received much attention in tourism studies.3 For some, the linkage between tourism and globalization unlocks important avenues for development. Others seriously question this linkage, as ‘tourism is not only an expression of globalization but also one of the most powerful driving forces towards progressive liberalization
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of the global economy that creates far more losers than winners the world over’ (Pleumaron, 2002a).
However important this political debate may be, in this section I shall concentrate on the empirical and conceptual dimensions of the debate. I shall start from two premises. First, globalization is to be conceptualized not as a singular condition or end-state (like a ‘global economy’ or ‘global culture’), but as a highly differentiated process that finds expression in all the key domains of social activity, including tourism. Second, it favours not a mono-dimensional but a multidimensional account of globalization. Although most of the political debate about globalization concerns the economic dimension of this process, it is clear that the phenomenon also has interwoven political, cultural, technological and ecological dimensions (RAWOO, 2000). Among economists, the dominant way of thinking is to reduce globalization to trade, investment and financial statistics. These constitute the ‘objective’ of ‘real’ globalization, and all the rest is myth. This approach can be used to delimit globalization or to deny its importance, as sceptics do (see below). However, on the whole, sociological, technological, political and cultural perspectives tend to include complex understandings of globalization and to be more inclusive than economic perspectives (ibid.: 15; see also Waters, 2001). But even then the question remains whether globalization is a fact or fantasy, and if the former, when it started.
Fact or fantasy?
People often hold widely differing opinions regarding the actuality of globalization. For some it is a fact, for others a myth. In this respect, Held et al. (1999: 2-10) distinguish three broad schools of thought, namely those of the hyperglobalists, sceptics and transformationalists, respectively. For hyperglobalists, globalization defines a new epoch of human history in which people everywhere are increasingly subject to the disciplines of the global marketplace. They argue that economic globalization, including ‘global tourism’, is bringing about a ‘denationalization’ of economies through the establishment of transnational networks of production, trade and finance. In this borderless economy, national governments are relegated to little more than transmission belts for global capital or, ultimately, simple intermediate institutions sandwiched between increasingly powerful local, regional and global mechanisms of governance (ibid.: 3). Within this framework there is a considerable normative divergence between neo-liberals, who welcome the triumph of market principles over state power, and the anti-globalists, for whom contemporary globalization represents the triumph of global capitalism.
The sceptics argue that globalization is essentially a myth. In their eyes, contemporary history holds nothing novel or distinctive that could be called ‘globalization’. Purportedly ‘global’
companies are in fact deeply embedded in their respective home countries, and their actions are thoroughly enmeshed in the logic of interstate relations. Globalization has not altered the role of the sovereign state and ‘global’ governance institutions have not exercised any power separately from their member states. According to sceptics, talk of ‘global civil society’ or ‘global culture’ is nonsense (Scholte, 2000: 18).
At the heart of the transformationalists’ thesis is a conviction that globalization is a central driving force behind the rapid social, political and economic changes that are reshaping modern societies and the world order. However, the directions of change are uncertain, since globalization is conceived as an essentially contingent historical process that is inscribed with contradictions
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(Held et al., 1999: 7). Rather than globalization bringing about ‘the end of the state’, it has encouraged a spectrum of adjustment strategies in which national governments reconstitute and restructure their role in response to the growing complexity of processes of governance in a more interconnected world (ibid.: 9). Table 5.1. summarizes the arguments.
Table 5.1. Three perspectives on globalization
Hyperglobalists Sceptics Transformationalists
What’s new? A global age Trading blocks weaker
than in earlier periods
Historically unprecedented levels of global interconnectedness Dominant features Global capitalism,
governance and civil society
World less
interdependent than in 1890s
Intensive and extensive globalization
Power of national governments
Declining or eroding Reinforced or enhanced Reconstituted and restructured Driving forces Capitalism and
technology
States and markets Combined forces of modernity
Stratification Erosion of old hierarchies Increased marginalization of the South
New architecture of world order Dominant motif McDonald’s, Disney,
Madonna
National interests Transformation of political community Conceptualization Reordering of the
frame-work of human action
Internationalization and regionalization
Reordering of inter-regional relations and action at a distance Historical trajectory Global civilization Regional blocks/clash of
civilization
Global integration and fragmentation Summary argument The end of the
nation-state
Internationalization depends on state support
Globalization transforms state power and world politics
Source: Held et al. (1999: 10)
Old or new?
A second debate on globalization concerns chronology: is globalization new or did it start centuries ago? Referring to our analysis of Manuel Antonio/Quepos, it is fair to say that global connectedness of this region began in the sixteenth century. Before then, Manuel Antonio/
Quepos was part of a world that was divided into a series of different regions that existed in different worlds. There was no ‘world system’ (Law and Hetherington, 1999). But, as explained in Chapter 2, even after that, globalization processes have been contingent. Following an indigenous period, the Spanish colonized the region. The Spanish Juan Vásquez de Coronado visited the region in 1536. Subsequent colonization lasted until 1746 (Largaespada, 1976), after which Manuel Antonio/Quepos was again largely detached from the rest of the world. From 1746 until the beginning of the twentieth century, Manuel Antonio/Quepos was economically and culturally cut off from global affairs. The founding of a banana production company intensified
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and extended the relations of Manuel Antonio/Quepos with the rest of the world. This period lasted from 1927 to 1964, when tourism started to develop (see Duim et al., 2001).
Sceptics could even take this example to essentially argue that there is nothing new. The Spanish conquerors’ voyage by sea to Costa Rica analytically resembles Dutch tourists’ travel by plane to Costa Rica and Manuel Antonio/Quepos4. Most hyperglobalists, however, would claim that globalization is an entirely new phenomenon, one resulting especially from new technologies that have dramatically increased the intensity, extensity and velocity of global exchanges, including tourism exchanges. However, most commentators stress the historical contingency of the globalization process, as well as a historically unprecedented explosion of global flows and networks in the last 50 years (Held et al., 1999; Castells, 2000).
Whereas Held et al. (1999) highlight four distinctive historical forms of globalization, each of which reflects a particular conjuncture of spatio-temporal and organizational attributes, Waters (2001) for example draws a threefold periodization of globalization. However, they, and many others (see for example Scholte 2000; Mol, 2001), emphasize a unique concurrence of social, political, economic and technological forces in the last half-century. As Mol (2001:20) argues:
I am not denying elements of continuity, and I acknowledge that most social developments do not come in the shape of sudden radical changes. However, it should be emphasized that the forms and dynamics of interconnectedness and interdependence, which are so central to most notions of globalization, have changed fundamentally in the last 30-40 years.
According to Held et al. (1999), historical forms of globalization should be analysed in terms of both spatial-temporal and organizational dimensions. Referring to the former, global interactions have an increasing extensity, intensity and velocity. These may also be associated with a deepening enmeshment of the global and local such that the impact of distant events is magnified while even the most local developments may come to have enormous global consequences, and vice versa. In terms of the latter, there are four dimensions that map the specific organizational profile of globalization, namely infrastructures, institutionalization, stratification and modes of interaction.
Following these key dimensions of globalization, Table 5.2 illustrates the bond between tourism and globalization in historically distinct periods. The shift from pre-modern to modern tourism is marked by the year 1841. As Lash and Urry (1994: 261) remark, 1841 deserves to be remembered as representing the beginning of modern mass travel. It was the year in which the first national railway timetable was published, the first Atlantic steamship service started, the Wells Fargo Company (which became part of American Express) began, and most important of all, the very first ‘tour’ was organized by Thomas Cook. Cook was responsible for a number of innovations that transformed travel from something that was individually arranged and full of risks and uncertainty into one of the most organized and rationalized of human activities based on considerable professional experience (Peters, 2003: 263-264; see also Chapter 6 of this book).
Similarly, the shift from modern to contemporary tourism is symbolized by the introduction of jet planes in tourism, although obviously the shift was the result of a great number of interlocking cultural, economic, technological and political transformations, as well as of the way we got
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locked into the mode of individualized auto mobility (Urry, 2003; see also Box 5.1). Although the jet plane gradually developed in the late 1930s, sponsored by the military (which increased research and development budgets in response to the threat of war), it took until the 1950s before the jet engine entered commercial aviation. Pan American Airlines wanted to use the jetliners in the niche market for long-distance intercontinental routes. The introduction in 1958 of the Boeing 707 and of the Boeing 747 in 1969 boosted travel for leisure. As Geels (2002) explains, the Boeing 747 was not simply a technical breakthrough, but also an economic one as larger aircraft allowed for scale economies and lower airfares. To fill the larger airplanes, airline companies tried to attract new user groups. They increasingly targeted the leisure market. In the mid 1960s, the cultural perception was that flying had become a normal way of transportation. The wide-body jet introduced a new functionality in flying: mass transportation for mass tourism. In the following decades tourism not only grew but also spread from Europe into other continents and diversified.
Table 5.2 Periodization of tourism
Pre-modern tourism Pre-19th century
Modern tourism 1850 - 1950
Contemporary tourism 1950 – 21st century Dominant modes • Grand Tour • Seaside tourism • Highly differentiated Extensity • Minor flows, mainly
trans-European
• Emerging flows within and between countries
• Global spread from Europe and Atlantic into East Asia
Intensity • Low • Increasing • High
Velocity • Low • Low • High
Impact • Low • Low and spatially
concentrated
• High, spatially and globally stretched Infrastructure • Some road and sea
networks and resorts
• Inns
• Railways and roads
• Seaside resorts
• Hotels
• Jet plane and auto-mobility
• Highly intensified road, communication and transport systems
• Internet
• A mixture of dation forms
Institutionalization • Virtually non-existent • Thomas Cook • High, many types and forms
Stratification • Only cultural centres and cultural elites
• Holidays as a marker of citizenship
• Resort stratification5
• Democratization of the tourist gaze
• Intricate processes of inclusion and exclusion of people and regions Modes of interaction • Personal and
cooperative
• Competitive on a local and regional scale
• Competitive,
increasingly on a global scale
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