Islanders and ‘other-siders’: the case of Texel
3 Islanders and ‘other-siders’: the case of Texel
3.2 Tourism development, local identity and liveability
Two recent surveys (Lengkeek and Velden, 2000 and Duim et al. 2001) clearly reflect the feelings of uncertainty on the island. In sum, the following issues were discerned:
• Tourism is considered a blight as well as a blessing. Tourism leads not only to more people, more traffic and more turmoil on the island, but also to more income, more jobs, more services and services of a better quality;
• Tourism is threatening agriculture as it legitimizes the conversion of agricultural land into nature as well as land claims for extension of tourism businesses;
• Tourism impinges on local distinctiveness in terms of culture, identity and architecture, although it also reasserts some of the same characteristics;
• Relatively small tourism-related conflicts over policy enforcement illustrate a more general mistrust of the role of the local government and its ability to cope with external influences and changes on the island.
Chapter 3 Islanders and ‘other-siders’: the case of Texel
The different opinions on blessings and blights are rooted in a variety of localized forms of knowledge and claims to identity, each based on different notions of attachment to the island and its people. Generally speaking, people from Texel are proud of their island. Green-black flags and stickers on the back of cars symbolize a ‘Texel feeling’, just as all kinds of local traditions, museums and folkways do. More modern ways of expression are used to distinguish Texel from the ‘other side’2 (the mainland). This includes the marketing of products from Texel as a ‘real Texel product’ and the founding of a local party called Texels Belang (‘the Interest of Texel’) – which predominantly represents the interests of the agricultural sector – and of a local action group called Ten for Texel, which voices the issue of liveability. All are expressions of the wish to preserve and strengthen local identity.
However, just as in Manuel Antonio/Quepos, the idea that people from Texel have a homogeneous local cultural identity can be considered a well-preserved myth (Ginkel, 1995). To think of communities as homogeneous entities is to assume that everyone in a specific locality has the same sense of place. However, while some people may have a clear sense of attachment, others may not (Meethan, 2001:140-141). On the one hand, in reference to ‘other-siders’, the islanders indeed display unity. But at the same time, many types of symbolic borders have been created on the island. For example, there are different kinds of farmers: those who intensify their farming, those who combine farming with (subsidized) nature conservation or small tourism services, and those who are phasing out. There are also different kinds of entrepreneurs, working in local or franchised companies, looking for genuine sustainability or for a short-term return on investment. There are many associations representing this variety of interests on the island, such as the Texel Association of Entrepreneurs (TVO), the Texel Association for Accommodation Owners (TVL), the Texel Branch of Horeca Nederland, the Texel Tourism Board (VVV), and the Foundation for a Sustainable Texel (see Duim et al., 2001). There are representatives of various national nature conservation organizations as well as local associations. There are different political parties ranging from Green Left, the Labour Party and the Christian Democrats, through right-wing Liberals to the local party Texels Belang. There are genuine islanders with roots going back several generations, there are people who have lived on the island for decades, and there are the new inhabitants and the owners of a second or a weekend house. However, this categorization is continuously contested and used at convenience. There are differences among the residents of the various villages. Every village has its own character and mentality. De Koog appeals to the tourists, Oudeschild claims to be a fisherman’s village, Den Hoorn considers itself predominantly an agricultural community, Oosterend is considered devout (five churches for 1400 inhabitants) and Den Burg is the administrative and commercial centre. Even within villages, symbolic borders have been created, based on kinship, class, occupation, religion, political party, sex or place of origin (Ginkel, 1995). Texel is a blend of people, opinions and interests. Therefore, on Texel localities are continuously shaped and hybrids of the newly arrived and the previously there are constantly reconfigured through flows of people, values and ideas (see Short, 2001:117). For example, more and more other-siders (including retired people) are coming to live on the island. Although regarded as ‘imported’ people, they share with a lot of the locals the nostalgic feelings of living on an island, while at the same time introducing values, norms and lifestyles from elsewhere. The result is a cultural fragmentation that at the same time is a search for identity. As Ginkel (1995:52) states:
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Chapter 3 Islanders and ‘other-siders’: the case of Texel
47 There is unity in variety, but still unity. To outsiders, people from Texel exhibit a harmonious picture of their island society, although it is a façade. Social and symbolic boundaries are always created relative to ‘significant others’. Members of a community gain their esteem and self-assurance by contrasting themselves with others, especially in a wider context. However, those who are not faithful to the island, will never be accepted or feel at home. (author’s translation)
Not surprisingly, there is opposition to as well as support for tourism development on the island. Just as in Manuel Antonio/Quepos, discussions concentrate on the desired quality of life or liveability on the island. These discussions also reflect more general issues of sustainable development, but most islanders (as well as tourists) are not able to define ‘sustainability’. 3 Sustainability predominantly is a theoretical concept or ethical principle that is used primarily in political and scientific discourses.4 Therefore discussions are framed in terms that islanders (and tourists) can understand, perceive and evaluate, however ambiguous the term ‘liveability’ may be. Interview results show that more than 75% of the respondents felt that tourism has changed their daily lives, while only 50% valuated this change as positive or very positive. According to half of the population, tourism causes many problems, such as an economic over-dependence on tourism, more hustle and bustle, and an increase in traffic (Duim et al, 2001). These results from recent research show that despite the blessings of tourism, intrusion in daily life is perceived.
Some islanders feel that their individual freedom of action is limited by the presence of around 43,000 beds and almost 1 million tourists against 13,500 local inhabitants. Especially in July and August, the occupancy rate is nearly 100%. In the last decade, most of the growth in tourism has been in the low season (Texelse Courant, 2003).
These feelings are reflected in discussions on particular issues. For example, the construction of new bungalow areas for tourism is considered to be out of balance with the regular housing market, which is hardly developing. Many islanders do not think that the new tourist bungalows fit into the ‘local style’. Other debated issues are, for example, the number of camping places on farms, the future of the local airport and local museums, the traffic jams and the crowding on the island. On the other hand, such plans as those to decrease auto mobility on the island are also disputed. All these issues mirror more fundamental ones.
First, many people regard tourism as providing a dominant but vulnerable basis for the island’s economy. Second, the municipality does not provide an unequivocal framework for tourism policy; as a consequence, feelings of safety are disturbed and control over developments is considered more restricted (Duim et al., 2001; Lengkeek and Velden, 2000). Therefore, the reasons for some of the dissatisfaction are more noteworthy than the actual percentages found in research projects in which locals were interviewed. As we saw in the previous chapter, an important variable is the so-called appropriation value (Lengkeek and Velden, 2000). People appropriate or confiscate and want to become familiar with space, to transform it into their place, their island. And this transformation process of space into place includes demarcation, exclusion and containment (Short, 2001:15). In other words, tourism is both creating and undermining the construction of place. Tourism constructs space through time-space convergence and processes of homogenization. But tourism also creates places. In this respect, the concepts of spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces of Lefebvre (1991) are particularly illustrative.
Chapter 3 Islanders and ‘other-siders’: the case of Texel
Spatial practices refer to production and reproduction, and are the realm of the social, cultural and economic objectives. This dimension of space is created and lived in interaction. As we have seen, on Texel there is a shift from agriculture to nature conservation and tourism as the principal spatial practice. Representational spaces are conceived as imagined spaces, which are mental constructions within the realm of the life world and can provide the focus for identity.
The increasing dominance of tourism in the production of the place called Texel strengthens processes of commodification on the island. In more recent years, however, conceptualizations of the nature of commodities have broadened from a focus on the production and consumption of material goods to encompass non-material or symbolic elements. In the creation of tourism places, more intangible qualities of places are being utilized (Meethan, 2001). These intangible qualities are represented in certain forms of narratives that encapsulate selected readings of the environment, as in tourism promotional literature and brochures. These meaning, narratives and symbols, which are the raw materials that are commodified to produce tourist space, are however derived from lived experiences. At the level of imagined spaces, therefore, struggles over the symbolic construction of space ‘are struggles to objectify meanings, to impose upon, or appropriate from the environment a particular order, a dynamic process of contestation and appropriation through which particular interests are maintained and legitimised’ (Meethan, 2001:37). Represented spaces are conceptualizations of space in terms of policies and planning, and thus are the spaces of politicians, planners and technocrats. It is the realm in which organizations on the island and from the mainland conceptualize, discuss, organize and plan the future of the island.
Assessing the impacts of tourism on liveability should acknowledge this ‘multilayeredness’
of space. There is a clash between spatial practices and between spatial practices and representational space on the one hand, and the represented space on the other. At first sight, many discussions on liveability address the consequences of particular spatial practices. Tourism facilities are, or are perceived to be, built in the wrong places, tourism creates crowded places and traffic jams before getting on or off the island, and tourism developments, nature conservation and environmental regulations obstruct agricultural development. However, this realm of minor complaints (which the local Texelse Courant tends to inflate) reflects more profound struggles over the symbolic production of space. Complaints about other-siders and tourists have been heard throughout time and divide them from us, here from there, the vernacular and the universal. Nevertheless, these complaints need to be acknowledged. More generally, one could even propose that tourism rather than being the agent of change, is indicative of other processes (Meethan, 2001:169). Perhaps local residues of economic, cultural and political globalization processes or the influx of other-siders buying first or second houses on the island equally affect the feelings of loss of control and sense of identity – in other words, the quality of life.