Tourismscapes
5 Tourismscapes
5.5 Actor-network theory
5.5.3 Translation
Chapter 5 Tourismscapes
1. The ability of a project to construct and maintain a global network that is intended to contribute resources to the project (money, tourists, access to markets, information,18 provided by first Fundecooperacion and UNDP and afterwards Camino, Boer and Wendel and others) in the expectation of an ultimate return (e.g. tourism-related services or, in the case of Fundecooperacion and UNDP, rural development).
2. The capacity of a project to assemble a local network (of people and things needed to provide the services) by mobilizing the means contributed by the global network, with the ultimate goal of offering a return of some kind to the different actors comprising the global network.
3. The degree to which a project succeeds in imposing itself as an obligatory point of passage between the global and the local network: ‘this means that, if successful, the project should first have the ability to shape and mobilize the local network and that second, the project is able to exercise control over all exchanges between the local and the global network’ (Verschoor, 1997a: 32). Many of the projects supported by the SDAs have not or not yet been able to impose themselves as such an obligatory point of passage. Either they have not fully or have not successfully shaped and established a local network (as they do not fully qualify in terms of skills, infrastructure, technology, etc.), and/or actors from the global network (e.g. De Boer and Wendel, or Camino Travel) do not trust and hence do not count on the promised return.
Moreover, many SDA projects are more equipped to construct and preserve other global networks, by aiming at, for example, domestic tourists or students19.
More generally speaking we cannot assume that we know the scale (global or local) or size (small or large) of an actor-network, but must attempt to trace out its various patterns of association through which it obtains certain effects of size or scale (Latham 2002: 132). As actor-networks in tourism grow, they extend their influence and reach beyond a single locale into other locales, tying these together in sets of complex associations. There is therefore no difference in kind between macro and micro, or global and local actors; longer networks can simply reach further than shorter networks can (Murdoch, 1997).
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which act to consolidate networks. The actor-network theorists have set themselves the task to explore the tactics of translation (Steins et al. 2000: 7).
The ‘chain project’, which was briefly described in the above, illustrates this translation process, which created a shared space that was not present before the initiation of the project. The translation process can be divided into four moments (see e.g. Callon, 1986a; Verschoor, 1997a; Clegg, 2003, Hillier, 2002; see also Chapter 8), although not every translation necessarily involves all four moments, and the moments may in reality overlap (see Woods, 1997). Therefore, translation is an endeavour: it may be achieved, but it always faces resistance and it can never be taken for granted (Callon, 1986b).
In the first moment – problematization – a project tries to become indispensable to other actors by defining the nature and the problems of the latter and then suggesting that these can be resolved by following the path of action suggested by the project. In this case, Buiten Consultancy and Wageningen University, indirectly representing the projects supported by the SDAs and the UNDP in Costa Rica, tried to convince first Fundecooperacion and Ecooperation as the SDA financing agencies, and subsequently Boer and Wendel and Camino Travel, to participate. Once approved, Boer and Wendel and Camino Travel were committed, also by excluding other probable alignments (e.g. other incoming travel agencies in San José).
According to Verschoor (1997a: 31), the second moment – ‘interessement’ – involves the methods by which the project attempts to impose and stabilize the identity of the other actors defined in the problematization. Actors exert influence over others via persuasion that their position is the best one (Hillier, 2002). In other words, interessement is the process of translating the images and concerns of a project into that of others, and then trying to discipline or control that translation in order to stabilize an actor-network. In this particular case, the criteria set by De Boer and Wendel and Camino Travel were used to evaluate the 24 SDA projects in Costa Rica.
Only three of the 24 projects met these criteria and subsequently were enrolled in the process.
Interessement only achieves enrolment (the third moment) if it is successful. Through enrolment, actors lock others into their definitions and networks so that their behaviour is channelled in the direction desired by the enrolling actor(s) (Hillier, 2002: 89). It is the successful distribution of roles as proposed (and most probably changed) in the initial problematization. In this phase, Camino Travel and de Boer and Wendel negotiated about the terms of reference for the trip to be organized through Costa Rica, just as Camino Travel and the three SDA projects negotiated about their terms of cooperation. Buiten Consultancy and Wageningen University withdraw from the process, as they had no stake in these negotiations.
If enrolment has been achieved, then one can speak of the mobilization (the fourth moment) of the network of entities involved. Mobilization means the successful translation of a network of entities: the trip is part of the offer of de Boer and Wendel, it is included in their travel brochures and three SDA projects have joined up. However, the whole process was also aimed at exploring and testing ideas with respect to sustainable chain management in tourism. The ideas were applied in a specific process, circulated in the process during various workshops (with de Boer and Wendel, Camino, Buiten Consultancy and Wageningen University; as well as in workshops in Costa Rica where representatives of the 24 projects met with the travel industry) and disseminated in a publication (see Caalders et al., 2003) as well as in this book.
Chapter 5 Tourismscapes
The example shows that processes of translation involve translators (Buiten Consultancy and Wageningen University), entities to be translated (Ecooperation and Fundecooperacion, TUI-NL, De Boer and Wendel, and Camino Travel, first 24 SDA projects and later three projects) and mediums in which the translation was inscribed (meetings, contracts, criteria set by De Boer and Wendel and Camino Travel, publications and leaflets, travel brochures, emails and, eventually, money).
The example also illustrates two other features of the translation process. First, it shows that translation may be more or less successful, may lead to convergence as well as divergence, and even after successful mobilization eventually may collapse.20 As Murdoch (1998: 369) explains, there are those networks where translations are perfectly accomplished: the entities are effectively aligned and the network is stabilized; despite the heterogeneous qualities of any previous entities these entities now work in unison, thereby enabling the enrolling actors (i.e. first Buiten Consultancy and Wageningen University, and later De Boer and Wendel, and Camino) to ‘speak’
for all. On the other hand, there are networks where links between actors and intermediaries are provisional and divergent, where norms are hard to establish and standards are frequently compromised. Here, the various components of the network continually renegotiate with one another, form variable and revisable coalitions and assume ever-changing shapes. In both extreme cases, however, it is important to stress that network conformity and nonconformity is performative, an effect of processes of ordering (ibid.: 369).
Second, and related, some network configurations generate effects that, so long as everything else is equal, last longer than others. This translation aims, in general, at the construction of network arrangements that might last for a little longer. However, the question is: what tends to last longer? What tends to spread? First, as we have seen, actor-network theorists point to socio-technical innovations that generate new forms of immutable mobiles: writing, print, paper, money, credit cards, email. They are not simply a matter of technology, but of certain heterogeneous socio-technologies which open up the possibility of ordering distant events from a centre. They have, in other words, the potential effect of generating peripheries and centres (see Law, 1994: 103/104).
Without these, small-scale entrepreneurs in Costa Rica or module coordinators of the Cultural Tourism Programme in Tanzania could never link up with distant markets in the United States or Europe. The second argument, according to Law (1994: 103), has to do with what happens at these centres. For any ordering centre – a centre of translation – strains towards reflexivity and self-reflexivity. That is, it monitors what is going on and acts on the basis of this monitoring. A centre of ordering – in this case, a tour operator or its agent in the country of destination21 – is, or is likely to be, a place that monitors a periphery, represents that periphery and makes calculations about what to do next partly on the basis of those representations – through such monitoring, representation and calculation are themselves heterogeneous effects. In the following chapter I shall elaborate this second argument when discussing issues of power in the actor-networks of tourism. But first I shall turn to these actor-networks themselves by introducing the concept of tourismscapes.
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