Contextual Studies Cultural Theory of Tourism
A Theory of Tourism
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People have always traveled - hence, how do we justify historically isolating something called tourism
from something that has always existed, as if it were something unique?
It was necessity, biological or economic in nature, that made people migrate. (due to geographic and climatic
causes.)
The desire to travel was never a reason for ancient expeditions.
The first people who left of their own will were merchants
Travel was a matter for minorities, subject to specific and tangible purposes.
Travel, as an end in itself, was unknown until well into the eighteenth century.
● Early tourism is comparable to modern tourism in some respects.
1-the egalitarian tendency in Roman society : homogenization of space - grandscale road network, capitalistic
traits
2-victory of the bourgeois - spatial homogeneity: technological progress, invention of the steam engine and the
steam boat, allowed capitalism to expand the network of traffic necessary for this homogenization of space.
The revolutionary component, however, is lacking in roman tourism.
Roots of this modern tourism: authors that captured the freedom that was threatening to suffocate under the
reality of a beginning world of industrial labor and political restoration. They transfigured freedom and removed it
into a real of the imagination, becoming a distant image of a nature far from all civilization.
Tourism is thus nothing other than the attempt to realize the dream that Romanticism projected onto the distant
and far away.
The development of tourism goes hand in hand with industrial civilization. Mountaineers play a key role, the key
role of alpine endeavor consists in the fact that it symbolizes the very concept of the romantic ideology of tourism.
It strives for the "elemental," the "pristine," the "adventure." Whatever name one assigns this goal, the dialectic of
the process remains the same: once it is achieved, it is destroyed.
Travel becomes a race for the first ascent, for setting the record.
Tourism, as a new human right, was for the class that invented and developed it: the independent bourgeoisie
that lived off its wealth.
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There is clearly an exact correlation between the development of the labor force and the development of
tourism. Tourism, then, spread from the broader circles of the upper bourgeoisie, first to the civil
servants, the craftsmen, and the petit bourgeoisie
Two groups remained excluded from the expansion of tourism
1- the farmers (until today resist its ideology and practice)
2- the workers, que pagaram o pato. só depois da WWI ganharam o privilégio de escapar a pressão do trabalho
industrial mesmo que por algumas semanas apenas. - privilege of paid holidays.
the real victims of the conglomeration of prison-like cities remained chained to the misery of their urban
incarceration.
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Even today in many countries there are no federal laws concerning employees' holidays.
The progress of tourism and its cultural predominance can be illustrated by three of its achievements
(indispensable for the development of any industry on a grand scale):
1- standardization
began with the travel book.
Murray's red book guides the stream of tourists into pre-established channels, the traveler voluntarily submits to
this steering (direção).
the conditioning is psychological, not yet physical. the standardized element is the sight, the point of interest,
classified according to its value (*,**,*** 1 2 or 3 stars)
the sight: a viagem sem “propósito”é desmentida pelo sight, que é um lugar que deve ser visto, é esperada a
visita até para tirar a culpa de fugir da sociedade. Por meio da obediência, o turista revela a incapacidade de
suportar a liberdade que ostensivamente deseja.
2-packaging
our century produces its own synthetic sights on demand
ticket voucher:
the idea of assembling sights and selling ticket vouchers. the trip was delivered as assembled and packaged.
Adventure had become something pre-arranged, with all risks eliminated.
3- serial production
guided tours with pre-established hotels, sights, guides. tourism brought society along from what society was
trying to escape with mass production.
from freedom to military command: a trip has a guide who is a leader, the crew craves and fears his authority,
even paying for it
_
● There are attempts to escape the vicious circle of tourism inner logic and its confinement, such as youth
movements. These youths resolutely dispensed with comfort and set out with backpack, camping
equipment, and tent. They programmati- cally eliminated technological means of travel; instead, they
artificially reconstructed the harsh conditions of "genuine" adventure.
With its policed camping regulations, obligatory use of campgrounds, camp order and campgroundhost, its
running water and outlet for the electric shaver, the camping movement quickly became absurd.
●
New trend --> Lifeseeing: observing the way the people one visits really live. turns the lack of hotels into
an advantage. people live in private homes and participates in the everyday lives of the hosts. This
supposedly reinstates the old virtue of hospitality. As long as travel was an odyssey or an exile,
hospitality was considered an asylum; once it becomes a deliberate amusement, the doors are closed.
Up went the cathedrals of tourism: the hotels.
The history of tourism is also a history of hotels.
The bourgeois upstart displays as traveler what is denied at home. The tourists have the illusion of escaping not
only into the freedom of a historic or geographical distance but also into a life-style they consider to be of higher
social status.
Social prestige joins the sight as the motive for traveling.
viajar é uma fuga da vida de commodities, mas acaba virando a marca e o status da viagem que tem um papel
decisivo no calculo de preço de uma viagem.
The souvenir insures the tourists against doubting their own experience.
the return: the tourists turn themselves into the attraction. they advertise their trip the same way it was advertised
to them.
Theory, Culture & Society
emergence of new technologies of transportation + mass hospitality = transformed the environmental
consequences of the world's current population.
because of the scale of tourism, carrying capacity of earth's finite resources is reduced below what it would have
been without that tourism.
Environmental disasters are relative to a particular configuration of the society and its environment.
4 mais ways society have intersected with their physical environments:
1- Stewardship of the land (provide better inheritance for future generations living within a given local area
2- Exploitation of the land (seeing nature as separate from society and available for its maximum instrumentala
appropriation)
3- Scientization through treating the environment as the object of scientific investigation and hence of some
degree of intervention and regulation
4- Visual Consumption through constructing the physical environment landscape (...) for aesthetic appropriation
term environment
-> physical setting alone (built or not built)
-> physical setting and the forms of its cultural appropriation
nature came to be hegemonized by a definition of the external world as scenery, views (...). 1990 - nature has
largely to do with leisure and pleasure (tourism)
later 1990 century - upper middle and middle class becoming increasingly mobile, access to landscape is
growing, but few are formally excluded (reasons of cost)
democratization of tourist gaze (olhar) well reflected in the anti-elitist and promiscuous practices of photography.
the new technique of colour photography raised the search for landscapes which are free from visible pollution
such as machinery, motorways etc.
photography increased the attractions of particular kinds of unpolluted landscapes and hence demands to protect
or conserve such environments, as large amounts of tourists seek to register similar scenes.
Different ways in which an environment is seen as inappropriate for visual consumption:
1- environment visually contamined because matter is out of place, technological landscape guilt (viewing of a
nuclear power station on an attractive coastline). tourist related services have developed techniques of visual
resource management, to disguize inappropriate technologies. some cultures value landscape of buildings (city
tourism).
2- environment seen as dangerous and unnecessarily risky. physical pollution such as water or air. but there are
riskys visitors are willing to take.
visitors to an area may be willing to risk illness, through eating conamineted foods, sex with strangesrs because
of the forms of exotic visual consumption that place such activities in a different context from what is normal and
everyday.
social pollution : social groups whose beliefs of actions are seen as polluting. hookers, alcoholics, drug addicts.
making the places unsuitable for visual consumption. but they can also be considered part of the "exotic
traditional attraction of a place.
3- the environment is seen as a commonplace, nothing remarkable.
this perception changes. a new railway can be an attraction before and then no.
4- environments which are historically inappropriate.
Different tourist practices vary along three further dimensions:
1- spatial : the diverse types of travel and mobility involved
2- temporal : the length of time and the prospective/ retrospective dimensions
3-institutional: the overlap between tourism and other related forms of activity (such as shopping, sport, culture)
Aesthetic Arguments in the Ethics of Nature
a certain mode of relating to nature can be right in terms of:
1- the way of life of a particular person - this is the individual-ethical side of the problem. concerns whatever
serves our own well-considered interest.
2- general, regardless of personal interest - this is the more specifically moral side of the problem, concerns the
obligation that we all share.
the moral responsibility with regard to nature can be conceived as a responsibility towards other people
or a responsibility towards nature itself:
1- socio-ethical responsibility
2- bio-ethical responsibility
there are 3 possible sources of moral consideration in the ethics of nature: the preservation of nature
can arise out of
1- consideration for the self
2- consideration for all the other people
3- consideration for extra-human claims
estudar o papel dos argumentos estéticos na etica da natureza.
vai determinar quais tipos de ética de natureza seriam capazes de incorporar essa dimensão estética e indicar
quais tipos de ética seriam capazes de suprir os requisitos de uma ética da natureza.
I.
Aesthetic arguments can figure in the discussion of our relationship with nature in two forms
A. Aesthetic criticism : arguments for or against the beauty of particular natural phenomena,
belonging to the realm of aesthetic criticism.
1. formulates judgments of taste
2. is the unreflected expression of an aesthetic interest
B. Philosophical aesthetics: arguments concerning the place and value of natural beauty as such,
belonging to the realm of philosophical aesthetics.
1. elucidates the meaning of those judgments
2. attempts to provide an analysis of this interest and its preferred objects
the aesthetic arguments whose ethical significance is to be investigated belong to group B.
many reasons apart philosophical aesthetics to preserve nature
1- economic. protection of nature as source of human wealth. economical management of available resources.
2- ecological. protection of nature as an environment that is tolerable for humans. physical well-being of present
and future generations.
3- aesthetics. protection of nature as a dimension of human experience. interest in a particular possibility of
happiness in human existence.
nature is considered for 1- a means of life, for 2- a medium of life and 3- a form of life. for 1 and 2 nature is an
irrepleceable condition of life, for 3 its an irreplaceable possibility within human life.
What sort of ethics would be capable of fulfilling the requirements of an ethics of nature
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the 1st moral of the aesthetic relationship with nature: those who wish to protect or preserve beautiful
nature must begin by protecting or preserving free nature, even if it is not beautiful
Hegel describe 3 kinds of aesthetic modes of attraction to nature
1- contemplative
context is dissolved. a different form of freedom is disclosed here: freedom from all attributions of meaning
2- co-responsive
the context is revealed. a different form of freedom is disclosed here: to a sensuously mediated apprehension of
one's own situation
3- imaginative
the context is overcome through the prefiguration of possible words. a different form of freedom is disclosed here:
freedom to experiment with artistic interpretations of life.