PRIVILEGED MOBILITIES.

TOURISM AS WORLD ORDERING

EDITORS:

MEKONNEN TESFAHUNEY & KATARINA SCHOUGH

CONTRIBUTORS:

RICHARD EK

KHALID KHAYATI

LARS LERIN

KATARINA MATTSSON

JOSEFINA SYSSNER

1
 Preface

For some, travelling is a taken for granted. For some, travelling is a right. For
some, travelling is a growth industry. It is said that we live in a ‘borderless’ world
of free mobility and travel opportunities to faraway lands and cultures. Tourism is
said to be a manifestation of this (“happy”) state of affairs.

For many more, travelling is barely conceivable at all. For, mobility is not ‘free’ for
all and access is carefully regulated. Only some are able to enjoy global mobility,
many more cannot. Mobility is always already structured and carefully regulated.
Global mobility is a privilege for some, but not for many. The tourist is the
embodiment of privileged global mobility. Like all privileges, it has its price.

The vuvuzela of our times trumpets loud and clear: value, growth and efficiency,
creativity and competitiveness. So too in studies of tourism. We would like to
thank the contributors to this book for making it possible to discern dissonant
tunes. Our thanks to the late Professor Emeritus Lennart Andersson for his wise
“senior disobedience” and last but not least, many thanks to Lars Lerin – the most
famous watercolour artist in Scandinavia today – for allowing us to use one of his
paintings as the book-cover.

Mekonnen Tesfahuney & Katarina Schough, September 2014

2
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

UKRAINE, MAY 2006

Lars Lerin

1. PRIVILEGED MOBILITIES. TOURISM AS WORLD ORDERING

Mekonnen Tesfahuney & Katarina Schough

2. THE NOMOS OF TOURISM. Mot en genomturistifierad världsordning

Mekonnen Tesfahuney & Katarina Schough

3. VENI, VIDI, ADIOS. THE TOURIST AND THE THREE

PRIVILEGES
Josefina Syssner & Khalid Khayati

4. THE TOURIST CAMP. ALL INCLUSIVE TOURISM, HEDONISM AND

BIOPOLITICS
Richard Ek

5. HOLIDAY UTOPIAS. THE GENDERED & RACIALIZED SPACES

OF ALL INCLUSIVE TOURISM
Katarina Mattsson

6. ”A SENSE OF AFRICA”. ON COLONIAL EMOTIONAL

GEOGRAPHIES IN ETHNIC TOURISM
Katarina Mattsson

7. WHO IS THE TOURIST? REFLECTION ON THE IDEAL SUBJECT

OF OUR TIME
Mekonnen Tesfahuney

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

3
 UKRAINE, MAY 2006

Lars Lerin

No, the Yalta place was not really my cup of tea, at least not at this point in time. Bars and
gates, locks and keys, barriers and concrete. An environment strictly designed for entertainment
and pleasure. No less than seven bars at the hotel itself, pool after pool, beach cafés and 2,400
rooms. To reach the beach, you had to take the lift from the hotel (2,400 rooms) and make your
way through a dark tunnel. The sea was goddamned grey and the fog made you wet. Normally,
I like hopeless places like that; but eventually, I had to abandon the idea of a holiday and instead
survive by observing.

So I started making an inventory of the beach lines, the harbour areas, checking out the vendors
and tourist sharks, yobs with beer bottles reeling about in the morning. Men with fishing tackle.
(They used a pin as hook, baited with shrimps, or worms, and caught little wriggling silver fish
in the size suitable for a cat bite.) Small and big ice cream bars, pasty vendors, the odd gritty
grey cat, some derelict dogs, accordionists, chess players, chestnuts, palm trunks, hotel facades
(terrible buildings under construction with gaping black window openings and rebars.

In the square you could have your picture taken with an owl or a minx on your shoulder. A
gang of rascals manhandled the poor, chained animals. An ape hugged me. I was fascinated by
his black nails – like a beetle, shining.

The most popular thing to do in Yalta seemed to be reeling around with a beer bottle in your
hand. There were many alcoholics, and down-and-outs in their twenties.

One morning, two dolphins splashed by, outside the pier, as if to entertain us. I was in the care
of the hotel masseur – a mild-eyed, square-set Russian with a thick golden crucifix round his
neck and white eyebrows. He didn’t know many words in English, but he did say, “relax” and
proceeded to pat, squeeze, caress and anoint me until I smelled like an oil painting. I particularly
liked having my hands massaged. Rounding it up, he touched my face, tenderly stroked my
forehead, nose, eyes, mouth, and kind of waved a blessing over me and gave me peace.

4
If I had access to a Russian like that at home, with a pinch like that and white eyebrows, things
would be different. There is something magical about being kneaded and pinched, made visible,
revealed by someone’s gaze. You’ll become your own secret in the end otherwise.
“It was like love”, I said to him.
He laughed, embarrassed.
“Come back tomorrow!”

But then I was to join with the travel group for a visit to Tatars … One-day excursion to
Sevastopol. An enormous three-dimensional painting of a battle, over 100 metres long and 40
metres high. Monasteries, caves. Gorbatjov’s summerhouse.
“I wish you could come with me to Sweden!”

But I don’t think he understood. Afterwards I was like born again and delirious, went to a
coffee shop and stained my white, clean trousers from Bangalore and forgot to pay.

This morning everything was desolate and grey. The Black Sea greyish. The sunbeds empty.
Passenger ships like high-rising buildings on the roadstead. German hit parade.

An old lady told me that she had been married to a sailor’s chaplain in Brazil. In a botanical
garden, we all tailed the guide, Lena, who knew everything about all the trees in the park, how
old they were and from which continent they derived. Frogs croaked in the water lily pond.
Later we were treated to candied roses and other local delicacies, walnut butter and fig jam. The
paths were delineated with beautiful shadows of leaves.

In the afternoon I took a photo of a crow on Stalin’s bronze head. Giant beetles with nut-
brown wings and striped chests invaded the airport in Kiev. They landed in people’s hair and
handbags and spread unease among passengers and personnel. So I waited indoors for the
connecting flight. Met a south Indian (bound for Sundsvall) and I lost him at Arlanda.

Airports are strange places–states of being, becoming, waiting, encountering, hope. Every
possible and impossible escape/home sickness. And a constant sadness?
This morning I sat in a 24-hour café feeling like crying, nibbling on a cheeseburger. “Strangers
in the Night” on an accordion.
(It would have been so easy to order a double whiskey…)

5
 1. PRIVILEGED MOBILITIES.
TOURISM AS WORLD ORDERING

Mekonnen Tesfahuney & Katarina Schough

That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain. For every native of every place is a potential
tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and
crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt
to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would
like a tour. But some natives—most natives in the world—cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They
are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live
properly in the place they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go—so when the natives see
you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your
ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.
Jamaica Kincaid 1988: 18-19
In our touristified world, tourist spaces, activities, needs and wishes have become mundane
events. We are all tourists – whether we want to or not – and are brought up to see, experience
and act accordingly even “here at home”, and/or are enlisted to serve tourism’s needs.
Contemporary global control, disciplinary, and surveillance apparatus are molded under the sign
of tourism as well. Disciplinary technologies shape, regulate and normalize ways of being and
acting (Foucault, 1987). The disciplinary apparatus mold the tourist subject, its needs, tastes and
fancies, as well as the flow of bodies, goods, information and values (economic, normative, etc).
Tourist spaces are re-produced thus. Wherever tourism treads, it transforms the world. This
anthology describes the tourist and the touristifed world order.

In current literature on tourism and tourism studies, the key question, “Who is the tourist?”,
does not figure prominently. There is a dearth of critical and analytical exposés of the tourist
subject and the huge material apparatus and imagined geographies in the trail of tourism and the
experience economy at large. Both in its various forms (adventure, war, space and sex tourism,
along with ethnic, nature and eco-tourism, etc) and as an area of study, tourism ought to raise a
series of questions regarding privileged mobility – who travels, where and why – not least from
perspectives of class, gender/sexuality, nationality/ethnicity and age. Studies into tourism can be
systematized in a number of different ways (e.g. Enzensberg 1958, Wolf 2001; Findlay & Crang
2001, Grinell 2004, Williams, ed 2004, Hall 2005, Hannam 2008). As a matter of principle and by
analogy with other social science theory and developments in the spheres of politics, culture,
economy and society, we can discern three overarching paradigms (schools) in tourism studies.

6
1. The Modernity Paradigm:
The paradigm focuses on modernity, urban life and the living conditions of modern man. These
theories of tourism, also known as structuralist perspectives, the focus lies on the attributes of
places of departure and destinations from a dichotomous here-and-there logic: the boring,
routine and superficial modern here, contra the genuine and natural untouched there. Tourism is
viewed through the lens of conceptual binaries and categories such as genuine/fake,
work/leisure, home/away, workdays/holidays (Findlay 2003; Cederholm 1999). The paradigm is
characterised by notions of technological progress, freedom, desire, flight and authenticity,
characteristic of the discourse on modern/out-moded. In that sense, such theories about tourism
and the tourist subject rest on ideologies about primitivism and romance. The holiday destination
offers the primitive, authentic life and romantic, untouched nature.

Dean MacCannell (1976) is one of those who stands at the forefront of theories of tourism which
address modernity and urban life’s artificial, dull and monotonous state. He believes that that
which drives tourism is the will to flee from this monotonous existence and its pre-arranged
spaces. We are taught to think of the tourist as seeking “authentic” places, cultures and peoples
along with “real” experiences. Modern life’s existential emptiness, alienating character and
superficiality spurs people into looking for something which is meaningful, authentic and real –
located in time to the past and geographically to non-modern space. This striving for meaning
and authenticity lends travel a sort of holy or religious stamp and the tourist emerges as a sort of
pilgrim, MacCannell says (1976: 48 ff).

An early, more nuanced but less known depiction of tourism in this genre is Hans Magnus
Enzenberg’s classic article, “A theory of tourism” (1958). Enzenberg says that the view of
travelling as an escape from the suffocating hold of modern life with the glorification of the
untouched and the authentic can be traced back to German, French and English romanticism. A
journey had until then almost exclusively been connected to a purpose such as work, trade,
conquest or had a darker connotation, such as exile and slavery. Enzenberg says that the modern
view of travel as a goal in itself emerged at the end of the 18th century, at the same time as travel
was being depicted as a search for untouched nature and the simple life. Because of this, travel
and tourism was associated with a romantic spirit of pioneering and discovery (1958: 124; 127).
The touristic style of thinking does not come about until the 18th century and the driving force
behind the idea is modern life. “Tourist flows are nothing more than a gigantic flight from the

7
type of reality that our society surrounds us with,” writes Enzenberg. He was way ahead of his
time and predicted many of the key issues that tourism studies would later deal with. Already in
the 1950s, he thought he could see a transition from ”classic to late capitalism”, that is to say a
transition to what we now would call postmodernism. Enzensberg sketched a few of the
distinguishing features of late capitalism - entrenched commodification; increasing
touristification of the world; staging, steering and control of tourist flows and places. He
maintained that the core paradox in the narrative of tourism – the search for the untouched,
genuine and new in order to consume it – was self-defeating (1958: 131).

Uryy (1990/2002) and Zygmunt Bauman (1996) provide postmodern variants of the tourist as
one who seeks extraordinary or new experience. While tourism is a temporary escape from, and a
suspension of, routine everyday life, with its chores and duties, yet even modern society offers
extraordinary and new experiences. The narrative of tourism is quite simply the search for
something above and beyond the ordinary. John Urry (1990/2002) is the most known
representative of this view. “Being a tourist is a typical part of modern experience,” writes Urry
(2202: 4). For Bauman (1996: 29), the tourist “is a conscious and systematic seekers of new and
different experience; of the experience of difference and novelty – as the joys of the familiar wear
off and cease to allure”. Whereas MacCannell highlights the role of the symbolic and authenticity
in the designation of places of interest in his account of tourism, Urry stresses “the tourist gaze”
and tourism’s visual economy in his account and Bauman experiential novelty as such. Ironically,
the paradigm holds – albeit indirectly – that “non-modern” people never grow bored, do not feel
the need to escape from their own dull routines and chores and do not long for different and/or
stimulating experiences. In other words, the quest for something above and beyond ordinary
experience is reserved for modern people.

Apart from the above theories, there are also to be found in this school of thought on modernity
models based on tourists’ motives and behaviour. Such depictions result in typologies of travel
based on the tourist’s behaviour and type of journey, but also on the tourist’s role-play in situ.
Erik Cohen’s (1972: 1974) work constitutes the template for these. Cohen identified four
typologies: the mass tourist; the individual mass tourist; the explorer and the drifter (also see
Plog 1977). These days, there is a wealth of such catalogues of tourist types. A Swedish example
in the same genre is Wolf (2001). She identifies five styles of tourist: the recreational tourists, the
cultural tourists, the compromisers, the action tourists and the individualists. An exhaustive
account of these typologies in tourism studies is given in McCabe (2005).

8
Yet prevailing theories of tourism and depictions of tourists’ motives and behaviour in this
modernity paradigm are made up of theories about utility maximization, growth and the view of
the tourist as homo economicus. Their homo touristicus is a “rational”, calculating and utilitarian
individual who is driven by price, choice, demand and symbolic worth. The idea of homo touristicus
informs different education programs in the tourism industry, marketing, investment in tourism
and development of destinations – all the way from the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), the
World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to hope-filled mayors (see for
example Weaver & Opperman 2000; UN-WTO’s annual reports along with the IMF’s and WB’s
development strategies for tourism.)

2. Critical studies of tourism: Who plays tourist, where, why and with what consequences? The
second paradigm is made up of – albeit marginal although growing in number – critical studies
of tourism. Tourism is, in this school of thought, emblematic of privileged movement and an
unequal global order of mobility. The tourist subject embodies the self-evident right to have
access to the world. Being a tourist means not just having privileged access to various spaces but
also that people and societies are arranged according to the tourist’s values, norms, needs, desires
and fantasies. The price of being a tourist is, in other words, that others remain non-tourists and
servants who take care of the tourist’s various needs.
Critical theories and studies highlight the historical shaping of travel and tourism and its global
spread as an important part of colonialism and empire-building (Said 1978, 1995; Enloe 1989;
Gregory 1999). Colonial and racialised conceptions of other places and people as inferior,
primitive and different form important part of the repertorie of images, fantasies and beliefs
associated with tourism (Hooks 1993; Crick 1994; Grinell 2004; McLaren 2003). The tourist is
described as the latest in a series of travellers who follow in the tracks of colonialism and empire
building and emerge as the conqueror’s and colonialist’s heirs:

Explorers, traders, missionaries and colonialists came first, to discover, exploit,

convert, and colonise, and are followed by ethnographers and eventually tourists,
who come to study or just observe the Other.
Brunner 1989: 438
In this paradigm, there are also critical depictions of the ideologies of tourism and tourism’s
contemporary development along with the tourism industry’s power and influence as an
expression of a global “master-slave” relationship and order. Tourism is considered to be key to
cultural imperialism and an important instrument for the spreading of the culture, tastes and

9
lifestyle of the West as a global norm. Post-colonial theory and feminist criticism lay bare travel,
tourism and the tourist subject as a sign of a masculine and racialised power and mobility order
and as a driving force for this order’s continued global reproduction (Kincaid 1996, 2000;
McClintock 1995; Tesfahuney 1998b, Eskilsson & Fazlhashemi 2001, Bierman 2002; Alneng
2002; Ramqvist 2002, Grinell 2003; Möller 2009). The paradigm also deals with the economic
consequences of tourism. “The leakage effect” – the proportion of income generated from
tourism in the Gloabl South that winds up in the North – lies between 50 to 75 percent
(www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx) (Patullo 1996; McLaren 2003). Global tourism has among other things
been studied from the point of view of world-system theory along with centre-periphery
relationships (Lundgren 1974; Ash 1975; Freigtag 1994; Harrison 1995). The fact that tourism
ought to be a given development strategy and source of growth in the South comes across as
doubtful when seen through the spectacles of this critical paradigm. The answer to the question,
“Who’s paying for the party?”, cannot be given in pure monetary terms without also considering
child labour, environmental destruction and widespread prostitution (Jeffreys 1999; Honey 1999;
Aitchison 1999; McLaren 2003; Dielemans 2008).

The commodification and staging of places, cultural inheritance and history – including slavery
and genocide – in the name of tourism, are further themes which are studied within the field of
critical tourism studies (Meethan 2002; Etchner & Prasad 2003; Agyei-Mensh 2006; Ek &
Hultman 2007). In the critical paradigm, tourism and nation building is also an object of study,
along with the roll of tourism in nationalism and internal colonialism and racist notions of
national minorities (Löfgren 2001; Shaffer 2001; Franklin 2004; Favero 2007; Schough 2008).
Also, there are studies on how tourism is mobilised within the EU in the creation of a European
cultural identity and community (Verstraete 2002). It is not just a matter of “what happens out
there in the former colonies” but also of how the primitive (including living people) are freighted
and exhibited like display objects around the West. Neocolonial traveling exhibitions have been
shipped around to various museums and cities in the West through repeated exhibitions, wax
museums, dioramas and panoramas (Furlough 2001, Pickles 2004; Pred 2004). The tourist does
not even need to venture out to reach the authentic, the untouched and the extraordinary;
instead, all this can be experienced at home, inside the spaces of modernity. (Neo)-colonial
tourism on the home front was, and is, the forerunner of today’s virtual tourism (Bruner 1989,
Furlough 2001).

10
3. The hybridity paradigm: The third paradigm is made up of theories revolving around
tourism practices, encounters and hybridity related to geography. In this school, the tourist is
regarded not just as a passive participant and consumer of tourist attractions, but the paradigm
stresses that the tourist helps to create tourist spaces. The tourist may use his position to
challenge, to put up resistance and to exceed established limits, frameworks and ways of being
(Crouch 1999, Edensor 2003, Hannam 2008, Mattsson in this anthology). One example is the
voyages of female travellers out into the world in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which
stand as a pioneering achievement and symbol of women’s liberation in the West (Pratt 1992,
Mattis 2001). Another example is how tourism is put to use as an effective instrument in
boycotting fascist regimes, e.g. Franco’s Spain, and racist and colonial regimes, e.g. apartheid-era
South Africa and Israel (Arbetaren, 2004).
Here, there are also studies of how hedonism, pleasure, sensuality and sex relate to tourism and
charges the tourist space. Other issues here include the body, tourism’s embodied practices and
power as an important part of tourism (Veijola & Jokinen 1994, Pettman 1997, Johnston 2001,
Diken 2005). Flows and networks creating heterogeneous spaces and new ways of doing tourism
off the beaten track, sometimes with a concept of space that goes beyond the Euclidean (Lash &
Urry 1994, O’Dell 1999, 2002, Edensor 2001, Franklin 2004, Brandin 2009). The travelling is
understood as a pairing which dissolves dichotomies/hierarchies such as here-there, then-now, we-
them and work-leisure which create heterogeneous spaces, transnational networks and new ways of
being and acting. In later years, what we call the hybridity paradigm has found expression in a so-
called mobility turn in the social sciences as well as in studies of tourism (Virillo 1986, Creswell
2006, Hannam, Sheller & Ury 2006, Edensor 2007, Ek & Tesfahuney 2008, Adey 2010)

Ironically enough, the question, “Who is the tourist?” does not take a prominent position in these
three paradigms. That is, perhaps, not so strange, since both tourism as a territorial order and
tourism studies with its theoretical constructs, conceptual apparatus and orientation of problems
have the “white” man and Westerners in general as their starting point and norm. We consider it
as a matter of urgency that we approach this problem. The contributions in this book share
certain features with Paradigms 2 and 3, but empahasise above all tourism as a territorial order
and as geo- and biopolitics. This understanding of tourism as a global privilege and as a world
order stems from a geophilosophy and a critical geopolitical approach – where territorialising and
recasting of the (scoial) body, flows, places/spaces and the tourisitifying of existence is central.
Tourism is understood as a material and ideological framing of the world (Enloe 1989: 28) and

11
incorporates a number of phenomena which together form cultures, histories, economies and
environments for its own ends (MacCannell 1992:1)

Our reasoning has some basic principles. Firstly, we maintain that tourism is much more than just
the world’s biggest business and that it involves much more important things that short-lived
escapes from the daily grind, the hunt for authentic experiences, and the search for excitement
and attractions of various sorts – as the modernity paradigm would have it. In this book, tourism
and the tourist is positioned in its broader context. Tourism is described as a force for
territorialisation, a process incorporating conquering, transforming and transcoding of the world
and life in the interest of tourism and in the service of capital accumulation. Everything – from
the ocean floor, social relations, places, cultures, to life sequences and outer space – is
touristifiable, that is, it can be transcoded and transformed into a consumer product and be
utilised in the interests of tourism. The unequal prevailing order in mobility is at the same time a
precondition for, and a consequence of, tourism and the increased touristification of the earth,
life and human beings.

The contributions in this book describe tourism as an expression for our era’s world order and
depiction of man. In the first contribution, Schough and Tesfahuney present the mobility
apparatus that constitutes tourism’s driving force. They describe tourism as a territorialisation
process and maintain that it can be understood in geopolitical terms. Through the notion of
Nomos, they describe the basic features in a thoroughly touristified world – conquering,
classification and utilisation.

In the chapter, “Veni, vidi, adios: The tourist and the three privileges” , Josefina Syssner and
Khalid Khayati present three of Western tourism’s privileges: the privilege of voluntary mobility,
the privilege of selective vision and the privilege of the immediate exit. To be allowed to come
and go as one likes, to be allowed to choose the places one wishes to travel to and to be allowed
to leave when one feels like it is so taken for granted in tourist practice that it is difficult for us to
imagine a different order of things, the authors write. They believe that further studies are needed
into how the privileges of tourism are met in different parts of touristified local communities, and
how those privileges can cause both accommodation and resistance.

Richard Ek writes: “There is a system of simulated places or enclaves emerging, spread over large
physical distances but which are bewilderingly like each other.” Ek discusses the cruise ship

12
industry and “all inclusive” tourism in the light of biopolitics and post-politics. He notes that all
inclusive tourism is has the camp as its primary spatial and organisational template or principle.
Ek’s contribution is innovative in Swedish tourism research in that he sheds light on tourism
from the standpoint of Agamben’s argument about “the camp”.

Tourism appeals to the tourist’s dreams about liberation and enhanced feelings. In the chapter,
“Holiday utopia”, Katarina Mattsson shows how “all inclusive” tourism’s space consists of non-
places, apparently without connection to the language of the place, its religion, political situation
or contemporary context. In these “paradise villages”, the local population and the service staff
are not to be seen, only relaxed family-oriented people who are occupied with each other and
with enjoying themselves. These non-places are created and marketed for the heterosexual female
customer needing to get away from it all. Tourism’s neo-colonial power relationships are a tacit
precondition for liberation from another power structure – the status of gender in the home.

In the chapter, “A Sense of Africa”, Mattsson changes perspective. In contrast to the non-place,
we encounter the pictures of “exotic Africa” (Palmberg 1987, 2000). It is a place for dreams and
longing, which speaks to the little child who read about Africa in school and watched films and
looked at pictures of wild animals; but also a space where feelings are presumed stronger and
more intense than in other places. Mattsson introduces the notion of “colonial emotional
geographies” and describes experiences of frustration and fervent delight when the tourist’s
expectations are fulfilled to varying degrees.

In the book’s concluding chapter, Mekonnen Tesfahuney muses on the idea of the tourist as the
ideal subject of our time. Homo touristicus is in this sense a template for how to relate to life and
being in the world. Ironically enough, this subject position is under theorized. Tesfahuney
envisages the tourist as privileged, white, and hedonistic creature of the market. The tourist is a
creature of the times: at once privileged and subjugated, free and bound, granted and denied
sovereignty.

13
 2. THE NOMOS OF TOURISM

Mekonnen Tesfahuney & Katarina Schough

The world is the tourist’s oyster

Bauman 1996: 295

A Touristified World Order

In this chapter, we describe the triumph of tourism, from having been “just” one of many ways
of travelling to functioning as a template for how the world should be ordered. Tourism is more
than an industry with its own way of thinking, infrastructure and politics; it also functions as a
norm for ordering the world and shaping people’s lives. This is happening in an epoch
characterised by the transition from capitalism to hyper capitalism, from colonialism to
neocolonialism, from the era of the European national state to the era of globalisation, or from
modernity to postmodernity. In tourism studies, we speak of a transition from tourism to post-
tourism. The essence of this shift is that it is becoming increasingly harder to draw clear-cut
boundaries – analytically or empirically– between tourism and other activities; to distinguish
tourists from other consumers; and to distinguish the consumer from the citizen and human
being. By deploying Carl Schmitt’s (geo)political notion of Nomos, we hope to shed light on
tourism as a world ordering force and an agent of re- and de-territorialisation.

From Jules Verne to Michel Houellebecq

Two literary accounts will illustrate the transformation of tourism from just one of many ways of
travelling to becoming a territorial world order. In Jules Verne’s novel, Around the World in 80
Days (1873), tourism comes across as a template for travel with its roots in the infrastructure of
colonialism. The novel is often used in descriptions of early tourism, and the World Tourist
Organisation (WTO) had Jules Verne as a theme for its World Tourism Day in 2005. The event
was blessed by the Vatican, and, in the spirit of Jules Verne, WTO general secretary Fransesco
Frangialli stressed the blessing of tourism:

Travel enables us to enrich our lives with new experiences, to enjoy and to educate ourselves,
to learn respect for foreign cultures, to establish friendships, and above all to contribute to
international cooperation and peace throughout the world.

14
In Verne’s novel, we encounter Londoner Phileas Fogg and his valet, Passepartout (whose name
means “goes everywhere”). Together, they make a sensational trip around the world.
Passepartout was an embryonic tourist, a travelling man from a time when tourism was, so to
speak, still in its infancy. One precondition for Passepartout’s trip was the British Empire, with
gentleman and employer Phileas Fogg as trail-blazer. One could say that without Mr Fogg there
would be no Passepartout. The gentleman traveller of the Empire paved the way and acted as
role model for the budding tourist, Passepartout. At the same time, the duo of Fogg and
Passepartout symbolise one of the tensions which accompanies the history of tourism, that
between the categories “traveller” and “tourismus vulgaris” – the upper class’s individual travel
patterns versus mass tourism.

“Empire Fogg” is described by Jules Verne as a mysterious, although typical, Englishman, who
embodies the very best of the British Empire. Mr. Fogg was wealthy, well travelled and urbane,
and a citizen of the world: “Nobody knew the map of the world better than he.” As the story
unfolds, Mr. Fogg is leading a discreet, comfortable life in London where he dines, reads and
plays whist at the Reform club. He plays for the sport of it and gladly donates his winnings to
charity. Mr. Fogg’s most distinguishing characteristic is, however, a sense of orderliness that finds
expression in punctuality, exactitude and careful manners. He is hyper competent and seldom
mistaken. Right at the first meeting with Passepartout, the valet, it is Mr. Fogg who decides
whose watch has the correct time. Mr. Fogg decides the time, decides himself that he is going to
travel around the world, finances the trip, gains access, deals with the authorities abroad,
calculates and checks movements in time and space and harvests the fruits of his travels – or, to
be more precise, wins the bet, gains the glory and the hand of a beautiful woman to top it all off.
Gentleman-traveller Fogg moves mostly within the Empire: “Around the world there runs a belt
of more or less strongly English influenced cities” (1960:78). In this space, he has full control.
“He moved in his mathematically calculated orbit around the earth without attaching himself to
all the satellites who followed his race” (ibid. 74). His chums at the club have certainly been
worried about such fickle elements as weather, head winds, shipwrecks and railway catastrophes –
not to mention the possibility that “Hindus or Indians [might] pull up the rails [...] stop the trains,
pillage the luggage-vans, and scalp the passengers!" Mr. Fogg has it all worked out. He gets
around run-ins with local authorities by stepping in and putting up bail money. He is a British
subject, a fact he does not fail to mention every time he speaks to the police or to a magistrate
(ibid. 62). Phileas Fogg floats around his world in “the most majestic and unconscious
indifference”. His focus is on duty and the task at hand. As a philanthropist and gentleman, he

15
steps in resolutely and rescues a beautiful widow with European looks and English upbringing –
she even plays whist – from an horrific death. He offers her protection in Europe. Mr. Fogg is
not only a traveller, he is also a body in orbit and a symbol of empire, and the point of his
journey is that he can calculate his return – to the minute.

Mr. Fogg’s valet, Passepartout, can, as we have mentioned, be seen as tourismus vulgaris in embryo.
He has been given his name because of his ability to get where he needs to and manage in
different situations. Passepartout belongs to the lower classes, is uneducated and has meagre
finances and is in touch with the forms of travel used by the hoi polloi, such as touring singers,
circus show riders, acrobats and tightrope walkers. At the same time, he is spry and particularly
loyal towards his master. On the other hand, he is, of course, unable to act with the same nobility
and refinement expected of a gentleman. When the duo arrive in Bombay, Verne writes: “He
stared and he listened in order to see and hear as much as possible – yes, his whole being
expressed undisguised amazement” (ibid. 37)

Unwittingly, Passepartout, the tourist, goes into a temple off-limits to foreigners (ibid. 37) and is
put on trial. He is rescued by his master who is deft at dealing with authorities and is released on
bail. Passepartout would never have been able to find the money for his release on his own, but
the Empire keeps a protective eye on him. Things go awry when Passepartout leaves this
protection on one occasion and disappears among the throng. These were important privileges
which touristus vulgaris was granted by the Empire: the chance to bask in the glory of the British
Raj, the chance to be part of the upper class’s ideological project, entry into the Empire’s
privileged mobility and the chance to avail oneself of a predictable itinerary which could be
purchased as a commodity. Another benefit was being free to tell oneself that travel was made
possible by individual endeavour. When Around the World in 80 Days was turned into a film more
than a hundred years after the book was published, Fogg was represented as an individualistic
inventor and entrepreneur. We are not allowed to see the infrastructure built up by the empire;
instead, one would think that Fogg blazes a trail over the world by himself.

Today, almost 150 years on, the tourism industry has stabilised and offers the tourist predictable,
packaged lifestyles in various price ranges and tastes. Today’s mature mobile consumer is an
accomplished child of the market and whose many needs (food, shelter, experiences, relations,
well-being, identity and a feeling of context), are provided by the market. In Houellebecq’s novel
Platform (2001), we encounter the ultimate consumer of travel, experience and pleasure.

16
The narrator, Michael Renault, organizes his life with regards to the thoroughly touristified world
order of our time. He is fed up and leads a life of indifference. He is portrayed as a child of
Europe who wrestles with both worry and shame. Renault states that his West is full of
maximizers of gain, who not only act out of financial interest to meet certain pre-defined needs;
they are also shoppers for whom every purchase is a celebration. Experiences become consumer
items, and the consumption itself the only chance of experience. Westerners live in a constant
state of want, Houellebecq writes. Michel Renault’s only contact with humanity is sex, a product
that he evidently is used to buy. To seduce a woman just to get laid usually only leads to hassle,
complication and endless prattle. It is simpler just to avoid romance and go to prostitutes. He
says himself that enthusiasm for what he calls “pussy” is one of his last recognizable, fully
human, traits.

Michel likes travelling, or, rather, engaging in tourism (ibid. 29). His dream is to go endlessly from
“passion trips” to “à la carte entertainment” via “colorful places”. Michel notes that he is an
object for the tourist industry’s enjoyment and products that bring happiness. He beliefs that he
has firm philosophical-ideological grounds for his enjoyment maxim. As a thinking traveller, he
distances himself from duty, enlightenment and metaphysics in order to fulfill the rights and
expectations of himself as well as others. “Enjoyment, a right” is his motto (ibid. 225). The
meaning of existence is, as far as possible, to make a good life for oneself – it may well be
through the legalization of the sex trade or the right to choose from a buffet of exotic
destinations which satisfy his desires and dreams. “ I liked holiday brochures, their abstraction,
their way of condensing the places of the world into a limited sequence of possible pleasures and
fares” (p.11). Michel plays around with various theories about consumption (Alfred Marshall,
Torsten Veblen, Melvin T. Copeland, Jean Baudrillard, George Becker), conscious of the fact that
his behaviour has been made transparent and has been diagnosed and that he himself is not more
than an object who figures in various marketing analyses and prognoses (ibid). Michel writes a
poem (2002:93): “Shortly after waking, I feel myself transported/To a different universe, its
contours ruled and picked/I know about this life, its details are all sorted/It’s very like a
questionnaire, with boxes to be ticked”.

While on holiday, Michel meets Valerie, who he believes is the last uncorrupted woman from the
West. She sits there in her tourist hotel and longs for a new master. Women who can enjoy
themselves and give pleasure to others are few and far between these days. Valerie is a last
exception from a development that cannot be halted, Michel recounts. Rather, women will

17
become more and more like men. Michel loves the gentle side of her nature. She never took it
out on Michel when she worked hard, she never got angry and she never had one of those attacks
of nerves that makes dealings with women so demanding, so pathetic.

Michel enjoys being a tourist, particularly the excellent sex service. It is, of course, the goal of
travel firms to make people happy for a set tariff during a set time framework. Michel thinks
therefore that it would be masochistic and dishonest not to affirm the opportunities for abandon
and enjoyment which tourism offers. The other tourists sometimes feel that everything is too
touristy(ibid: 35). It makes Michel mad since they are denying the facts. He laughs at the double-
blind paradox of the tourists’ frenetic search for un-touristy places whose authenticity disappears
the moment the tourist turns up. Everything is touristy – packaged, superficial and monotonously
arranged. The world is going to look more and more like an airport and a shopping arcade – a
non-place (cf Augé 1995), Michel explains Airport shops present a groomed version of the
country, complete with barcodes – totally reconfigured for the consumer (Houellebecq 2002: 93-
94)

Nothing annoys Michel Renault like the fact that the consumption of certain goods is still
charged with feelings of guilt. He reads The Hitchhiker’s Guide and is irritated by its double
standards and hypocrisy as it does not affirm things as touristy but, rather, harks back to the
domain and era of the traveller. It sneaks in what everyone knows the tourist wants – blithe,
unabashed sex. Michel affirms pleasure without guilt. Propaganda against child sex as in the
White Paper, Inquisition 2000, is idiotic and, anyway, there isn’t more child sex in Thailand than in
Europe, Valerie says (ibid, 73). And it is not sex slavery, she insists, surprised, but not
reproachful. They are not that poor; some even remodel their breasts and that doesn’t come
cheap (ibid. 67). For the manipulative Western masochist, it is not enough that he is suffering –
everyone else has to suffer, too (cf Nietzsche 2002) – which is completely unnecessary and
meaningless, according to Michel.

Michel and Valerie get the opportunity, via Valerie’s work, to sketch out a tourism concept that
does not entail such masochism. Now, Michel can get an outlet for all his fantasies and realize sex
tourism on a grand scale. He believes that it is not just an antidote for Westerners’ boredom but
also important for “the future of the world” (2002: 77). Regulated according to the supply and
demand of “invisible” hand and veiled as friendly tourism, sex tourism is going to be a global
success. On one side of the equation, there are hundreds of millions of Westerners who have

18
everything, except sexual satisfaction – they search and search. On the other hand, there are
billions of people who have nothing to sell except their bodies and their intact sexuality - an ideal
(market) exchange situation. European companies fight for this space. Such is the nature of
capitalism: if you’re not moving forward, you’re dead, so it is a matter of acquiring a distinctive
competitive advantage. Will it never end? Michel wonders. In the eyes of the locals, the tourist
comes across as a wallet on legs (ibid. 161). Michel cites Ramid Amirou and says “tourism is ... a
system for a graded, codified and non-traumatized apperception of the outside and the other”.
“Apperception” entails absorbing an observation whose image you have already inside of you.
When the tourist goes adventure travelling or buys sex, prejudices escalate. In other words,
tourism is not at all “fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness” as the Enlightenment
travellers believed (Mark Twain cited in Franklin 2004). One of Michel’s fellow tourists points
out that one of the first effects of travelling is to reinforce or create racial prejudice. “Racism
seems to be characterized first by an accumulation of hostility, a more aggressive sense of
competition between males of different races; but the corollary is an increased desire for the
females of the other race. What is really at stake in this racial struggle is the neither economic nor
cultural, it is brutal and biological. It is competition fro the cunts of young women” (ibid 83).
Tourism’s space is the arena where this global phallic war plays itself out. Houellebecq’s
protagonist philosophizes that sex tourism and racism are different to the “god ol’ and
benevolent almost humanist racism” (ibid 81). Michel is a punter who finds those parts of others’
bodies and lives that still manage to give him pleasure. When Michel “fucks”, he feels like a God
who can decide over both calm and storms. Michel is the tourist “I” of our time, and the world
that Houellebecq sketches shows the breadth of the world order permeated by tourism.

In order for us to understand the complex nature of tourism, we must look at it as both a travel
methodology à la Passepartout and as an ensconced world order as per Michel Renault. Since the
rest of this chapter deals with the transition and movement towards tourism as a world order, we
present the ideal-typical features of these forms in Table 1. Since we understand tourism as a
particular travel methodology, it is our opinion that the tourist trip is just one of many possible
ways of travelling. A classical word for travel methodology is apodemic (from the Greek apo’demos,
instructions for travel). Every type of travel demands its own apodemic understanding, whether it
relate to the travelling salesman, the vagabond, or the reindeer herdsman – indeed, every person
who has a reason to travel may, or ought to, do it in accordance with a particular apodemic
understanding. As long as tourism is described apodemically, it means that there are alternatives.
Because tourism is lifted to an order and then a world order, it means that there is no longer

19
anything “beyond”. The mobility machine sets the global economy in motion and allocates
values, material and people so intensively that tourism becomes a world order. But before we go
any further along this line, we will render an over view of how we principally intend to describe
global travel privileges apodemically (Jules Verne) or as a world order (Michel Houellebecq).

Tourism: both as a way of travelling (Apodemos) and as a world order

(Nomos)
Both/and
Apodemos Nomos

Who is the tourist? Fogg & Passepartout Michel Renault

Traveller/tourist Globalised nomad

Citizen (passport) consumer (credit card)
Individuals Dividuals

Mobility regime Capitalism Hypercapitalism

Modernity Post-modernity
Colonialism Neocolonialism
Expansive/ Intensive

Spatial Order Territorial Aterritorial

Tational state Globalisation
Delimited Open and unlimited
Here versus there Place polygamy
Touristic v. non-touristic spaces Totally touristified spaces
Specific attractions Experience everywhere

Time Seasonal Continuous mobility

Analogue/chronometric time Digital/real time
Holiday time Continuous consumption
of life sequencesH
Moral code Fairness hedonism
Reward for work Enjoyment/experience
Self-improvement, education Consumerism
Traveller v. tourist vulgaris Hedonist; status for sale
Fetishising of destinationS Fetishising of tourism/tourist

Control Government Governance

Tourism subject to state State subject to tourism
Law of the nation state Juis turismus
Border control Control of flows

Oppositional forces External Integrated

Uncivilised people Terrorists
Cultural taboos Incomplete commercialisation

20
 The Mobility Machine
Impossible to stop, the current rolls on . . .

Jochen Schütze, 1999:2

From having been an exception or unusual element in social life, travel and mobility have now
become the norm in the West – to the degree that travel has now become a sort of duty or
obligation or a compulsion (Virilio 1986; Schütze 1999). It would seem that we live in a time
when the mobile, the fluid, the shifting and the ephemeral are the calling card not just of
individuals who want to keep up with the trend, but also for how the economy, culture, politics
and social relations should be managed and developed globally – with speed, flexibility and
adaptability as watchwords. Defence policy and war are waged along similar lines. In science, we
speak of a paradigm shift where flows, mobility, hybridity and complexity are the very bases of
analysis and the norm for construction of theory rather than bi-products and deviations from the
hard and fast. We live in a time when issues of governance, control and surveillance of
movement and flows has taken a prominent place, all the way from tourism to daily life,
economic growth, geopolitics, security and risk assessment. Today, the world is no longer
primarily shaped through control of delimited territories, but through control of large
technological systems and flows. The world order is maintained and structured through the
mobility apparatus. The pockets that lie “outside of” or “beyond” comprise as potential areas for
expansion and growth zones, or even worse as irrelevant places and populations – as Manuel
Castell put it (1999: Vol. I 411)

What we are seeing here is a worldwide mobility machine that regulates who can move, as well as
when, where and how. This mobility machine and the order it creates opens and closes doors; it
distributes and redistributes local and global mobility privileges. The prominent place which
mobility takes today also exposes the fact that tourism and the tourist trade constitute arenas
where issues of geopolitics, the division of labour along lines of geography, ethnicity and gender,
re-distribution of profits and income in the global tourist trade together with hierarchies of
movement and access are laid bare. The mobility machine constitutes the necessary precondition
for tourist flows and the creation of touristified spaces. In what follows, we address some of the
distinguishing features of this order of mobility and how it leaves its mark on tourism.
To start with, the prominent place which mobility, tourism and the traveller/tourist takes in
today’s world order requires that we set these phenomena in a wider historical, economic, social,
cultural and geopolitical context. The history of mobility over the past five hundred years is tied

21
to two overarching and internally related matters. Firstly, the emergence and spreading of the
global mobility machine follows the growth and worldwide expansion of capitalism since the 16th
century. Secondly, the mobility machine’s global expansion goes hand in hand with that of
colonialism. Together, these two occurrences – capitalism and colonialism and their 500-year-old
roots – permeate the planetary mobility order of our time.

The growth of capitalism and the spreading of capitalism since the 16th century are not just
connected through their successive transformation of economies and societies under the sign of
the commodity economy they also include the establishment of an order of mobility and
circulation in the name of capital. The capitalist system can be said to consist of goods, services,
labour and capital. Deleuze and Gauttari (1987: 468) sort the flows into categories such as flows
of capital, fuel, food and people together with various kinds of waste – in towns, on a national,
supranational and global level.

Given that “capital is value in motion” (Harvey 1982: 405) this interconnection, circulation and
distribution make up the core of the capital accumulation process. Capital must be in continual
movement in order for profits to be achieved and accumulated. The faster and the more
efficiently goods, services, capital and people circulate, the less time it takes for investments to
result in profits, the greater the accumulation of capital (Marx 1971: 224-229). Without increased
movement, the accumulation of capital and its continued reproduction is as good as impossible.
The capitalist system demands an encompassing apparatus that weaves together and makes
possible interconnection, circulation and distribution of people, goods, capital and information in
time and space. We call this arrangement, which makes global circulation and movement possible
and governs and regulates flows, the capitalist mobility machine.

The mobility apparatus consists of built environments and physical infrastructure – roads,
railways, airports, ports and other facilities, and of information technology and communication
networks such as telecommunications systems, computers and satellites. The digital infrastructure
makes collection and storage of large amounts of information possible, not only to do with
tourist’s travel habits and preferences, but other sorts of data (income, age, marital status,
consumption habits, education, health, insurance, etc) which may be used for everything from
direct marketing to follow-ups, governance, control and surveillance of travel, both during and
after the trip (Lyon 2003; Adey 2010). This rather refined surveillance apparatus makes up a
growing part of the mobility machine and technologies of surveillance that continuously watches

22
over individuals and groups. It also consists of a symbolic and more or less immaterial dimension
of concepts, norms and laws. The mobility machine is institutionalised through states and
companies (travel companies and airlines, hotel chains in tourism, for example). The mobility
machine also includes various technologies to deal with “undesirable” and problematic flows and
phenomena, that is, those which do not obey the profit and capital accumulation axiom nor
occur under the rule of the mobility machine. The mobility order promotes a certain type of
movement (for example, that which contributes to the accumulation of capital and profit-making)
at the same time as it redirects movements that do not contribute to maximisation of gain, both
within the borders of the nation state and on a global level.

The mobility machine includes well-developed systems to coordinate circulation and flows of
products, ideas and people. Resources for planning and coordination which reduce turnaround
time for capital and goods, that is, which increase the speed with which profits are achieved and
accumulated, are important components of the machine (Harvey 1982: 373-412). In all, the
contribution of the mobility machine in terms of the circulation of capital, labour and goods is a
fundamental requirement of the process of the making and accumulation of profit. This is one of
the most important reasons for why mobility, travel and tourism has come to take such a
prominent position in our time.

The infrastructure for movement which came about in connection with European colonialism,
slavery and empire building also permeates our global mobility order today. Already at its
inception in the 16th century, this mobility order bore a pattern of various privileges of movement
with differentiated barriers and redirecting of travel opportunities. Refugees, asylum seekers,
enslaved in illegal trafficking and migrants without documents were shunted around in parallel
with, or in the shadow of, the global tourism flows (Tesfahuney 1998b; Biemann 2002). While
the tourist is in demand and is welcomed nearly everywhere, there are many other travellers who
meet a different destiny – the sex trade, underground labour market, jail and sometimes death.
Forced evictions – which are a possible measure in the mobility machine – of villages and people
who stand in the way of tourism’s expansion are included in the creation. It might be a matter of
legalised and illegal activities such as the purchase, expropriation and confiscation of desirable
land such as stretches of coast and beaches (Klein, 2007). One might think of it as tourism
creating geographies which consist of a set of camps and sluices where decisions are made as to
who may be a tourist and who is excluded. It seems absurd to say the least that Jochen Schütze, a
renowned travel philosopher should claim that tourists are the real utopians, the one that eraze

23
geographical differences (1999). We believe that it is way too early to claim that the monotopic
epoch of movement has already come. On the contrary, the differences between who may and
who may not be a tourist is the basis and the prerequisite for both tourism and the governing
global apartheid of movement (Tesfahuney 2001).

Tourism as Agent of De- and Re-Territorialization

What is an expeditionary force without guns? Tourists.
Dan MacCannell 1989: xviii

If we wish to comprehend tourism’s victory and consider tourism and geopolitics, there is reason
to go to the written sources in geopolitics. These are written by militaristic, Darwinistically
minded gentlemen whose thoughts are probably not worth passing on. But their way of thinking
lives on and their ideas flourish even today (see, among others, Schough 2008). There is much to
be gained from making use of these militaristic tropes, since they also can be used in critical
analysis of politics and of geographic transformations. That is why we borrow Carl Schmitt’s
geopolitical notion Nomos, to describe tourism’s victory over the world. Nomos may be
understood as a word to mean proper name, law and order. With Schmittian terminology, we
might say that the Nomos of tourism is created by three active, internally related phenomena:
nehmen – the conquering of territory in the name of tourism; teilen - the installation of a tourist
spatial and lifestyle order; and weiden – the exploitation of the world order created in the name
of tourism. These three processes, which together build the notion of Nomos, show similarities
with the patterns of colonialism and imperialism. Territories and societies are conquered,
incorporated and exploited as part of a larger colonial/imperial project (Mudimbe 1989). Nehmen,
teilen and weiden ought to be understood as ongoing and intertwining processes rather than
separate, sequential phenomena.

The Nomos of tourism may be studied in the material world and as embodied practice. The Nomos
of tourism also appears in notions and ideas about the tourist subject as well as the point of
tourism. One might say that the Nomos of tourism is a result of the power of tourism to
territorialise and its power to transcode space in the name of tourism. We see tourism as the
process of, and a force for, both de- and re-territorialising. Tourism as de- and re-territorialising
force and processes manifests materially/physically, as embodied and/or lived practice and
includes notions and ideas about travel, the tourist subject and tourist things in general.
Territorialisation power and process both creates and orders tourist spaces. Production and
consumption of various touristified places, experiences, goods, pictures of and notions about
various destinations are examples of this. One piece of writing in tourism research which gets

24
close to such an understanding is the article by Franklin (2004), where he launches the idea of
tourism as an order of things. This is an alternative way of understanding tourism in relation to
the paradigm of modernity. Taking Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), Franklin stresses
the materiality of tourism and highlights tourism as practice, where non-people also are part of
the creation of tourist spaces. One limitation in Franklin’s reasoning is, however, that he reduces
tourism’s order of things to a question of how nation states in particular order their territory in
the name of tourism. In this way, he neglects the study of the position of tourism as an
independent planetary order and territorialisation power and its role as representative for
processes that override and overshadow the nation state as an organiser of space. Nor in what he
calls the ontology of tourism does he address colonialism, empire building or the racialised,
gendered and class-based order which tourism reproduces and reshapes, nor tourism’s place in
capitalism’s world cycles. Geo-philosophy and critical geopolitics help us to study these
phenomena.
Conquest under the Sign of Tourism

The conquering of territory in the name of tourism entails gaining access and dominating space
for the aims of tourism. Being a tourist means making use of routes which are logistically possible
from a practical perspective. The tourist’s travel methodology in this way follows routes forged
by developers, businessmen, scientists, soldiers, colonial civil servants and so on. The tourist
requires politically established infrastructures. During the 18th and 19th centuries, it was mainly the
British colonial empire that enabled Europeans access to far-off destinations. Colonialism was a
bloody enterprise that violated “he dark regions and peoples of the earth (Said 1993). Tourism,
on the other hand, comes across as peaceful and non-violent and is seen as being about the
promotion of peace and mutual understanding through the meeting of cultures – anything but
geopolitics and ideology. Yet colonialism, empire building and touristification may be seen as
reflecting each other.

The basic principles of the Nomos of tourism have their counterpart in how colonialisation came
about – through domination, reform and integration (Mudimbe 1989). The history of Grand Tours
and Thomas Cook & Sons is fairly well known, along with Karl Baedeker and John Murray’s role
in the growth of tourism (Åkerberg 2001). On the other hand, what is less well known is that
Thomas Cook also organized luxury tours to Egypt in parallel with his English and European
tours (Gregory 1999). Tourism bears yet another similarity to colonialism and empire building.
The story goes that the venture was apolitical, a concern without ideology, and that it was an

25
altruistic mission to save lost souls and shine the light of civilisation into hearts of darkness
through teaching primitive societies the modern way of living.

Unsurprisingly, the story also often has it that global tourism promotes peace and mutual
understanding through the meeting of cultures. This is how the UN presented tourism in the
1960s and how the World Tourism Organisation presents it today. Tourism is seen to be about
harmless pursuits, pleasure and exchanges – anything but an ideology and (geo)politics. However,
tourism is (geo)political, and is so several respects.

The history of tourism, tourist streams and the global spread of tourism is facilitated by the
enormous global transport and communications infrastructure which developed in connection
with European colonialism and empire-building (Rodney 1974, Wolfe 1982), but tourism has just
as much to do with the notions that tourists have about various destinations and people around
the world. Travel agencies, marketing and advertising agencies are an important part of the
creation of images and ideas about tourist resorts and destinations. Racialised and neocolonial
ideas bout non-European societies and places – exotic, uncomplicated and frozen in a past time
and space – constitute important elements in the marketing and images of tourism and in tourist
desires and dreams (Jonsson 1994, Hall 2004). A run-through of tourism advertising in Sweden
since the 1950s shows how stereotypical ideas pervade the marketing of the Orient and the Third
World. The image of the passionate and the carefree, happy-go-lucky person who inhabits
southern climes lives on even today in marketing ideas, travel brochures and the minds of tourists
(Grinell 2004: 96). The colonial inheritance and neocolonialism is reflected in the tourist streams’
direction and volumes – from former colonial powers to former colonies. It is in the North that
travel agencies, airlines and hotel chains have their base (Pattullo 1996). French tourists travel
mostly to former French colonies; Spanish, English and Belgian tourists to “their” destinations.

In classical (geo)political analysis, conquering powers are usually understood as empires, states,
nations or peoples in symbiosis with their leaders. The benefits of expansion include secured
borders, increased international influence, territory or lebensraum. In a political world, it is the state
which is the performer of political actions. To a certain degree, this is also true of the expansion
of tourism since touristification contributes to the construction of national identity (Löfgren
2001), to geopolitical exclusion and inclusion, and to various forms of imperial and national soft-
power projects (Enloe 1989, Furlough 2001). Touristification on the domestic front consolidates
notions of the nation as home. Questions of access were high on the agenda when, for example,

26
Fredrik Svenonius and the Swedish Tourist Association adopted the motto, “Know your
country”. The conquering of Sweden as a tourist country was founded on the colonisation of
“wilderness areas” which were named as sightseeing attractions; the expansion of hydroelectric
power and railways paved the way for tourists. Yet, tourism is also driven by forces stronger than
sheer nationalism and patriotism. Since the 1980s, the IMF and the World Bank (Pattullo 1996)
have put strong pressure on developing countries to open themselves up to tourism. In Brazil,
bulldozers help clear away favelas in order to make room for beach hotels; and in Mallorca the
local population backs away. The few countries which are not accessible to global tourism such as
North Korea or Belarus stand out as extremist exceptions. Conquest in the name of tourism
occurs through recategorisation , identification, sorting, welcoming, dismissal, modification,
correction, confirmation and reception. Sometimes it is about seizing or cordoning off of
specific areas for tourist purposes via discreet confiscation and purchase of land for purely
commercial purposes. It may also include the drawing of borders, fencing off and the
establishment of particular zones as nature reserves, animal parks, beaches, camping and leisure
camps. Conquest may also take place indirectly, through tourism coming along and making use of
other adjacent infrastructure to incorporate new spaces, such as built-up environments and
infrastructure. Touristified space enacted through conquest enables, governs and redistributes
tourist flows, experiences and pleasures. In principle, conquest is a one time affair, but the
consolidation and intensification of touristified spaces occurs as a continuous process . We may
speak of an expansive and intensive phase, or of the horizontal versus vertical growth of tourism.
Passepartout represents the expansive phase of tourism, when territories became accessible for
travellers in the form of a travel product, a commodity. Michel Renault lives during the intensive
phase of tourism where every space, (living) moment and activity is successively framed in
tourism’s terms (experience, pleasure and enjoyment).

A Tourist World Order Emerges

Conquest in terms of tourism turns successively to installation of various orders. Installation has
as its primary task the formation, encoding, channeling and surveillance of material and
immaterial flows and the joining of these into the tourist whole. Planning of tourist destinations,
sightseeing attractions, experiences-spaces, staging tourism and identification of potentially
touristifiable destinations and phenomena are examples of how territories, societies and flows are
ordered in terms of tourism. In this way, regulation, stability and regularity are secured as regards
tourist flows and benefits. The ordering also touches on the control and redirection of disruptive,
unharnessed elements or features (Ek & Tesfahuney 2008). When a tourism order is set up, flows

27
are regulated, channeled and redirected at one and the same time. In this way, mobility and
immobility is regulated both within and outside of touristified spaces. This mutual relation is a basic
pre-requisite for tourism.

Establishing a tourist order involves a successive transformation and reform of societies, nature
areas, systems of production, forms of consumption and patterns of movement in the name of
tourism and the commodity economy. The installation of a tourism order can be likened to a net
thrown over existing areas, societies and flows. The net transcodes, orders and channels
territories, societies and flows according to tourism’s profit and growth needs. Everything can be
inserted and transformed to sightseeing attractions and subjects for experience – whether it be
nature, culture, history and destinies, including staging of the “authentic” or other tourist
attractions.

The installation of a tourism order may be systematized according to Foucault’s (1977) three
main principles – time, space and time-space. The establishment of a spatial order involves
defining and encoding places as destinations and sightseeing attractions. Tourist routes emerge.
The ordering of space is at the same time a cartographic order, and the presentation of tourist
spaces functions in many contexts as a complement or replacement of the Atlases that are used
for education and “nation building”. The false fronts as part of the town-planning ideal is
institutionalized and marketed. It becomes important for every place to be attractive as a
destination – the tourist becomes as important, if not more important, than the local inhabitants.
Another aspect of the installation of touristified spaces has to do with the standardization and
ordering of time. A new order of time involves the place’s seasons, rhythms and timetables being
adjusted for the tourist. The establishment of unified systems of time (analogue, clock,
chronological time) and scheduling of rhythms and cycles (holiday time, leisure time, working
hours) is an important aspect to consider. The order of time carries with it a systematic and
detailed division of time with defined tasks and duties in various contests (on vacation, at the
workplace, during leisure time, indoors, etc.) The division of time creates uniform and regular
times: days, weeks, months, years and pre-defined occasions such as leisure hours, holidays,
vacations and working hours. The net anchors an awareness of time in all people and in all forms
of organizations (Ek & Tesfahuney 2008). One example is the installation of a universal standard
time (GMT), the introduction of uniform time across the nation state to replace and standardize
various local time calculations for transport by train. At the same time, one of the sales pitches

28
for tourism is that it offers a sequence where bodily sensations and needs can be allowed to
govern the day’s schedule – a temporary transition to a “quasi- or pre-modern” rhythm of life.

The new orders of space and time merge into a form of collection apparatus that filters the
masses (Virilio 1986). The touristified space demands a continual cycle of raw materials, people,
foodstuffs, and money together with the creation of new desires, wishes and fantasies. This helps
us to understand why tourism has gone from being a marginal phenomena to taking a prominent
economic, cultural, social and (geo)political position and to being a recurring element in everyday
life in our time. The growth and expansion of tourism is also reflected in how seasonally based
tourist flows and cyclic rhythms are successively transformed into a continuous activity with daily
outings, weekend trips and weekend cruises in winter, spring, autumn and summer, not to
mention how we are increasingly led to thinking, acting and living as tourists even when we are
not travelling. The increased intensity in the turnover of tourism capital (the time it takes for
capital invested in the tourism sector to realize profits is getting shorter) sheds light over a raft of
issues with which tourism research wrestles. Today, as a result of the intensification of tourism,
we find ourselves in an era of post-tourism (Feifer 1986). Both tourism’s dramatic expansion and
the difficulties of finding meaningful distinctions between tourist and non-tourist activities:
workday/holiday, work/leisure, here/there – can be traced to the increased speed, intensity and
scope of the turnover of capital in the tourism sector.

The order of time and space which tourism imposes has a series of manifestations. A legal system
sorts travellers into various categories as well as regulating travel with respect to governing
policies on mobility (passport and visa, permit requirements for one’s stay, laws and provisions
regarding immigration and emigration, international law, etc.) We find once again here
hierarchical relations between privileged travelers from the old colonial nations and the local
population in geopolitically subordinated countries. The machine encodes people at destinations
according to racist and stereotypical notions about race, ethnicity and culture. But the tourist legal
order also manifests in poor policing and exercising of justice at the local level. After a judicial
and police sorting has been carried out, a tourist-oriented management order steps in and sets the
norms for the reception of tourists. Globalized instructions on hosting created for commercial
relations are here united with the mobilization of local and traditional notions about hospitality
and honoring guests: “The wanderer needs water, and he is invited to the table and given a
napkin and friendly welcome; benevolence...” as it says in the Swedish Havamal. A production order
of handicrafts, industry and services is adapted to tourism’s consumer need for souvenirs, for

29
example. A lifestyle order packages people’s lives so that their bodies and their interpersonal
experience is defined with the prefix “tourist” or “holiday”, as in “tourist experience” or “holiday
fling”. Two variations of moral order exercise influence on the evaluation of travelling. One is the
Enlightenment ideal with its roots in the classic European traveller’s registration project. This
moral order emphasises the traveller’s education, dignity and his neoplatonically clear-sighted and
authoritative gaze. The model for this is the citizen who, in his quest for knowledge, is forced out
into the world where he himself simultaneously acts as enlightener. The other moral order is
based in an experience and enjoyment ideal which came out of the closet, so to speak, in the 20th
century to the degree that we can speak of a process of hedonisation (Zizek 1996, Diken &
Laustsen 2004). Michel Renault can be seen as a sort of model, a consumer of experience “with
the right to enjoy”. An order of sexuality that follows toruism specific morale and logics, one that
structures how bodies are sexualised and gazed, as well as access to sexualized bodies. The order
of tourism is enacted, is developed and is modified by a politics of tourism spurred on by “policy
entrepreneurs” – industry people, expectant local politicians, proud patriots, investors and
politicians in need of foreign currency.

In tourism’s wake, there has developed a new academic order of knowledge which offers a
recognized body of knowledge for policy-makers and industry people. This order of knowledge
describes, calculates and confirms tourism’s significance. The knowledge order is subsumed in
and is dependent on the tourism order, and in many cases looks to the tourism industry’s needs
and goals as a starting point rather than as the issues they are. The growth of the tourism order
coincides with the expansion of Western patterns of consumption; they are, so to speak, both
cause and effect. The models of description in tourism research have gone from traditional,
relatively simple linear models focusing on cause and effect to depictions of tourism as a
complex, dynamic, mutable and non-linear system rather like an ecosystem. According to this
way of thinking, tourism is a complex, adaptive system: self-organising, non-linear, chaotic and
with threshold effects (Becken & Hay 2007). The field of mobility studies has been established in
connection with the social sciences’ borrowing and adoption of the natural sciences’ complexity
model – not because control of movement is high on the political agenda and is therefore worthy
of research, but because this way of thinking requires focus on movement, flows and change.
Nonetheless, the stable skeleton in this order is calculable, predictable and translatable. Tourism
builds on a travel methodology where time and space are calculated mathematically and where
costs and income are expressed in monetary terms. Life sequences packaged in time and space

30
are “guaranteed” and should be able to be accounted for both qualitatively and quantitatively
irrespective of complexity.
The Uses of Tourism

According to prognoses (www.unwto.org/facts/eng/highlights.htm), travel is estimated to

increase to 1.6 billion people in 2020. There is a strong belief that tourism generates growth and
development. Moreover, in the tourist industry’s own rhetoric (exemplified here by World
Tourism Day’s various themes between 1998 and 2007), tourism is portrayed as being of benefit
in the preservation of world heritage (Chile); peace and dialogue between civilizations (Iran);
sustainable development (Costa Rica); fighting poverty, providing employment opportunities and
bringing social harmony (Algeria); bringing understanding, culture and social development
(Malaysia); and women’s issues (Sri Lanka).

Rather than deconstructing this rhetoric, we want here to work the issue of usefulness into the
notion of Nomos. The third sub-notion of Nomos is referred to in German as weiden, i.e., absorbing
and harvesting the fruits of conquest and installation. In a politically defined world and the state
is the politically active agent. To a certain degree, this is also true of tourism’s expansion since
touristification contributes to the construction of national identities; geopolitical exclusion and
inclusion; and to various forms of imperial and national soft-power projects, as we have pointed out
earlier.

In this post-political age, nature, land, people, cultural heritage, myth, history, etc, are all there to
be made use of through the marketing of places, through design and through branding – hence
the genesis of “nation branding” and “designer nations”, when national identity and territory is
tailored, packaged and sold in the name of tourism in accordance with neoliberal market logic
(Jansen 2008). In order to completely comprehend the driving forces behind touristification and
understand who reaps the benefits, we need to shift our focus from the state to the market.
Tourism expands in the first place according to a capitalist market rationale that creates supply
and demand in symbiosis. The benefit of tourism should therefore be expressed in market terms.
The principles and logic of the market harbor no innate taboos or prohibitions that might stop
the commodification of anything. According to neoclassic economic theory,
usefulness=value=price. The usefulness of tourism in market terms shifts the focus from an
exercise in identity and education, such as “Know your country”. National heritage tasks get
taken over by tour operators. Tourist brochures – not atlases, primary schools and encyclopedias
– educate both inhabitant and visitor alike about the land and its people. Museums are

31
transformed into experience factories. In the ultimate market world, all goods would be available
to all customers. Yet there are certain values that are immovable, which cannot gravitate towards
the markets. The lean of the earth’s axis prevents shifting its climate and landscapes. The politics
of transnational migration watch over the flows of the mobility machine so that undesirable
people and/or cheap labor cannot travel to the areas with the greatest purchasing power. This
does not mean absolute exclusion of labor that is prepared to sell its services cheaply. If it were
possible to move these qualities to the market with the greatest spending power it would be done,
and we see this most clearly in the building of completely staged places, landscapes and hyper-real
spaces and in the touristification of life all over the globe.

Tourism is an agent of de- and re-territorialization which captures, restructures and exploits
places and people the world over to such a degree that it is no longer possible to find a spot on
earth which has not been affected the logic of tourism. One might believe, as certain researchers
do, that this means that the age of tourism is over: the concept collapses, so to speak, when there
is no longer anything which does not come under its sphere of influence. Beyond focusing on
tourism’s weak points, we believe it more meaningful to maintain and re-establish a critical focus
on tourism’s innate territorialization powers.

32
 3. VENI, VIDI, ADIOS
THE TOURIST AND THE THREE PRIVILEGES

Josefina Syssner & Khalid Khayati

The Tourist and the Three Privileges

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Swedes go on holiday to countries where ethnicity conflicts
are rampant and human rights violated. So, why is it that people are prepared to spend their
holiday savings and leisure time in such places? One answer is that it is cheap. A second is that it
is nice and warm. A third is that it is interesting and “different”. Whichever the explanation, there
is a further possibility that goes deeper and on which the other answers rest. This explanation is
that the Western tourist has several privileges that make the prospect of lying on a sunny beach
and cheap shopping by far outweigh ethnicity conflicts and violation of human rights.

This chapter focuses on three of the privileges that the Western tourist has. We will discuss the
expectations created by the privileges and discuss in what context and situations these privileges
and expectations are realised. The three privileges are: (a) The privilege of voluntary mobility, (b)
The privilege of selective gaze, and (c) The privilege of immediate departure. These privileges
coincide chronologically partly with Ryan’s (1991; see also Shaw & Williams 2002:89) description
of the tourist experience. Ryan suggests that the experience involves three phases. The first phase
is the planning. The tourist chooses a place to visit, arranges the journey and accommodation,
and plans the activities for the trip. In this phase the privilege of voluntary mobility is most
evident. Ryan’s second phase is the actual undertaking. In our triad, this is when the privilege of
selective gaze predominates. The third phase, according to Ryan, is the evaluative and recounting
phase. Here, and at the end of the second phase, the privilege of the immediate departure is
central.

The present text is based on several different types of material. We have studied travelling
brochures and other printed material from three market-leading travel agencies in Sweden – Ving,
Fritidsresor, and Apollo. We have observed and conducted structured interviews with tourists in all
the phases described above and we refer throughout to literature in the filed and to our own
tourist experiences.

33
 The Privilege of Voluntary Mobility

The Western tourist’s most basic privilege is the privilege to stay at home (cf. Urry 2002). The
mobility characterising international tourism is not imposed and the risk we run when we choose
not to travel is comparatively small. Even if social and class-related norms and value systems may
impact in varying degrees on people’s decisions to go abroad, technically speaking, the Western
adult tourist is free to stay at home. There is also the fundamental freedom to choose destination.
The number of possible destinations is neither unlimited nor constant in time and space. Where
tourists can and have the opportunity to go is determined by many factors–ranging from their
space of experience and horizon of expectation (Koselleck 2004) to their access to different types
of capital (Bourdieu & Thompson 1991) and information. Within these frames, however, the
options are many. We can choose to stay at home and we can choose to avoid a great many
possible holiday destinations.

Voluntary mobility is a privilege enjoyed by a relatively small part of the world population. In the
West it is easy to think that we live in a world of openness and accessibility. In reality this is not
the case. A big part of the world population struggles for their livelihood from day to day; public
statistics show that nearly a quarter of the world population lives below the international poverty
line. The privilege of voluntary mobility is far removed from these people. A great number of
people do not hold a passport or other identity documents–this too is an obstacle to international
mobility. Furthermore, there are a number of international agreements that effectively reduce the
chances for the people in the poor parts of the world to travel to the rich part. The countries that
have signed the Schengen agreement have decided that citizens from most countries are required
to have entry visas and to get a visa from the Schengen area the applicant has to meet a number
of conditions. If the granting authority (in Sweden the Migration Agency) has reason to believe
that the applicant wants to seek asylum or become a resident of Sweden, the application is denied
immediately. Voluntary mobility, in other words, has a clear direction. It moves from rich
countries to other rich countries, and from rich countries to poor countries. In addition, access to
the capital needed to travel is unevenly distributed in the rich countries. Although a privilege,
voluntary mobility can give rise to a certain unrest and ambivalence for the tourist because the
destinations are so many, but travelling funds and holiday times are limited. Shaw & Williams
(2002: 89) suggest that the type of consumption that a journey entails can be seen as a kind of
high-risk consumption. Buying a new sofa, en new car, or a TV-set comes with the chance to test,

34
or try out at home before the purchase and even then there is a good chance of returning the
goods or, swop, or sell it. Buying a travel is very different. As long as the agency is not guilty of
any irregularities the customer has little chance of regretting the purchase. Even if the summer
was more dreary, rainy and uninteresting than expected, no money is refunded. This risk means
that the tourists often plan their purchase relatively well. People compare countries, destinations,
flight schedules, prices, hotels and agencies. In this respect, the tourist is often a fairly alert and
well-informed customer. The privilege to choose and the resulting battle for the tourist money
combine to generate a tourism discourse that gives the tourist the incentive to search for a certain
kind of information. As we will see, the tourist discourse often centres on the climate, cost level,
entertainment, food, atmosphere and the local beaches. These themes are emphasised and
emerge as the most important aspects to get information on. The consequence is that the regular
tourist spends more time on checking weather forecasts and currency than finding out about the
current political situation in the countries under consideration.

The privilege to choose and the quest for the ultimate travel are reflected in many ways in the
relation between the tourist’s and the travel agencies’ arranging and selling travels to distant
countries. The competition for tourism money is serious and every agency makes efforts to
ensure that the tourists will use their freedom to choose to opt for their offers of destinations and
services. When the destination Dubai is described in brochures and on websites we are told that
this is “an exotic and different world” full of “trendy shopping malls, fabulous beaches and well-
kept golf courses.” The country is described as “oriental”, “ultramodern”, and as a
“cosmopolitan centre” of “hospitality and friendliness”. When Thailand is presented in the same
forum, we are told that “wherever you go, you will meet smiles, smiles, and smiles again.
Everyone is so friendly that it is impossible not to be happy and satisfied.” Singapore is described
as “modern and ordered with world-class shopping.” Cambodia is “friendly, charming, and
hospitable, and Indonesia is said to treat you to “everything from grandiose landscapes with
volcanoes, jungles, and paradise beaches to milling cities, cheap shopping and fantastic nightlife.”
Turkey is associated with “lazy days on the beach, low prices, spicy treats, tea parties in the
bazars, and endless nights.” Here, we are told, everything is available, and “not least, you get
value for your money!”

The descriptions above are easily recognizable. Anyone who has browsed travelling literature
knows that it is the exotic, oriental, milling and colourful attractions that are highlighted, together
with the organised, modern and cheap shopping aspects. Problems in the countries described are

35
never highlighted. We are never told that Sharia laws are applied in Dubai. Neither are we told
that the violence in the south of Thailand goes on unabated and that the conflict between military
and guerrilla groups involves extensive violations of human rights and international humanitarian
conventions. The fact that the Singapore government has restricted freedom of speech as well as
freedom of assembly is not mentioned, nor that suspects are regularly tortured or abused when
interrogated. The government-initiated forced migration and population movements in the poor
areas of Cambodia are also ignored. The excessive violence and torture used by the Indonesian
police and military against demonstrators and the arrested are not described. The restrictions of
freedom of speech in Turkey are as little visible in the on going conflict between the Turkish
military and the different Kurdish groups.

It is in no way surprising that travel producers choose to stress the positive and neglect the
negative aspects of a country. Why would they even consider doing otherwise? Their interest lies
in ensuring that the countries to which they arrange travels are associated with positive things
such as sand beaches, sun and cheap shopping. To the international tourism industry, the
privilege of free mobility means that it has to compete for the tourists’ longing, fantasies, and
dreams. Many countries have a vested interest in being perceived as the ultimate tourist
destination. Tourism is an important industry in many countries, particularly in poor countries.
An EU Parliament report in 2006 on tourism and development shows that tourism generates a
flow of cash from rich to poor countries that is twice the size of government grants. The report
also states that tourism is the greatest source of foreign currency income for the 49 least
developed countries, and that tourism accounts for over 5 per cent of the GNP and/or 10 per
cent of the export in 41 of the world’s 50 poorest countries. This means that the international
travel agencies are not alone in having a commercial and institutionalised interest in cultivating
the tourist’s dreams and fantasies of the ideal destination. This interest is shared by actors at
every level of the host environments that make a living on tourism.

Initially, we referred to Ryan (1997), who divides the tourist experience into three phases:
planning, undertaking, and recounting. The first and last phase can overlap and become
intertwined. The average tourist tends to discuss her/his choice of a trip with others before
finally booking. Other people’s travel accounts, memories, experiences, and photos can even be
a decisive factor in making the decision. Also virtual travel diaries, blogs, and private messages in
various Internet discussion forums are used as sources of information and inspiration in the
planning of the trip. Clearly, one person’s recounting phase can coincide with another person’s

36
planning phase. Even in the private discussions, statements on climate, price levels, and
unspoiled or overexploited beaches predominate. Dramatic events, bug-ridden hotel rooms, and
padded bills are also elements of the travel narrative genre, along with tales of beggars,
prostitutes, and intrusive vendors. However, when these themes are treated the emphasis is
usually on the individual strategies a tourist can resort to in order to avoid being cheated out of
money or service or avoid awkward situations. Themes seldom highlighted in personal travel
accounts are those involving wider, deeper, and more problematic societal issues.

Images, narratives, and impressions of places are central to the tourist’s preparatory planning
phase, and are to a great extent created in the intersection between travel agency information and
commercial messages, travel magazines, travel guides and the private and personal travel stories.
“Hard facts” on visa rules and travel insurance are provided along with expectations and fantasies
on what we think that the holiday has in store for us.

News media and other channels of information are also actors on this arena but the tourism
discourse and the news discourse seem incompatible. The tourism discourse is nourished by a
long line of commercial actors, creating images of remote places, but in spite of the distance the
images are perceived as relevant since they represent places, environments, and experiences
existing primarily for the tourists and their needs. The images of the news discourse can
encompass places that coincide with or are adjacent to the tourist place, and yet these seem less
relevant to many people. Often the images concern an ungraspable conflict that is of little
consequence to those uninvolved. The tone is serious, more complex and there is no explicit or
implicit recommendation of action linked to the news reports of a conflict far away. The
commercial and tourism messages always come with a recommendation of action: this concerns
you because we want you to buy your trip to this place, now, from us!

The Privilege of Selective Gaze

The second privilege that we have chosen to highlight is the freedom to ignore aspects of the
political, social, and economic situation in the country visited. This practice of bracketing is
variously manifested and is in many ways different from the dissociation that comes with other
types of consumption. We will exemplify how this bracketing takes place and what ideological
and material circumstances make it possible.

37
Many forms of consumption certainly include a degree of bracketing. Buying a sweater, a pair of
shoes, or a football also involves the freedom to turn a blind eye to the conditions of their
production. The practice of bracketing is therefore far from unique to the tourism sector. What
distinguishes the tourism commodity from other goods is its close connection to the context in
which it is produced. Tourism is, as Urry (2002) puts it, a positional good. To start with, this means
that the goods–the tourist experiences–are place-bound. The Bali experience can only be
consumed at Bali. The experience of a guided tour, a dance performance, or a foot massage on
the beach is produced at the same place and at the very instance that it is consumed. This is very
different from consumption where the production takes place at a different place concealed from
the final consumer - for the production of tourism ‘takes place’ in the very space of experience
(Mossberg 2003: 15) and in real time (Urry 2002: 61). Compared to other forms of consumption,
the contact areas between the tourism producer and the consumer are evident.

Tourism as a type of positional good implies that it is deeply bound with and dependent on the local
environment. For the person who wants to buy a pair of jeans, it is–setting aside any moral,
ethical, or political considerations–completely irrelevant what the inside of the factory looks like,
what the situation is in town where the factory is located, or the country in which the town is
situated. However, for a tourist who wants to go to a restaurant, rent a motorbike, go snorkelling
or on guided tour this wider context is very important. The local resources–culture, surroundings,
nature, architecture, pulse, entertainment, ambience, service, and other more or less definable
factors–are what make a destination attractive to tourists. This means that the tourist does not
only consume a clearly set off commodity but also part of the context in which it is produced.

So far, we have seen that commodity tourism is different from many other commodities to the
extent that consumer and producer often meet in a common space of experience. We have also
seen that the tourism experience is clearly linked to the context in which it is lived. Tourism is an
in situ experience (Urry 2002; Shaw and Williams 2002:46), and can therefore not be separated
from the social context of production. It is therefore of particular interest to investigate how the
tourist perceives the space of experience and the surrounding context, and what enables the
tourist to turn a blind eye to certain parts of the context.

On a general level we can note that time is one of the factors that enables the tourist to ignore, or
choose to ignore certain elements of a place. The tourist is by definition a guest, a temporary
visitor, someone with a clear intention of leaving the place after a relatively short period of time

38
(Urry 2002: 3). This limited stay is often used as an argument when tourists disavow, or are
relieved of, responsibility. “How could I do something about child prostitution in Thailand, when
we are only here for a few weeks?” is an example of disavowal.

Our task here is not to determine whether it is right or wrong to deny responsibility with
reference to being a temporary guest. Besides, to lay the blame on someone else is not restricted
to tourists. As Heberlein (2008) points out, it is a rather ubiquitous behaviour in society and
many different contexts. What in the end makes the tourist disavowal of responsibility special is
that it can encompass so many people in the same place at the same time. Malta, for example, is a
popular resort for Europeans on holiday. The country is small, covering an area the size of a
Swedish rural municipality. Compared to Sweden, the country is densely populated–around
400,000 residents on the three main islands. Every year, at least double the number visit the
islands as tourists. In the summer season, the number of residents in Malta climbs considerably,
and if we assume that there is a general inclination among tourists to disavow responsibility, this
means that Malta for 6 months in a year is populated by people who are there for a very short
time and therefore have no responsibility for the Malta environment, social conditions, culture,
or any other aspect related to the long-term development in Malta. The same applies to Majorca,
Gran Canaria, Calais or any other small, heavily exploited resort.

The limited time frame can thus serve to explain why tourists can ignore major parts of the social
context at the resort chosen although the context in many ways is central to the tourist
experience. On a similarly general level, we note that what often is described as the essence or the
intention of the holiday trip is in sharp contrast to their everyday or long-term responsibilities.
Most definitions of tourism are based on the assumption that pleasure is the intention of the
tourist trip. The pleasure can be relaxation, recreation, recuperation, intellectual stimulation, or
adventure, abandon, freedom and physical challenges, depending on the traveller. The fact that
the tourists strive to satisfy a special need for themselves or others contributes to structuring their
gaze (Urry 2002). Holiday-goers are, as Shaw and Williams (2002: 92) put it, “completely self-
oriented”. When on holiday, our needs are what counts–not those of others.

Besides time and intention, which contribute to structuring the tourists’ relation to the place visited
on a general level, there are a number of phenomena enabling their disregard of parts of the
environment visited. Some of these phenomena are visibly physical barriers protecting the
tourists from sounds, smells, and sights, as well as from undesired interaction with people who

39
are neither tourist’s nor employed to serve them. The pre-booked, air-conditioned transfer coach
from the airport to the hotel is an example. The private, sometimes fenced hotel beach is another
example. In other cases the border between the tourists and the host environment is not physical
but functional, for example, the guided tour, the agency’s arranged evening entertainment by the
pool. A ‘room in the room’ is created inside the physical and functional borders–a space where
tourists meet other tourists, or officials ordered to treat the tourists in a special way. All examples
mentioned require the presence of tourism employees with the duty to maintain the border
between the tourism reality and other extra-tourism realities. Hotel receptionists, guides, police,
travel agency guides, guards, for instance, belong to the gate-keepers whose task it is to ensure
that no unauthorised persons sneak into the tourism space.

The short time frame, the intention to “have fun”, and a number of physical and functional
barriers provide the tourists with the privilege to visit a place without committing to its
continued, long-term existence. Tourists have the opportunity to move along tourist tracks
together with other tourists and tourism employees between various tourist environments (hotel,
pool, sights, souvenir shop, casino, bar) without interacting with environments beyond the tourist
reality. In this way the tourist mobility can be both selective and–despite its voluntariness–
extremely restricted.

The Privilege of Exit

The Western tourist has, as mentioned, the choice to refrain from travelling. He or she also has
the privilege to choose–within certain limits–which country to spend his/her holiday in. And
once there, the privilege to ignore major parts of the political, social, and economic situation in
the country applies. The third privilege we would like to discuss is the tourist’s right and capacity
to leave the tourist place with immediate effect. The freedom to depart without delay is here seen
as the last phase of the tourist mobility pattern and it is initiated once the Western tourist is
unable to, or no longer wishes to stay, in the tourist destination.

The privilege of immediate departure is activated when the tourist wishes to leave the resort at
once. The wish may be triggered by various reasons. In some cases it may be the result of illness
and the afflicted person wants to return home–to family, friends, or just to get better hospital
care. Also other personal circumstances (accident, theft) can be the reason to use the privilege. In
other cases, political and social upheaval (state of war, ethnic conflict, terrorist attacks,

40
demonstrations, strikes, or riots at or near the tourist place) can contribute to the activation of
the privilege of immediate departure. Yet, further examples are nature-related events and disasters
(earthquake, fire, flooding, volcano eruption, hurricane, and cyclone) that can make the privilege
of immediate departure an urgent matter for the tourist.

The privilege to leave a place as soon as problems accumulate is more of an issue than ever
before. Year by year the number of Swedes and other Western tourists going to remote
destinations is rising. More people visit uncommon destinations in the part of Asia, Indonesia
and Asia that were earlier difficult to reach for tourists. The travel agencies constantly update
their offerings to capitalize on these new consumptions pattern in tourism, and to respond to the
new demands of the tourist gaze. At the rate of the fast-growing tourism and the multiple
doubling of the number of tourist destinations, the risk that a tourist will be afflicted by some
unexpected and disagreeable event increases; events that contribute to the tourist’s failure to see
the place as a suitable area to be in. The privilege of immediate departure has now gained in
relevance as the tourist numbers have risen and the destinations have become more
“adventurous” and even more remote.

But what actually happens when the privilege of immediate departure is set in motion? What
happens beyond the tourist’s wish to leave the place – for usually obvious reasons – without ado?
Firstly, the changed situation – irrespective of social, health, political, or nature-related reasons –
entails a radical change in the visitor’s attitude to the symbolic and physical space that s/he is in.
The tsunami of 26 December 2004 in South-East Asia is probably one of the most major and
clear examples of how the symbolic and material tourist space can disintegrate in an instant. The
tsunami laid waste wide areas in several countries in the Indian Ocean, killing a quarter of a
million people. Previously beautiful and peaceful tourist places of relaxation and recreation in
these areas were transformed into disaster areas with scattered debris, smashed cars, fallen trees,
hotel room doors, muddy bags, cameras, and other personal affects that only managed to convey
a vague feeling to a spectator that this was once a tourist paradise (Öhrling 2008: 7-8). More than
20,000 Swedish citizens were in the area, of which 543 were killed or missing, and over 1,500
injured. Sweden was one of the countries in the West hardest hit by the tsunami (Lennquist &
Hodgetts 2005).

Other dramatic examples of how a place can come to take on a different meaning are situations
in which tourists become the targets of a political conflict that they are not involved in. The

41
terror attack in a nightclub on Bali on 12 October 2002 is such an example. Two hundred people
were killed, including local people and Western tourists. Five of the victims were Swedes. Further
examples are the Madrid train bombing (27 August 2004), the terror attacks on the London
central transport system (7 July 2005) and the Egyptian tourist resort Sharm el-Sheikh (23 July
2005, among others, notably the armed attack on a commercial centre and luxury hotel in
Bombay (17 November 2008). Among the 125 casualties, the injured and the hostages were many
Westerners. A recent example is the terror attack and hostage situation at the Westgate shopping
mall in Nairobi (21-24 September 2013), where 72 people were killed and hundreds injured, of
which 19 were foreigners of different nationalities.

All these dramatic, revolutionary, and tragic events mean that the original meaning of a place–from
a tourist perspective–is completely lost. For the local people the place continues to be a place
where they must cope with everyday concerns and make a living and a place of social context,
sometimes a family. The conditions of everyday life are changed and compounded because of the
disastrous events, but the meaning of the place as the loci of daily life has not changed. For the
tourist, however, the change implies that the social relations and interactions offered by the place
(Castree 2003; Held Cassel 2008) no longer nourish the tourist experience. The destination loses
its legitimacy and its tourist status, and to stay on in a place without the tourist legitimacy is an
anomaly.

Secondly, the activation of the privilege of immediate departure involves a number of actors
facilitating the departure. In some cases it is enough that the individual tourist changes the ticket
to an earlier flight to speed up the return. In other, more critical cases, a multifaceted rescue
operation is set in motion, both requiring and producing (new) technological, informational and
institutional structures. Government meetings, parliamentary deliberations, embassy mobilisation,
legislation, partnership agreements between countries, non-profit organisation investments,
setting up crisis teams, stand-by liaison offices, on-line connections, medical expertise,
pharmaceutical supply, therapy expertise, clerical presence, printed material, statistical and
documentation services, research and report compilation, contingency planning, review
committees, maps and mappings are some of the operations that may be in force when the
privilege of immediate departure is to be implemented on a grand scale.

Most Western states have delegated the responsibility of protecting travelling citizens in
situations of crisis or catastrophes to their foreign affairs ministry. The Swedish ministry of

42
foreign affairs and its ambassadors have issued detailed information on the rules pertaining to
evacuation and repatriation of Swedish citizens in situations of crisis. Similarly, the Finnish
foreign department and ambassadors have produced brochures and websites providing
information on how to get adequate assistance in a major crisis. Such a crisis can be when “a
considerable danger threatens the security of a Finnish citizen abroad: a serious accident, a
natural disaster, en environmental disaster, political unrest, internal confrontations between
population groups or a state of war”. The other Nordic countries and other EU countries
cooperate in situations of crisis. This structure of disseminating information is a central part of
the immediate departure privilege; the tourist must know where to turn and how to act if a
sudden, dramatic, and undesired situation should arise abroad.

Another relevant component of the immediate departure privilege is the attention paid by the
mass media to the involvement of their fellow citizens in disasters abroad. When Swedes are
afflicted, there are big headlines in Sweden. The destiny of the Swedish tourists takes priority
even when the sufferings of the local population are considerably greater. Likewise, attention is
paid to Swedes who cannot get home as planned because they are stuck in airports due to strikes,
attacks, or natural disasters, or to Swedes who are not evacuated as quickly and efficiently as one
might wish. News reports thus contribute to reinforcing the already strong conception that a
tourist should be able to leave a place immediately, and that there should be an infrastructure
making the departure possible. The headlines and dramatic pictures make the mass media a
central actor in forming public opinion and by extension in impelling political decisions that will
enable efforts to rescue Swedish in distress.

There are a number of institutions and practices that strengthen and sustain the notion that the
tourist should be able to depart immediately when a place has lost its tourist value. When the
institutions fail to deliver, it can have serious political repercussions. A case in point is the
Swedish government’s poor performance in connection with the 2004 tsunami disaster. Since the
government’s actions were not considered acceptable, a commission of inquiry was appointed on
13 January 2005. Eleven months later the commission presented a comprehensive report
launching severe criticism of major insufficiencies in the government’s capacity to lead, make
decisions, and take initiatives. These shortcomings, the report said, resulted in omissions to act
and the neglect of the rights of stranded Swedish tourists (SOU 2005: 104). The report clearly
stated that the government office lacked a functioning crisis management organisation, and the
foreign office was criticised for the inefficient stand-by service and the national health care

43
system for its inadequate performance during the disaster. Likewise, the Swedish consular system
was criticised for not being sufficiently prepared for major disasters. The other Nordic countries
also carried out official inquiries with similar criticism of insufficient alert systems and lack of
initiative in the initial phase of the disaster (DN 22 June 2005).

These illustrative examples show that the privilege of immediate departure is conceived as a right
for “our” tourists abroad. The notion is deeply rooted in the cultural mentality and built into the
very fabric of societal institutional practice. The freedom to come and go at our leisure and to
choose destinations and to leave them when we please is such an indisputable part of the tourist
practice that we can hardly imagine a different state of affairs.

Concluding remarks

The initial question posed concerned why it is that hundreds of thousands of Swedes (and
millions of other Westerners) can picture themselves going on holiday to countries with ongoing
ethnic conflicts and where human rights are being violated. Our tentative answer has been that
this is a result of the tourist privileges, which render the social, political and economic problems
in a place unimportant. The voluntary mobility privilege allows the tourists the freedom to
choose destinations based on their own preferences. The tourist industry does its very best to
accommodate and confirm the preferences and has a self-serving interest in turning a blind eye to
anything that is at odds with them. The privilege of the selective gaze works the same way. The
tourists’ limited visits, the ambition to “have fun” and the physical and organisational barriers
erected between the tourist and the local community by the tourism industry also contribute to
disregarding any problems and instances of abuse. The privilege of immediate departure, finally,
means that the tourist who nonetheless has been exposed to something genuinely unpleasant can
in most cases leave the place relatively quickly. The risk the tourist runs of being stranded in a
country with escalating and urgent problems is negligible.

The privileges discussed are closely interconnected, but it is important to remember that the
voluntary mobility privilege is clearly the basis of the other two. It is in the context of voluntary
mobility that the tourist’s conception of the journey and the destination is created. This means
that a kind of motivation agenda is drawn up on the part of the tourist, which is based on a set of
stories of the attraction value of a place and the journey there, the means of transport, routes,
currency, price level, and exchange rate. Other important factors on the motivation agenda are

44
local entertainment, the culinary tradition, ambience and beach life. The agenda gives priority to
certain events and phenomena, while others fade away. The privileges discussed here become
order-creating principles, contributing to ascribing a certain meaning to a tourist place. The order-
creation takes shape through linguistic utterances, metaphors, accounts, and concrete practices
(cf. Foucault 1980). The global mobility pattern can therefore be read in the light of two
contradictory as well as associated selection mechanisms. The first is a mechanism of laying bare
and highlighting, while the second is making invisible and secluding. What gives the place its
tourist meaning is foregrounded. What is made invisible is everything threatening to that very
meaning.

It is clear that the privileges discussed here have obvious consequences for Western tourists’
perception and evaluation of remote tourist places. In a wider perspective the privileges can also
be assumed to have an impact on how the world as a whole is perceived and construed. Seen
from the perspective of the voluntary mobile tourist, the world appears as an open and accessible
world dominated by global, smooth travelling. Also in academic contexts, the human migration
across state and nation borders is commonly seen as a general indication that the world is
shrinking and that the distance is shorter between people, places, and cultures (Castells 1996). In
such a frame of reference all journeys and flows of people are equated. All forms of human
mobility are seen as parts of the shrinking of the world, irrespective of the reasons for the
migration. Perceiving the world as dominated by flows and mobility represents a so-called
nomadological perspective. This perspective is grossly over-generalising and universalising and
risks seeing travelling as a non-differentiated phenomenon in an abstract de-politicised and de-
historicised context (Clifford 1992; Mani 1992; Ang 1993). With a nomadological way of seeing
the world, it becomes more difficult to see that the voluntary travelling is confined to a relatively
small part of the world population. This means that the focus is on the flows and mobility per se
rather that on what causes them.

Here we would like to emphasise that the tourism field encompasses many types of mobility and
that the voluntary type is only one of them. We would also like to point out that it is absolutely
essential to distinguish between the various forms of mobility and above all consider the causes
of different types of migration. In many countries dominated by the tourism industry, the
number of guest workers and internal migrants is high. Guest workers in Thailand come from the
poor and conflict-ridden Burma, Laos, and Cambodia. In the west and south of Turkey, the
tourist industry is to a great extent sustained by Kurdish people who have fled the armed conflict

45
between Kurds and the Turkish military in the northeast of the country. Parallel to the tourist
voluntary mobility and the guest worker system, we can observe dramatic global migratory
movements from the poor south to the rich north (Castles 2003) that are structured on different
forms of forced migration. These movements are, amongst others, an effect of the ethnic
conflicts often taking place in the very countries to which tourists go for the sun, swimming, and
cheap shopping. This form of mobility is not at all characterised by smooth openness but is
curbed, prevented, and controlled by legal as well as social, political, and economic barriers.

Internal migration and the guest worker system as well as the forced migration from the countries
favoured by tourists are phenomena omitted in the description of tourist places. Like a great
many problems, such as precarious terms of employment, child work, general poverty, violations
of human rights, ethnic and religious conflicts and environmental problems, internal migration
and guest worker issues are masked or demoralised to lend status and legitimacy to the place-
bound tourist experience. Also in this respect is the interaction between masking and highlighting
mechanisms clear, and it is in the context of this systematic interaction that tourist places are
shaped and adapted to the tourist gaze. The adaption of a tourist place does not only involve
trimming off parts of its social, cultural, and historical elements, but also transforming and
recreating in accordance with what is believed to be the tourist preference (cf. Grünewald 2006).

So far, we have argued that contemporary international tourism is structured along several
intertwined privileges. We have also noted that all these privileges involve masking as well as
highlighting elements. We have emphasised that these privileges have consequences for how the
tourist can perceive the place and for how the place is formed and re-formed. We have suggested
that the tourist experience can have a direct impact on how we view the worlds. We have also
noted that the destiny and suffering of tourists receive more attention in disasters although their
losses may be insignificant in comparison with those of the local population. However, we have
not discussed the response shown to the tourist privileges in different parts of the local
community. This is an area that calls for further research. The highlighting of certain political,
cultural, and economic elements and the concurrent masking of other elements can lead to both
adaption and resistance. Adaption, as indicated, involves increasing commodification and
commercialisation of local cultures (Hall 2004). In turn, it can have detrimental effects on the
identity and social unity of the local population (Grosspietsch 2005). The resistance can, in turn,
grow out of an aversion to what is perceived as constant simplification and misinterpretation.

46
However, the question is open as to what forms such resistance will take and what their
consequences will be.

47
 4. THE TOURIST CAMP
ALL INCLUSIVE TOURISM, HEDONISM AND BIOPOLITICS

Richard Ek

Introduction – The All-inclusive Phenomenon

All-inclusive tourism, including cruise tourism, is increasing more than other kinds of tourism.
Since the 1960s, cruise tourism has developed from being exclusive travel packages to a tourism
industry that focuses on all customer segments. The result has been a remarkable increase in the
number of cruise tourists: from half a million passengers in 1970, 4.4 million passengers in
1990, almost ten million passengers in 2000 to 13.2 million passengers in 2004 (Szarycz
2008:259; Weaver 2005a:11). In the U.S., cruise tourism is the fastest growing segment in the
tourism sector. In 1980 1.4 million citizens travelled on cruise liners, but in the space of only
twenty years that figure had risen to 6.9 million (Miller and Grazer 2002:221). Cruise liners
became increasingly larger as a result, the largest being in the Post-Panama category, i.e. a cruise
liner that is too big to navigate the Panama Canal. These cruise liners are able to accommodate
some 4,000 tourists and more than 1,000 crew (Wood 2000:349). For instance, the 339-metre
long MS Independence of the Sea is able to receive 4,370 passengers and 1,360 crew members
(Royal Caribbean 2011a).

Polly Pattullo (2005) reserves a chapter in her book 'Last Resorts' for a discussion of cruise
tourism in the Caribbean and the now well-known negative consequences of tourism. The
increasingly larger cruise liners more or less force the different port authorities in the Caribbean
to expand the ports so as not to lose the cruise traffic. Further, when the question of taxation
has been on the agenda, the cruise companies have immediately threatened to move their
businesses to destinations with more modest demands. To Ulrich Beck (2000), mobile
companies playing immobile places off against each other is one of the most concrete
implications of globalisation. Finally, Pattullo argues, the merchandise consumed on the cruise
liners is not purchased locally but is imported from leading transnational companies. Thus, the
local businesses in the cruise destinations are unable to gain from the cruise industry to any
significant degree (Pattullo 2005). The same goes for employees, in that “It has become

48
common practice for cruise-ship companies to recruit their poorest paid employees from
poorer countries” (Weaver 2005a:14).

Another tendency is for cruise-ship companies to buy parts of or sometimes entire islands in
the Caribbean archipelago and freight the tourists there. In this way they are able to reduce the
number of days in any one port and the tourists do not have to ruin their tropical fantasy by
uncomfortable encounters with the locals. At the end of the 1990s the majority of the
established cruise-ship companies owned their own islands (Pattullo 2005:204):

On these islands, the cruise liners show off their private beaches, where what is called
’cruise-style service’ is on hand, with barbecue and bar provided by cruise staff. Princess
Cruises owns Princess Cay on Eleuthera, Bahamas, ... and Saline Bay, Mayreau, in the
Grenadines... The RCCL owns Coco Cay, also on the Bahamas, and leases Labadee in Haiti,
an isolated promontory on the north coast where tourists spend a day on the beach
surrounded by a high wall patrolled by guards.

What stands out here is a system of simulated places or enclaves, stretched out over large
physical distances but confusingly similar to each other. Cruise tourism can consequently be
regarded as a pedagogical example of globalisation in the sense that it is characterised by spatial
restructuring, mobility and stratification. In effect, the larger and larger cruise ship turns away
from the world outside and instead becomes an insular micro cosmos (Wood 2000:350):

The new squarish-built towering ships, with their vast atriums and inward-looking
architecture, are essentially floating resorts, with everything from casinos and shopping malls
to golf courses and ice-skating rinks onboard. Viewing the sea is optional; even the deck
chairs are likely to face inwards. The liners have emulated theming from the entertainment
and hotel sectors, and conversely the hotel and entertainment giants have been increasing
their presence in the cruise business.

The illustration can be continued with another giant cruise ship, 'Allure of the Seas' (Royal
Caribbean 2011b):

The revolutionary design of Allure of the Seas will fill your days at sea with wonder: wake
to two-story ocean views in our contemporary Loft Suites, hop onto a classic, full-sized
carousel in our Boardwalk neighborhood, spend some quiet time in our adults-only
Solarium, and let the kids' imaginations run wild in our Youth Zone - the largest dedicated
youth area at sea. Jump right into our Pool Zone, where you'll find our H2O Zone,
cantilevered whirlpools, FlowRiders® and a thrilling zip-line view of the ship and sea
below. When it's time to unwind, go for a stroll in Central Park - a meandering garden and
lush public space lined with foliage and fine restaurants - or take in the majestic view from

49
 any of the multiple balconies overlooking the AquaTheater, the first amphitheater at sea.
With 28 ultra-modern loft suites and 2,700 spacious staterooms, this 16-deck marvel proves
that the impossible is possible. You have to see it to believe it.

The cruise-ships are mobile, all-inclusive establishments; physical mobile nodes in the global
network of all-inclusive tourism. But the tourist global network of all-inclusive facilities also
consists of establishments on firm ground. In Sweden, the number of tourists choosing the all-
inclusive facility on the ground has increased by 20-30 per cent in the last year, and will soon
represent 25 per cent of charter tourism as a whole (Dagens Nyheter 2010). Today, all-inclusive
establishments on firm ground are the fastest growing sub-sector of the tourism industry
(Dielemans 2008). This too is a concept and practice that turns inwards, isolates itself from the
physically adjacent surroundings, and focuses on functional and similar places that are physically
far removed. It would seem that an arrangement like this has several winners (Dielemans
2008:124-125, my translation):

To the hotel companies it [the all-inclusive solution] is efficient: Food and beverage is that
part of the business that is usually difficult to make a profit on, the guests stroll outside the
hotels, eat and drink in local restaurants and bars. But not if this is included in the travel
costs and served as required in the hotels... In addition, the model implies independence.
What local life outside has to offer is not quite so important; the idea is that all kinds of
entertainment should be available inside the hotel. And the hotels do not have to worry
that employees will put money into their own pockets, because no money is in circulation
[tipping is also usually forbidden]. It isn’t only the hotels that benefit. Tour operators can
also reduce their staffing costs – if no one leaves the hotel there’s no need for as many
guides. The big hotels - in the Caribbean 2,000 rooms are not unusual - also fill a large
number of airline seats, something that is naturally beneficial to the airline companies. And
travel agencies that depend on commission can earn money by marketing all-inclusive
packages, where the basic price is higher.

The spatialities of contemporary all-inclusive tourism have only received marginal attention in
human geography and tourism studies; Claudio Minca’s (2010) work on tourist enclaves filled
with docile bodies being a noteworthy exception. This paper addresses this issue by analysing
and problematising the spatiality of all-inclusive tourism through the explicit use of the two
spatial concepts of topography and topology. Consequently, the paper is a response to the call
made by Belcher et al (2008) for further spatial understanding of the societal state of exception
as a topological unfolding of potentiality (see also Minca 2005). The all-inclusive practices of
tourism form a post-political practice (Swyngedouw 2011; Žižek 1999) that unfolds and
simultaneously has the capacity to change the conditions of a radical politics in the neoliberal
contemporary.

50
The paper is structured as an essay with three vignettes. The first vignette discusses all-inclusive
tourism as a modernistic phenomenon that should be approached topographically and
topologically. The second vignette considers (all-inclusive) tourism's Logos and Eros as
topologically connected. In the third and last vignette interest is directed towards all-inclusive
tourism as a biopolitical organisation that rests on the topological camp as a foundational spatial
principle, with post-political implications also for the world outside the tourist camp.

Seeing Tourism Topographically and Topologically

Tourism has traditionally been regarded as something that is detached from the rest of ‘society’
and as something separate from ‘social core activities’ like working life, the public sector and
families’ everyday lives. To Adrian Franklin (2004), this fundamental view of tourism has
crystallised into two hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that modern everyday working life is
such that individuals need to ‘escape’ from it now and again by going on holiday. The second
hypothesis is that this tourist space is something extraordinary and different from the social
space of ordinary everyday life.

These two hypotheses have also been dominant ontological starting-points in tourism research.
Here, tourism is defined and characterised by means of a topographic ontological framework.
In a topographical ontology there is an emphasis on relief, borders, physical distances and
positions in physical space (with a corresponding stress on space as absolute and relative). The
physical attributes usually represented by Euclidean representation techniques, such as the two-
dimensional maps (shape, height, and depth), become prominent in a topographic ontology.
The topographical framework says less about the nature of the relations between, for instance,
places close to each other on the map. In a topographical framework, society is imagined as a
container, in which distinct social activities (taking place in society) are ontologically placed
beside each other as separate phenomena. From this topographical perspective, the next step,
which almost seems to come naturally, is to decide which of these social activities are central to
society as a whole, which activities influence other activities most, which activities do not have
any relation to each other at all, and so on. The social activities in the container are stratified
and assigned a certain value depending on their position in the box, and are crystallised into a
power-knowledge nexus that expresses an epistemology that harmonises with the topographical
ontology. Very often, geographical and functional proximity set the tone here (places that are

51
physically close are expected to influence each other more than distant places, leisure activities
at weekends are ‘closer’ to vacation activities than to common work on a weekday etc.).

However, Franklin (2004:278), in line with other tourism researchers (formatted into a ‘critical
turn’ in tourism studies, see further Ateljevic et al 2007 and Bianchi 2009), argues that this
topographical ontology in tourism studies should be questioned – or at least supplemented with
an alternative ontology in which tourism is not regarded as something secluded in society, but
something that is society. To Franklin, tourism is an ordering practice that shapes and has
shaped the modern society into what it is today. Here tourism is something that in an active way
does and is society, rather than something that is in or is an outcome of society (tourism as a power
order, as increased consumption or experience mediation). Not least, tourism as a modernistic
practice is expressed as territorialisation, and in its continuation, as the institutionalisation of
nationalism and territorial states. To Franklin (2003:38):

… tourism is not a decorative and superficial activity or even a compensatory activity for
the ills of capitalism or modernism. Instead it relates centrally to modernity in a number of
dimensions: politically, morally, technologically, and economically. However, as we will see
in considering its intimate relationship to nation formation and nationalism, tourism can be
considered one of the new cultural expressions and performances of nation formation.

According to Franklin, the critical moment in the development of tourism and nationalism is
the building of the railway. The development of a set of large-scale mobility apparatus that
connected different places and local economies was a prerequisite of industrial tourism and an
imagined community at a national level (Anderson 1983). In the same way, developments in
communication and information technologies were inherent parts of the construction of
nations and resulted in an increased awareness of and curiosity about the world outside the
nation (Thompson 1995). This awareness and curiosity took shape as an orientalist geographical
imagination (Said 1978) that is still apparent in contemporary tourist discourses. To Franklin
(2003:43):
… tourism and travel were always tied into modernity, and… modern cultures were
necessarily mobile and inquisitive cultures. They were either poking around the planet,
seeking to pull the world into the modern orbit or in the case of camping, parodying it in a
’useful’ manner. It is a nonsense to imagine tourism as an escape from modern ways of life
when it is par excellence the way of modern life.

Being part of the modernistic project is to be in motion, to advance in unknown terrain with an
open mind towards change (Löfgren 1999:268). Nationalism made the world ‘outside’ the

52
nation as relevant as the world ‘inside’ the nation. Inevitably, a visit ‘outside’ the nation, as a
tourist, was a manifestation of national identity and citizenship.

Franklin advocates a topological ontology in the approach to tourism that focuses on the
inherent order and properties of places. As a concept, topology includes the study of non-
metric properties (not restricted to the variable of physical distance) and spatial configurations
as the degree of connectivity and density. Topology has been an important concept in the
project of outlining a relational notion of space in human geography and actor-network theory
(Jones 2009), and has also been used to problematise notions of power as relational (Allen and
Cochrane 2010; Giaccaria and Minca 2011).

In the topological approach there is a greater sensitivity towards properties that are not
influenced by changes of a topographic nature (such as size and shape). In a topological
ontology tourism and society are interwoven and it is not possible to separate the touristic from
the social. With a topological approach, the focus is on the function and interaction between
practices, rather than on distinct units, tangible similarities and surface differences. Here, the
dichotomy as an ordering principle is disregarded, as well as topographic similarities and
differences of any kind, in favour of the relational complexity beneath the surface of the spatial
forms (Murdoch 2006). The boundaries between here and there and now and then are not so
clear-cut. Instead, the world can be seen from a perspective that is both here and there and then
and now, and that is interconnected in a topological entirety.

All-inclusive tourism increases in extent as well as in importance in many ways, and to follow
the reasoning outlined by Franklin, is a practice that increasingly orders society. The network of
mobile and stationary all-inclusive tourism enclaves are thus topographically dispersed over
great physical distances but yet become increasingly topologically close to each other as the
network of all-inclusive tourism is intensified and becomes denser. Through the analysis and
discussion of this practice as a topology it becomes possible to say something about organised
society in its entirety. It also becomes possible to say something about the direction of society,
i.e. where it is heading politically, because in a topological perspective tourism and politics are
not separated and distant (like two remote phenomena in the societal box in a common
topographical reading), but are two aspects of the same twisted societal body, constituted
through the practices that outline its internal relationship.

53
Especially in a political and philosophical perspective, it becomes interesting to approach all-
inclusive tourism as a way of organising society and people. What characterises the spatial
organisation of all-inclusive tourism is that it is organised as a camp! The cruise-ships and the
stationary all-inclusive establishments are all based on a camp logic, a mainly enclosed space that
is constituted through surveillance, control of mobility and canalisation of circulation. The
boundary drawing is not topographic, in which entrance is regulated by a principle of public
right, but topological, in which entrance is conditional and temporary in nature, in this case
based on the principle of credit (Tesfahuney and Dahlstedt 2008). Boundary setting does not
follow an ‘inside or outside – logic’ but an ‘inside and outside – logic’. In other words, inclusion
is always temporary and since the boundary setting is topological it can be moved around a
spatially stationary person (with a changed credit worthiness for instance). Ontologically,
although the tourist is never completely in the camp he or she is nevertheless forced to submit
to its logic and function. The camp can then assume a different nature: it can be pleasant
and/or uncomfortable, claustrophobic and/or agoraphobic, sadistic and/or hedonistic. Despite
this, the underlying principle of inside and outside remains the same (Agamben 1998).

Both politically and philosophically, the camp as a spatial principle of organisation can be seen
as an ontological alternative to the dominant principle of the polis, the city with its surrounding
walls that delimit the human community from the wilderness outside (Tesfahuney and Schough
2009). But seeing the world from either a topographic or a topological perspective, setting two
ontologies side by side and towards each other, is to reason in a topographical way. That is not
what Agamben (1998) implies when he argues that the camp is the new paradigm of the world,
not the polis. Instead, he insists that the relation between these two principles of spatial
organisation is topological, like two principles that are interwoven. To him, the camp as an
organisational principle has existed as an inherent but mostly invincible idea in the modernistic
metaphysical tradition in which polis is based. The camp has been in the shadow of the polis, but
the increasingly aggressive and all encompassing capitalism has made the logic of the camp
more and more visible, especially in contexts of systematic oppression like detention- and
asylum camps. The spatial organisation of all-inclusive tourism as camps thus constitutes a
model for human organisation that is increasingly crystallised and legitimated in neoliberal
rhetoric and practice and in which inclusion and exclusion are something conditional and never
given.

54
 Seeing Tourism's Eros and Logos Topologically

Relatively few research contributions discuss tourism from a topological perspective. Even
fewer contributions explicitly discuss tourism as modernity, rather than a phenomenon in
modernity. One exception is Ning Wang's 'Tourism and Modernity: A Sociological Analysis'
(2000). Wang argues that the modernistic project is marked by an ambivalence that is the
outcome of two related but simultaneously conflicting forces or directions – the first being a
reason- and rationalistic-based Logos-modernity, the second a desire- and emotions-based
Eros-modernity.

The first direction, Logos-modernity, permeates the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment
and can be traced back to Aristotle's reliance on reason being able to control other aspects of
the human being, such as emotions. The second direction, Eros-modernity, expresses (from a
perspective anchored in Logos-modernity) irrational demands and desires of bodily
characteristics. Eros-modernity benefits and cherishes desire, seduction and the festive and is
carnivalesque and hedonistic. Logos-modernity prioritises forces that discipline and/or suppress
feelings and affect, through rationalisation, setting boundaries, segmentation, surveillance and
control of the organised modernistic space (Chanlat 2006; Ek and Tesfahuney 2008). Thus,
although modernity is steered by emotions (e.g. through its many hedonistic expressions) it is at
the same time rationally (instrumentally) stratified (Wang 2000:41):

Modern tourism, as institutionalized leisure travel, is one of examples of Eros-modernity that

allows people to gratify their Eros impulses and desires without being punished by the agents of
Logos…The gratification of Eros in and through tourism, then, releases the tensions caused by
the self-constraints imposed by Logos on Eros. In this way, tourism helps reinforce the order of
the home society that Logos underpins. At the same time (Wang 2000:41-42):

Unlike tourism as pleasure travel or a leisure institution, the tourism industry, as an agent for
the commodification of tourist experiences, is the embodiment of Logos. While tourists are
largely motivated by Eros, the tourism industry is to a large extent informed by Logos…As a
result, the relationship between the tourist experience (e.g., Eros-modernity) and the tourism
industry (e.g., Logos-modernity) is one of ambivalence.

Tourism as a hedonistic practice related to rationality has been discussed to a certain extent (by
e.g. Andriotis 2010; Diken and Laustsen 2004; Grappi and Montanari 2011; Jansson 2002).
André Jansson (2002) emphasises the distinction between realistic hedonism and imaginary

55
hedonism. Realistic hedonism can be embodied in the tourist who travels to the same
destination again and again in order to have the same experience, while imaginary hedonism can
be embodied in the tourist who is always seeking new experiences. The mediatisation of tourism
loosens up these two categories, and the archetypal charter trip acquires elements of both
realistic and imaginary hedonism as the tourist product goes through a product diversification.
The tourist has no choice but to make choices, in that he or she is forced to customise his or
her tourist experience, and becomes, in the process, embedded in hyperreal representations and
practices. The paradox is complete and logos and eros melt together when “rational choice is
bound to be a matter of imaginative hedonism” (Jansson 2002:438; see also Weaver 2005b).

The expansion of all-inclusive tourism is an indication that Eros-modernity has at least gained a
qualitatively new position in the intricate topological balancing act between eros and logos in
modernity. In particular, it takes a new distinct spatial shape – the introvert hedonistic camp
that is canalised and stratified in the network of tourism-related activities and places, closely
linked topologically but topographically out-stretched on a global scale – with substantial
political implications. However, touristic hedonism in relation to the (political) organisation of
society and in the prolongation, the design of the citizen, has been discussed to a very
insignificant degree. The spatial logic of the camp provides a ‘hedonistic overcoat’, in which all-
inclusive tourism becomes a structured hedonism that creates human subjects. In her analysis of
discussion forums connected to cruise tourism, Christine Chin (2008:109) concludes that:

Rising demands for tourism goods and services in general and cruise tourism in particular are
indicative of how pleasure culled from extraordinary experiences has become an integral
dimension to experiences of ‘self-actualization’ … Even though the centrality of pleasure
consumption has not wholly eliminated posters’ flashes of critical evaluation, located in a global
context of neoliberal economic restructuring however, posters much like other citizen-
consumers are expected to resolve free market created contradictions and moral dilemma by
resorting to the perspective of individual choice, action hence responsibility. … It is not that
‘the political’ has been eliminated per se, but that it is redefined in a distorted version of
feminism’s ‘the political is personal,’ so to speak.

Intertwined in this introvert, hedonistic, all-inclusive tourism, where it is not necessary or hardly
desirable to look at the sea or the surroundings of the stationary all-inclusive establishment, is a
touristic nihilism, a will to nothingness, a passive nihilism (Diken 2009a). To Nietzsche, nihilism

56
was an historical movement and an imminent logic in the history of the West that was
summarised in the declaration of God's death. Here 'God' is equal to ideas and the realms of
ideas. To be more precise, the Platonic metaphysics institutionalised into Western metaphysics
had reached its impasse (Heidegger 1977:57-61, 67). Nietzsche traces nihilism's origin to the
three monotheistic religions that all turn away from life on Earth (by addressing a heavenly
world beyond life). But the rise of secularism did not imply the end of nihilism, since escapism
can also take non-religious forms. However, with the rise of modernity and the Age of Reason,
religious nihilism divided into a radical and a passive form (Diken 2009a:3).

Passive nihilism is based on the assumption that there are no values, meanings or authority. In
this meaningless condition – a world without values – there is no reason to take political
responsibility or have societal goals. Only intoxication and flight remain. Radical nihilism, on
the other hand, confronts and attacks existing value-systems in order to, in a state of pure spite
and malevolence, destroy them. The reason for this is that the superior values of the radical
passivist can never be realised. In other words, the radical nihilist's values are without a [worthy]
world (Diken 2009a:33; 2009b:100). However, these two forms of nihilism constitute a
symmetry that is complementary rather than conflict-ridden, and where hedonistic passivity and
extremist passion occupy the same social space (see Diken's [2009a] analysis of Michel
Houellebecq's Platform [2003]). Radical nihilism in the shape of pure malevolence and passive
nihilism in the form of post-political practices like all-inclusive tourism are topologically
interwoven (Diken 2009a:6). The traditional (topographical) view of these two forms of nihilism
as radically different is thus a 'false antagonism' (Diken 2009a:11).

Touristic nihilism thus unites a negative and an affirmative nihilism, in the proclaimed right to
live in a hedonistic way, such as appropriating the cruise-ship’s supplies without remorse and at
the same time calculating that it is a business opportunity not to be missed. By way of example,
let us look at the stationary, all-inclusive establishment of Secrets Capri Riviera Cancun, in Playa del
Carmen in Southern Mexico. Although children are not allowed here (perhaps because everyone
is treated like a child?) adults are free to engage in the registered brand Unlimited-Luxury® (AM
Resorts 2011a):

Embrace our sensuous world of Unlimited-Luxury®, where everything is included, with our
all-new Preferred Club, concierge-style resort. Share our spectacular Caribbean scenery.
Play at challenging golf courses. Rejuvenate in world class spas. Pamper yourself with 24/7
concierge and room services. Indulge in our many gourmet restaurants. Dance the night
away under the stars.

57
Included among the facilities is the unlimited supply of juice and soft drinks, a mini-bar that is
refilled every day, wine-tasting, luxurious bathing facilities, service personnel at the pool, an
outdoor Jacuzzi, a floating bar in the pool, beach parties, unlimited possibilities to play golf, and
no need to carry presence-legitimating bracelets. One of the guests testifies to the experience on
the website (AM Resorts 2011b):

Wow! This resort is fantastic! I would like to say that this is one of the best vacation
decisions I've made. When I arrived they greeted me with a cool towel, a glass of champagne
and the floor concierge walked me to my room while introducing me to the hotel. The
moment I arrived, I was either beach side, poolside or by the Jacuzzi. The entire resort’s
service is impeccable. They are so polite and helpful. There's plenty of onsite poolside and
beachside activities. Both pool side and beach side service is outstanding. The resort is very
intimate and private. The pool is huge with, of course, a swim up bar. It was, hands down,
the best resort experience to date. I will certainly be going back as quickly as I can!

At the same time, Super Clubs Breezes Resorts tempts visitors by offering “super-inclusives”
(Breezers 2011):

Okay, so you’ve already heard the term, “super-inclusive.” So what exactly is it? Simply put,
it’s the best vacation value in the world. All your meals. All your drinks. All your
entertainment. An incredible variety of land and water sports, with professional instruction.
All included. And tipping is never permitted. We created the Super-Inclusive concept
because we understand that the whole point of a vacation is to get as far away from the real
world as possible. And nothing brings that point closer to home than going out for the day
and leaving your wallet behind.

Finally, Hedonism Resorts, promotes itself as “the pleasure seekers ultimate super-inclusive
playground” and states on its website that everyone is welcome to hedonism and that this is
indeed possible (Hedonism Resorts 2011):

Sleep in. Stay up late. Give up counting calories. Have a drink before noon. Give up
mineral water. Dine in shorts. Talk to strangers. Don't make your bed. Go skinny-dipping.
Don't call your mother. Let your hair down. Don't pay for anything. Don't leave a tip. Be
your beautiful self in spectacular Negril or Runaway Bay, Jamaica. Hedonism is a sandbox
for your inner child, nourishment for the mind, body, spirit and soul. Pleasure comes in
many forms. Choose one. Or two. Or more. And with absolutely everything included in
one upfront price you never have to think about money. Not even tips. Just what to do
next. And when. And with whom at one of two Hedonism resorts to chose from, the
original Hedonism II in Negril and the new Hedonism III in Runaway Bay.

58
Here eros and logos are blended and packaged as a unity. The rational path to happiness is to
leave your wallet at home, while the hedonistic condition can be reached by means of different
possible alternatives - Hedonism II or Hedonism III. Hedonism II costs 50$ for women and 100$ for
men for a day- or night pass, whereas Hedonism III costs 65$ for men and women (day pass)
alternatively 75$ for men and women (night pass). What is the most rational, logic alternative
for you? Read the small print first, and ’To learn more about what's included click here’
(Hedonism Resorts 2011).

In these hedonistic environments the touristic subject or agent is encouraged to become a

certain type of human; a conclusion that leads us in a biopolitical direction. To some degree we
have to return to the connections between nation building and tourism as a practice, whose
topological contact surface is embedded in the same socio-spatial strategy: territorialization.

From Topographical Polis to Topological Camps

The reasoning thus far could be regarded as based on an exaggerated binary thinking, but the
central idea is that tourism is characterised by the same ambivalence that permeates the
modernistic project. Tourism cannot be reduced to an isolated phenomenon, or to a space-time
in which the oppressed eros finds its discharge in hedonistic practices, as tourism research has
usually described it. In contrast to the topographical either/or view of tourism, tourism should
be regarded as a hybrid practice that contains both instrumental reason and the emotional and
corporeal, i.e. reason and emotion become entangled. Tourism is a part of Nomos (the conquest,
ordering and made useful through territorialisation, see further Schmitt 2003) and
simultaneously a biopolitical conduct that creates biopolitical subjects.

Biopolitics is critical to modernity, the creation of territorial belonging, national identity and
culture. Disciplinary, control and surveillance technologies that arise during modernity shape
the population into a unity. Biopolitics shapes bodies, senses and imaginations from thoughts
about norms and deviation, similarity and difference (Foucault 2008). Tourism is and has been a
crucial part of nation-building and the construction of imaginations and myths about one land
and one people, inside and outside, ‘us’ and ‘them’. Tourism has also been part of the
disciplinary, control and surveillance apparatus that has been mobilised as such for a variety of
reasons (Löfgren 1999). Moreover, tourism does not only shape people, but also shapes spaces
and territories, as a creating force. The tourist gaze (Urry 1990) is central here, because it is an

59
optic machine and a series of mirrors that create boundaries. Thus, the tourist gaze is a creating
force for society in general.

Biopolitics implies that our biological lives are politicised within the frame of the societal, and,
consequently, all contemporary politics can be regarded as biopolitics. Agamben is perhaps the
intellectual thinker who has pointed Foucault's ideas in the most radical direction. Agamben
uses ideas from several philosophical frameworks in his ambition to clarify why the camp and
not the city – polis – should be considered as the guiding thought paradigm in the attempt to
comprehend contemporary modernity, power and ordering. Hannah Arendt is another
influential source. Arendt (1951) argued that the political distance between western democracies
and totalitarian states was not as wide as has commonly been supposed. Topographically it is
possible to imagine a continuum with two end poles, the most ‘democratic’ and the most
‘totalitarian’, although topologically speaking the two extreme poles are closer because they both
base their authority and legitimacy on each others’ populations. Both democracies and
totalitarian systems are, in the end, biopolitical apparatus. Both systems have population as the
primary target and the difference is more a question of how biopolitics is conducted than
whether it is conducted.

Agamben (1998) develops this conclusion and points to another topological relation that ties
democracies and totalitarian systems. That this is the most suitable way of organising and
managing own population as a biopolitical resource is based on a specific spatial principle. This
spatial principle operates/works as a camp or a zone, whose basic characteristic trait is that
there is no predetermined protocol for what is going to remain in force and what is not.

The camp gives the sovereign total freedom of action and flexibility to decide the rules
accordingly – something that optimises control in a power- and steering perspective. The camp
is based on a topological principle where inside and outside are interlaced. The camp is thus the
hidden Nomos in modernity that successively becomes visible and discernible – not least under
the auspices of colonial and imperial regimes and in the concentration camps during the Second
World War. From a topographical understanding the concentration camp is revealed as an
anomaly, a pathological exception that categorically does not belong to Western modernity or
have any metaphysical connection with democratic systems. It is an abomination that is only
realisable in totalitarian, dictatorial systems. However, in a topographical reading, concentration

60
camps are an extrapolation of biopower and biopolitics. The camps represent a condensation of
the organisational principle that exists in all political systems and institutions (Clegg et al 2006).

Of course, ideas like these are provocative, especially as concentration camps constitute a
sensitive chapter in the history of Western modernity. Concentration camps as a materialisation
of the spatial logic of the camp or zone first appeared in Cuba, Namibia and South Africa
(Campbell 2002) in the context of slavery, estate economy and European colonisation
(Tesfahuney and Dahlstedt 2007). The concentration camp is thus a colonial invention that
found its optimal utility when it was brought back to European soil in the shape of Nazi
concentration- and annihilation camps. What is more, such thoughts can be regarded as an illicit
reading of power and sovereignty, because one of the consequences is that the people who are
stuck in the camp are excluded from the principal safety that polis affords as long as they are
situated within its walls but are still in the grasp of (a potentially lethal) power. The person or
figure in this situation is homo sacer; someone who is unworthy of being sacrificed but is possible
to kill without punishment (Agamben 1998:82). A quick reading of Agamben might give the
impression that he argues that all people are homo sacer, but what he insists on is that we are all
potentially homo sacer. Our political and civil rights, which are anchored in national and territorial
belonging, and our human rights, based on the definition of what counts as humanity through
the anthropological machinei, can actually be withdrawn as they were in the concentration
camps, where the internees were not even allowed to decide on their own deaths (Agamben
2002; Bauman 1989).

A dismantling of people’s political and human rights is usually traced with some acceptance to
so-called extraordinary circumstances, states of exception in war or states of crisis. The point of
issue for Agamben, in his reading of Carl Schmitt's (1985), is the conclusion that the state of
exception is pronounced by the sovereign (the very essence of sovereign power is to have the
capacity to do that), is that this proclamation (of a state of exception) is not possible to stop
(since the decision to proclaim is arbitrary). All humans are thus philosophically speaking
potentially homo sacer or bare life (the bearer of the link between violence and law to Benjamin
1978; see also Derrida 2005) but with a wide variation when it comes to probability,
‘realpolitically’ speaking (Agamben 1998).

Expressed in more explicit spatial terms, the camp or the zone, as a spatial rule of conduct in a
hypothetical context, puts ‘us all’ in a situation where we run the risk of becoming the bearer of

61
bare life through a topological relation to sovereign power characterised by inclusive exclusion.
That is, the very apparatus that makes ‘us’ subjects can also be turned into an apparatus of
violence (Butler 2004). This situation should then be compared to the situation schematically at
hand in polis, with the foundational boundary between inside and outside (the dominant
ontology in political philosophy and executed politics as in migration politics). In polis, we have
a simple dichotomy in which it is only possible to be either inside or outside. Ontologically
speaking the camp is both more complicated and simpler, since the only position is on the
threshold. Here the relation between the sovereign and its subjects in polis is viewed through
topological lenses – the inside-outside dichotomy is topographical. However, this topographical
approach misses the sovereign power's potential or potency (a potential that becomes visible in
a topological perspective) and has been the case since Aristotle made a distinction between
biological life (zoē) belonging to the sphere of the household (oikos) and politically qualified life
(bios) belonging to the sphere of the societal (polis). Bare life, on the threshold between oikos and
polis, was made invisible (Mills 2008:64). Polis, and the boundary-setting that constitutes this
traditional spatial model, is a mirage that has directed the Western world of ideas to a realm of
seemingly simple dichotomies that have shaped foundational thought patterns; something that
is particularly tangible in the institutionalisation of territorial states and nations (Tesfahuney and
Schough 2009). In Agamben’s opinion we need to rethink, since it is the ban that is the original
sovereign act and not the application of belongingness in communities of citizenship (Agamben
1998:29). It is not the citizen that is the primeval authentic figure in political philosophy and
political conduct, but the sans papier who are living and dying on the borders of Europe at this
very moment (van Houtum and Boedeltje 2009; see also Dahlstedt and Tesfahuney 2004).

The tourist camp again reminds us that the camp is in a topological relation to polis as an
inherent principle, but with the consequence that the state of nature is in the same way an
inherent principle in civilisation, as in the touristic catchphrase 'sea, sun, sex' (Diken and
Laustsen 2004; see also Worthington 2005). Here, the tourist camp symbolises a privilege, the
advantage of being able to travel as a tourist, embedded in a mobility apparatus that gives
security, exclusivity and luxury in different places. The tourist chooses, almost in a Hegelian
sense, to be besieged in order to indulge in hedonism and touristic nihilism, escape in pleasure
and, in the continuation, give up life.ii Conventionally, the humans outside the tourist camp are
regarded as excluded, but here the logic remains the same, even if it is inverted. Getting out is
not difficult; it is coming in that is the problem (the same is true for refugees, migrants and in
gated communities [Diken & Laustsen 2005]). Tourism, cruise tourism and other forms of all-

62
inclusive tourism constitute mental images and materialised aspects of the global topological
order that manifests itself as stratified camps on different topographical scales, from gated
communities to Fortress Europe.

The result of the spatial logic of the camp becoming increasingly influential in society is that the
spatial and temporal status of citizenship is rearranged, and in the continuation, the definition of
and expectations of the citizen are changed. What used to be a consistently held practice of
citizenship connected to a territory is no longer a certainty. For instance, the figure homo sacer, in
the gestalt of the sans papier, points to the fact that the right to have and the right to keep
citizenship is in the end dependent on a (more or less) capricious sovereign decision (perhaps
most obvious in asylum processes in the different European countries).

Citizenship is here no longer connected to a universal idea (in theory if not in practice) of
human rights, but to biopolitical ideas about the economic value by which citizenship is
increasingly graded (Ong 2006). The social contract that has traditionally regulated inclusion and
exclusion and represented some sort of stability, predestination and simplicity, now takes the
shape of continuous negotiation, in which the conditions relentlessly change and value
displacements happen all the time. Political ideas about equity and solidarity are replaced with
principles based on the notion of economic value, and where the singular person and his or her
body constitute a biopolitical value (Tesfahuney and Dahlstedt 2007). The principal dismantling
of polis (and often also in urban-material meaning) is part of political ‘de-citizenification’, since
the city is a ground condition for citizenship (Dahlstedt 2009:33):

Through centuries the fight for citizenship has taken place in cities. The city is neither the
background to this struggle or the arena the fight for hegemony has been about. The city is
more of the arena on which different societal groups has identified theirs rights, made demands,
fought and articulated citizen rights and obligations. This social tendency, the reduction of
traditional citizen functions and the mobilisation of a population to increase its biopolitical
value can all be regarded as post-political practices and, as such, related to governmentality (see
for instance Miller and Rose 2008; Mitchell 2007; Mouffe 2005). Here the ideal behaves more
like a tourist who does not engage in the places through which s/he passes, and thus does not
burden a public sector like a place-bound citizen according to neoliberal discourses (Sparke
2005).

63
 Conclusion – The Hedonistic Camp

In this paper a specific form of tourism, namely all-inclusive tourism, has been discussed. This
all-inclusive tourism usually consists of cruise tourism and a touristic visit to a stationary, all-
inclusive establishment. This form of tourism has become increasingly popular in recent
decades and continues to grow. What for a hundred years ago was regarded as an aristocratic
affair has now developed into a net of simultaneous mobility and the storage of millions of
people, globally stretched out in a cartographic pattern that can be described as an imprint of
colonial relief.

In this paper it has also been stressed that tourism should not be seen as something isolated or
discernible in society. Traditionally, tourism has been dichotomised and compared to the
‘everyday’ and ‘ordinary’ as something ‘outside’ everyday life and ‘extraordinary’. Tourism per se
has also been categorised in dichotomies, for instance ‘ordinary’ charter tourism versus
‘extraordinary’ backpack tourism (Andersson Cederholm 1999). Regarding and interpreting the
world in this way – comparing phenomena and practices as complementary or mutually
exclusive and pitting them against each other as ontologically separated even though there may
be countless connections – is to approach it through a topographical world-view. The
alternative is to see the world topologically. iii Here, tourism is not something in society, a
compartment among others with more or less tangible relations of cause and effect. Rather,
tourism is society, i.e. it orders and structures society and co-institutionalises territorial states
and Eurocentric geographical imaginations. Tourism and politics should be read as one-in-one,
not as two separate societal spheres. All-inclusive tourism is a political practice.

However, in addition to being a political practice, all-inclusive tourism is also a spatial practice
(spatial practice as a concept that is close to a tautology). Schematically, all-inclusive tourism can
spatially be expressed as a practice that is canalised and arranged in camps. Agamben's idea of
the camp as a spatial organisation principle in which power works topologically offers a
reasoning and terminology that enlightens the discussion further. Power, primarily crystallised
as an institutionalised sovereign power (an emperor with absolute power, a dictator, democracy
at the end of history, an empire, etc.) finds its capacity to execute through the topological
relation between the two spatial models of organisation, namely polis and the camp. Polis makes
a territorial power over societies and populations possible, while the camp facilitates a
biopolitical power over people – in the end power over people's lives and deaths. When the two

64
spatial models coincide, an encompassing iron cage of territorially based execution of law and
power is created (Bauman 2003).

Reasoning about the worst possible scenario reveals something about less charged tendencies
and trajectories, such as the growing all-inclusive tourism, its shapes and figures. The tourist
camp constitutes the spatial model that crystallises the inherent presence of the state of nature
in polis, or to be more precise, the system of territorial states. The same tourist camp becomes
the place where the eros and logos of tourism meet and materialise. The tourist camp expresses
and materialises a certain post-political system and at the same time actively orders and
structures the very same post-political system. Could the tourist camp, the all-inclusive tourist
facility at sea or on firm ground, be the primary model for and representative of a post-political
situation and societal tendency? When the tourist escapes into the all-inclusive establishment
does he or she then become someone who does not care about politics, equality or anything
that can pass as metaphysical, principal, or a question of justice? Someone who instead focuses
on the corporeal, the pleasure and the experience, and is encouraged to do so by the sovereign
power that has created and ordered the service-scape that the hedonistic tourism that circulates
within, filling his or her numb body with food and drink – in effect a reversed version of the
prisoner in the concentration camp who circulated in order to find food and drink in order to
survive (Agamben 2002). In the end, the reasoning becomes ethical. The question is, what kind
of ethics does the hedonistic camp express?

65
 5. HOLIDAY UTOPIAS
THE GENDERED & RACIALIZED SPACES OF ALL INCLUSIVE
TOURISM

Katarina Mattsson

Blue Inclusive–Complete holiday, most things included!

Blue Inclusive is a perfect selection of modern resorts on the beach. The hotel standard is
at least FFFF. In addition to meals, beverages and snacks, entertainment and activities are
also included, not to mention some water sports.* Give your wallet a rest and enjoy a
golden complete holiday!

www. Fritidsresor.se, 30 November 2008

In recent years, the offers of all-inclusive travel to destinations outside of Europe have increased
dramatically. It is nearly impossible to read a daily paper without being accosted by full-page ads
with pictures of tourist resorts with tempting blue pools and clear blue skies. A selection of them
is pinned to the noticeboard in my office at Uppsala University, where they form a background
of blue sky and sea behind my computer. Promising relaxation and vacation the all-inclusive
offers are marketed to families with children under the mottos of “complete relaxation” and
“more time for each other”, for example. The promise, in other words, does not only involve a
haven from everyday routines and stress in a general sense, but also a more specific promise of a
holiday free of negotiations on household chores. The underlying message in the extracts above
is that not only should the wallet be given a rest but the person holding it too. The expression
“golden complete holiday” signals that nothing will be wanting; there will in fact be luxury.

The design of all-inclusive travels can vary but often entails that “all” the tourist may need is
available within a single tourist complex. In varying degrees this means that an all-inclusive
resort constitutes more or less a village with a variety of pools, restaurants, pubs and activities.
All-inclusive tourism, with its standardised solutions and tourist environments, appears as a
more luxurious variant of the charter concept and is in many ways at odds with other trends in
the international tourism industry. New forms of tourism have emerged under different

66
names, such as ecotourism, ethnic tourism and culture tourism, as a critique of mass tourism
and as an answer to its problems (see Mattsson, this volume). Significantly, the interest in new
forms of travelling and the impetus to pursue authenticity in the tourism field have neglected
the study of the sun and sand tourism motivation and its manifestations as if it was too banal
to explore (cf. Selänniemi 2003).

This article shows how the marketing of all-inclusive travels is based on a number of spatial
tropes and metaphors that serve to construct the resorts as attractive and appealing. The
recurring question in this article is to whom the all-inclusive travel seems attractive and why.
Who is the all-inclusive tourist? On the more metaphorical level, I will try to deduce how the
blue tourism space of all-inclusive travels establishes imaginary relations between people and
creates gendered and racialised spatialities. What notions of gender and family does the
marketing of all-inclusive travels convey? How are ideas of family interwoven with colonial
and racialised representations?

Re-pre-sentations

Advertisements and travel brochures, together with travel guides and travel reports are interesting
study objects in the field of tourism since they provide a picture of a place that tourists may want
to visit. A central theme in the study of marketing is the importance of the “tourist gaze” and
how tourism is based on viewing as a practice. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s works, John Urry
(2002) has characterised tourism as a modern phenomenon transforming the world into “an
aesthetic surface” in his book The Tourist Gaze (Grinell 2004:11). The tourist gaze positions
people, cultures, and places as objects to consume (Urry 1995:220). The tourist approaches the
world and views what he/she encounters in a way that is socially and systematically organised,
thus lending crucial importance to the way a place is experienced. The traveller or the tourist
emerges primarily as someone who views a destination from a distance with an investigative gaze,
ordering and demarcating the “sights”.

The theory of tourist positions and the emphasis on the visual economy of tourism have been
criticised for reproducing a masculinity-oriented position (Wearing & Wearing 1996) and for
neglecting and excluding a more embodied experience of tourism. In a seminal article, Veijola
and Jokinen (1994) have highlighted the importance of the body in tourism (see also Jokinen and
Veijola 1997). The authors argue that the attraction of tourism must be understood in relation to

67
bodily sensations and the wish to get the body involved in situations and contexts rather than
view them from a distance. Veijola and Jokinen effectively show that the sensual importance of
the body in tourism cannot be ignored. Also Crouch and Desforges (2003) think that the
importance of somatic experiences in tourism and the readiness for “pleasure, fun and sensuality”
must be studied and theorised. They call for the addition of more verbs to the tourism palette:
tourism is not only about seeing but is a multi-sensual experience involving “being, doing,
touching and seeing” (Cloke & Perkins 1998: 198, quoted in Crouch and Desforges 2003:7).

This article attempts to show how representations of tourist destinations can be understood as
re-pre-sentations: they frame, instruct and suggest emotional structures preceding the encounter
with concrete destinations. They are the first step in in a number of communication acts in the
tourist experience, from getting the idea of going on a trip to the undertaking of the trip and the
return journey (Dann 1996). Advertisements and travel brochures do not only serve a commercial
function for travel agencies wishing to attract customers. They function as projection screens for
potential travellers and their dreams, perceptions and ideas of an upcoming holiday (Cooper
1994), what they want to do or not do, and what activities and relationships with other people
they want to engage in. The travel brochures therefore convey an image and a symbolic frame of
places, thus attaching values and symbols to a destination in various ways for the purpose of
catching the attention of the potential traveller. They strike a chord with people by offering a
way to approach a place on a more abstract level.

Spatial tropes

The marketing of tourism rests on a number of spatial tropes and metaphors. In international
research there are many postcolonial studies of the representations of tourist sites in marketing
materials and travel brochures (see e.g., Cooper 1994; Echtner & Prasad 2003; Grinell 2004;
Sturma 1999; Morgan & Pritchard 1998: Pritchard & Morgan 2000). These studies have revealed
how tourism marketing contributes to shaping and reproducing colonial images of places and
countries, people and cultures, often imbued with primitivism and exoticism (Cooper 1994).
Sturma (1999) claims that tourism is deeply steeped in a representational loop, in which colonial
narratives of other people and other places are told and retold. The lure of tourism at the same
time means that many of the negative representations of countries and people in the media are
more or less suppressed. As a part of a more extensive reproduction of colonial discourses, the

68
discourse of tourism is instead focused on colonial myths with a positive undercurrent while
being one of the most prominent producers of contemporary racialised discourses.
In a discourse analytical study of the marketing of destinations in “the third world”, Echtner &
Prasad (2003) identify three parallel myths: “the myth of the untouched”, the myth of the non-
civilised” and “the myth of the unlimited”. In the so called “paradise tourism” it is primarily the
myth of the unlimited space that is conveyed, for example, in the marketing of luxurious sun and
beach tourist sites, such as Cuba, Jamaica and Fiji. The myth of the unlimited is, they point out, a
colonial myth, which primarily builds on the attraction of having access to a contemporary
“paradise” and is communicated through pictures of beaches, high quality tourist facilities and
happy staff, busy serving the customers. The sun and beach resorts are portrayed as having
indescribably beautiful landscapes, friendly and accommodating local people ready to provide
service (ibid.). Often, marketing completely leaves out the poverty and misery sometimes existing
in the vicinity of the resorts and the construction of the destinations as “paradise” in this respect
rests on the romanticising of colonial power relations (ibid.).

In an analysis Morgan and Pritchard (1998; 2000) show that the imaginary spaces created in
tourism reproduce a deeply rooted understanding of nature, culture and space as gendered. The
landscape pictures in marketing are masculinised adventure landscapes from the north and
feminised landscapes from the third world (Pritchard & Morgan 2000). Gendered and sexual
imagery is used to create women as part of the exotic tourist site in an intricate weave of
gendered and racialised connotations. The marketing of the sites repeats a sexualised and
racialised “spatial trope” where place and landscape are positioned as hypnotic, innocent,
seductive, teasing–a choice of diction that not only sexualises the people in the place but also the
landscape as such (ibid.). The imagery is, according to the authors, not only constructed to attract
the tourist gaze of people in the “first world”. The tourist material also privileges a male
heterosexual tourist gaze through signs, symbols, myths and fantasies (Morgan & Pritchard 1998).

Promise of immobility

Unlike travels that are sold primarily on the basis of a rhetoric signalling interest in the other as in
ethnic tourism (see Mattsson in this volume), all-inclusive tourism rather displays indifference of
the other. In the marketing of all-inclusive travels, it is the wish to see other places and cultures
that is a typical feature. The destinations and their sights are admittedly described, but the history

69
and culture of the places are seldom in focus. The web pages present the hotel environments in
one tab and the sights in another. In the travel brochures the practical aspects of the travel are
often separated from the presentation of the destinations. Joint outings to sights are often offered
but usually as an addition to an arrangement that in other aspects includes “all”.
Could it be that the location of the destination is not important to the attractiveness of all-
inclusive travels? A prominent feature of the marketing is that the pictures of different
destinations look more the same than different. The focus is on the buildings of hotels and
restaurants and details of the interior design such as beds and balconies. The rooms are often
described in detail: equipment, such as microwave, fridge, percolator, kettle, is especially
mentioned. The fact that the focus is on facilities and hotel service seems to guarantee a journey
that is practicable, safe and comfortable (Cooper 1994). Where the hotels are located, in which
country and continent is often hard do figure out from the pictures, as the tourist environments
are delusively similar. One advertisement covering two full pages does not indicate the location of
the destination at all other than as the “Swedes’ favourite by the Mediterranean Sea”.

The underlying message of the promise of all-inclusiveness is, as we shall see, not to visit a place
but to escape visiting one. The all-inclusive concept does not only entail that the visitors live in
the same place but also swim, partake in activities and eat all or most meals in the same area. The
focus on facilities and comfort emphasise this; the idea is that everything should be available in
one and the same place. The marketing holds out a promise of immobility, of not having to move
outside of tourist village, unless we want to. The all-inclusive resorts make it possible for those
who wish to visit a place without getting involved in the language, religion, political situation or
the contemporary context of the place. Some travel deals, such as Fritidsresor’s BlueExotic
context, promise that meals and entertainment will have “a local touch to make you get close to
the culture of your destination”. At the same time, the element of “exotic” culture emerges as
part of the standardised arrangement.

Non-places

A way of understanding the imaginary spaces created in the marketing of all-inclusive travels is to
use the concept of non-place. The concept was coined by the anthropologist Marc Augé as a way
to define how places based on mass consumption tend to adhere to a standardised pattern and
hence homogenise places (Augé 1995). Examples of non-places are shopping centres, fast-food
chains and airports. All-inclusive tourist facilities are non-places in the same sense–standardised

70
tourist spaces designed to meet international trends and consumption patterns in the tourism
area. They imitate and reinforce the homogenisation tendencies of globalisation and what has
been described as the “McDonaldization” or “McDisneyization” of tourism (Ritzer & Liska
1997; Coleman & Crang 2002).

The idea of non-places harbours an implicit fear that globalisation and tourism will lead to the
erosion and erasure of the specificity and values of places. The local and the specific seem to be
placed in opposition to the global, a suggestion which Doreen Massey has criticised. She argues
that the processes of globalisation always assume local expressions and therefore cannot be
hierarchically ordered (Massey 1998; 1999). Massey prefers the glocal, the interweaving and
interdependence of places along with the evident locatedness in a unique place. In the light of
this idea, the concept of non-place can be criticised for being related to a kind of place nostalgia,
where the tourism destinations are expected to be homogeneous and stable communities,
untouched by external influence if it had not been for the “eroding forces” of mass consumption.
The concept non-place thus seems to be based on a notion of authentic place, a distinction that
easily turns into a kind of colonial place nostalgia where genuineness always has to be located
elsewhere (see Mattsson, this volume).

At the same time the concept of non-place highlights a characteristic feature of how the
marketing of all-inclusive tourism is designed, namely as a kind of privileged and safe island
where tourists “don’t belong” but engage in predetermined activities and doings (cf. Coleman &
Crang 2002). Coleman & Crang claim that the non-place of tourism can be understood as an
“almost home” kind of space, that is, as an extension of home (see Coleman & Craig 2002). I
would like to travesty the apt definition and claim that all-inclusive deals create a space “almost
abroad” These are constructed on the idea of the holiday as distanced from home but not
necessarily as arriving somewhere else. They are characterised by being ‘rooms’ away but not
quite.

Places for bodily pleasure

Instead of comparing the attraction of sun tourism with other forms of tourism, I think that it is
rewarding to ask an open question of how these activities are constructed and for whom. The
paradise villages of all-inclusive tourism can then be seen as material and social spaces in
themselves, opening for tourist activities and no others (Coleman & Crang 2002; Edensor 2000,

71
2001). Like Selänniemi (2003), I would like to point out that the attraction of sun tourism rests
on the temporary movement and release from obligation at home and at work, which he calls
“the liminality of the sun holiday! (cf. Turner 1969). It is the standardised character of the tourist
space in the form of non-places that open for the form of bodily pleasure often associated with
food, drink, warmth, sex and relaxation (Selänniemi 2003).

These dimensions, I think, are indicated in how the all-inclusive marketing describes the facilities
and the service offered in the brochures. Hairdressers, massage, fitness centres and sport are only
some of the options presented. The bars and restaurants are described in detail. There are
extensive lists on what is included and not included in the concept of “all inclusive”, for example,
the number of meals and beverages and side dishes. The myth of the unlimited, mentioned
earlier, is given concrete and specific meanings. Apollo’s specification of the all-inclusive concept
at a hotel even includes the word ‘unlimited’ to describe what is included:

All inclusive
Breakfast, lunch and dinner
Unlimited refreshments, local drinks/beer and wine between 10 pm to 11 am
Unlimited service of soft drinks, water and sandwiches on the beach between 12 am to 2
pm
Daytime and evening activities
Afternoon tea/coffee and cake

www.apollo.se, accessed 24 Sept 2009

Here, ‘all inclusive’ is marketed as a very concrete promise of unlimited access to food and
certain beverages. The all-inclusive is not only practical and at a reasonable price but is also
charged with freedom from moderation when it comes to eating and drinking: “You eat and
drink how much you want and can forget about the bill” (ibid.). Holiday space is constructed in
line with a guilt-ridden pleasure practice: eating and drinking without moderation and being able
to “afford indulging yourself for once” (ibid.). The movement from home to the sun paradise can
be construed as a transcendence of “the limits of the sensual body” (Selänniemi 2000: 21). The
holiday resort symbolises the dream of a place where the tourist can be “a different person” in
the sense of free, lazier, more sensual and more licentious (Löfgren 1999).

The paradise beach

A common motif in the marketing of the all inclusive is, as mentioned earlier, pictures of still
blue pool water and a clear blue sky. The attraction of the pool seems undisputed and it is

72
highlighted in different ways as the pride of the tourist village. Another advertisement stresses
that the hotel has “7 different types of pools”. The resort is described as having ”pools for most
tastes, for instance, a pool for activities, a pool in tropical style and a more secluded pool for
“you who just want to relax.” In yet another ad the whole picture consists of an enormous pool
of blue-coloured water, which merges with the clear blue sky. The blue colour covers the whole
page. The headline proudly announces: “This is not a pool, it’s a lake!” Often the pools are built
in asymmetrical forms, surrounded by palm trees and sunshades as if to resemble “natural lakes”.

In these representations the tourist space relies on the tropes of relaxation and a kind of
contemplative existence. There is a great deal to suggest that the function of the pool in the all-
inclusive concept is to resemble the Edenic beach in a constructed form. The central role of the
pool in marketing seems to rest on the same tropes as the paradise beach myth, drawing on the
symbolic meaning of the colour blue as having a calming effect. The associations of cooling and
coolness seem here to signal and convey such a meaning. The agency Fritidsresor also has blue as
its basic colour in advertising and on the web, and in the various concept solutions blue is part of
the names: BlueVillage, BlueInclusive, and so on. In a Fritidsresor full-page advertisement for the
new destination Cape Verde, the agency entices tourists with the proximity of the “paradise
beach”: “You live on a paradise beach….” The photo features a man and a woman in swimsuits,
trunks and bikini respectively, and two children, a girl of five in a swimsuit and a toddler in a top
and a sun hat. The girl and the man lie in the sand next to each other and the girl’s hand is placed
on the man’s shoulder. The woman sits on the sand and plays with the toddler.

The classic image of the paradise beach with a coconut palm tree shading and framing a white
beach with a surging aqua sea gradually melting into a darker blue sea and a brilliant blue sky
(Waitt 1997) is here reproduced in the all-inclusive travel version. The image of the paradise
beach somewhere in the periphery of the world also evokes associations to a simple but relaxing
life in a wonderful natural environment with sparkling sunrises and romantic sunsets. It
reproduces what Sturma has described as the notion of “a tropical garden of Eden where the
secret rhythms of nature can be experienced. It comes across as a utopian place where the
summer, sun and swimming are central, holding out the promise of relaxation and a conflict-free
holiday. The standardised non-places of all-inclusive tourism, in other words, are not places
devoid of cultural symbolism; quite the contrary: it is precisely through the metaphorical
associations that the standardised landscape of the non-places takes shape.

73
 The ideal holiday family

In the marketing of all-inclusive travels as places of relaxation, the notion of family plays a
crucial role. In many pictures, family members are seen turned to one another, often sitting in a
ring, touching one another or holding hands. A recurring visual motif is the picture of a man and
a woman and a child or two small children, engaged in some kind activity. One such example
shows a man, a woman and two children, a boy and a girl, playing cards at the side of the pool,
turned towards and engulfed in one another. The all-inclusive travel’s imaginary space is charged
with the meaning of not merely being distanced from the everyday arena but also with the
promise of a qualitative difference in family relationships.

Fritidsresor attributes the success of the concept BlueStar to the positive marketing
representation of the family:

At Blue Star families quickly settle in. The hotel area is easily surveyable in spite of the
generous pool area and playgrounds for children. The kids’ clubs add energy to the holiday.
The playmates are there. The moments together gain more dimensions.

www.fritidsresor.se accessed 30 Nov. 2008

The all-inclusive holiday is clearly idealised and filled with expectations of a certain set of feelings
in the family unity. The access to food and activities also hold out a promise of a holiday without
moaning and disharmony:

Forget the stress and agree on a restaurant–here everything is already arranged.

www.fritidsresor.se accessed 23 March 2009

Practical information is interspersed with a more specific symbolism and structure of associations
of the family as a happy unit. This is perhaps how the incentive for and appeal of the all-inclusive
concept should be understood. The attraction seems to lie in being saved the trouble of thinking
about practicalities and worrying about costs and instead “simply being together”. Holiday as a
concept can generally be seen as signifying this form of a space, free of friction and conflict. The
interesting point about all-inclusive travels is that the form offers a solution to unreasonable
expectations of a holiday. It demarcates a spatial zone characterised by the absence of certain
feelings–friction, stress, anger–and invests it with others: joy, unity and “more time together” (cf.
Hochschild 1979). As a kind of iconised ideal family tourist marketing in this way reproduces a
conservative and hetero-normative image of the happy nuclear family.

74
 “What’s best for the children”

The centrality of the children is an obvious fact in the tourist family unit and their position is
manifested and confirmed in various ways in the marketing. Activities for children such as games
with game organisers, pool games and kids’ clubs are mentioned–especially. Many all-inclusive
resorts offer baby-sitting services at the hotel. If ice cream and lemonade are included, the travel
agencies are careful to point that out. The Fritidsresor agency organises clubs for the small
children and for the older children (Superkids). In a commercial, children’s voices can be heard
explaining the point of the club for the small children:

Girl’s voice: Parents are so lazy, you know, on holidays! They just sort of want to lie on a sun
lounger.
Boy’s voice: Yeah, or sit and have dinner for eighteen hours!
Girl’s voice: So we are lucky to have BlueVillage so we can be with friends and do fun things.

Http://www.fritidsresor.se/resor/Blue-vara-basta-hotell/Blue-Village/Bamseklubben,
accessed 26 Feb. 2010.

Here, all-inclusive arrangements seem both constructed on the basis of a promise of meeting
children’s needs and interests as well as the concurrent promise of a holiday from parenthood.
The kids’ clubs enable parents to be lazy in the sun. The underlying message of the idea that the
all-inclusive design includes the caring for children is that both mum and dad can rest and
potentially have “more time for each other”. This is evoked through the strong connection
between “what’s best for the children” and what’s best for the parents, especially mother.

The marketing of all-inclusive resorts as a “holiday paradise”, as we have seen, also builds on an
imaginary place in which everyday gender contracts and gender division of tasks are temporarily
deactivated. If this interruption of gendered routines and relations is actually true of family
holidays or if gendered patters are extended beyond home are interesting questions but beyond
the scope of this article (Deem 1996; Davidsson 1996). The focus on activities for children in the
marketing, however, can be seen as primarily targeting women and possibly the “child-oriented
man” (Bekkengen 2002). All-inclusive tourism thus seems to be aimed at a tourist gaze that
inspects and appraises a tourism arrangement in terms of promises of togetherness and recreation
rather than in terms of adventure and opacity. It is aimed at a heterosexual female gaze more than
anything else (Aitchison 1999; cf. Pritchard & Morgan 1998; 2000).

75
 The Emptied Space

The myth of the unlimited space in paradise tourism is, according to Sturma, based on the image
of a “static utopia” (Sturma 1999). The places are represented as locked in a kind of immovable
idea of the good life, enabled by smiling and friendly people. The local people at a resort are
often portrayed in servile poses: smiling and subordinate and as an assurance that the paradise
holiday will include unlimited access to the service of other people. The tourists’ leisure and
relaxation are in other words closely interwoven with an international division of labour, which is
reproduced on the basis of asymmetrical relations between coloniser and the colonised (cf.
Echtner & Prasad 2003). The harmonious family life of the all-inclusive resorts is not then only
woven into colonial relations of power but also more or less dependent on them.

In this context, I would like to point to a striking and somewhat intriguing aspect of the pictures
in the travel brochures, namely the absence of service staff. In the cases where service staff can
be seen, the photos are taken at a distance and I can find no pictures of the proverbially smiling
waiter that Echtner & Prasad (2003) comment on. Apart from the tourist families, the pictures
are characterised by the absence of people. Paradoxically, many of the pictures are emptied of
staff and tourists. Remarkably often, hotel environments, massage tables, hotel beds, sun
loungers and pools without tourists, or just a few, are displayed. The focus is instead on laid
tables in empty restaurants, on beds made with neatly decorated pillow arrangements, white
towels in swan and heart arrangements, and photos of buffets and richly decorated fruit plates.

At the same time we know that the staff is there to ensure that the all-inclusive trip is a “success”,
according to the principle ‘no staff, no service.’ The photographic absence of service staff would
seem contradictory in a form of tourism that centres on service and the availability of all
conceivable facilities, but I would like to suggest that it is an extension of the unlimited myth.
This myth is here intimately linked to what Edsnor has called the “enclavic tourist space”, that is,
monitored and regulated space excluding undesired people and activities. The absence of the
image of the service providers creates an image of a space devoid of power relations and
conflicts. Tourist space is therefore portrayed as a space emptied of people and thus of conflict,
controversy and injustice. The colonial dimensions of holiday bliss of all-inclusive travel are
effectively naturalised simply by being made invisible (cf. Echtner & Prasad 2003).

76
 Colonial holiday utopias and gendered tourist gaze

In line with previous research, this study shows how tourism space is encoded and filled with
gendered and colonial meanings and how they work to construct a number of spatial tropes. The
most important one is probably the construction of a utopian place, which, on the one hand, can
be anywhere and, on the other, is filled with a number of very specific meanings. The images of
the all-inclusive resorts are also characterised, as we have seen, by very detailed place descriptions,
which may seem beyond deep symbolic meaning. Can the food lists and beverage specifications
included in the all-inclusive concept really tell us anything? As I have argued, they can tell us a
great deal if ‘us’ refers to a potential traveller browsing a brochure in pursuit of a good holiday
place. It shapes a kind of holiday utopia–a culturally conveyed ideal holiday.

As an idea, the holiday utopia in tourism marketing is constructed by means of the materialised
figurative dimensions while representing an immaterial idea that is suggestive of so much more. It
signifies the dreams of an existence beyond daily stress; it stages the fantasy of a paradise far away
and generates powerful ideas of the harmonious family. I have paid attention to how the spatial
myth of the unlimited has specific gendered meanings through the construction of the holiday
space as free from the everyday concerns that, as research has shown, are not distributed evenly
between men and women. Like other forms of travel, historically and in the present, where
international mobility for Western women have been interpreted in terms of liberation from the
gender order of the home, there is an underlying idea of the travel or holiday as a kind of
liberation project (Blunt 1994; Mattis 2001; Pratt 1994). The portrayal of the holiday space as free
of friction and conflict is not, however, a future vision in the sense of a new phase or the final
place of humankind. It is rather a limited and individualised vision and a temporary dream in a
demarcation with gendered meanings. The holiday utopia also has colonial dimensions, as this
article has demonstrated. In the unspoken dimensions of the holiday utopia, the power structure
of the neo-colonial power relations seems to be an implicit backdrop to the liberation from
another power structure–the structure of gender at home.

77
 6. “A SENSE OF AFRICA”
ON COLONIAL EMOTIONAL GEOGRAPHIES IN ETHNIC TOURISM

Katarina Mattsson

Neither the senses, nor the adjectives are enough. From one single viewpoint thousands of gnus, zebras,
gazelles, buffalos and antelopes be seen. You have seen this picture since childhood. And yet reality boggles
the mind. As a child you probably didn’t make a mental note of places like Serengeti, Ngoronger and
Masai Mata. Now you know that these are the most well known of Africa’s national parks, and there is a
reason why. […] A safari in East Africa has always been the epitome of the real journey to the land of
wild animals. Perhaps you have always longed to go there, always known that one day you would. In the
dark of an evening you are listening breathlessly to all the sounds of the savannah. It’s just like you always
imagined it. Yet, reality is difficult to grasp. (Gulliver’s 2003:17)

On colonial emotional geographies in ethnic tourism

This article is based on a case study of the “one-month journey to South-Africa” offered by the
travel agency Knowledge Travel. This agency is one of many in Sweden targeting travellers who
have a genuine interest in “foreign cultures” in places away far from home. The reasons for
taking these trips to South Africa vary, but many of the travellers express a wish to see “the real
Africa” and what they vaguely call “Africaness”. Several have been to countries in Europe, Asia
or Latin America but they think that “a journey to Africa” has to be undertaken at least once in a
lifetime. This is how a traveller described the longing for Africa:

I have never been in Africa for real, and I’ve been peeping at the Tanzania and Sarangeti
national parks for many years. And then I looked…I travelled a lot in the 90s and even up
till 2001, but then I haven’t travelled for a bit. I felt a need to get going to Africa!

The travellers in the study share this feeling with many. The travel brochure pictures mainly
present us with the wild animals and the magnificent nature of the continent. But it is also a place
to realise dreams and fulfil life-long desires. In Gulliver’s catalogue on Africa above, “the African
journey” is, for example, depicted as a childhood dream finally come true. Tourism marketing

78
conjures up a positively charged image of Africa, which evokes associations to the established
images of “the exotic Africa” (Palmberg 1987, 2000). It is a place of dreams and longing that
appeals to the small child who read about Africa in school and saw films and pictures of wild
animals. But it is also a room where emotions are assumed to be stronger and more intense than
in other places.

As we shall see, the travellers in the study described this in terms of “the sense of Africa”, which
is both a sense of place and an experience of elevated emotions of a more exquisite feeling. At
the same time, the travellers were often a bit disappointed during the month in South Africa, as
they did not experience any real “sense of Africa”. In this article I will show how the image of
Africa generates reactions of disappointment and elation to different places and spatial settings
during the journey. The concept of colonial emotional geographies is introduced to frame the
experiences of frustration and strong feelings of joy that are evoked in the tourist group when the
image of Africa is respectively frustrated and fulfilled.

“Ethnic tourism” and the desire for the other

The travellers’ wish to see and experience “the real Africa” does not, I would like to stress, arise
in a social vacuum. In international tourism research, the forms of travelling that are propelled by
a wish to meet people of a different ethnical background are termed ethnic tourism (see e.g., van
den Berghe 1994, 1995; Hitchcock 1999: Jamison 1999; Wood 1998). According to van den
Berghe, who has written a book on ethnic tourism in San Cristóbal in Mexico, this form of
tourism is characterised by an active search for ethnic exotisation, as the destinations gain their
value precisely by virtue of being exotic and different. In this way they constitute a mirroring as
well as a differentiation of the tourists own identities and home environments. Ethnic tourism is
also a form of tourism whose specific and pronounced objective is to take part in other people’s
daily life in “an unspoilt form” (van den Berghe 1994). The ethnic tourist seeks close encounters
and contacts with places and people “who have had no contact with tourists previously” (ibid.
10).

Ethnic tourism is therefore geared towards the so called “fourth world”, that is, countries,
communities or ethnic groups perceived to be or really are physically isolated and located outside
of the capitalist world system (ibid.). The result is that places and people who have hitherto not
been “worth” exploiting are now the hottest and “commodifiable objects” (Meethan 2001). The

79
local people, as van den Berghe points out, become the object of curiosity and are part the
exhibition whether they want to or not. People are thus not only the receivers of tourists and
hosts ensuring their comfort; they become part of the “spectacle” (van den Berghe & Keyes
1984). In the “great irony of tourism”, the tourist wish to visit places and people untouched by
tourism paradoxically runs the risk of dragging these very places and people into the economic
relations of tourism. At the same time, the local residents are only perceived as authentic as long
as they do not change their behaviour or activities to make themselves more attractive to tourists
(ibid.).

A notable problem of the literature on ethnic tourism, as I see it, is that the tourists’ ethnicity is
nor problematized and analysed to any great extent. “The ethnic” in this form of tourism seems
to be reserved for the people at the destinations. That ethnic tourism is called “ethnic” tourism
can in itself be seen as an expression of the tendency to see some people as more ethnic than
others (cf. Delaney 2002; McGuiness 2000). The tourist’s ethnicity has simply been banned to a
“rhetorical silence” (Crenshaw 1997; see Morrison 1993; Dyer 1993). This means that the
Western tourist’s discursive position and obvious access to mobility and other rooms often
define the concepts used in research on tourism in a taking-for-granted way that crucially impact
on the way we perceive tourism. My future research will therefore focus on how ethnic tourism
can be understood as a form of tourist whiteness (cf. Tesfahuney in this volume). In this chapter,
however, I would like to show how the ethnic tourism builds on, reinforces and is deeply
embedded in postcolonial relations and constructions of otherness (Hall & Tucker 2004).

An important point is that the ethnic tourist is a producer and distributor of the images of “the
other”, to whom “the otherness” has a commercial value (cf. Meethan 2001). The ethnic tourist
in this context follows a broader trend in contemporary culture where otherness, according to the
postcolonial feminist bell hooks (1992) has launched a new satisfaction, which is more intense
and attractive in character than other “normal” ways of doing and feeling. The other and its
otherness turn into an exotic flavour with the power to spice up the otherwise dull white majority
culture (ibid. 21). bell hooks has coined the expression “eating the other” for the relationship
with the other that is formed out of the desire for the close encounter across ethnic and racialised
borders. Having a “piece of the other”, bell hooks says, is portrayed as a “ritual of transcendence,
a movement out into a world of difference” (hooks 1992: 23). The main reason for wanting
intimacy with the other is not to control or subordinate the other but in some way to be

80
transformed by encounter. In this way, I think, bell hooks provides a key to the critical
exploration of the ethnic tourist’s colonial desire.

Africa as a screen of projection

An important backdrop to the rest of this article is the images that traditionally have created
Africa as a screen of projection for a number of fantasies and dreams. In this sense, Africa is not
a geographical term designating a continent with stable and clear borders but an “imaginary room
(Said 1993). In his book The Invention of Africa, Valentin Mudimbe shows how Africa as an
imagined unity with certain characteristic properties and features emerged during the colonial
period (Mudimbe 1988; 1999). In his studies on the discourses of Africa in art, anthropology and
philosophy he asks what structures that which can be thought and said about Africa. Mudimbe
refers to an Africanism, which, like Said’s Orientalism, “produces its own motives as well as
objects”, thus inventing Africa (ibid.). The notion of Africa also encompasses, as we shall see, on
the one hand, conceptions and expectations of people, their appearance and imagined qualities,
including clothes and activities (such as dance and music), and on the other, landscape, habitation
and wild life.

In the European imagination myths and conceptions of Africa have flourished for a long time. In
his book When Sweden Discovered Africa, Lasse Berg 1997) offers an historical exposé on the
Swedish image of Africa and he shows how the first Swedish Africa travellers reported on an
alluring and frightening continent in their travel accounts and anecdotes. The image of the
primitive Africa has in this way repeatedly been constructed on the basis of a number of
contradictory tendencies of attraction, dominance, desire and distance (Eriksson Baaz 2001b).
While Africa has consistently been depicted as a continent housing the “dangerous savage”
whose life is marked by chaos and anarchy, it has also been seen in a romanticised rose-tinted
perspective, in which the image of the “noble savage” has been germinated: the premodern and
simple human being whose carefree and insouciant existence has functioned as a mirror for the
European modernity ambitions (ibid., see also Eriksson Baaz 2001; Nederveen Pieterse 1992).

The often contradictory features show that the image of Africa has been formed as an expression
of Europe’s needs of borders and otherness to measure itself against rather than anything else.
The “real Africa” is always a place detached and distant from a European whiteness (cf.. Bonnett
1998). Throughout history Africa has been depicted as the undisputed opposite of Europe, often

81
placed the furthest away from the conceived centre of the European civilisation (cf., Blaut 1993;
Jan Mohamed 1986). Perhaps it is the geographical proximity to Europe combined with the many
natural resources that have made the African continent an important and rewarding screen of
projection for European civilisation missions, research expeditions and identity projects (cf., Berg
1997). In any case, Africa and the African today function as a projection screen for tourism’s
driving forces.

“But, this is just like home!”

I will now turn to the case study of Knowledge Travel and show how the expectations of Africa
and Africaness are interwoven with the experiences made by tourists on the spot in South Africa.
The first days of the trip the group spent somewhat unwillingly in Johannesburg’s urban and
white neighbourhoods. Because of the high rate of criminality in Johannesburg, the guide had
accommodated the group in a white suburban area and on the first days the group was mostly
driven around in a tourist bus. Most of the tourists reacted with surprise to the urbanised
Johannesburg area. As the bus was travelling on the highway between Johannesburg and Pretoria
and passed the district Sandton–which hosts the exclusive luxury hotels in Johannesburg–one
group member exclaimed that, “you have to remind yourself where you are!” On the same
occasion another group member disappointingly commented on the surroundings: “But, this is
like home!”

At the same time the expectations of experiencing “Africaness” were great during the days in
Johannesburg. The gap between expectations and actual experiences often resulted in irritation.
On the first day, for example, when the guide stopped at a fast-food place near a petrol station
and suggested that the group could grab something to eat, there was a certain uproar in the
group: “We want to eat African food!” said one member. Generally speaking, in the group’s
ambition to take part of the specific local culture Africaness was often described in terms of the
opposite of known manifestations of the globalised era. Exactly what African food might entail
remained unstated and unspecified. Instead, it was usually defined in terms of absence and in
comments on not matching the expected.

Surprise and disappointment seemed to grow out of the gap between the spatial surroundings
and the Johannesburg context and the expectations of the “real Africa”. In a complex recognition
of architecture, chain stores, urban planning, city views, roads and cars, and a certain

82
technological level, space, activities and contexts were repeatedly encoded more or less into “like
home”, thus making these signs incompatible with the idea of the “real Africa”. As one traveller
put it:

Instead there was…there were cities, it was more western, more western in constructions
and yes…infrastructure and everything…

The signs of the urban room, in other words, evoke a spatial line of associations, which can take
us pretty far from the simple remark that “it’s like home”. Urban environments and skyscrapers
work as powerful signs of “western modernity”. This association between the city space and the
occidental constitutes a central part of the “symbolic economy of racialised modernity” (Bonnett,
2002). Modernity is associated with the extended Europe and the west but also with
Americanisation, which charges the definitions of urbanity with a tacit whiteness value, which is
seldom noted and analysed, despite the fact that the majority of mega cities in the world are not
located in what is called “the west” (ibid.). For the travellers this resulted in a feeling of not being
in Africa, which several of them referred to as a lack of a sense of Africa.

“Do you have any sense of Africa?”

The absence of a sense of Africa lingered in the group for the rest of the journey and was a
recurring topic of conversation. On several occasions Per-Erik asked: “Do you have any sense of
Africa?” Per-Erik had not “pictured South Africa in this way”, and when asked about this prior
to the journey, he said: “More jungle, wild animals from Conrad’s book [Heart of Darkness by
Joseph Conrad], the dark, the wild” and added “not open, light”. Another traveller, Göran, seated
next to Per-Erik in the bus, said that he and his wife had a hard time understanding that they
were in Africa: “We have to remind [each other] that we are in Africa. You imagine the savannah,
animals…” After a pause, he added: “But it is too early to say anything. We will get another
picture along the journey. Anita, his wife, agreed. I sensed disappointment and asked if that was
the case. “Yes”, Anita said, “I’m a little disappointed”.

When I asked Per-Erik what he meant with a sense of Africa, he answered: “you have an
inner picture, a vision of a country of scent, a picture of a country, you have a picture.” Here we
can see how the tourist gaze is formed on the basis of an imaginary tourist room, also associated
with sense sensations and atmosphere (see also Mattsson in this volume). In the tourists’ use the
term ‘a sense of Africa’ seems both to capture the sense of being in a place and the feelings

83
associated with the place. The imaginary room “Africa” is, in other words more than a tourist
gaze appraising sights of the destination from a distance (Urrry 2002/1990). It rather involves an
emotional structure (Ahmed 2004) attributing anticipated feelings to certain spatial and social
contexts (Hochschild 1979). The relation between the expectations of the imaginary rooms and
the emotional reactions to perceptions and encounters with different spatial and social contexts
together form what I would like to call emotional geographies of tourism (cf., Davidson, Bondi &
Smith 2005). This indicates that tourist emotions are intimately linked to both space and vision
(cf., Urry 2005).

The close link between emotions, room and vision is even clearer when the preconceived and
expected image of Africa suddenly materialises. It was fairly easy to see when this happened in
the case study as the occasions were connected with strong and visible emotional reactions. All of
a sudden there was something in the combination of buildings, people and the landscape that
matched the image of Africa and produced an intense atmosphere in the group. When this
happened, several people in the party would cry out “look, look!” at the same time and place and
this word became a signal to me to be observant. On several occasions several travellers would
also make comments like “now it feels like Africa” or “this is the real Africa”. One traveller even
used the word “temperature” to describe such an occasion. I asked him if he thought that the
image of Africa tied in with what the group saw when this happened and he agreed and said:
“Then the spirit, temperature and expectations rose.”

“A green hut”

The travellers talked about the sense of Africa in very concrete terms and could often specify
exactly where they had felt this feeling, which is clear in the interview extracts below. One
example of the occurrence of a so-called sense of Africa was when the group passed through a
village on the way to a park in in the Drakensberg. The spatial area outside the bus was a flat,
open landscape, there were some round huts with thatched roofs in the villages and there were
only local inhabitants to be seen on the roads. Lillemor, a member of the group, said: “Now it’s
getting to be more like Africa with these round huts.” The symbolic function of the round huts in
the African image is reinforced when the group took photos. Although most houses in the
countryside are square and have tin-roofs, several still wanted to take a photo of a round,
thatched hut. When the opportunity presented itself, Lillemor asked the driver to stop by the

84
roadside so she could take a photo of “a green hut”. She wanted a photo of a green or pink hut,
she said and added with a laugh: ”and it’s got to be round.”

At the same time the sense of Africa includes a more complex expectation of landscape and the
absence of houses. Lennart described when he got “a strong sense of Africa, as follows:

The trip to…let’s get this right…trip to Drakenberg…then I had this sense of Africa when
we travelled… towards…where the landscape was flat. Mile after mile of flat landscape! No
settlements, this struck me, no buildings between the cities. It was empty. Hundreds of
miles and hardly anything, what?! No villages.

There is a completely different structure from what we are used to in Europe, where there
is a village, some houses, and farm and…a town and a few houses and then fifty miles of
forest perhaps, but there is a little kiosk on the way. Here it was simply empty! Between the
cities. And yet it was quite, not so far to the city. Then when I sat and looked out at the
dawn or across savannah, it wasn’t savannah it was shrubbery…Then I had a strong sense
of Africa!

The symbolic meaning of the rural landscape and the “traditional” house as signifiers of primitive Africa is
generated by the mobilisation of the binary opposition urban/rural to represent Africa as pre-modern and
pre-industrial. The huts and the open landscape serve the same function for the rural as the city’s high-
rising buildings serve for the imaginary city space: they are necessary elements of the imaginary space
Africa but not the only ones. As a symbol of a more primal and “primitive” existence the symbol of the
hut guarantees a genuine rural life style, secluded from city influence. Again, physical buildings feature in
the traveller’s talk about a sense of Africa. Also the absence of buildings and the construction of an
“empty” and “open” sense of Africa create “a sense of Africa”, which must be understood against the
background of the image of primitive destinations as desolate or “pre-civilised” places lacking the signs of
civilisation (Echtner & Prasad 2003). Together these elements create a given association between Africa
and rurality, and Europe and urbanity.

“When we saw that elephant!”

Another central ingredient in the Africa image is “the wildlife” and the Knowledge Travel party
visited a preserve. Experiencing wildlife and going on a safari are important components of the
agency’s travels. Several of the group members had a genuine interest in nature and for some it
was a longed-for treat to see animals in their natural habitat. The atmosphere in the bus going
there was great again and arriving there the exuberant mood was heightened in anticipation. The
travellers straightened up one by one to see better out of the windows and we all looked
intensively into the landscape. Then Dorotea said passionately: “This is the real Africa!” and

85
quickly added, “as the text books in school taught us.” Linda continued the line of thought by
saying: “Yes, with no annoying people intruding.” Then they were abruptly interrupted by
another traveller who had seen a giraffe and the whole group (author included) started screaming:
“Look, look!”

Interviewing Dorotea later in her home, we talked about when the image of Africa matched the
experience and she said that this happened, “many times actually” and added with a laugh, “when
we saw that big elephant, for instance”. During one of the days in the preserve, they were driving
round the area in their own bus. There was a rumour that a big male elephant was in the vicinity
of one of the roads in the preserve and many cars, as our bus, were heading in that direction. The
accumulation of cars made traffic come to a standstill in both directions, blocking the elephant’s
passage. Our bus was heading the queue at this point and the huge elephant was a few metres
behind the bus to the right. It rumbled angrily, obviously stressed by not being able to move.
Slowly the cars began to reverse to make room for the elephant and eventually there was an
opening for him. “That was really Africa”, said Dorotea emphatically when we recalled the
episode together and I too laughed.

Another time when the image of Africa rang true, according to Dorotea, was during a morning
picnic in the preserve. Early one morning at sunrise a small party went off on foot with a guide to
look at animals.

And likewise…when I felt it [image of Africa matching] the most actually, not counting
people. It was when we went on that early morning outing. When we lived in the preserve.
When we went out there and we were not supposed to talk and followed the leader. He
went first rifle in hand and eight of us followed. I thought of all the films I’ve seen with
Safaris and everything. And a big strong black man first and us tiptoeing after. And then I
thought all we need now is a lion or something. But there was no lion, only other animals
of course. There were rhinoceros also and they were pretty impressive. And then I felt it.
This is Africa.

The image of the preserve as untouched and wild is central, I think, to understand how it fits in
with the image of rural Africa. The myth of “the untouched places” portrays some places as
being just right for explorers, inviting us to relive the travels and experiences made by colonial
exploiters, tradesmen, treasure hunters, hunters and archaeologists etc. (Echtner & Prasad
2003:669). The quotation above reproduces the filmic scene that Dorotea was reminded of with
the white explorer who penetrates dangerous and wild areas with the help of local people.
Precisely such associations generate the strong sense of being in Africa.

86
 “What lovely people”

The last theme I will discuss here concerns how images of the primitive are associated with
historical pictures and the celebration of the “noble savage”. Towards the end of the month long
journey the tourist group spent two days in the South African countryside. For many of the
tourists this visit was one of the peaks of the journey. The village we visited is situated some
miles away from the nearest central community and the group members lived two by two with
families in the village. One day a fairly large party, consisting of the local hosts and the tourists,
walked to the nurse’s clinic at the far end of the village. During the walk Per-Erik came up to me
and made a further contribution to the ongoing discussion on the sense of Africa: “Katarina”, he
said with a hard-to-define veiled voice, “this is Africa”.

When asked to explain, he listed a number of things and said that it was a “genuine environment”
and “genuine people”. “They are admittedly civilised people”, he said, “but you get close, are
allowed to see how they are”. He described his host family in the same way in terms of
“genuinely lovely, spontaneous, happy”. Also Lennart was noticeably touched on this occasion.
He approached me during the walk to say that the visit was “totally unforgettable”. He had spent
the previous evening with his host family in a “round hut”, where they had been sitting and
talking to the teenagers who had sung gospel to the visitors. “It was as cosy as it can be!” he said
enthusiastically. And then he exclaimed: “Oh, what lovely people!” Half to himself and half to me
he then added: “Imagine having to go to poor countries to meet smiling people. Yes, money
corrupts.”

The image of Africa as the continent at the bottom of the ladder of development, as Eriksson
Baaz (2001b) observes, has not only been used as an illustration of an imagined barbarism and
chaos; the “African other” has also throughout history been acclaimed as the carrier of a nobler
form of life and used to critique Western modernity. In the image of the “noble savage” the ideas
of primitivism were associated with the image of “the simple natural human being who lived a
happy life far away from the problems haunting Europe” (ibid.). The brief quotes above make
clear that the preconceptions of the genuine Africa also function as a reference point for
criticising the life styles that the tourists themselves are involved in. Africa seems to represent a
form of positive difference and as a room to which overdeveloped Westerners can turn in pursuit
of the salvation of the soul (ibid. 8-9).

87
 “The primal was there”

The tourist desire to experience ”the real Africa” must, I argue, be understood in this context as
it easily swings into an exotic celebration of poverty. In the interview with Birgitta I asked if there
was ever a time when she felt that what the group saw was consistent with her image of Africa.

Birgitta: Yeees [strongly affirmative].

Absolutely. It was up in the mountain village. I said that. There was the soul of Africa.
It was so enormously African there.
K: You mean, where we were to stay?
B: Yes, where we lived, in the village. That was Africa to me. It was incredible. The primal
was there with warm people and they walked on the roads and their way of living, how they
cooked, their scanty kitchens and their generosity and that medicine woman. Yes, I thought
so. That this was the Africa that I had longed for in some way.

Birgitta’s answer can be seen as an epitome of what the other travellers referred to in their
accounts of their images of Africa, an image emphasising the traditional, non-modern and a
notion of the primal. In the book Gone Primitive, the cultural anthropologist Marianna Torgovnick
(1990) investigates the governing principles of primitivism. Primitivism, she argues, is formed in
relation to the other as a mirror of the modern ego. Conceptions of the primitive are therefore
ascribed values that are perceived as distinct from the modern world. A recurring idea is that
primitive communities and people, in contrast to industrialised and urbanised communities, are
not alienated and not dominated by an instrumental logic. Instead, these are attributed, as in the
quotations above, to everything that modernity is not: warmth, generosity, spontaneity, and
genuineness (cf. Torgovnick 1990). Primitivism is here not only constructed on powerful ideas of
space but also of time, which is expressed in the common idea that travelling to Africa means
travelling back in time, or rather beyond time (Fabian 2002/1983). Travelling to cultures
perceived as beyond modernity or “civilisation” as some tourists put it, involves powerful
metaphors of immobility–the primitive place appears stationary in terms of both time and space
(cf. Massey 1999).

The notion of the authentic builds on the idea of a real and unaffected place, a community
practising its “original” principles, which are therefore more authentic and genuine. The authentic
and genuine also connote a dimension of nobility and purity. As a root metaphor, the word

88
primitive per se also evokes meanings of origin. Some places are thus assumed to represent “a
more primal way of living”, often symbolising the origin of humankind. Views of the primitive,
according to Torgovnick, involve metaphors of home and homecoming, which we can see in the
quotation above when Birgitta says that she “had longed for [it] in some way”. The travellers
seem to associate the primitive with a sense of being balanced and feeling comfortable,
metaphorically generated by the meaning of “feeling at home”. Encountering the primitive is thus
a means of gaining access to the essential, says Torgovnick. People ascribe the values and life
styles to the other that are perceived as lost in their own lives and the other becomes a means for
the tourist to restore a relation to her/his primal self.

“But what is Africa?”

The question begging an answer is if travelling as such–embarking into concretely unknown

spatial environments and the uncertainty this entails–is what makes colonially tinged imaginary
geographies so significant. Maria Eriksson Baaz sees such as connection in her work on aid
workers. She argues that the movement from the “relatively well known and safe to the partly
known” and the experience of insecurity and lack of control create an “excellent breeding-ground
for the stereotype–the attempts to define the other (Eriksson Baaz 2001:167). The stereotype
then works by transferring feelings of insecurity, failure and indebtedness to the other and in this
process the “colonial library” becomes an “excellent source! (ibid.). I think there is some truth in
that. It is when the traveller actually leaves the humdrum life of home to embark on a journey
that the talk of the African and the desire to experience Africa are foregrounded.

At the same time I would like to stress that the images of Africa are by no means static in the
tourist narratives. In several cases the trip serves to challenge the image, reshape it and even
discard it. Here is an example of how such revaluation can take place. During the journey,
Lennart, on several occasions, mentioned that he should have taken the alternative trip to
Tanzania instead. At times it was apparent that he perhaps regretted his choice a little: “It [going
to Tanzania] would perhaps have been more Africa”, he said despondently. Changing planes in
Frankfurt on the homebound flight, I asked him about his general impression, to which he
responded that South Africa in his opinion was not exotic enough. It was “too American”, he
said. Rut agreed and added: “Yes, it was too westernised” and Lennart concluded: “So Tanzania
would probably have been more exciting.” When Lennart and I talked about this in the interview

89
later, he was self critical and said vehemently: “It [the image of Africa] probably only existed in
my head”.

Another traveller who had revaluated her image at the time of the interview was Lillemor, a
group member who repeatedly discussed the image of Africa and in the interview said that she
was aware of having a too narrow image of Africa before the trip. She describes how she, before
going, imagined “pygmies living primitively” with “bow and arrows”. She also had an image
strongly influenced by the film Out of Africa: “So it has something to do with white people living
in luxury in the colonial period.” “But”, she said in the interview, “I also know that Africa is
many other things”, and she enumerated: “...lots of poverty, lots of famine, lots of war, lots of
misery and evil...and also beautiful scenery.” The following extract from the interview illustrates
how layers of meanings generate her image of Africa:

But Africa...we are prone to think that there is one image of Africa. But what is Africa?!! While all
countries in Africa...I have only been to North Africa. Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. And it’s not
Africa either. And then maybe South Africa is not Africa either. Because...well what do I
know...There are many whites in Africa, or South Africa, so maybe it is not Africa. Africa should be
with black people.
[Silent]
It’s wrong that there are white people in Africa in a way.
K: In the picture?
L: Mmm, in the picture. But at the same time there’s the colonial period and this is also Africa.
[Silent]
I think that the landscape in Transkaii and these enormous, enormous areas with all the huts in all
colours, that was in a way...this must be a part of Africa. But Africa must also be big cities and
modern cities too. Why shouldn’t it be?!! Africa is a whole continent. So we can’t find an answer to
what Africa is, I think.

Contradicting her previous perception of Africa, Lillemor redefines her image of the African. The
new image incorporates a more complex definition with variation as a central feature, and “there
is no answer to what Africa is” is her conclusion. She explicitly links several of the contradictory
images that appear in this article, when she says that Africa can also be big, modern cities,
expansive landscapes and “huts in all colours”. By bringing together urbanity and rurality,
modernity and tradition, the image of Africa is renegotiated. Concurrently and paradoxically, this
quotation confirms the power of the discursive homology set up between the oppositional terms

90
of modernity/urbanity/European whiteness and primitive/rural/African blackness, as also the
reformulation of the African image draws on the binary pairs (cf. Jan Mohamed 1986).

“Colonial emotional geographies”

In ethnic tourism, as in other areas of society, the act of recognising someone as a stranger or as
different takes place in a preconceived form. In the spirit of the postmodern and
multiculturalism, the stranger in tourism seems to be a “reminder of the difference we must
celebrate” (Ahmed 2000). Even if the tourist wish for close encounters with the other can be
seen as a critique of alien discourses, the very construction of the stranger is the same (ibid.). To
understand and analyse the “stranger fetishism” of contemporary tourism we must start by
dismissing the idea of the stranger’s natural and given status as a stranger (cf. ibid.). The
construction of the stranger as a figure is not, as one would assume, as someone we do not know
or do not know anything about. Instead “we recognise someone as a stranger rather than fail to
recognise them” (Ahmed 2000:21).

Both the recognition of a space as African and the dismissal of it as non-African rest on the
construction of the known unknown. The spatial surroundings that the tourists move in are
constantly valuated in relation to the expectations and the images that the tourists have of the
destination (cf. Ahmed 2000). This indicates a complex relation between the spaces constructed
as both strange and familiar. The desire to experience the real Africa is fraught with this
dichotomy of both marking the crossing of a border to the perceived strangeness and shaping the
crossing into a preconceived image of the strangeness (ibid.). The tourists’ spatial contexts during
the trip to South Africa are at the same time always more complex, more contradictory than the
images they had of Africa before departing. We have seen several examples in this article of
situations and encounters with spatial settings and people when the travellers in varying degrees
display this dichotomy of pursuing the already defined and shifting its borders at the same time.

But the colonial images of the other affect tourism in more ways. They inscribe themselves into
the tourists’ emotions and experiences. The colonial images structure and appraise the tourist
experience and colour the emotional geographies. With the concept of colonial emotional geographies
I want to analytically pay attention to how colonial notions, imaginary rooms, the tourist gaze and
tourist emotions are interwoven in complex ways. It is obvious that tourist emotions do not arise
from a spatial vacuum but from the encounter between imaginary rooms and preconceived

91
expectations, on the one hand, and specific contexts and situations, on the other. Africa as an
imaginary room is revealed to be a conditioned “re-pre-sentation”, in which the stereotypical
representation of Africa is a necessary prerequisite for the tourist emotion of being there. Tourist
bliss is paradoxically generated by the fulfilment of the colonial images and this is also the trigger
and incentive of ethnic tourism.

92
 7. WHO IS THE TOURIST?
REFLECTIONS ON THE IDEAL SUBJECT OF OUR TIME
Mekonnen Tesfahuney

Who is the tourist? The tourist is an odd figure: at one and the same time respected, protected
and sought after but at the same time ridiculed and detested – even by tourists who themselves
point out that they are certainly not tourists. The tourists’ motto seems to be: “Rather a traveller
than a tourist”. I think that it is important to look into the tacit ideas about the tourist subject –
exactly who is assumed to be the tourist – as these notions leave their mark on tourism studies,
education and the tourism industry. There is therefore a need for critical analyses and studies of
the construction and normative position of the touristic subject. In this chapter, I shall focus on
some of the characteristic features of the touristic subject, whom I call homo touristicus, and whom
I believe can be seen as the ideal typical figure or model figure of our time for his way of relating
to and being in the world.

To begin with, when the tourist is talked about in tourism literature, it is understood that it is
“white” people and Westerners who are being discussed. The tourist as “white” and a Westerner
is taken to be the norm for the very idea of travelling, experiences, leisure and recreation and the
premise for the creation of tourist destinations, wishes and desires. This normative position
moreover constitutes the very starting point for the construction of of the theory behind tourism
studies and its concepts and the representations of the tourist. This is the first question which will
be addressed in this article. Secondly, I shall highlight the tourist in his capacity as wanderer and
stranger. Being on the move denotes the tourist's “formal position” in relation to places and
societies he visits and/or stays in – a tension characterised by distance and closeness (Simmel
1995: 141). Thirdly, I shall talk about hedonism as the typical feature of tourism's appetite and
economies of pleasure in our time. Fourthly, and in relation to jouissance, I shall discuss the living
out of hedonistic desires within a framework of consumption made possible and encouraged by
the axiom of capitalism. The market may offer goods packaged in various forms of moral
philosophy, but the moral principle that lends itself best to the logic of the tourism market in our
time is hedonism. Bianchi points out that “tourism represents the apotheosis of consumer
capitalism and Western modernity, based on an apparently seamless harmony between the free
movement of people, merchandise and capital (2006: 64).” I shall address the hedonism of

93
tourism as enforced enjoyment and/or a dictate on programmed desire driven by the market and
as a part of a stylised and worldwide culture of consumption. Finally, as a fifth point, I shall
highlight the tourist as the new cosmopolitan ideal subject, a model figure necessary to the
maintenance of a commodity economy and the governing world order, that is, the empire of
whiteness (Tesfahuney & Dahlstedt 2008).

The tourist is at once privileged yet conformist, free yet bound, granted subjectivity and robbed
of it. Homo touristicus is a model figure created by the activities of the tourist order: categorisation,
identification, sorting, welcoming, inclusion, rejection, modification, reprimand, confirmation and
reception.

The Tourist as White

In the autumn of 2006, a Swedish man travelled to Thailand on a business trip. The man
flew from Stockholm, went through security and several passport checks. The man flew
on a domestic flight in Thailand and checked in at three hotels. When the man was due to
fly home from Bangkok, it was discovered that he had been travelling on the wrong
passport – he had mistakenly been travelling on his wife's passport. The passport officer
then changed the details given by the airline on the ticket to the wife's name so that the
ticket and the passport agreed.
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d0147&a0581501&rss=1400 080521

A look through the tourism literature shows that the basic question, “who is the tourist
subject”, does not occupy a prominent place in tourism studies. For example, the four-
volume anthology intended to be a state-of-the-art collection in tourism studies (Williams
2004) does not include a single article which describes the “normative whiteness”
(Mattsson 2005) which permeates tourism studies and the travel and tourism industry.
Surprisingly enough, or perhaps not, neither is this aspect of the tourism subject raised in
an article whose explicit aim is to find out who the tourist actually is (McCabe 2005).
Consequently, neither has the question of why the tourist is represented as white and why
tourism as such is taken to mean white people's activities, needs, preferences and desires
received much attention in tourism studies and tourism education.

The fundamental problem is tied up with the idea of the subject that permeates tourism studies
and the tourist industry, as well as Western science and philosophy. The idea of the subject rests

94
on a coloured and gendered scale of values, a hierarchy with the white man at Europe and the
West as norm setting and the measure of everything (Irigaray 1994). The view of the tourist
subject as white and from the West can be traced to the understanding of the Subject in the
classical meaning of the word – the sensible, sovereign and free individual – who originates in
connection with enlightenment, modernity and capitalism. Like the Western tradition of
knowledge and metaphysics, the representation of the subject (the tourist) in tourism studies and
the tourism industry is replete with whiteness. The representation is characterised by the
hegemonic view that uses whiteness as its yardstick and normative quality for humanity.
Eurocentrism emerged in a broad (geo)political, economic and historical context, characterised
by (neo-) colonialism and imperialism, which underpins the prevailing picture of tourism subject
as white. Tourism is taken to mean white people's (Westerners') touristic concerns, activities,
needs and preferences.

The touristification of the world has whiteness and Westernness as its role model. Presenting the
world from the perspective of whiteness/Westernness also expresses the power to determine the
legitimate (formal and moral) division of the world (Bourdieu 1991: 231). Ideas of Self-Other,
We-Them, white and coloured, modern and primitive, divides up the world and establishes
hierarchies which combine with negative and/or positive qualities and values. Ideas of the tourist
subject permeate how the world is organised for touristic ends, that is, tourism's biopolitical and
territorial order. It is a question not just of who the tourist is, but also of those who are and will
remain exotic, authentic and sexual objects for tourism's libidinous economy (the economy of
attraction, enjoyment and desire).

Rights of movement are graded with whiteness as yardstick (hooks 1993; Tesfahuney 1998b,
Elsrud 2004). Touristic flows – who travels where and why – follow the same principle. The
word tourist is more or less synonymous with white or Westerner. In other words, being a tourist
(white) is to act from a privileged subject and mobility position and have control over movement
and access to different (global) spaces. Tourism as a (global) order and tourism's Nomos is
therefore not only about conquering, integrating and making use of the world, but also about
arranging it against the yardsticks of whiteness and Westernness. Tourism's order is at the same
time the order of whiteness, and the Nomos of tourism is thereby also racialized. Tourism can be
said to be a key for cultural imperialism and is an important instrument for spreading and
entrenching Western culture, taste and lifestyles as the global norm (cf Said 1993). “Leisure centre
and holiday paradise” are put up to “promote tourism” and attract “tourists on the hunt for

95
exotic atmospheres, big game and casinos”, which in practice transforms these countries “into a
bordello for Europe”, as Fanon put it (2007: 139-40). The Third World so remains a playground
for Western fantasies and tourism has therefore also been called “leisure imperialism” (Nash
1989) as well as a form of neo-colonialism (Crick 1996; Grinell 2003; Jaakson 2004). In this way,
questions about the human and environmental cost that must be paid for pleasing the tourist
subject and maintaining the global tourist party are obscured.

The Tourist as a Stranger

One of the distinguishing qualities of the tourist is having short-lived and fleeting ties to places,
people and features. Temporariness is the very basis and hallmark of existence as a tourist, who is
in but not of the societies and places visited (Bauman 1996: 299). Being on the move denotes the
tourist’s “formal position”. “The purely mobile person comes incidentally into contact with every
single element, but is not bound up organically, through established ties of kinship, locality, or
occupation, with any single one.” (Simmel 1995: 141). This tension-packed relation and position
is characterised by both distance and closeness in relation to the places and societies the tourist
lands in. “Wandering [is] considered as a state of detachment from every given point in space,
[and] is the conceptual opposite of attachment to any point,” Simmel writes (1995: 139) in his
essay, The Stranger. As with Simmel’s stranger, we can say that the tourist should not be
understood as arriving one day and leaving the next, rather as the man who arrives today and
stays tomorrow – the potential wanderer – “an unclassifiable anomaly” – one who is neither “one
of us” nor “one of them” (Cederholm 1999: 106). Cederholm points out that there “is an
important difference between the traveller and Simmel’s stranger: the conditions for the
encounter with the other are set almost exclusively set by the tourist (ibid.). The tourist may both
choose to go into forms of relationship and let them go whenever and wherever. The privileged
position is awarded the stranger or tourist and not the resident.

The spatial aspect in the relationship between the resident and the tourist is symbolic. Like
Simmel’s stranger, the tourist as sociological figure is characterised as a synthesis, embodying
both closeness and distance. “The unit between closeness and distance, which can be found in
every relationships between people, has, in this case, formed a constellation, which can most
succinctly be described in the following way: the distance within the relationship means that the
person who is near is distant, while the trait of foreignness entails that the person who is distant
is near” (Simmel 1995: 139). The paradox – seeking the “extraordinary”, that which is different,

96
in order to gain meaningful insights into the self and life and by doing so simultaneously
destroying the source of this endeavour – applies very well to tourism’s human relations.
Tourism’s economy of want implies that the tourist is destined to chase different and meaningful
experiences and relationships, while the native walks away and refuses to establish real
relationships.

Today, one can lead a life of a tourist or, rather, in a touristic way of being and dealing
with the world and people. One can live in alienation and in a general existential state of
rootlessness, uncertainty and angst, but also search for pleasure and bliss. The touristic
way of being in the world has become the norm rather than the exception - a world where
the everyday is suspended and the quest for the extraordinary is the norm. Put differently,
we are all become tourists (wanderers, strangers) vis-à-vis each other. A consequence of
the tourist’s “formal (privileged) status” in relation to places and societies the tourist visits
and/or stays in, is also that the tourist can best be compared to someone who lives in
exile (Shütze 1999: 23). It is in light of this that one can understand how tourism is both
makes possible by and contingent on the breaking of social barriers and taboos – itself a
mark of what constitutes a tourist. Today, the tourist travels abroad only for the sake of
enjoyment “...bypassing other places in-between, and abandoning him or herself to the
sun, the tourist enters an enclosed, exceptional and ‘duty-free’ zone’ taken ‘outside home’,
everyday routine and familiar social/moral contexts” (Diken & Lausten 2004: 102). Being
a tourist can be seen as living in a “free zone”, a type of vacuum, or non-place which is
characterized by the fact that is inhabited by short-lived, changing and casual
relationships, experiences and events, one after the other, with increasing speed and
intensity (Augé 1995: 78 & 111). Touristified spaces consist of networks of more or less
similar nodes/places (hotel rooms, beaches, airports, bars and restaurants, and night
clubs) and menus, entertainment and adventure spaces. Schütze says that touristified
spaces can be compared to ghettos magnified to existential space in their entirety (1999:
23, authors translation). The hotel room is a staged residence, where the guest, a typical exile, re-
discovers everything according to his wont. At the same time, the identical hotel rooms all over
the world comprise mobile living quarters of sorts, whose topographic significance has been
reduced to the point that they can be considered as mere accommodations at best (ibid).

97
The wanderer, the stranger, has conquered the world and the tourist is epitome of the reactive
nihilism of our time. He moves “without saying goodbye or promise of return, an empty series of
temporary sojourns which do not even offer any noticeable change”; “a few places gain
significance through comparisons of the service they can offer, but tourists usually orient
themselves in any case in a web of comparisons” (Schütze 1999: 22)

The Tourist as Hedonist

“No constraints, no obligations”

Club Med Ad cited in Diken & Laustsen 2004:102.

For the tourist self, the ordinary social norms, such as duties, expectations, relationships, do not
apply. “A change in place becomes a justification for a change in morals” usually followed by a
change in morals”, as Littlewood puts it: (2202: 210). It is the very absence of lasting bonds or
relations to destinations and people that is the hallmark for tourism’s economy of desire
enjoyment and hedonism. The non-place character of touristic spaces makes it possible to break
with or rescind social mores and constraints. Non-places suspend the everyday “normal” and
may thus be conceived as spaces of exception that enhance the hedonistic tendencies in tourism
(cf. Augé 1995: 78). Both the non-place character, and the logic of no obligations (absence of
commitment) which govern the relationship patterns of tourism make possible and engender the
hedonistic desires and wishes of the tourist. Both personal and social mores (way of being, ethics
and morals) are suspended or are suppressed, so to speak. Casual liaisons – it is no coincidence
that these are associated with sexual relations. Hedonism is an expression of this, as well as the
dehumanization of the tourist him/herself and the people who are the object of the tourist’s
desire and a template that governs the subject-object relations in the context of tourism. In line
with the logic of economies of pleasure, the tourist and his potential object come to see each
other as potential prey, as objects for fulfilling various desires and needs in the case of the tourist
and for fleecing in the case of the other (cf. the natives nickname for tourists as “wandering
wallets” in Hoellebecq).

We live in the age of indulgence, a time when we are asked to indulge and when indulging is
offered in stylised packages with accompanying lifestyle guidelines – naturally, with a price tag
attached. The pleasure-seeking ethos includes nearly all spheres of life – from the most intimate
to the general – from sex lives, relationships, marriages, to career and work; from audacity and

98
breaking taboos to enjoyment through self-deprecating experiences. Hedonism is the religion of
our time and the tourist is perhaps its priest and foremost practitioner. Michel Renault, in our
introductory chapter, embodies tourism as a hedonistic practice and the tourist as hedonist.
Renault’s life as a tourist is all about crossing boundaries, hedonism, demands for an outlet and
nihilism. “Not having any taboos is the only taboo which hedonism obeys” (Virilio, cited in
Diken & Laustsen 2004). Gone is the sanctimonious moral code on behaviour, limits, loyalty and
duty that for a long time surrounded travelling and tourism (see for example Littlewood 2002).
Moral duty, enlightenment, higher values and taboos should not stand in the way of pleasure.
Michel Renault does not consider the fact that hedonistic lifestyles can be bought and sold to be
a problem. On the contrary, he considers it favourable and that it has a legitimate base in the
teachings of utilitarianism. Life sequences consisting of uninterrupted pleasure – à la carte
entertainment - are Michel’s ideal and everything must be made available to this end, regulated by
the “invisible” hand which makes possible pleasurable experiences and apportions “happiness”
(2002: 18). His motto, “Enjoyment, a right” well captures the tourist’s claim to abandonment to
excess and the “perverse dream of limitless pleasure” (Juliet McConnell 2000: 70) which governs
not only tourism but also consumer culture as a whole. The good life can be compared with an
uninterrupted vacation – as Bauman puts it (1996: 298).

In the last few decades, the tourist industry has focused on adventure tourism, and tourism
research on embodied practice. The tourism industry works according to a practical, pragmatic
philosophy that gives the client what the client wants – and the client will be happy. Its motto is,
“You deserve pleasure”, while the consumer society is more direct: “Enjoy!” (Zizek 1996: 110).
The principle of utility and the rationale of utilitarianism – offering happiness for payment –
plays on the principle of hedonism that the sole aim for people’s actions is ultimately to fulfil
their desires and achieve happiness. The market economy and capitalism as the principle of social
order facilitates the living out of hedonistic desires within a framework of mass consumption. As
a hedonistic pattern of consumption, tourism functions more obviously as adventure tourism,
and tourism research focuses on experiences of the senses. These days, tourism’s claim to sensual
pleasure as a right is an important part of its marketing strategy and is anything but an exception
or obscure phenomenon. Rather, it is the case that people are obliged to enjoy and submit to
packaged and standardised pleasure, a type of hedonism without a consignee, anonymous on
offer in the market and the maxim: “Give people what they want” (Juliet MacCannell 2000: 70;
Dolem & Laustsen 2004: 106-7). Put differently, early mass tourism has been replaced by a
multiplicity of tourism mobilities and related flows – a signpost for collective hedonism and

99
consumerism. Global tourism flows and the world order of tourism may, thus, be conceived as
the spatiotemporal and logistic organization of business activities that submit a hedonistic logic.

Ironically enough, the imperative to enjoy means that the very spirit of hedonism – to achieve
pleasure and happiness – is exhausted by dint of the fact that pleasure is organised and governed
by conditions, and occurs in an arranged time and place dictated by the market. Moreover, other
events and experiences than those already on offer are eliminated or shut out (Julie MacCannell
20000: 69). A person may more easily feel themselves captive rather than happy and free with the
frame of the market’s hedonism imperative and its bubbles of happiness. All-inclusive tourism is
an example of this paradox, reducing pleasure to a lifestyle scorecard (see Mattsson and Ek’s
respective contributions in this anthology.) All inclusive is a tourist bubble which “fences in the
traveller so that he/she moves in secured, protected and normalised environment” (Juliet
MacCannell 2000: 69) and whose painstaking grip simultaneously excludes or stifles the diversity
that is the very premise of enriching experiences and happiness. Even in its most beautiful form
(as with Michael Onfray), hedonism is a philosophy that stands and falls with access to
contraceptives or an effective capacity to repress disagreeable events and things, like who pays
the price for the abandon. The traveller’s bildung ideals of self-education, experience and
knowledge of the world are still there, but watered down. The lingering rhetoric of idealism
closely underpins hedonism: it is possible to purchase a good conscience and an ethical
standpoint. All the calculations about joy and pain are found lacking when it comes to making
prognoses about the future. The tourist is emblematic of what Nietzsche called the herd animal;
and tourism is slave morality in its mobile form – a morality of utility (Nietzsche 2002, aphorism
260). Thus, hedonism in the guise of tourism is the global triumph of immanent decadence and
emptiness – Christianity sublimated. Welcome to paradise!

Creature of the Market

In the consumer society, the majority of people are still treated as passive objects. “Leisure
time”, the arena where people are encouraged to live out their desires and wishes as active
subjects, is quite simply a new form of work.... consumption is kept going by consumers
identifying with the game, accepting the system’s various pseudo needs as their own...
Carl Cassegård 20004: 92

The tourist as a white, privileged, mobile stranger without any ties has what it takes to make a
move to into the market that can offer him all he wishes. He has his needs defined and met
through his interaction with the market. He is economically oriented, but not to the extent that

100
he acts rationally to achieve the biggest return possible on his invested capital or sell his labour
for the highest price. His economic rationale is bound up with physical needs and conditions. He
will give himself the biggest possible feeling of wellbeing, excitement, rest or other desired
experience during his time on earth. He is the exact opposite of the diligent worker (see for
example Löfgren 2001), as he does not define success as his contribution to society, confirmation
or social ideals but performs as an autonomous being.

Capitalism as a social order functions as a facilitator for the expression of hedonistic desires
within the framework of mass consumption. The market may offer wares packaged in various
forms of moral philosophy, but the mentality which best lends itself to the logic of the tourist
market is hedonism. One might say that tourism is the spatio- and logistic organisation of
activities, one that obeys a consumerist and hedonistic logic of. The hedonistic drive entails that
tourists graze like cattle on tracks carved out for them from one green meadow to the next,
chasing happiness and consuming stylised pleasures and desires thrust on them by the tourism
industry. Rather than stilling their hunger, the culture of consumerism brings it on. Tourism is
therefore tormented by hedonism’s paradox of pleasure. The tourist finds no peace when there is
no achieving happiness in the shape of the principle of utility. Hedonism has a close connection
with the rationale of utilitarianism – both obey the principle of utility and individually have
respective collective desire and happiness as their goal (Debord 2002; Zizek 1996). Hedonism
and utilitarianism are variants of the slave mentality whose essence is usefulness (Nietzsche 2002:
para 260). Hedonism and utilitarianism converge in accordance with the logic of the consumer
society and commodity economy where enjoyment is turned into a commodity and thrust on us
as tourism. As a hedonistic pattern of consumption, tourism functions ever more apparently as
adventure tourism, and tourism research focuses on embodied practice. The commodification of
experiences, pleasures and leisure time facilitates hedonism and hedonistic consumption (Wang
2000: 188). The market sells excess. (Diken & Laustsen 2004: 100) and this has nowadays been
incorporated into the dictum of tourism.

Tourism entails an exchange, a buying and selling, of time and space. Certain bodies are filled and
fed with the energy and time of others (Enloe 1989; Kincaid 1988). The tourist is a mobile
subject since he has the privilege of being able to move to the market that can offer him what he
wishes. Tourism and the tourist become the bearer and the practitioner respectively of the
consumer society’s hedonistic dictate.

101
 The Tourist as the Cosmopolitan Ideal Subject

Human circulation considered as something to be consumed – tourism – is a by-product of

the circulation of commodities; basically, toruism is the chance to go and see what has been
made trite. The economic managemnt of travel to different places suffices in istelf to
ensure thoseplace’s interchangeability. The same modernization that has deprived travel of
its temporal aspect ahs like deprived it of its reality of space.

Guy Debord 2002: 168.

The tourist can be understood as the new cosmopolitan ideal subject, a model figure necessary
for the maintenance of the capitalist machinery and the governing world order. Being a tourist is
a way of being in the world, and the tourist’s ontological status is a function of a touristified
world. This book shows how this model figure has grown during a period where the compression
of time and space and the commodification of mobility and places has put its stamp on the world
to such a degree that we can speak of touristified man. This thorough commercialisation of the
world is more than just the packaging of places (Ek & Hultman 2007) – it is also about how we
relate to all dimensions of life. The globalised subject is the tourist figure whom the mobility
machine creates when the world is territorialised and touristified. Forgotten is the envisaged
world citizen, and out emerges the tourist with insatiable adventure and consumption needs – but
also all the others that constitute legitimate parts of the machinery. “The age of the settled life has
irrevocably passed” (Macho, cited by Schütze 1999: 20) and the tourist constitutes the prototype
for this state. “Everything indicates that we have now reached an era which no longer can call on
the culturally defining antagonism between settlers and nomads” (Schütze 199: 22). The tourist is
a cosmopolitan person, someone who has access to the cosmos in the sense of everywhere.

The tourist subject enjoys a particular status on a global level and these days there is competition
between states, regions, cities and companies to win the tourist’s favour by making promises to
look after their various needs in the best possible way and by trying to entice as many tourists as
possible. To ensure tourists’ well-being and safety – Making the World Safe for Tourism (Goldstone
2001) – has become an important end goal for governments, various authorities and companies.
The tourist subject’s global status in our time is apparent not least in the events such natural
catastrophes, accidents, epidemics and terrorist attacks. Governments, companies, authorities,
media and NGOs mobilise quickly, take part in various rescue operations and take various
measures to place tourists in safety. In the prominent position which mobility/travel has adopted
in later years, the (geo)political dimension of tourism also comes to light along with the status

102
which the white subject enjoys as a traveller (tourist). In the aftershock of the “global war on
terrorism”, control and surveillance of movement and flows of various kinds (capital, goods,
services and people) have adopted a prominent place in various types of geopolitical, security and
economic risk calculations (Tesfahuney & Dahlstedt 2007). In connection with this, issues as to
the tourist subject’s mobility, tourism and security/risk have ended up in the spotlight of the
emergent global surveillance apparatus. More than anything, what is really becoming obvious is
the tourist subject’s global status in the global media attention surrounding serious events that
befall (Western) tourists – disease, natural catastrophes, armed conflicts or operations. The
tourist’s (tourism’s) status is apparent in the series of fast rescue operations that are put into place
by governments, local authorities, NGOs and international bodies/forces to place tourists in
safety - away from the troubles, for example, in Thailand in the autumn of 2008, French
Guadeloupe in the winter of 2009, Machu Pichu in January 2010. The big international actions
during the tsunami crisis in South-East Asia at the end of 2004 – undertaken because they
affected so many Westerners – can be compared with the meagre actions undertaken when an
equally devastating disaster hit the local population in the area a few years later; or when, for
example, warfare ensued after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. At the same
time, the privilege of being a tourist also entails the white tourist subject being the target of
various types of political protest, social movements and environmental movements around the
world. Protests against tourism such as those in Hawaii and Goa (Patullo 1996: 202), Sir Lanka
(Klein 2007; 488-89), Amsterdam (Owens 2998) and the Canary Islands are but a few examples.
The fact that the kidnapping of and violence against tourists (Sommez 1998, Bianchi 2006) have
become a sure way of attracting media attention in the West is also part of the same logic,
through exploitation of the (geo)political status which the tourist subject enjoys just by dint of
being white or Western. The privilege of being a tourist includes, as was pointed out earlier, the
fact that the white tourist subject is an important concern not only for governments, local
authorities and enterprises, but also as the target for various kinds of ideologies (armed) conflicts,
resistance actions and political movements the world over. Making tourism safe is another name
for making the world a safer place for Westerners. Mobility has to do with (geo)politics and
tourism can be seen as (geo)politics on the move.

Naomi Klein writes about how tourism exploited the tsunami disaster to confiscate beaches
inhabited by families of fishermen and who were subsequently prohibited from returning and
rebuilding on the grounds of “new rules” which had supposedly decreed the beaches “buffer
zones”. Thus the tourism industry could lay claim to beaches along the whole Sri Lankan east

103
coast, as well as coastal strips in the Maldives, Thailand and Indonesia. Likewise, beaches were
besieged in the name of tourism in countries such as Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Guatemala after
the ravages of hurricane Mitch in October 1998 as well as Hurricane Katrina’s inundation of New
Orleans in 2005 (Klein 2007: 483-517). In the case of Katrina, tourists were evacuated before
citizens. Tourists were taken to what once had been luxury hotels before flying to their respective
home countries. Several witness statements confirm that the US military, under cover of night,
picked up tourists from the Super Dome stadium from among others hit by the disaster and saw
to it that they could return safely home.

It is as if, notes Croswell wryly, the label “tourist” accords a right to special treatment. He
explains why only a certain few are seen as needing special protection and taken quickly to safety
while others are not (2006: 262). The fact that the tourists were rescued before poor, Afro- and
Latin American citizens (who, on paper at least, have “rights” and enjoy “the protection of the
state”) is in itself a tangible expression for the governing global and racialized tourist order.
Jamaica Kincaid depicts the plight in this way: “Even though all the beaches in Antigua are by
law public beaches, Antiguans are not allowed on the beaches of this hotel, they are stopped at
the gate by the guards; and soon the best beaches in Antigua will be closed to Antiguans” (1988;
57-58). The fact that tourists’ welfare went before that of the local citizens as in the case of New
Orleans in connection with the Katrina floods (Klein 2007) shows that the rights of the tourist
are above that of the citizen. The examples above illustrate at the same time how conquering,
establishment and exploitation in the name of tourism is played out in practice. Naomi Klein
draws parallels with colonialism’s way of confiscating “free land”. “During colonial times, there
was a doctrine that was all but inscribed in the law: terra nullius, land belonging to no one” (ibid.
501). Tourism lays siege to places and creates islands cut off from their surrounds where tourists
do not need to concern themselves with the local population or have any contact with them
whatsoever; all-inclusive holidays are a prime example of this. These days, tourism’s Nomos has
taken over this slogan and conquers, completes and makes use of everything from land, coast,
nature and cultural areas to life itself the world over, not to mention that part of outer space
annexed by the space travel industry. That which is white and Western constitutes the norm for
how territory is incorporated, ordered and laid claim to.

It is important to point out that tourism does not stand apart or beyond armed conflict, acts of
resistance or (geo)politics (Hall 1996; Sonmez 1998; Bianchi 2006). Tourism is (geo)politics by
any other means and as such, it is already in advance a part of (geo)political, economic, cultural

104
and social power plays on different geographic scales. The tourist subject is an emblem of
globally layered and racialised movement privileges and rights and as such the tourist subject is a
geopolitical being in motion who embodies the inequalities and injustices in the governing global
order. This status is most palpable where the privileged status and mobility of the tourist subject
is contrasted with the immobility thrust upon other “problematic” forms of mobility and people
(immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, etc) (Virilio 1986, Urry 2000, Tesfahuney & Dahlstedt
2008).
In Conclusion

Globalized mobility privileges entail that the tourist subject, by dint of being “white”, has “free”
access all over the world, and is able to find an outlet for his various desires, and to consume and
enjoy in the name of hedonism. This status which the tourist subject these days enjoys is of a
hitherto unseen kind: the whole world is served up for the tourist. In the times we live in, the
tourist is either “the model which both appropriates and shapes life and daily life” or the template
for assessing all other tasks. “Tourism is no longer something we apply ourselves to while on
holiday. Ordinary life ought to be – if it is to be a good life –one continuous holiday ... Ideally, we
ought to be able to play tourist whenever and wherever ... In the ideal case, our moral conscience
will have been sedated with a good dose of sleeping pills” (Bauman 1996: 298-99).

The tourist’s status is both a product of the governing world order and an important means for
preserving it. The touristification of the world entails the besieging of territory as well as material,
experienced and imagined spaces in the name of whiteness and with all things Western as the
norm. In that sense, by looking at Thorstein Veblen’s (1986/1899) theory of leisure,
consumption and lifestyle, we should state that it is the white Westerner who stands as the norm
for a global leisure class. We can talk about global employment distribution from the category of
leisure. Whiteness, class and territorial order converge into the global travel prerogative.

In this article, and indeed this book, highlights and problematizes the tourist subject’s normative
status and privileged position. It is apparent that the privilege of being a tourist, that is to say, the
ideal subject of our time, is bestowed on only a portion of humanity. The global status which the
tourist subject enjoys demands that – and is in fact made possible by the fact that – a good deal
of the world is enslaved and forced to serve the tourist’s various needs, desires and pleasures.

105
 Bibliography

Adey, P. (2010) Mobility, London: Routledge

Agamben, G. (1993) The coming community, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
__________ (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign power and bare life, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
__________ (2002) Remnants of Auschwitz: The witness and the archive, New York: Zone Books.
__________ (2004) The open. Man and animal, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ahmed, S. (2000). Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality, London: Routledge
__________ (2004). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Aitchison, C. (1999) ”New Cultural Geographies: The spatiality of leisure, gender and sexuality”, Leisure
Studies, 18, 19–39.
__________ (2001) ”Theorizing Other discourses of tourism, gender and culture. Can the subaltern speak
(in tourism)?” Tourism Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 s 133–147
Alegre, J. & Pou, L (2008) “Tourism expenditure and all-inclusive packages – the case of a mature
Mediterranean destination”, Tourism Economics 14[3]; 645-655.
Alneng, V. (2002) ” The modern does not cater for the native. Travel ethnography and the conventions”
Tourist Studies vol. 2, No 2, s 119-42
Amnesty International Report 2008
Anderson, B. (1993) Den föreställda gemenskapen. reflexioner kring nationalismens ursprung och spridning, Göteborg:
Daidalos.
Andersson Cederholm, E. (1999) Det extraordinäras lockelse. Luffarturistens bilder och upplevelser, Lund: Arkiv.
Ang Ien (1993). "Migrations of Chineseness: ethnicity in the postmodern world", in Cultural Studies:
Pluralism and Theory Ed. D Bennet (University of Melbourne, Melbourne) pp 32 – 44
Arbetaren (2004) Arbetarens turismguide. www.arbetaren.se/pdf/arbetarens turismguide.pdf
Arendt, H. (1951) The origins of totalitarianism, New York: Harcourt.
Ash, J. & Turner, L. (1975) The Golden Hordes. London: Constable
Asplund, J. (1970) Om undran inför samhället, Uppsala: Argos.
Augé, M. (1995). Non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London: Verso.
Bauman, Z. (1991) Auschwitz och det moderna samhället, Göteborg: Daidalos.
__________ (1996) Postmodern etik. Göteborg: daidalos
__________ (2000) Globalisering, Lund: Studentlitteratur.
__________ (2003) Samhället under belägring. Götebrog: Daidalos
Beck, Ulrich (1998) Vad innebär globaliseringen? Missuppfattningar och möjliga politiska svar, Göteborg: Daidalos.
Becken, Susanne & Hay, John (2007) Tourism and Climate Change. Risks and Opportunities. Clevedon: Chanell
View Publications
Bekkengen, Lisbeth (2002). Man får välja: om föräldraskap och föräldraledighet i arbetsliv och familjeliv. Karlstad:
Univ., 2002
Benjamin, Walter (1978) Reflections: Essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings, New York: Harcourt.
Berg, Lasse (1997). När Sverige upptäckte Afrika. Stockholm: Rabén Prisma.
Bianchi, Raoul (2007) ”Tourism and the globalization of fear: Analysing the politics of risk and (in)security
in global travel” Tourism and Hospitality Research Vol. 7, 1, 64-74
Biemann, Ursula (2002) ”Touring, Routing and Trafficking Female Geobodies” Cresswell, Tim &
Verstraete, Ginette (red) Mobilizing place, Placing Mobility. The Politics of Mobilization in a Globalized World.
Amsterdam: Rodopi
Blaut, James M. (1993). The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History.
Blunt, Alison (1994). Travel, Gender, and Imperialism: Mary Kingsley and West Africa. New York: GuilfordPress.
Bonta, Mark & Protevi, John (2004) Deleuze and geophilosophy. A guide and glossary. Edinburgh: Edinburh
University Press
Bonnett, Alastair (1998). ”Who was white? The disappearance of non-European white identities and the
formation of European racial whiteness”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 21, No. 6, 1998.
Bonnett, Alastair (2002) ”The metropolis and white modernity”, Ethnicities, Vol. 2, No. 3, 349-366.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984). Distinction: A Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge & Keagen Paul.
Bourdieu, Pierre & Thompson, John B. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press
Bowie, David & Chang, Jui Chi (2005) “Tourist satisfaction: A view from a mixed international guided
package tour”, Journal of Vacation Marketing 11[4]; 303-322.

106
Brandin, E. (2009) ”Versions of ‘wild’ and the importance of fences in Swedish wildlife tourism involving
moose” Current Issues in Tourism 12 (5 & 6): 413-427.
Brunner, Edward M (1989) ”Of Cannibals, Tourists, and Ethnographers” Cultural Anthropology. Vol 4 (4) s
438-445
Butler, K. (1995) ”Independence for Western Women Through Tourism” Annals of Tourism Research, 22, 2,
487–489.
Butler, Judith (2004) Precarius Life. The Power of Mourning and Violence, London: Verso.
Butcher, Jim (2003). The Moralisation of Tourism: Sun, Sand ... and Saving the World? New York: Routledge,
2003.
Calarco, Matthew (2007) “Jamming the anthropological machine”, i Calarco, Matthew & DeCaroli, Steven
(red.) Giorgio Agamben. Sovereignty and life, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Campbell, David (2002) “Atrocity, memory, photography: Imaging the concentration camps of Bosnia –
the case of ITN versus Living Marxism, Part 2”, Journal of Human Rights 1[2]; 143-172.
Cassegård, Carl (2004) ”Revolt och melankoli: Om stadens gestalt hos situationisterna och Walter
Benjamin” i Res Publica Vol 64 s. 118-115
Castells, Manuel (1996). The information age: economy, society and culture. Vol. 1. The rise of the network society.
Malden, Mass.: Blackwell
Castles, Stephen (2003) ”Towards a sociology of forced migration and social transformation” Sociology Vol.
77, No. 1 s 13-34
Castree, N. (2003): Place: Connections and Boundaries in an Interdependent World. I Holloway, S. &
Rice, S. & Valentine, G. (ed.) Key Concepts in Geography. SAGE Publications. London.
Clifford, James (1992). “Travelling cultures”, in Grossberg, L., Nelson, C. & Treichler, P. (eds.), Cultural
Studies, Routledge, New York, pp. 96–112
Chanlat, Jean-Francois (2006) “Space, organisation and management thinking: A socio-historical
perspective”, i Clegg, Stewart R. & Kornberger, Martin (red.) Space, Organizations and Management Theory,
Malmö & Copenhagen: Liber & Copenhagen Business Press.
Cederholm, Erika Andersson (1999) Det extraordinäras lockelse. Lund: Lunds Universitet
Chin, Christine B. N. (2008) Cruising in the global economy: Profits, pleasure and work at sea, Aldershot: Ashgate.
Ciftci, Hakki; Düzakin, Erkut & Yildirim, Önal B. (2007) “All inclusive system and its effects on the
Turkish tourism sector”, Problems and Perspectives in Management 5[3]; 269-285.
Clegg, Stewart; Courpasson, David & Phillips, Nelson (2006) Power and organisation, London: Sage.
Clifford 1992;
Cohen Erik (1979) ”A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences” Sociology Vol 13, No. 2, s 179-201
Cohen, E. (1988) ”Authenticity and commoditization in tourism” Annals of Tourism Research, 15, s. 371-386.
Cole, Stroma (2007) ”Beyond Authenticity and Commodification” Annals of Tourism Reasearch Vol. 34, No.
4 s 943-960
Coleman, Simon & Mike Crang (2002). Tourism – Beetween Place and Performance. New York: Berghahn
Books.
Cooper, Dave (1994). Portraits of Paradise: Themes and Images of the Tourist Industry, Asian Journal of
Social Science, Vol. 22,No.1, s. 144-160.
Crenshaw, Carol & Urry, John (1997). Tourism and the photographic eye. I: Rojek, Chris (1993). Ways of
Escape: modern transformations in leisure and travel. London: Macmillan.
Crenshaw, Carrie (1997). “Resisting Whiteness’ Rethorical Silence”, Western Journal of Communication, Vol
61, Nr 3, s. 253-278.
Cresswell, Tim (2006) On the Move. Mobility in the Modern World. New York: Routledge
Crick, Malcolm (1989) ”Representations of International Tourism in the Social Sciences: Sun, Sex, Sights,
Savings, and Servility” Annual Review of Anthropology Vol 18: 307-344
Crouch, David red. (1999) Leisure/Tourism Geographies. Practices and Geographical Knowledge. London:
Routledge
Crouch, David & Desforges, Luke(2003) ”The Sensuous in the Tourist Encounter: Introduction: The
Power of the Body in Tourist” Tourist Studies.2003; 3: 5-22
DN 2005.06.22, Regeringen får svidande kritik efter tsunamin.
Dahlstedt, Magnus (2009) Aktiveringens politik: Demokrati och medborgarskap för ett nytt millennium, Malmö,
Liber.

107
Dahlstedt, Magnus & Tesfahuney, Mekonnen (2004)”Rörlighetens paradox: Om ’migrationshot’, ett
inhägnat EUropa och en paranoid samtid”, i Dahlstedt, Magnus & Lindberg, Ingemar (red.) Rasismer i
Europa: Migration i den nya världsordningen, Stockholm: Agora.
Dagens Nyheter 2005.06.22.
Dann, Graham (1996). “The People of Tourist Brochyres” i Selwyn, Tom (red) The Tourist Image. Myths and
Myth Making in Tourism, London: Wiley.
Davidson, P. (1996) ”The Holiday and Work Experiences of Women with Young Children”, Leisure
Studies, 15, 2, 89–103.
Davidson, Joyse, Bondi, Liz & Mick Smith (2005). Emotional Geographies. Hampshire: Aschgater Publishing
Limited.
Debord, Guy (2002/1967) Sådespelssamhället. Göteborg: Daidalos
Deem, Rosemary (1996) ”No Time for a Rest? An Exploration of women’s Work, Engendered Leisure
and Holidays” Time and Society, 5, 1, 5–25.
Delanda, Manuell (2002) Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. London: Continuum
Delaney, David (2002). “The Space That Race Makes” Professional Geographer, Vol. 54, No. 1, s. 6-14.
Deleuze, Gilles och Guattari, Felix (1987) A thousand plateaux. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota
Delillo, Don (1999) White Noise. London: Picador
Derrida, Jacques (2005) Lagens kraft, Eslöv: Östlings bokförlag Symposion.
Dielemans, Jennie (2008) Välkommen till paradiset. Reportage om turistindustrin, Stockholm: Atlas.
Diken, Bülent (2009a) Nihilism, London: Routledge.
Diken, Bülent (2009b) “The (impossible) society of spite: Revisiting nihilism”, Theory, Culture & Society
26[4]; 97-116.
Diken, Bülent & Laustsen, Carsten Bagge (2004) “Sea, sun, sex and the discontents of pleasure”, Tourism
Studies 4,[2]; 99-114.
Diken, Bülent & Laustsen, Carsten Bagge (2005) The Culture of Exception: Sociology Facing the Camp, London:
Routledge.
Dyer, Richard (1997). White. New York: Routledge.
Echtner, Charlotte M. & Pushkala Prasard (2003) ”The Context of Third World Tourism Marketing”
Annals of Touism Research, Vol. 30, No. 3, s. 660–682.
Edensor, Tim (2000)”Staging tourism: tourists as performers” Annals of Tourism Research, 27 [2] 322-344
___________ (2001)”Performing tourism, staging tourism: (re)producing tourist space and practice”,
Tourist Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 59-81 (2001)
Ek, Richard (2009) ”Från marknadsföring av polis till marknadsföring av zoner?” Geografiska Notiser 2009:
1, 34-44.
Ek, Richard (2007) ”Malmö och America's Cup - Det koloniala evenemanget” i Ek, Richard & Hultman,
Johan (red.) Plats som produkt. Kommersialisering och paketering, Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Ek, Richard (2008) ”Apatiska entreprenörer? Om gäst(o)vänlighetens politik och spelet om
flyktingbarnen”, i Tesfahuney, Mekonnen & Dahlstedt, Magnus (red.) Den bästa av världar?
Betraktelser över en postpolitisk samtid, Stockholm: Tankekraft.
Ek, Richard och Tesfahuney, Mekonnen (2008) ”Den post-politiska regionen som fångst- och
rörlighetsterritorium”, i Andersson, Frida; Ek, Richard & Molina, Irene (red.) Regionalpolitikens
geografi: Regional tillväxt i teori och praktik, Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Ek, Richard (1998) ’Kartan i fantasylitteraturen’, Geografiska Notiser 1998:1, 41-50.
Elsrud, Torun (2004) Taking Time, Making Journeys. Narratives of Self and the Other among Backpackers. Lund:
Lunds Universitet
Eng, Catherine (2002) ”Future consideration for improving end-of-life care for older persons: Program of
All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE)” Journal of Palliative Medicine 5[2]; 305-309.
Enloe, Cynthia (1989) Bananas, Beaches and Bases. Making Sense of International Politics. London: Pandora
Enzensberger, Hans-Magnus (1996/1958) ”A Theory of Tourism”, New German Critique 68:
117–35.
Eriksson Baaz, Maria (2001) ”Biståndet och partnerskapets problematik”, i McEachrane, M. & Faye, L.
(red.) Sverige och de Andra – Postkoloniala perspektiv, Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, s. 159-186.
Eriksson Baaz, Maria (2001b). ”Introduction. African Identity and the Postcolonial” i Palmberg, Mai &
Eriksson Baaz, Maria (red.) (2001). Same and other: negotiating African identity in cultural production. Uppsala:
Nordic Africa Institute (Nordiska Afrikainstitutet).

108
Eskilsson, Lena & Fazlhashemi, Mohammed red. (2001) Reseberärttelser. Idéhistoriska resor i sociala och
geografiska rum. Stockholm: Carlsson
Etchner, C M & Prasad, P (2003) ”The Context of Third World Tourism Marketing” Annals of Tourism
Research, Vol. 30, No. 3 s 660-682
EU Parlamentet (2006) Betänkande om turism och utveckling, Utskottet för ekonomisk utveckling,
finansiella frågor och handel, (ACP-EU 3871/06/A/slutlig).
Fabian, Johannes (2002/1983). Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Colombia
University Press.
Fanon, Frantz (2007) Jordens Fördomda. Översättning av Per-Olov Zennström: Stockholm: Leopard
Favelo, Paolo (2007) ” ’What a wornderful world!’: On ’touristic ways of seeing’, the knowledge and
politics of the culture industries of otherness’ ” Tourist Studies Vol. 7, No 1 s 51-81
Feifer, M (1986) Tourism in History: From Imperial Rome to the Present Day. New York: Stein and Day Findlay
Franklin, Adrian (2004) “Tourism as an ordering: Towards a new ontology of tourism”, Tourist Studies,
4[3]; 277-301.
Franklin, Adrian (2003) Tourism: An introduction, London: Sage.
Franklin, Adrian & Crang, Michael (2001) ”The trouble with toruism and travel theory” Tourist Studies 1(1):
5-22
Foucault, Michel (1977) Discipline & Punish. The Birth of the Prison. London: Allan & Lane
Foucault, Michel (1980). Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977. Brighton: Harvester
Foucault, Michel (2008) The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collége de France, 1978-1979, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Freitag, T. G. (1994) ”Enclave tourism development: For whom the benefits roll?” Annals of Tourism
Research 21, 538–554
Furlough Ellen (2002) ”Une leçon des choses: Tourism, Empire, and the Nation in Interwar France” French
Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3, s 441-473
Gellner, Ernest (1983) Nations and nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell.
Goldstone, Patricia (2001) Making the World Safe for Tourism. New Haven: Yale University Press
Gorsuch, Anne E. & Koenker, Diane P. (red.)(2006) Turizm: The Russian and East European tourist under
capitalism and socialism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Gregory, Derek & Dunacn, James red. (1999) Writes of Passage. Reading Travel Writing. London: Routledge
Grinell, Klas (2003) ”Tourism som postkolonialism?” i Svensk turismforskning – en tvärvetenskaplig antologi om
turism, turistdestinationer och turismorganisationer, red. Mia Larsson European Tourism Research Institute: Östersund
Grinell, Klas (2004). Att sälja världen – omvärldsbilder i svensk utlandsturism, Gothenburg Studies in the History
of Science and ideas 17. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.
Grosspietsch, Michael (2005) ’Can tourism provoke terrorism?’, Working Paper No.3, Münster.
Grünewald de Azeredo Rodrigo (2006), "Tourism and ethnicity”, Horizontes Antropológicos, Vol. 1
Hall, C. M., & O'Sullivan, V. (1996) ”Tourism, political instability and social unrest” i A. Pizam andY.
Mansfield (Eds.) Tourism, Crime and International Security Issues. Chichester: John Wiley.
Hall, Colin Michael & Tucker, Hazel (red.) (2004). Tourism and postcolonialism: contested discourses, identities and
representations. London: Routledge
Hall, Michael C. (2004) ’Geography, Marketing and the Selling of Places’ in Williams, S. (ed.) Tourism,
Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 283-304.
Hall, Colin Michael (2005). Tourism: Rethinking the social science of mobility. Harlow: Perason/Prentice Hall
Hall, D. (eds), Tourism: A Gender Analysis. Wiley, Chichester, pp. 1–34.
Hannam, K., Sheller, M., Urry, J. (2006) “Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings”, Editorial Introduction
to Mobilities, 1: 1 s. 1-22
Hannam, Kevin (2008) ”Tourism Geographies, Tourist Studies and the Turn Towards Mobilities” Geohgraphy
Compass Vol2 Issue 1, s 12-139
Harrison David (1995) ”Development of tourism in Swaziland”, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 22, No. 2,
s 135-156.
Harvey, David (1982) The Limits to Capital. Oxford: Blackwell
Heberlein, Ann (2008). Det var inte mitt fel! Om konsten att ta ansvar. Västerås: Ica
Heidegger, Martin (1977) The question concerning technology and other essays, New York: Harper & Row.
Hitchcock, Michael (1999) ”Tourism and ethnicity: situational perspectives”, International Journal of Tourism
Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, s. 17 – 32.

109
Heldt Cassel, Susanna (2008) ”Platsmarknadsföring, regional image, och jakten på attraktivitet” i
Andersson, Ek och Molina (red) Regionalpolitikens geografi. Regional tillväxt i teori och praktik. Lund:
Studentlitteratur
Hochschild, Arlie Russell (1979) ”Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure”, American Journal of
Sociology, Vol. 85 No. 3, s. 551-575.
Hollinshead, K., Atelejevic, I. & Ali, N. (2009) ”Worldmaking Agency-Worldmaking Authority: The
Sovereign Constitutive Role of Tourism” Tourism Geographies, Vol. 11, No. 4 s 427-443
Honey, Martha (1999) Ecotourism and Sustainable Development: Who Owns Paradise? Island Press
hooks, Bell (1992) Black Looks – Race and Representation, Cambridge: South End Press.
Houellebecq, Michel (2002) Plattform, Stockholm: Bonniers Förlag.
Houtum, Henk van & Boedeltje, Freerk (2009) “Europe’s shame: Dearth at the borders of the EU”,
Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 41[2]; 226-230.
Irigaray, Luce (1994) Könsskillnadens etik och andra texter. Brutus Östlings Bokförlag
Issa, John J. & Jayawardena, Chandana (2003) “The ‘all-inclusive’ concept in the Caribbean”, International
Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 15[3]; 167-171.
Jaakson, Reiner (2004) ” Globalisation and neocolonialst touirsm” i Tourism and postcolonialism C. Michael
Hall & Hazel Tucker red. London: Routledge
Jamison, David (1999) ”Tourism and ethnicity: The brotherhood of coconuts”, Annals of Tourism Research,
Vol. 26, No. 4, s. 944-967.
JanMohamed, Abdul R. (1986) ”The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference
in Colonialist Litterature” i Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (red) (1986). ”Race”, Writing and Difference. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Jansen, Sue Curry (2008) ”Designer nations: Neo-liberal nation branding – Brand Estonia” Social Identities
Vol. 14, 1 s 121-142
Jansson, André (2002) “Spatial phantasmagoria: The mediatization of tourism experience”, European
Journal of Communication, 17[4]; 429-443.
Jansson, André (2007) “A sense of tourism: New media and the dialectic of encapsulation/decapsulation”,
Tourist Studies 7[1]; 5-24.
Johnston, Linda (2001) ”(Other) Bodies and Tourism Studies” Annals of Tourism Research, 28(1). 180–201
Jokinen & Veijola (1994) ”The Body in Tourism” Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 11, s. 125-151.
Jokinen & Veijola (1997). “The Disoriented tourist: The figuration of the tourist in contemporary cultural
critique.” In: Rojek, Chris (1993). Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel. London:
Macmillan.
Jonsson, Stefan (1995) Andra platser: en essä om kulturell identitet. Stockholm: Norstedts.
Kincaid, Jamaica (1996) The Autobiography of my Mother. A Novel. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux
Kincaid, Jamaica (2000) A Small Place. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux
Klein, Naomi (2007) Chockdoktrinen: katastrofkapitalismens genombrott. Stockholm: Ordfront
Kinnaird, V., Kothari, V. and Hall, D. (1994) ”Tourism: Gender Perspectives”, i Kinnaird, V. and
Koselleck, Reinhart (2004). Erfarenhet, tid och historia: om historiska tiders semantik. Göteborg: Daidalos
Lash, Scott & Urry, John (1994) Economies and Signs of Space. London: Sage
Lennquist, Sten & Hodgetts, Timothy (2005), Den svenska sjukvårdens ledning och funktion i samband med
tsunamikatastrofen i Sydostasien 26 december 2004, Rapport från katastrofmedicinska expertgruppen, 2005 års
katastrofkommission
Little, Walter E (2004) Mayas in the Marketplace. Tourism, Globalization, and Cultural Identity. Austin: Univeristy
of Texas Press.
Littlewood, Ian (2002) Sultry Climates. Travel and Sex. Cambridge: Mass. Da Capo
Lundgren, Jan O (1974) ”The development of the tourist travel system – a metropolitan economic
hegemony par excellence”, Ymer, Svenska sällskapet för antropologi & geografi Årsbok 1974. Vol. 94
Lyons David (2003) “Surveillance as Social Sorting: Computer Codes and Mobile Bodies,” i Lyon D. (red.)
Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk, and Digital Discrimination (ed.), New York: RoutledgeLöfgren, Orvar
(1999) On holiday. A history of vacationing, Berkeley: The University of California Press.
Mani, Lata, (1992). “Cultural theory, colonial texts: reading eyewitness accounts of widow burning”, in
Grossberg, L., Nelson C. & Freichler, P. A. (eds.) Cultural Studies, Routledge, New York
Löfgren, Orvar (2001) ”Know your country: A comparative perspective on tourism and nation building in
Sweden” i Being Elsewhere. Tourism, Consumer Culture, and Identity in Modern Europé and America. Baranowsky,
Shelley & Furlough, Ellen red. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

110
Macabe, Scott (2005) ” ’Who is a tourist?’ A Critical Review” Tourist Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, s 85-106
MacCannell, Dean (1976) The Tourist. A New Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Schocken Books
MacCannell, Dean (1992) Empty Meeting Grounds. The Tourist Papers. London: Routledge
MacCannell, Juliet F (2000) ”Urban Perversions” Third Text Vol. 14 Issue 51, s 65-74
McLaren, Deborah (2003) Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel. Kumarian Press, Inc
Marti, Bruce E. (2004) “Trends in world and extended-length cruising”, Marine Policy 28[?]; 199-211.
Marx, Karl (1971) Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 3. Penguin Calssics
Matthis, Moa (2001) ”Från Temple till Thorvall”, i McEachrane, M. & Faye, L. (red.) Sverige och de Andra –
Postkoloniala perspektiv, Stockholm: Natur och Kultur.
Mattsson, Katarina (2010). Turistisk vithet & begäret till den andra. Stockholm: Tankekraft förlag (under
utgivning)
Massey, Doreen (1999) “Spaces of Politics”. I: Massey, Allen, & Sarre, (red). Human Geography Today.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
____________ (1998) “Imagining globalisation: power-geometries of time-space”. In A. Brah, M. J.
Hickman och M. MacanGhaill (red), Future Worlds: Migration, Environment and Globalisation. Basingstoke,
Macmillan.
Mattsson, K. (2005) ”Diskrimineringens andra ansikte – svenskhet och det vita västerländska” i SOU
2005: 41 Bortom Vi och Dom – Teoretiska reflektioner om makt, integration och strukturell diskriminering. s 139-57
McClintock, Anne (1995) Imperial Leather. Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York:
Routledge
McGuinness, Mark (2000) ”Geography matters? Whiteness and contemporary geography”, Area, Vol 32,
Nr 2, s. 225-230.
Meethan, Kevin (2001). Tourism in Global Society – Place, Culture, Consumption. New York: Palgrave.
Miller, Peter & Nikolas, Rose (2008) Governing the present. Administering economic, social and personal life,
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Miller, Allan R. & Grazer, William F. (2002) “The North American cruise market and Australian tourism”,
Journal of Vacation Marketing 8[3]; 221-234.
Mills, Catherine (2008) The Philosophy of Agamben, Stocksfield: Acumen.
Mitchell, Dean (2007) Governing Societies, McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead.
Morgan, Nigel J. and Anette Pritchard (1998). Tourism Promotion and Power: Creating Images, Creating Identities,
Wiley, Chichester.
Morrison, Toni (1993) Mörkt spel: vithet och den litterära fantasin. Stockholm: Trevi.
Mossberg, Lena (2003) Att skapa upplevelser: från OK till WOW! Lund: Studentlitteratur
Mouffe, Chantal (2008) Om det politiska, Stockholm: Tankekraft.
Mudimbe, Valentin Y. (1988) The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
_________________ (1999) ”Diskurs om makt och kunskap om de Andra: Marginalitet och
koloniseringens struktur” i Eriksson, Catharina; Eriksson Baaz, Maria & Thörn, Håkan (red) (1999).
Globaliseringens kulturer: Den postkoloniala paradoxen, rasismen och det mångkulturella samhället. Nora: Bokförlaget
Nya Doxa.
Murdoch, Jonathan (2006) Post-structuralist geography. A guide to relational space, London: Sage.
Möller, Cecilia (2009) Transforming Geographies of Tourism and Gender. Exploring women's livelihood strategies and
practices within tourism in Latvia Karlstad: Karlstads universitet
Nash, Dennison (1989) ” Tourism as a Form of Imperialism” Hosts and Guests. The Anthropology of Tourism i
Valene L. Smith (red) Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press
Nederveen Pieterse, Jan (1992). White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2002) Bortom gott och ont: förspel till en framtidens filosofi. Brutus Östlings Förlag
O’Dell, Tom (red). (1999) Nonstop! Lund: Historisk media
Olsson, Gunnar (2007) Abysmal. A critique of cartographic reason, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Ong, Aihwa (2006) Neoliberalism as exception: Mutations in citizenship and sovereignty, Durham: Duke University
Press.
Orwell, George (1996) Djurens gård, Bokförlaget Atlantis AB: Stockholm
Owens, Lynn (2008) ”From Anti-tourists to Tourist Attractions: The Transformation of Amsterdams
Squatters’ Movement” Social Movement Studies Vol. 7, 1 s 43-59
Palmberg, Mai (1987). Afrika i skolböckerna: Gamla fördomar och nya. Stockholm: SIDA, INFO-sekretariatet.

111
Palmberg, Mai (2000). Afrikabild för partnerskap: Afrika i de svenska skolböckerna. Uppsala: Nordiska
Afrikainstitutet
Palmberg, Mai & Eriksson Baaz, Maria (red.) (2001) Same and Other. Negotiating African Identity in Cultural
Production. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute (Nordiska Afrikainstitutet)
Pattullo, Polly (2005) Last Resorts. The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean, 2nd edition, London: Latin American
Bureau.
Pettman, Jan J (1997) ”Body Politics: International Sex Tourism” Third World Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1 s 93-
108
Pickels, John (2003) A History of Spaces. Cartographic Reason and the Geocoded World. London: Routledge Pratt,
Mary Louise (1992) Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London: Routledge.
Pred, Allan (2004) The Past is not Dead. Facts, Fictions, and Enduring Stereotypes. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press
Pritchard, Annette & Nigel J. Morgan (1998) Tourism Promotion and Power: Creating Images, Creating Identities.
Chichester: Wiley
Pritchard, Annette & Nigel J. Morgan (2000) ”Privileging the Male Gaze: Gendered Tourism Landscapes”
Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 27, No. 4, s. 884-905.
Ramqvist Karolina (2002) More fire: roman. Stockholm: Modernista
Ritzer, George (1993) The McDonaldization of society: An investigation into the changing character of contemporary
social life, Newbury Park: Pine Forge Press.
Ritzer, George & Liska, Allan (1997) ”’McDisneyization’ and ’post-tourism’: Complementary perspectives
on contemporary Tourism” i Rojek, Chris (1993). Ways of escape: modern transformations in leisure and travel.
London: Macmillan.
Rodney, Walter (1974) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington: Howard University Press
Ryan, Chris (red.) (1997). The Tourist Experience. A New Introduction . London: Cassell
Said, Edward W. (1993) Orientalism, Stockholm: Ordfront.
Said, Edward W. (1995). Kultur och Imperialism. Stockholm: Ordfront.
Schmitt, Carl (1985) Political Theology. Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Cambridge MA, MIT Press.
Schough, Katarina (2008) Hyperboré: Föreställningen om Sveriges plats i världen. Stockholm: Carlsson
Schütze, Jochen K (1999) ”Nomadens förbannelse” i Farlig Geografi. Res Publica Nummer 41-42. Brutus
Östlings Förlag s. 17-35
Selänniemi, Tom (2003) ”Oh Holiday in the Liminoid Playground: Place, Time, and Self in Tourism” i
Bauer, Thomas G & Bob McKercher (eds) (2003). Sex and Tourism. Journeys of Romance, Love, and Lust.
Binghamton: The Haworth press.
Shaw, Gareth & Williams, Allan M. (2002). Critical issues in tourism: a geographical perspective . 2. ed. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers
Shome, Raka (2001). ”White Femininity and the Discourse of the Nation: Re/membering Princess Diana”
Feminist Media Studies, 1(3), s 323–342.
SOU 2005: 104, Sverige och tsunamin: katastrofkommissionens rapport, Lind & Co förlag AB
Simmel, George (1981) Hur är samhället möjligt? Och Andra Essäer. Göteborg: Bokförlaget Korpen
Simmel, Georg (1990) The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge
Sturma, Michael (1999) ”Packaging Polynesia’s Image” Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 26, s. 712–715.
Szarycz, Gregory S. (2008) ”Cruising, freighter-style: A phenomenological exploration of tourist
recollections of a passenger freighter travel experience”, International Journal of Tourism Research 10; 259-269.
Sönmez, Sevil F (1998) ”Tourism, Terrorism and Political Instability” Annals of Tourism Research. Vol. 25,
No. 2 s 416-56
Temkin-Greener, Helena & Mukamel, Dana B. (2002) “Predicting place of death in the program of All
Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE): Participant versus program characteristics”, Journal of theAmerican
Geriatrics Society 50[1]; 125-135.
Tesfahuney, Mekonnen (1998a) Imag(in)ing the Other(s). Migration, Racism and the Discursive Constructions of
Migrants. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet
___________________ (1998b) ”Mobility, Racism and Geopolitics” Political Geography 17 (5): 499-515.
Tesfahuney, Mekonnen & Dahlstedt, Magnus (2007) ”Lägerliv – undantagstillstånd,
övervakningsansamlingar och migration”, i Lövgren, Sofia & Johansson, Kerstin (red.) Viljan att styra.
Individ, samhälle och välfärdens styrningsmentaliteter, Lund: Studentlitteratur.

112
___________________________________ (2008a) ”Inledning: Betraktelser över en postpolitisk
samtid”, i Tesfahuney, Mekonnen & Dahlstedt, Magnus (red.) Den bästa av världar? Betraktelser över en
postpolitisk samtid, Stockholm: Tankekraft Förlag.
____________________________________(2008b) ”Fångad i spelet? Spekulationer om den bästa av
världar”, i Tesfahuney, Mekonnen & Dahlstedt, Magnus (red.) Den bästa av världar? Betraktelser över en
postpolitisk samtid, Stockholm: Tankekraft Förlag.
_____________________________________(2008c) ”Maze of Camps: (Im)Mobilities, Racism and
Spaces of Exception” i Holmgren Troy, M & Wennö, E (red) Space Haunting Disocurse. Cambridge:
Cambridge Scholars Press
Tesfahuney, Mekonnen & Schough, Katarina (2009) ”Postpolis”, i Graninger, Göran & Knuthammar,
Christer (red.) Samhällsbyggande och integration: Frågor om assimilation, mångfald & boende, Linköping: Linköpings
universitet.
Thompson, John P (2001) Medierna och moderniteten, Göteborg: Daidalos.
Torgovnick, Marianna (1990). Gone Primitive. Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Turner, Simon M & Troiano, Carolyn S. (1987) ”The attraction of all-inclusive resorts”, Cornell Hotel and
Restaurant Administration Quarterly 28, s. 25-27.
Turner, Victor (1969). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. London: Routledge and Keagen Paul.
Urry, John (1995). Consuming Places. London: Routledge.
Urry, John (2000). Sociology beyond Society. Mobilities for the 21st Century. London: Routledge
Urry, John (2002). The Tourist Gaze. Second edition. London: Sage publications.
Urry, John (2005). “The Place of Emotions within Place”, i: Davidson, Joyse, Bondi, Liz & Mick Smith
(2005). Emotional Geographies. Hampshire: Aschgater Publishing Limited.
Van den Berghe, Pierre (1994). The Quest for the Other – Ethnic Tourism in San Cristóbal, Mexico. Seattle &
London: University of Washington Press.
Van den Berghe, Pierre (1995) Marketing mayas: Ethnic tourism promotion in Mexico, Annals of Tourism
Research, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1995, s. 568-588.
Van den Berghe, Pierre & Charles F. Keyes (1984) ”Introduction: Tourism and Re-created Ethnicity”,
Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1984, Pages 343-352.
Veijola, Soile & Eeva Jokinen (1994) ”The Body in Tourism” Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 11, No. 3, s.
125-151.
Verne, Jules (1873) Jorden runt på 80 dagar. 3 upplaga. Översättning av L. Ericsson. Stockholm: S. Flodin
Verstraete, Ginette (2002) ”Tourism and the Global Itinerary of an Idea” i Cressweel Tim & Verstraete,
Ginette red. Mobilizing place, placing mobility: the politics of representation in a globalized world. Amsterdam: Rodopi
Virilio, Paul (1986) Speed and Politics. New York: Semiotext(e)
Waitt, Gordon (1997) ”Selling Paradise and Adventure: Representations of Landscape in the Tourist
Advertising” Australian Geographical Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1, s. 47-60.
Wang, Ning (2000) Tourism and Modernity. A Sociological Approach, Oxford: Elsevier/Pergamon.
Wearing, Betsy & Stephen Wearing (1996) ”Refocussing the tourist experience: the flâneur and the
Choraster” Leisure Studies, vol 15, s. 229-243.
Weaver, Adam (2005a) ”Interactive service work and performative metaphors. The case of the cruise
industry”, Tourism Studies 5[1]; 5-27.
Weaver, Adam (2005b) ”The McDonaldization Thesis and Cruise Tourism”, Annals of Tourism Research
32[2]; 346-366.
Weaver, Adam (2005c) ‘”Passports to Pleasure: Credit Cards and Contemporary Travel’, International
Journal of Tourism Research 7[3]; 151-159.
Weaver, David & Opperman, Martin (2000) Tourism Management. Jacaranda: Wiley
Weaver, Frances M. et al (2008) ”Providing All-inclusive Care for frail elderly Veterans: Evalution of three
model of care” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 56[2]; 345-353.
Williams, S. (ed.) Tourism, Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences, London and New York: Routledge
Wolf, Eva (2001). Med charter till Estoril. En etnologisk studie av kulturell mångfald inom modern svensk turism,
Skrifter från Etnologiska föreningen i Västsverige 33, Etnologiska föreningen i Västsverige, Göteborg.
Wolfe, Eric (1982) Europe and the Peoples Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press
Wong, Chak-keung Simon & Kwong, Wai-Yan Yan (2004) ”Outbound tourists’ selection criteria for
choosing all-inclusive package tours” Tourism Management 25[?]; 581-592.

113
Wood, Robert E (1998) ”Touristic ethnicity: a brief itinerary” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. No. 2 s. 218 –
241
Wood, Robert (2000) ”Caribbean Cruise Tourism. Globalization at sea”, Annals of Tourism Research 27 [2];
345-370.
Worthington, Barry (2005) ”Sex and shunting: Contrasting aspects of serious leisure within the tourism
industry” Tourist Studies 5[3] 225-246.
Zizek, Slavoj (1996) The Ticklish Subject. The Absent Center of Political Ontology. London: Verso
Åkerberg, Sofia (2001) ”Inhägnad kunskap – guideboken i London Zoo” i Eskilsson, Lena &
Fazlhashemi, Mohammed red. (2001) Reseberärttelser. Idéhistoriska resor i sociala och geografiska rum. Stockholm:
Carlsson
Öhrling, Stefan (2008), Krig, tsunami och turism i Sri Lanka, WP 2008:1 ETOUR

Internet och andra källor

(www.unwto.org/facts/eng/highlights.htm).
(http://www.eturbonews.com/142/strong-support-world-tourism-day-themes-2008-amp-2009)
www.fritidsresor.se/resa/dubai/
www.apollo.se/Travelling+with+apollo/Catalogue/Thailand/
www.ving.se/singapore
www.ving.se/kambodja
www.ving.se/indonesien
www.apollo.se/Travelling+with+apollo/Catalogue/Turkiet/
www.regeringen.se
http://www.royalcaribbean.com
http://www.secretsresorts.com/capri/whatsinc.asp
http://www.secretsresorts.com/capri/awards-testimonials.asp
http://www.clubmedsverige.se/all-inclusive.php
http://www.breezes.com/whats-super-inclusive
http://www.hedonismresorts.com/
www.fritidsresor.se
www.apollo.se
http://www.fritidsresor.se/resor/Blue-vara-basta-hotell/Blue-Village/Bamseklubben
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=147&a=581501&rss
www.apollo.se/Travelling+with+apollo/Catalogue/Thailand/, 2009-04-16.
www.apollo.se/Travelling+with+apollo/Catalogue/Turkiet/, 2009-04-16.
www.formin.finlandd.fi, 2009-02-03
www.fritidsresor.se/resa/dubai/?season=vinter-08-09, 2009-01-23.
www.regeringen.se/sb/d/6933/a/67169, 2009-02-09
www.ving.se/dubai, 2009-01-23.
www.ving.se/indonesien, 2009-01-23.
www.ving.se/kambodja, 2009-01-23.
www.ving.se/singapore, 2009-02-02.

Picture gallery – The Tourist Camp

All inclusive map 1:
http://www.bluebayweddings.co.uk/resorts/mexico/excellence-riviera-cancun/img/map.gif
All inclusive map 2
http://www.arubabound.com/accommo/divi_map.jpg
All inclusive map 3
http://www.arubabound.com/accommo/tamarijn_map.jpg
All inclusive map 4:
http://www.beaches-negril-resort.com/files-
RWD/RWDTravel/Image/Beaches%20Negril/BeachesNegrilMap.jpg
Internment Camp 1:
http://itcphotos.utsa.edu/photos/098-0953.gif
Internment Camp 2:
http://www.foitimes.com/internment/FtLincoln.jpg

114
Internment Camp 3:
http://images.google.se/imgres?imgurl=http://www.mission-base.com/manzanar/history/images/5-
CAMP-GRID-M2.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.mission-
base.com/manzanar/history/origins.html&usg=__frF-
kx0MH64gmUoEi5n8iiM8xbk=&h=600&w=902&sz=338&hl=sv&start=109&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=J9
bm8z8waKOXtM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=146&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dinternment%2Bcamp%26ndsp%3D
20%26hl%3Dsv%26sa%3DN%26start%3D100%26um%3D1
Internment Camp 4:
http://jahmp.org/imgs/history/crystalcitymap.jpg

115
Notes

i The anthropological machine is a set of symbolic and material mechanisms that works in
different scientific and philosophical discourses and classifies and separates out humans and
animals by putting them in a topological relation, a double process of inclusion and exclusion
where animal aspects of the human nature are specified and isolated (Calarco 2007) This first step
is then followed by boundary-setting following the same characteristics and logic: “And it is
enough to move our field of research ahead a few decades, and instead of this innocuous
paleontological find we will have the Jew, that is, the non-man produced within the man, or the
néomort and the overcomatose person, that is, the animal separated within the human body itself”
(Agamben 2004:37, original emphasis). In the end the anthropological machine is arbitrary and
changeable (like the language game according to Wittgenstein) and based to a large extent on the
crystallisation of contrasts between the human and the non-human; an ontological practice that is
interwoven in the tourist practice and its fascination with the exotic and unfamiliar.
ii A specific biopolitical topology can be found in the modality of 'all-inclusive'; also a concept
found in the abbreviation PACE, Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly that aims at making it
possible for very sick elderly people to live in their homes as long as possible (Eng 2002; Temkin-
Greener and Mukamel 2002; Weaver et al 2008:345).
iii I am aware that this reasoning could be seen as topographical and constituted around a locking
dichotomy, and to some extent this may be true. But this is a first step in breaking up the same
dichotomy, since the topographical and the topological do not mutually exclude each other, but
meet in the least common denominator, topos, place. More ontological starting points could
perhaps be used, for instance ontology without topos as an element, or perhaps the ontology of
the Abyss, the ontology that existed before any other ontology (Olsson 2007)?

116